After the preliminary examination as to his identity and so on, Gurn had
been transferred to the Santé prison. At first the prisoner seemed to
have terrible difficulty in accustoming himself to the rigours of
confinement; he suffered from alternate paroxysms of rage and despair,
but by sheer strength of character he fought these down. As a prisoner
on remand he was entitled to the privilege of a separate cell, also
during the first forty-eight hours he had been able to have his meals
sent in from outside. Since then, however, his money had given out, and
he was obliged to content himself with the ordinary prison dietary. But
Gurn was not fastidious; this man whom Lady Beltham had singled out, or
accepted, as her lover had often given proofs of an education and an
intelligence above the average, yet now he appeared quite at ease in the
atmosphere of a prison.
* * * * *
Gurn was walking quickly and alone round the exercise yard, when a
breathless voice sounded in his ear.
"'Gad, Gurn, you know how to march! I was going to join you for a bit,
but I could not keep up with you."
Gurn turned and saw old Siegenthal, the warder in charge of his
division, in whose custody he was particularly placed.
"My word!" the old fellow panted, "anybody could tell you had been in
the infantry. Well, so have I; though that wasn't yesterday, nor yet the
day before; but we never marched as fast as you do. We made a fine march
once though--at Saint-Privat."
Out of pity for the decent old fellow Gurn slackened his pace. He had
heard the story of the battle of Saint-Privat a dozen times already, but
he was quite willing to let Siegenthal tell it again. The warder,
however, wandered to another point.
"By the way, I heard you were promoted sergeant out in the Transvaal: is
that so?" and as Gurn nodded assent, he went on: "I never rose above the
rank of corporal, but at any rate I have always led an honest life." A
sudden compassion for his prisoner seized the old man, and he laid a
kindly hand on Gurn's shoulder. "Is it really possible that an old
soldier like you, who seem to be such a steady, serious, kind of man,
can have committed such a crime?"
Gurn dropped his eyes and did not reply.
"I suppose there was a woman at the bottom of it?" Siegenthal said
tentatively. "You acted on impulse, in a fit of jealousy, eh?"
"No," Gurn answered with sudden bluntness, "I may as well own up that I
did it in anger, because I wanted money--for the sake of robbery."
"I'm sorry," said the old warder simply. "You must have been desperately
hard up."
"No I wasn't."
Siegenthal stared at his prisoner. The man must be utterly callous to
talk like that, he thought. Then a clock struck and the warder gave a
curt order.
"Time, Gurn! We must go back," and he conducted the unresisting prisoner
up the three flights of stairs that led to the division in which his
cell was. "By the way," he remarked as they went, "I forgot to tell you
that you and I have got to part."
"Oh?" said Gurn. "Am I to be transferred to another prison?"
"No, it's I who am going. Just fancy, I have been appointed head warder
at Poissy; I go on leave to-night, and take up my new post in a week."
Both halted before the door of cell number 127. "In with you," said
Siegenthal, and when Gurn had obeyed he turned to go. Then he wheeled
round again quickly, and put out his hand hurriedly, as if half afraid
of being seen. "Put it there, Gurn," he said; "no doubt you are a
murderer and, as you have confessed yourself, a thief; but I can't
forget that if you had kept straight, you were the sergeant and I should
have had to obey you. I'm sorry for you!" Gurn was touched and murmured
a word of thanks. "That's all right, that's all right," Siegenthal
muttered, not attempting to hide his emotion; "let us hope that
everything will turn out well," and he left Gurn alone in the cell to
his meditations.
Twice, Gurn reflected, relying on the sympathy which he knew he had
evoked in the old warder's heart despite the number of criminals who had
passed through his hands, he had been on the point of broaching a
serious and delicate matter to him; but he had not actually spoken,
being deterred by some undefinable scruple, as well as half suspecting
that his application would be made in vain. And now he was glad he had
been so cautious, for even if the warder had been amenable, his
approaching removal to another prison would have prevented the idea from
coming to fruition.
* * * * *
A sing-song voice echoed in the corridor.
"Number 127, you are wanted in the barristers' room. Get ready," and the
next minute the door of the cell was thrown open, and a cheery-looking
warder, with a strong Gascon accent, appeared. Gurn had noticed him
before: he was the second warder in this division, a man named Nibet,
and no doubt he would be promoted to Siegenthal's place when the chief
warder left. Nibet looked curiously at Gurn, a certain sympathy in his
quick brown eyes. "Ready, Gurn?"
Gurn growled an answer and pulled on his coat again. His counsel was
Maître Barberoux, one of the foremost criminal barristers of the day;
Gurn had thought it prudent to retain him for his defence, more
especially as it would cost him nothing personally. But he had no
particular desire to talk to him now; he had already told him everything
he intended to tell him, and he had no intention of allowing the case to
be boomed as a sensation; quite the reverse indeed: in his opinion, the
flatter the case fell, the better it would be for his interests, though
no doubt Maître Barberoux would not be of the same way of thinking.
But he said nothing, and merely walked in front of Nibet along the
corridor towards the barristers' room, the way to which he was already
familiar with. On the way they passed some masons who were at work in
the prison, and these men stopped to watch him pass, but contrary to
Gurn's apprehensions they did not seem to recognise him. He hoped it
meant that the murder was already ceasing to be a nine days' wonder for
the public at large.
Nibet pushed Gurn into the barristers' room, saying respectfully to the
person in it already, "You only have to ring, sir, when you have
finished," and then withdrew, leaving Gurn in presence, not of his
counsel as he had expected, but of that personage's assistant, a young
licentiate in law named Roger de Seras, who was also a most incredible
dandy.
Roger de Seras greeted Gurn with an engaging smile and advanced as if to
shake hands with him, but suddenly wondering whether that action might
not suggest undue familiarity, he raised his hand to his own head
instead and scratched it; the young fellow was still younger in his
business, and did not rightly know whether it was etiquette for a
barrister, or even a barrister's junior, to shake hands with a prisoner
who was implicated in a notorious murder.
Gurn felt inclined to laugh, and on the whole was glad that it was the
junior whom he had to see; the futile verbosity of this very young
licentiate might possibly be amusing.
Maître Roger de Seras began with civil apologies.
"You will excuse me if I only stay for a few minutes, but I am most
frightfully busy; besides, two ladies are waiting for me outside in my
carriage: I may say confidentially that they are actresses, old friends
of mine, and, just fancy, they are most frightfully anxious to see you!
That's what it means to be famous, M. Gurn; eh, what?" Gurn nodded, not
feeling unduly flattered. Roger de Seras continued. "Just to please them
I have made any number of applications to the governor of the prison,
but there was nothing doing, my dear chap; that beast of a magistrate,
Fuselier, insists on your being kept in absolute seclusion. But none the
less, I've got some news for you. I know heaps: why, my friends at the
Law Courts call me 'the peripatetic paragraph!' Not bad, eh, what?"
Gurn smiled and Roger de Seras was encouraged. "It's given me no end of
a boom, my leader acting for you, and my being able to come and see you
whenever I like! Everybody asks me how you are, and what you are like,
and what you say, and what you think. You can congratulate yourself on
having caused a sensation in Paris."
Gurn began to be irritated by all this chatter.
"I must confess I'm not the least interested in what people are saying
about me. Is there anything new in my case?"
"Absolutely nothing that I am aware of," Roger de Seras replied
serenely, without stopping to think whether there was or not. "I
say--Lady Beltham----"
"Yes?" said Gurn.
"Well, I know her very well, you know: I go out a frightful lot and I
have often met her: a charming woman, Lady Beltham!"
Gurn really did not know how to treat the idiot. Never one to suffer
fools gladly, he grew irritable and would almost certainly have said
something that would have put the garrulous young bungler in his place,
had not the latter suddenly remembered something, just as he was on the
point of getting up to go.
"Oh, by the way," he said with a laugh, "I was nearly forgetting the
most important thing of all. Just fancy, that beast Juve, the marvellous
detective whom the newspapers rave about, went to your place yesterday
afternoon to make another official search!"
"Alone?" enquired Gurn, much interested.
"Quite alone. Now what do you suppose he found; the place has been
ransacked dozens of times, you know; of course I mean something
sensational in the way of a find. I bet you a thousand----"
"I never bet," Gurn snapped. "Tell me at once what it was."
The young fellow was proud of having caught the attention of his
leader's notorious client, if only for a moment; he paused and wagged
his head, weighing each word to give them greater emphasis.
"He found an ordnance map in your bookcase, my dear chap--an ordnance
map with a bit torn out of it."
"Oh! And what then?" said Gurn, a frown upon his face.
The young barrister did not notice the expression on the murderer's
countenance.
"Well, then it appears that Juve thought it was very important. Between
you and me, my opinion is that Juve tries to be frightfully clever and
succeeds in looking a fool. How, I ask you, can the discovery of that
map affect your case or influence the decision of the jury? By the way,
there is no need for you to worry about the result; I have had a
frightful lot of experience in criminal cases, and so be assured you are
all right: extenuating circumstances, you know. But--oh, yes, there is
one thing more I wanted to tell you. A fresh witness is going to be
called at the examination; let me see, what's his name? Dollon: that's
it: the steward, Dollon."
"I don't understand," said Gurn; his head was bent and his eyes cast
down.
A glimmer of light dawned in the young licentiate's brain.
"Wait, there is some connection," he said. "The steward, Dollon, is in
the employment of a lady who calls herself the Baronne de Vibray. And
the Baronne de Vibray is guardian to the young lady who was staying with
Lady Beltham the day, or rather the night, when you--you--well, you
know. And that young lady, Mlle. Thérèse Auvernois, was placed with Lady
Beltham by M. Etienne Rambert. And M. Etienne Rambert is the father of
the young man who murdered the Marquise de Langrune last year. I tell
you all these things without attempting to draw any deductions from
them, for, for my own part, I haven't the least idea why the steward,
Dollon, has been summoned in our case at all."
"Nor have I," said Gurn, and the frown on his brow was deeper.
Roger de Seras hunted all round the little room for his gloves and found
them in his pocket.
"Well, my dear chap, I must leave you. We have been chatting for a whole
half-hour, and those ladies are still waiting for me. What on earth will
they say to me?"
He was about to ring for the warder when Gurn abruptly stayed him.
"Tell me," he said with a sudden air of interest, "when is that man
coming--what's his name? Dollon?"
The young barrister was on the point of saying he did not know, when a
brilliant recollection came into his mind.
"'Gad, how frightfully stupid I am! Why, I have a copy of the telegram
he sent the magistrate in my portfolio here now." He opened the
portfolio and picked out a sheet of blue paper. "Here it is."
Gurn took it from him and read:
"Will leave Verrières to-morrow evening by 7.20 train, arriving Paris 5
A.M...."
Gurn appeared to be sufficiently edified: at all events he paid no
attention to the rest of the message. Lord Beltham's murderer handed the
document back to the barrister without a word.
A few minutes later Maître Roger de Seras had rejoined his lady friends,
and the prisoner was once more in his cell.