On Tuesday, a little before five o’clock, as she had promised, Phillis
rang at Saniel’s door, and he left his laboratory where he was at work,
to let her in.
She threw herself on his neck.
“Well?” she asked, in a trembling voice.
He told her how he had played and won, without stating the exact sum;
also the propositions of the Prince Mazzazoli, the meeting with Duphot,
and the telegram to Jardine.
“Oh! What happiness!” she said, pressing him in her arms. “You are
free!”
“No more creditors! I am my own master. You see it was a good
inspiration. Justice willed it.”
Then interrupting him:
“Apropos of justice, you did not speak of Caffie the morning of your
departure.”
“I was so preoccupied I had no time to think of Caffie.”
“Is it not curious, the coincidence of his death with the condemnation
that we pronounced against him? Does it not prove exactly the justice of
things?”
“If you choose.”
“As the money you won at Monaco proves to you that what is just will
happen. Caffie is punished for all his rascalities and crimes, and you
are rewarded for your sufferings.”
“Would it not have been just if Caffie had been punished sooner, and if
I had suffered less?”
She remained silent.
“You see,” he said smiling, “that your philosophy is weak.”
“It is not of my philosophy that I am thinking, but of Caffie and
ourselves.”
“And how can Caffie be associated with you or yours?”
“He is, or rather he may be, if this justice in which I believe in spite
of your joking permits him to be.”
“You are talking in enigmas.”
“What have you heard about Caffie since you went away?”
“Nothing, or almost nothing.”
“You know it is thought that the crime was committed by a butcher.”
“The commissioner picked up the knife before me, and it is certainly a
butcher’s knife. And more than that, the stroke that cut Caffie’s throat
was given by a hand accustomed to butchery. I have indicated this in my
report.”
“Since then, more careful investigations have discovered a trousers’
button--”
“Which might have been torn off in a struggle between Caffie and his
assassin, I read in a newspaper. But as for me, I do not believe in this
struggle. Caffie’s position in his chair, where he was assaulted and
where he died, indicates that the old scamp was surprised. Otherwise,
if he had not been, if he had struggled, he could have cried out, and,
without doubt, he would have been heard.”
“If you knew how happy I am to hear you say that!” she cried.
“Happy! What difference can it make to you?” and he looked at her in
surprise. “Of what importance is it to you whether Caffie was killed
with or without a struggle? You condemned him; he is dead. That should
satisfy you.”
“I was very wrong to pronounce this condemnation, which I did without
attaching any importance to it.”
“Do you think that hastened its execution?”
“I am not so foolish as that, but I should be better pleased if I had
not condemned him.”
“Do you regret it?”
“I regret that he is dead.”
“Decidedly, the enigma continues; but you know I do not understand it,
and, if you wish, we will stop there. We have something better to do
than to talk of Caffie.”
“On the contrary, let me talk to you of him, because we want your
advice.”
Again he looked at her, trying to read her face and to divine why she
insisted on speaking of Caffie, when he had just expressed a wish not to
speak of him. What was there beneath this insistence?
“I will listen,” he said; “and, since you wish to ask my advice on the
subject, you must tell me immediately what you mean.”
“You are right; and I should have told you before, but embarrassment and
shame restrained me. And I reproach myself, for with you I should feel
neither embarrassment nor reproach.”
“Assuredly.”
“But before everything else, I must tell you--you must know--that my
brother Florentin is a good and honest boy; you must believe it, you
must be convinced of it.”
“I am, since you tell me so. Besides, he produced the best impression on
me during the short time I saw him the other day at your house.”
“Would not one see immediately that he has a good nature?”
“Certainly.”
“Frank and upright; weak, it is true, and a little effeminate also,
that is, lacking energy, letting himself be carried away by goodness and
tenderness. This weakness made him commit a fault before his departure
for America. I have kept it from you until this moment, but you must
know it now. Loving a woman who controlled him and made him do what she
wished, he let himself be persuaded to-take a sum of forty-five francs
that she demanded, that she insisted on having that evening, hoping to
be able to replace it three days later, without his employer discovering
it.”
“His employer was Caffie?”
“No; it was three months after he left Caffie, and he was with another
man of business of whom I have never spoken to you, and now you
understand why. The money he expected failed him; his fault was
discovered, and his employer lodged a complaint against him.”
“We made him withdraw his complaint, never mind how, and Florentin went
to America to seek his fortune. And since you have seen him, you admit
that he might be capable of the fault that he committed, without being
capable-of becoming an assassin.”
He was about to reply, but she closed his lips with a quick gesture.
“You will see why I speak of this, and you will understand why I do
not drop the subject of Caffie, and of this button, on which the police
count to find the criminal. This button belonged to Florentin.”
“To your brother?”
“Yes, to Florentin, who, the day of the crime, had been to see Caffie.”
“That is true; the concierge told the commissioner of police that he
called about three o’clock.”
Phillis gave a cry of despair.
“They know he was there? Then it is more serious than we imagined or
believed.”
“In answering a question as to whom Caffie had received that day, the
concierge named your brother. But as this visit took place between three
and half-past, and the crime was certainly committed between five and
half-past, no one can accuse your brother of being the assassin, since
he left before Caffie lighted his lamp. As this lamp could not light
itself, it proves that he could not have butchered a man who was living
an hour after the concierge saw your brother and talked with him.”
“What you say is a great relief; if you could know how alarmed we have
been!”
“You were too hasty to alarm yourself.”
“Too hasty? But when Florentin read the account to us and came to the
button, he exclaimed, ‘This button is mine!’ and we experienced a
shock that made us lose our heads. We saw the police falling on us,
questioning Florentin, reproaching him with the past, which would be
retailed in all the newspapers, and you must understand how we felt.”
“But cannot your brother explain how he lost this button at Caffie’s?”
“Certainly, and in the most natural way. He went to see Caffie, to ask
him for a letter of recommendation, saying that he had been his clerk
for several years. Caffie gave it to him, and then, in the course of
conversation, Caffie spoke of a bundle of papers that he could not find.
Florentin had had charge of these papers, and had placed them on a high
shelf in the closet. As Caffie could not find them, and wanted them,
Florentin brought a small ladder, and, mounting it, found them. He was
about to descend the ladder, when he made a misstep, and in trying to
save himself, one of the buttons of his trousers was pulled off.”
“And he did not pick it up?”
“He did not even notice it at first. But later, in the street, seeing
one leg of his trousers longer than the other, he thought of the ladder,
and found that he had lost a button. He would not return to Caffie’s to
look for it, of course.”
“Of course.”
“How could he foresee that Caffie would be assassinated? That the crime
would be so skilfully planned and executed that the criminal would
escape? That two days later the police would find a button on which they
would build a story that would make him the criminal? Florentin had not
thought of all that.”
“That is understood.”
“The same evening he replaced the button by another, and it was only on
reading the newspaper that he felt there might be something serious in
this apparently insignificant fact. And we shared his alarm.”
“Have you spoken to any one of this button?”
“Certainly not; we know too much. I tell you of it because I tell you
everything; and if we are menaced, we have no help to expect, except
from you. Florentin is a good boy, but he is weak and foolish. Mamma
is like him in more than one respect, and as for me, although I am more
resistant, I confess that, in the face of the law and the police, I
should easily lose my head, like children who begin to scream when they
are left in the dark. Is not the law, when you know nothing of it, a
night of trouble, full of horrors, and peopled with phantoms?”
“I do not believe there is the danger that you imagined in the first
moment of alarm.”
“It was natural.”
“Very natural, I admit, but reflection must show how little foundation
there is for it. The button has not the name of the tailor who furnished
it?”
“No, but it has the initials and the mark of the manufacturer; an A and
a P, with a crown and a cock.”
“Well! Among two or three thousand tailors in Paris, how is it possible
for the police to find those who use these buttons? And when the tailors
are found, how could they designate the owner of this button, this one
exactly, and not another? It is looking for a needle in a bundle of hay.
Where did your brother have these trousers made? Did he bring them from
America?”
“The poor boy brought nothing from America but wretchedly shabby
clothes, and we had to clothe him from head to foot. We were obliged to
economize, and a little tailor in the Avenue de Clichy, called Valerius,
made this suit.”
“It seems to me scarcely probable that the police will find this little
tailor. But if they do, would he recognize the button as coming from
his stock? And, if they get as far as your brother, they must prove that
there was a struggle; that the button was torn off in this struggle;
that your brother was in the Rue Sainte-Anne between five and six
o’clock; in which case, without doubt, he will find it easy to prove
where he was at that moment.”
“He was with us--with mamma.”
“You see, then, you need not feel alarmed.”