Juve had spoken in a tone of command that brooked no reply. His keen
eyes seemed to pierce through Paul and read his inmost soul. The winking
light of the street lamp shed a wan halo round the lad, who obviously
wanted to move away from its radius, but Juve held him fast.
"Come now, answer! You are Charles Rambert, and you were Mademoiselle
Jeanne?"
"I don't understand," Paul declared.
"Really!" sneered Juve. He hailed a passing cab. "Get in," he ordered
briefly, and pushing the lad in before him he gave an address to the
driver, entered the cab and shut the door. Juve sat there rubbing his
hands as if well pleased with his night's work. For several minutes he
remained silent, and then turned to his companion.
"You think it is clever to deny it," he remarked, "but do you imagine it
isn't obvious to anyone that you are Charles Rambert, and that you were
disguised as Mademoiselle Jeanne?"
"But you are wrong," Paul insisted. "Charles Rambert is dead."
"So you know that, do you? Then you admit that you know whom I am
talking about?"
The lad coloured and began to tremble. Juve looked out of the window,
pretending not to notice him, and smiled gently. Then he went on in a
friendly tone. "But you know it's stupid to deny what can't be denied.
Besides, you should remember that if I know you are Charles Rambert I
must know something else as well; and therefore----"
"Well, yes," Paul acknowledged, "I _am_ Charles Rambert, and I was
disguised as Mademoiselle Jeanne. How did you know it? Why were you at
the Saint-Anthony's Pig? Had you come to arrest me? And where are you
taking me now--to prison?"
Juve shrugged his shoulders.
"You want to know too much, my boy. Besides, you ought to know Paris,
and so ought to be able to guess where I told the driver to go, merely
by looking at the streets we are passing through."
"That is exactly what frightens me," Charles Rambert replied. "We are on
the quays, near the Law Courts."
"And the Police Station, my son. Quite so. Now it's quite useless to
make a scene: you will gain nothing by attempting to get away. You are
in the hands of justice, or rather in my hands, which is not quite the
same thing, so come quietly. That is really good advice!"
A few minutes later the cab stopped at the Tour Pointue which has such
melancholy associations for so many criminals. Juve alighted and made
his companion alight as well, paid the driver, and walked up the
staircase to the first floor of the building. It was daylight now, and
the men were coming on duty; all of them saluted Juve as he walked along
with his trembling captive. The detective went down one long passage,
turned into another, and opened a door.
"Go in there," he ordered curtly.
Charles Rambert obeyed, and found himself in a small room the nature of
which he recognised immediately from the furniture it contained. It was
the measuring room of the anthropometric service. So what he feared was
about to happen: Juve was going to lock him up!
But the detective called out in a loud tone: "Hector, please!" and one
of the men who remained on duty in the department, in case they were
required by any of the detective inspectors to find the records of any
previously convicted criminal, came hurrying in.
"Ah, M. Juve, and with a bag too! So early? You think he has been here
before?"
"No," said Juve in a dry tone that put a stop to further indiscreet
questions. "I don't want you to look up my companion's record, but to
take his measurements, and very carefully too."
The man was somewhat surprised at the order, for it was not usual to be
asked to do such work at so very early an hour. He was rather irritable
too at being disturbed from the rest he was enjoying, and it was very
curtly that he spoke to Charles Rambert.
"Come here, please: the standard first: take off your boots."
Charles Rambert obeyed and stood under the standard of measurement, and
then, as the assistant ordered him, he submitted to having his fingers
smeared with ink so that his finger prints might be taken, to being
photographed, full face and in profile, and finally to having the width
of his head, from ear to ear, measured with a special pair of caliper
compasses.
Hector was surprised by his docility.
"I must say your friend is not very talkative, M. Juve. What has he been
up to?" and as the detective merely shrugged his shoulders and did not
reply, he went on: "That's done, sir. We will develop the negatives and
take the prints, and recopy the measurements, and the record shall be
classified in the register in a couple of hours."
Charles Rambert grew momentarily more scared. He felt that he was
definitely arrested now. But Juve left the arm-chair in which he had
been resting, and coming up to him laid his hand upon his shoulder,
speaking the while with a certain gentleness.
"Come: there are some other points as to which I wish to examine you."
He led him from the anthropometric room along a dark corridor, and
presently taking a key from his pocket, opened a door and pushed the lad
in before him. "Go in there," he said. "This is where we make the
dynamometer tests."
A layman looking round the room might almost have supposed that it was
merely some carpenter's shop. Pieces of wood, of various shapes and
sizes and sorts, were arranged along the wall or laid upon the floor; in
glass cases were whole heaps of strips of metal, five or six inches
long, and of varying thickness.
Juve closed the door carefully behind him.
"For pity's sake, M. Juve, tell me what you are going to do with me,"
Charles Rambert implored.
The detective smiled.
"Well, there you ask a question which I can't answer off-hand. What am I
going to do with you, eh? That still depends upon a good many things."
As he spoke Juve tossed his hat aside and, looking at a rather high kind
of little table, proceeded to remove from it a grey cloth which
protected it from dust, and drew it into the middle of the room. This
article was composed of a metal body screwed on to a strong tripod, with
a lower tray that moved backwards and forwards, and two lateral
buttresses with a steel cross-piece firmly bolted on to them above. Upon
this framework were two dynamometers worked by an ingenious piece of
mechanism. Juve looked at Charles Rambert and explained.
"This is Dr. Bertillon's effraction dynamometer. I am going to make use
of it to find out at once whether you are or are not deserving of some
little interest. I don't want to tell you more just at present." Juve
slipped into a specially prepared notch a thin strip of wood, which he
had selected with particular care from one of the heaps of material
arranged along the wall. From a chest he took a tool which Charles
Rambert, who had had some intimate experience of late with the
light-fingered community, immediately recognised as a jemmy. "Take hold
of that," said Juve, and as Charles took it in his hand he added: "Now
put the jemmy into this groove, and press with all your force. If you
can move that needle to a point which I know, and which it is difficult
but not impossible to reach, you may congratulate yourself on being in
luck."
Stimulated by this encouragement from the detective, Charles Rambert
exerted all his force upon the lever, only afraid that he might not be
strong enough. Juve stopped him very soon.
"That's all right," he said, and substituting a strip of sheet-iron for
the strip of wood, he handed another tool to the lad. "Now try again."
A few seconds later Juve took a magnifying lens, and closely examined
both the strip of metal and the strip of wood. He gave a little
satisfied click with his tongue, and seemed to be very pleased.
"Charles Rambert," he remarked, "I think we are going to do a very good
morning's work. Dr. Bertillon's new apparatus is an uncommonly useful
invention."
The detective might have gone on with his congratulatory monologue had
not an attendant come into the room at that moment.
"Ah, there you are, M. Juve: I have been looking for you everywhere.
There is someone asking for you who says he knows you will receive him.
I told him this was not the proper time, but he was so insistent that I
promised to bring you his card. Besides, he says you have given him an
appointment."
Juve took the card and glanced at it.
"That's all right," he said. "Take the gentleman into the parlour and
tell him I will be with him in a minute." The attendant went out and
Juve looked at Charles Rambert with a smile. "You are played out," he
said; "before we do anything else common humanity requires that you
should get some rest. Come, follow me; I will take you to a room where
you can throw yourself on a sofa and get a sleep for a good hour at
least while I go and see this visitor." He led the lad into a small
waiting-room, and as Charles Rambert obediently stretched himself upon
the sofa, Juve looked at the pale and nervous and completely silent boy,
and said with even greater gentleness: "There, go to sleep; sleep
quietly, and presently----"
Juve left the room, and called a man to whom he gave an order in a low
tone.
"Stay with that gentleman, please. He is a friend of mine, but a friend,
you understand, who must not leave this place. I am going to see some
one, but I will come up again presently," and Juve hurried downstairs to
the parlour.
The visitor rose as the door opened, and Juve made a formal bow.
"M. Gervais Aventin?" he said.
"M. Gervais Aventin," that gentleman replied. "And you are
Detective-Inspector Juve?"
"I am, sir," the detective answered, and pointing his visitor to a chair
he took a seat himself at a small table littered with official
documents.
"Sir," Juve began, "I ventured to send you that pressing invitation to
come to Paris to-day, because from enquiries I had made about you, I was
sure that you were a man with a sense of duty, who would not resent
being put to inconvenience when it was a question of co-operating in a
work of justice and of truth."
The visitor, a man of perhaps thirty, of somewhat fashionable appearance
and careful though quiet dress, manifested much surprise.
"Enquiries about me, sir? And pray, why? I must confess that I was very
much astonished when I received your letter informing me that the famous
Detective-Inspector Juve wished to see me, and at first I suspected some
practical joke. On consideration I decided to obey your summons without
further pressing, but I did not imagine that you would have made any
enquiries about me. How do you know me, may I ask?"
Juve smiled.
"Is it the fact," he enquired, instead of replying directly, for like
the good detective that he was, intensely keen on his work, he enjoyed
mystifying people with whom he conversed, "is it the fact that your name
is Gervais Aventin? A civil engineer? The possessor of considerable
private means? About to be married? And that lately you made a short
journey to Limoges?"
The young man nodded and smiled.
"Your information is perfectly correct in every particular. But I do not
yet understand what crime of mine can have subjected me to these
enquiries on your part."
Juve smiled again.
"I wondered, sir, why you vouchsafed no answer to the local enquiries
which have been made at my instance, to the advertisements which I have
had inserted in the papers, in which I discreetly made it known that the
police wanted to get into communication with all the passengers who
travelled first class, in the slow train from Paris to Luchon, on the
night of the 23rd of December last."
This time the young man looked anxious.
"Great Scott!" he exclaimed, "are you in the employment of my future
father-in-law?"
Juve burst into a roar of laughter.
"First acknowledge that you did travel by that train on that night: that
you got into it at Vierzon, where you live and where you are going to be
married; and that you were going to Limoges to see a lady--and that you
did not want your fiancée's family to know anything about it."
Gervais Aventin pulled himself together.
"I had no idea that the official police undertook espionage of that
sort," he said rather drily. "But it is true, sir, that I went to
Limoges--my last post before I was appointed to Vierzon--to take a final
farewell to a lady. But since you are so accurately informed about all
this, since you even know what train I went by, a train I deliberately
chose because in little places like Vierzon so much notice is taken of
people who travel by the express, you must also know----"
Juve checked him with a wave of the hand.
"A truce to jesting," he said; "excuse me, sir, I was only amusing
myself by observing once more how quickly decent people, who have a
little peccadillo on their conscience, are disturbed when they think
they have been found out. Your love affairs do not matter to me, sir; I
don't want to know if you have a lady friend, or not. The information I
want from you is of a very different nature. Tell me simply this: in
what circumstances did you make that journey? What carriage did you get
into? Who travelled with you in that carriage? I am asking you because,
sir, I have every reason to believe that you travelled that night with a
murderer who committed a crime of particular atrocity, and I think you
may be able to give me some interesting information."
The young man, who had been looking grave, smiled once more.
"I would rather have that than an enquiry into my defunct love affairs.
Well, sir, I got into the train at Vierzon, into a first-class
carriage----"
"What kind of carriage?"
"One of the old-fashioned corridor carriages; that is to say, not a
corridor communicating with the other carriages, but a single carriage
with four compartments, two in the middle opening on to the corridor,
and two at the ends communicating with the corridor by a small door."
"I know," said Juve; "the lavatory is in the centre, and the end
compartments are like the ordinary noncorridor compartments, except that
they have only seven seats, and also have the little door communicating
with the narrow passage down one side of the carriage."
"That's it. I got into the smoking compartment at the end."
"Don't go too quick," said Juve. "Tell me whom you saw in the various
compartments. Let us go even farther back. You were on the platform,
waiting for the train; it came in; what happened then?"
"You want to be very precise," Gervais Aventin remarked. "Well, when the
train pulled up I looked for the first-class carriage; it was a few
yards away from me, and the corridor was alongside the platform. I got
into the corridor and wanted to choose my compartment. I remember
clearly that I went first to the rear compartment, the last one in the
carriage. I could not get into that, for the door opening into it from
the corridor was locked."
"That is correct," Juve nodded. "I know from the guard that that
compartment was empty. What did you do then?"
"I turned back and, passing the ladies' compartment and the lavatory,
decided to take my seat in the one next it communicating with the
corridor. But luck was against me: a pane of glass was broken and it was
bitterly cold there; so I had to fall back on the only compartment left,
the smoking one towards the front of the train."
"Were there many of you there?"
"I thought at first that I was going to have a fellow-traveller, for
there was some luggage and a rug arranged on the seat. But the passenger
must have been in the lavatory, for I didn't see him. I lay down on the
other seat and went to sleep. When I got out of the train at Limoges, my
fellow-traveller must have been in the lavatory again, for I remember
quite distinctly that he was not on the opposite seat. I thought at the
time how easy it would have been for me to steal his luggage and walk
off with his valise: nobody would have seen me."
Juve had listened intently to every word of the story. He asked for one
further detail with a certain anxiety in his tone.
"Tell me, sir, when you woke up did you have any impression that the
baggage arranged on the seat opposite yours had been disturbed at all?
Might the traveller, whom you did not see, have come in for a sleep
while you yourself were asleep?"
Gervais Aventin made a little gesture of uncertainty.
"I can't answer in the affirmative, M. Juve. I did not notice that; and,
besides, when I got into the compartment, the shade was pulled down over
the lamp, and the curtains were drawn across the windows. I hardly saw
how the things were arranged. And then, when I got out at Limoges I was
in a hurry, and only thought about finding my ticket and jumping on to
the platform. But I do not think the other fellow did take his place
while I was asleep. I did not hear a sound, and yet I did not sleep at
all heavily."
"So you travelled in a first-class compartment in the slow train from
Paris to Luchon on the night of the 23rd of December, and in that
compartment there was the luggage of a traveller whom you did not
see--who may not have been there?"
"Yes," said Gervais Aventin, and, as the detective sat silent for a
moment, he enquired: "Is my information too vague to be of any use to
you?"
Juve was wondering inwardly why the dickens Etienne Rambert was not in
that compartment when, according to the depositions of the guard, he
must have been there; but he said nothing of this. Instead, he said:
"Your information is most valuable, sir. You have told me everything I
wanted to know."
Gervais Aventin displayed still more surprise.
"Well," he said, "by way of return, M. Juve, tell me something which
puzzles me. How did you know I travelled by that train that night?"
The detective drew out his pocket-book, and from an inner pocket
produced a first-class ticket, which he held out to the engineer.
"That is very simple," he replied. "Here is your ticket. I wanted to
know exactly who everyone was who travelled in that first-class
compartment, so I sent for all the first-class tickets which were given
up by passengers who left the train at the different stations. That's
how I got yours: it had been issued at Vierzon, the station where you
got in, so I interrogated the clerk at the booking-office who gave me a
description of you; then I sent down an inspector to Vierzon to make
discreet enquiries, and he got me all the information I required. All I
had to do then was to write and ask you to come here to-day; and the
regrettable story of your broken relations with the lady was an ample
guarantee to me that you would be punctual at the appointment!"