II

When I asked my mother, on the instant, to tell me all about the

awful event, she said that my father had been seized with a fit in

a hackney carriage, and that as no papers were found upon him, he

had not been recognized for two days.

Grown-up people are much too ready to think it is equally easy to

tell lies to all children.

Now, I was a child who pondered long in my thoughts over things

that were said to me, and by dint of putting a number of small

facts together, I came to the conviction that I did not know the

whole truth. If my father's death had occurred in the manner

stated to me, why should the man-servant have asked me, one day

when he took me out to walk, what had been said to me about it?

And when I answered him, why did he say no more, and, being a very

talkative person, why had he kept silence ever since? Why, too,

did I feel the same silence all around me, in the air, sitting on

every lip, hidden in every look? Why was the subject of

conversation constantly changed whenever I drew near? I guessed

this by many trifling signs. Why was not a single newspaper left

lying about, whereas, during my father's lifetime, the three

journals to which we subscribed were always to be found on a table

in the salon? Above all, why did both the masters and my

schoolfellows look at me so curiously, when I went back to school

early in October, four months after our great misfortune? Alas! it

was their curiosity which revealed the full extent of the

catastrophe to me.

It was only a fortnight after the reopening of the school, when I

happened to be playing one morning with two new boys; I remember

their names, Rastonaix and Servoin, now, and I can see the big fat

cheeks of Rastonaix and the ferret-like face of Servoin. Although

we were day pupils, we were allowed a quarter of an hour's

recreation at school, between the Latin and English lessons. The

two boys had engaged me on the previous day for a game of ninepins,

and when it was over, they came close to me, and looking at each

other to keep up their courage, they put to me the following

questions, point-blank:

"Is it true that the murderer of your father has been arrested?"

"And that he is to be guillotined?"

This occurred sixteen years ago, but I cannot now recall the

beating of my heart at those words without horror. I must have

turned frightfully pale, for the two boys, who had struck me this

blow with the carelessness of their age--of our age--stood there

disconcerted. A blind fury seized upon me, urging me to command

them to be silent, and to hit them with my fists if they spoke

again; but at the same time I felt a wild impulse of curiosity--

what if this were the explanation of the silence by which I felt

myself surrounded?--and also a pang of fear, the fear of the

unknown. The blood rushed into my face, and I stammered out:

"I do not know."

The drum-tap, summoning us back to the schoolroom, separated us.

What a day I passed, bewildered by my trouble, turning the two

terrible sentences over and over again.

It would have been natural for me to question my mother; but the

truth is, I felt quite unable to repeat to her what my unconscious

tormentors had said. It was strange but true, that thenceforth my

mother, whom nevertheless I loved with all my heart, exercised a

paralyzing influence over me. She was so beautiful in her pallor,

so royally beautiful and proud.

No, I should never have ventured to reveal to her that an

irresistible doubt of the story she had told me was implanted in my

mind merely by the two questions of my schoolfellows; but, as I

could not keep silence entirely and live, I resolved to have

recourse to Julie, my former nurse. She was a little woman, fifty

years of age, an old maid too, with a flat, wrinkled face, like an

over-ripe apple; but her eyes were full of kindness, and indeed so

was her whole face, although her lips were drawn in by the loss of

her front teeth, and this gave her a witch-like mouth. She had

deeply mourned my father in my company, for she had been in his

service before his marriage. Julie was retained specially on my

account, and in addition to her the household consisted of the

cook, the man-servant, and the femme de chambre. Julie put me to

bed and tucked me in, heard me say my prayers, and listened to my

little troubles.

"Oh! the wretches!" she exclaimed, when I opened my heart to her

and repeated the words that had agitated me so terribly. "And yet

it could not have been hidden from you forever." Then it was that

she told me all the truth, there in my little room, speaking very

low and bending over me, while I lay sobbing in my narrow bed. She

suffered in the telling of that truth as much as I in the hearing

of it, and the touch of her dry old hand, with fingers scarred by

the needle, fell softly on my curly head as she stroked it.

That ghastly story, which bore down my youth with the weight of an

impenetrable mystery, I have found written in the newspapers of the

day, but not more clearly than it was narrated by my dear old

Julie. Here it is, plainly set forth, as I have turned and re-

turned it over and over again in my thoughts, day after day, with

the vain hope of penetrating it.

My father, who was a distinguished advocate, had resigned his

practice in court some years previously, and set up as a financial

agent, hoping by that means to make a fortune more rapidly than by

the law. His good official connection, his scrupulous probity, his

extensive knowledge of the most important questions, and his great

capacity for work, had speedily secured him an exceptional

position. He employed ten secretaries, and the million and a half

francs which my mother and I inherited formed only the beginnings

of the wealth to which he aspired, partly for his own sake, much

more for his son's but, above all, for his wife's--he was

passionately attached to her. Notes and letters found among his

papers proved that at the time of his death, he had been for a

month previously in correspondence with a certain person named, or

calling himself, William Henry Rochdale, who was commissioned by

the firm of Crawford, in San Francisco, to obtain a railway

concession in Cochin China, then recently conquered, from the

French Government. It was with Rochdale that my father had the

appointment of which he spoke before he left my mother, M.

Termonde, and myself, after breakfast, on the last fatal morning.

The Instruction had no difficulty in establishing this fact. The

appointed place of meeting was the Imperial Hotel, a large

building, with a long facade, in the Rue de Rivoli, not far from

the Ministere de la Marine. The entire block of houses was

destroyed by fire in the Commune; but during my childhood I

frequently begged Julie to take me to the spot, that I might gaze,

with an aching heart, upon the handsome courtyard adorned with

green shrubs, the wide, carpeted staircase, and the slab of black

marble, encrusted with gold, that marked the entrance to the place

whither my father wended his way, while my mother was talking with

M. Termonde, and I was playing in the room with them. My father

had left us at a quarter-past twelve, and he must have taken a

quarter of an hour to walk to the Imperial Hotel, for the

concierge, having seen the corpse, recognized it, and remembered

that it was just about half-past twelve when my father inquired of

him what was the number of Mr. Rochdale's rooms. This gentleman, a

foreigner, had arrived on the previous day, and had fixed, after

some hesitation, upon an apartment situated on the second floor,

and composed of a salon and a bedroom, with a small ante-room,

which separated the apartment from the landing outside. From that

moment he had not gone out and he dined the same evening and

breakfasted the next morning in his salon. The concierge also

remembered that Rochdale came down alone, at about two o'clock on

the second day; but he was too much accustomed to the continual

coming and going to notice whether the visitor who arrived at half-

past twelve had or had not gone away again. Rochdale handed the

key of his apartment to the concierge, with directions that anybody

who came, wanting to see him, should be asked to wait in his salon.

After this he walked away in a leisurely manner, with a business-

like portfolio under his arm, smoking a cigar, and he did not

reappear.

The day passed on, and towards night two housemaids entered the

apartment of the foreign gentlemen to prepare his bed. They passed

through the salon without observing anything unusual. The

traveler's luggage, composed of a large and much-used trunk and a

quite new dressing-bag, were there. His dressing-things were

arranged on the top of a cabinet. The next day, towards noon, the

same housemaids entered the apartment, and finding that the

traveler had slept out, they merely replaced the day-covering upon

the bed, and paid no attention to the salon. Precisely the same

thing occurred in the evening; but on the following day, one of the

women having come into the apartment early, and again finding

everything intact, began to wonder what this meant. She searched

about, and speedily discovered a body, lying at full length

underneath the sofa, with the head wrapped in towels. She uttered

a scream which brought other servants to the spot, and the corpse

of my father--alas! it was he--was removed from the hiding-place in

which the assassin had cunningly concealed it. It was not

difficult to reconstruct the scene of the murder. A wound in the

back of the neck indicated that the unfortunate man had been shot

from behind, while seated at the table examining papers, by a

person standing close beside him. The report had not been heard,

on account of the proximity of the weapon, and also because of the

constant noise in the street, and the position of the salon at the

back of the ante-room. Besides, the precautions taken by the

murderer rendered it reasonable to believe that he had carefully

chosen a weapon which would produce but little sound. The ball had

penetrated the spinal marrow and death had been instantaneous. The

assassin had placed new unmarked towels in readiness, and in these

he wrapped up the head and neck of his victim, so that there were

no traces of blood. He had dried his hands on a similar towel,

after rinsing them with water taken from the carafe; this water he

had poured back into the same bottle, which was found concealed

behind the drapery of the mantel-piece. Was the robbery real or

pretended? My father's watch was gone, and neither his letter-case

nor any paper by which his identity could be proved was found upon

his body. An accidental indication led, however, to his immediate

recognition. Inside the pocket of his waistcoat was a little band

of tape, bearing the address of the tailor's establishment.

Inquiry was made there, in the afternoon the sad discovery ensued,

and after the necessary legal formalities, the body was brought

home.

And the murderer? The only data on which the police could proceed

were soon exhausted. The trunk left by the mysterious stranger,

whose name was certainly not Rochdale, was opened. It was full of

things bought haphazard, like the trunk itself, from a bric-a-brac

seller who was found, but who gave a totally different description

of the purchaser from that which had been obtained from the

concierge of the Imperial Hotel. The latter declared that Rochdale

was a dark, sunburnt man with a long thick beard; the former

described him as of fair complexion and beardless. The cab on

which the trunk had been placed immediately after the purchase, was

traced, and the deposition of the driver coincided exactly with

that of the bric-a-brac seller. The assassin had been taken in the

cab, first to a shop, where he bought a dressing-bag, next to a

linen-draper's where he bought the towels, thence to the Lyons

railway station, and there he had deposited the trunk and the

dressing-bag at the parcels office. Then the other cab which had

taken him, three weeks afterwards, to the Imperial Hotel, was

traced, and the description given by the second driver agreed with

the deposition of the concierge. From this it was concluded that

in the interval formed by these three weeks, the assassin had dyed

his skin and his hair, for all the depositions were in agreement

with respect to the stature, figure, bearing, and tone of voice of

the individual. This hypothesis was confirmed by one Jullien, a

hairdresser, who came forward of his own accord to make the

following statement:

On the day in the preceding month, a man who answered to the

description of Rochdale given by the first driver and the bric-a-

brac seller, being fair-haired, pale, tall, and broad-shouldered,

came to his shop to order a wig and a beard; these were to be so

well constructed that no one could recognize him, and were

intended, he said, to be worn at a fancy ball. The unknown person

was accordingly furnished with a black wig and a black beard, and

he provided himself with all the necessary ingredients for

disguising himself as a native of South America, purchasing kohl

for blackening his eyebrows, and a composition of Sienna earth and

amber for coloring his complexion. He applied these so skilfully,

that when he returned to the hairdresser's shop, Jullien did not

recognize him. The unusualness of a fancy ball given in the middle

of summer, and the perfection to which his customer carried the art

of disguise, astonished the hairdresser so much that his attention

was immediately attracted by the newspaper articles upon "The

Mystery of the Imperial Hotel," as the affair was called. At my

father's house two letters were found; both bore the signature of

Rochdale, and were dated from London, but without envelopes, and

were written in a reversed hand, pronounced by experts to be

disguised. He would have had to forward a certain document on

receipt of these letters; probably that document was in the letter-

case which the assassin carried off after the crime. The firm of

Crawford had a real existence at San Francisco, but had never

formed the project of making a railroad in Cochin China. The

authorities were confronted by one of those criminal problems which

set imagination at defiance. It was probably not for the purpose

of theft that the assassin had resorted to such numerous and clever

devices; he would hardly have led a man of business into so

skilfully laid a trap merely to rob him of a few thousand francs

and a watch.

Was the murder committed for revenge?

A search into the life of my father revealed nothing whatever that

could render such a theory tenable. Every suspicion, every

supposition, was routed by the indisputable and inexplicable fact

that Rochdale was a reality whose existence could not be contested,

that he had been at the Imperial Hotel from seven o'clock in the

evening of one day until two o'clock in the afternoon of the next,

and that he had then vanished, like a phantom, leaving one only

trace behind--ONE ONLY. This man had come there, other men had

spoken to him; the manner in which he had passed the night and the

morning before the crime was known. He had done his deed of

murder, and then--nothing. "All Paris" was full of this affair,

and when I made a collection, long afterwards, of newspapers which

referred to it, I found that for six whole weeks it occupied a

place in the chronicle of every day.

At length the fatal heading, "The Mystery of the Imperial Hotel,"

disappeared from the columns of the newspapers, as the remembrance

of that ghastly enigma faded from the minds of their readers, and

solicitude about it ceased to occupy the police. The tide of life,

rolling that poor waif amid its waters, had swept on. Yes; but I,

the son? How should I ever forget the old woman's story that had

filled my childhood with tragic horror? How should I ever cease to

see the pale face of the murdered man, with its fixed, open eyes?

How should I not say: "I will avenge thee, thou poor ghost?" Poor

ghost! When I read Hamlet for the first time, with that passionate

avidity which comes from an analogy between the moral situation

depicted in a work of art and some crisis of our own life, I

remember that I regarded the Prince of Denmark with horror. Ah! if

the ghost of my father had come to relate the drama of his death to

me, with his unbreathing lips, would I have hesitated one instant?

No! I protested to myself; and then? I learned all, and yet I

hesitated, like him, though less than he, to dare the terrible

deed. Silence! silence! Let me go back to the facts.