heard. Lisette, the other maid, the neighbours, the gendarmes ...
two of these disgusting bodies to account for. I’d better leave the
swag and clear.” He drained the rest of the brandy and staggered
uncertainly toward the door. The house was very still. He turned the
handle and went into the passage. Then one of those voices which were
always directing his life said:
“Courage, old man, why leave the sack behind? You’ve worked for it.
Besides, one might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb!”
He went quietly back and picked up the sack. But his hands were
shaking violently. As he was returning, the sack with its metallic
contents struck the end of the brass bed. This little accident
affected him fantastically. He was all fingers and thumbs to-night.
What was the matter? Was he losing his nerve? Getting old? Of course,
the time must come when--God! What was that? He stood dead still by
the jamb of the door. There was the sound of the stealthy tread on
the stairs, the distinct creak of a board. How often in his life had
he not imagined that! But there was no question about it to-night. He
was completely unstrung.
“If there’s another fight I won’t be able to face it. I’m done.”
An interminable interval of time passed, and then--that quiet
creaking of another board, the person, whoever it was, was getting
nearer. He struggled desperately to hold himself together, to be
prepared for one more struggle, even if it should be his last.
Suddenly a whisper came down the stairs:
“Leon!”
Leon! What did they mean? Eh? Oh, yes--Leon Briteuil! Of course that
fool of a woman, the informer--Lisette. She thought it was Leon.
Leon, her lover. He breathed more easily. Women have their uses and
purposes after all. But he must be very circumspect. There must be no
screaming. She repeated:
“Leon, is that you?”
With a great effort he controlled his voice.
“It’s all right. I’m Leon’s friend. He’s outside.”
The woman gave a little gasp of astonishment.
“Oh! I did not know----”
“Very quietly, mademoiselle. Compose yourself. I must now rejoin him.
Everything is going well.”
“But I would see him. I wish to see him to-night. He promised----”
Laissac hurried noiselessly down the stairs, thankful for the
darkness. He waited till he had reached the landing below. Then he
called up in a husky voice:
“Wait till ten minutes after I have left the house, mademoiselle,
then come down. You will find your Leon waiting for you behind the
dust-bin in the yard.”
And fortunately for Lisette’s momentary peace of mind she could not
see the inhuman grin which accompanied this remark.
From the moment of his uttering it till four hours later, when his
mangled body was discovered by a gendarme on the pavement just below
the window of the house in which he lived in the Place Duquesne,
there is no definite record of old Laissac’s movements or whereabouts.
It exists only in those realms of conjecture in which Monsieur
Tolozan is so noted an explorer.
Old Laissac had a genius for passing unnoticed. He could walk through
the streets of Bordeaux in broad daylight with stolen clocks under
each arm and it never occurred to any one to suspect him, but when it
came to travelling in the dark he was unique. At the inquest, which
was held five days later, not a single witness could come forward and
say that they had seen anything of him either that evening or night.
That highly eminent advocate, Maxim Colbert, president of the
court, passed from the cool mortuary into the stuffy courthouse
with a bored, preoccupied air. Dead bodies did not greatly interest
him, and he had had too much experience of them to be nauseated by
them--besides, an old criminal! It appeared to him a tedious and
unnecessary waste of time. The old gentleman had something much more
interesting occupying his mind. He was expecting his daughter-in-law
to present his son with a child. The affair might happen now, any
moment, indeed, it might already have happened. Any moment a message
might come with the good tidings. A son! Of course it must be a son!
The line of Colbert tracing their genealogy back to the reign of
Louis XIV--must be perpetuated. A distinguished family of advocates,
generals, rulers of men. A son! It annoyed him a little in that he
suspected that his own son was anxious to have a daughter. Bah!
Selfishness.
Let us see what is this case all about? Oh, yes, an old criminal
named Theodore Laissac, aged fifty-seven, wanted by the police in
connection with a mysterious crime at the villa of Monsieur and
Madame Delannelle. The body found by a printer’s devil, named Adolp
Roger, at 4:15 o’clock on the morning of the ninth, on the pavement
of the Place Duquesne. Witness informed police. Sub-inspector
Floquette attested to the finding of body as indicated by witness.
The position of body directly under attic window, five stories high,
occupied by deceased, suggesting that he had fallen or thrown himself
therefrom. Good! Quite clear. A life of crime, result--suicide. Will
it be a boy or a girl? Let us have the deceased’s record....
A tall square-bearded inspector stood up in the body of the court,
and in a sepulchral voice read out the criminal life record of
Theodore Laissac. It was not pretty reading. It began at the age of
seventeen with the murder of the Chinaman, Ching Loo, and from thence
onward it revealed a deplorable story of villainy and depravity. The
record of evil doings and the award of penalties became monotonous.
The mind of Maxim Colbert wandered back to his son, and to his son’s
son. He had already seen the case in a nutshell and dismissed it. It
would give him a pleasant opportunity a little later on. A homily on
the wages of sin ... a man whose life was devoted to evil-doing, in
the end driven into a corner by the forces of justice, smitten by the
demons of conscience, dies the coward’s death. A homily on cowardice,
quoting a passage from Thomas à Kempis, excellent!... Would they
send him a telegram? Or would the news come by hand? What was that
the Counsel for the Right of the Poor was saying? Chief Inspector
Tolozan wished to give evidence. Ah, yes, why not? A worthy fellow,
Inspector Tolozan. He had known him for many years, worked with him
on many cases, an admirable, energetic officer, a little given to
theorizing--an interesting fellow, though. He would cross-examine him
himself.
Inspector Tolozan took his place in the witness box, and bowed to the
president. His steady gray eyes regarded the court thoughtfully as he
tugged at his thin gray imperial.
“Now, Inspector Tolozan, I understand that you have this district
in which this--unfortunate affair took place, under your own special
supervision?”
“Yes, _monsieur le president_.”
“You have heard the evidence of the witnesses Roger and Floquette
with regard to the finding of the body?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“Afterward, I understand, you made an inspection of the premises
occupied by the deceased?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“At what time was that?”
“At six-fifteen, monsieur.”
“Did you arrive at any conclusions with regard to the cause or motive
of the--er accident?”
“Yes, _monsieur le president_.”
“What conclusions did you come to?”
“I came to the conclusion that the deceased, Theodore Laissac, met
his death trying to save the life of a dog.”
“A dog! Trying to save the life of a dog!”
“Yes, monsieur.”
The president looked at the court, the court looked at the president
and shuffled with papers, glancing apprehensively at the witness
between times. There was no doubt that old Tolozan was becoming
cranky, very cranky indeed. The president cleared his throat--was he
to be robbed of his homily on the wages of sin?
“Indeed, Monsieur Tolozan, you came to the conclusion that the
deceased met his death trying to save the life of a dog! Will you
please explain to the court how you came to these conclusions?”
“Yes, _monsieur le president_; the deceased had a dog to which he was
very devoted.”
“Wait one moment, Inspector Tolozan, how do you know that he was
devoted to this dog?”
“I have seen him with it. Moreover, during the years he has been
under my supervision he has always had a dog to which he was devoted.
I could call some of his criminal associates to prove that, although
he was frequently cruel to men, women, and even children, he would
never strike or be unkind to a dog. He would never burgle a house
guarded by a dog in case he had to use violence.”
“Proceed.”
“During that day or evening there had apparently been a slight
subsidence in the chimney place of the attic occupied by Laissac.
Some brickwork had collapsed, leaving a narrow aperture just room
enough for a dog to squeeze its body through, and get out on the
sloping leads of the house next door. The widow Forbin, who occupies
the adjoining attic, complains that she was kept awake for three
hours that night by the whining of a dog on the leads above. This
whining ceased about three-thirty, which must have been the time that
the deceased met his death. There was only one way for a man to get
from his attic to these leads and that was a rain-water pipe, sloping
from below the window at an angle of forty-five degrees to the roof
next door. He could stand on this water pipe, but there was nothing
to cling to except small projections of brick till he could scramble
hold of the gutter above. He never reached the gutter.”
“All of this is pure conjecture, of course, Inspector Tolozan?”
“Not entirely, _monsieur le president_. My theory is that after
Laissac’s departure, the dog became disconsolate and restless,
as they often will, knowing by some mysterious instinct that its
master is in danger. He tried to get out of the room and eventually
succeeded in forcing his way through the narrow aperture in the
fireplace. His struggle getting through brought down some more
brickwork and closed up the opening. This fact I have verified. Out
on the sloping roof the dog naturally became terrified. There was no
visible means of escape; the roof was sloping, and the night cold.
Moreover, he seemed more cut off from his master than ever. As the
widow, Forbin, asserts, he whined pitiably. Laissac returned some
time after three o’clock. He reached the attic. The first thing he
missed was the dog. He ran to the window and heard it whining on
the roof above. Probably he hesitated for some time as to the best
thing to do. The dog leaned over and saw him. He called to it to be
quiet, but so agitated did it appear, hanging over the edge of that
perilous slope, that Laissac thought every moment that it would jump.
_Monsieur le president_, nearly every crime has been lain at the door
of the deceased, but he has never been accused of lack of physical
courage. Moreover, he was accustomed to climbing about buildings. He
dropped through that window and started to climb up.”
“How do you know this?”
“I examined the water pipe carefully. The night was dry and there had
not been rain for three days. Laissac had removed his boots. He knew
that it would naturally be easier to walk along a pipe in his socks.
There are the distinct marks of stockinged feet on the dusty pipes
for nearly two metres of the journey. The body was bootless and the
boots were found in the attic. But he was an old man for his age, and
probably he had had an exhausting evening. He never quite reached the
gutter.”
“Are the marks on the gutter still there?”
“No, but I drew the attention of three of my subordinates to the
fact, and they are prepared to support my view. It rained the next
day. The body of the dog was found by the side of its master.”
“Indeed! Do you suggest that the dog--committed suicide as it were?”
Tolozan shrugged his shoulders and bowed. It was not his business
to understand the psychology of dogs. He was merely giving
evidence in support of his theories concerning the character of
criminals--“birds”--and the accident of crime.
Maxim Colbert was delighted. The whole case had been salvaged from
the limbo of dull routine. He even forgave Tolozan for causing him
to jettison those platitudes upon the wages of sin. He had made it
interesting. Besides, he felt in a good humour--it would surely be
a boy! The procedure of the court bored him, but he was noticeably
cheerful, almost gay. He thanked the inspector profusely for his
evidence. Once he glanced at the clock casually, and said in an
impressive voice:
“Perhaps we may say of the deceased--he lived a vicious life, but he
died not ingloriously.”
The court broke up and he passed down into a quadrangle at the back
where a pale sun filtered. Lawyers, ushers, court functionaries
and police officials were scattering or talking in little groups.
Standing outside a group he saw the spare figure of Inspector
Tolozan. He touched his arm and smiled.
“Well, my friend, you established an interesting case. I feel that
the verdict was just, and yet I cannot see that it in any way
corroborates your theory of the accident of crime.”
Tolozan paused and blinked up at the sun.
“It did not corroborate, perhaps, but it did nothing to----”
“Well? This old man was an inveterate criminal. The fact that he
loved a dog--it’s not a very great commendation. Many criminals do.”
“But they would not give their lives, monsieur. A man who would do
that is capable of--I mean to say it was probably an accident that he
was not a better man.”
“Possibly, possibly! But the record, my dear Tolozan!”
“One may only conjecture.”
“What is your conjecture?”
Tolozan gazed dreamily up at the Gothic tracery of the adjoining
chapel. Then he turned to Monsieur Colbert and said very earnestly:
“You must remember that there was nothing against Laissac until the
age of seventeen. He had been a boy of good character. His father was
an honest wheelwright. At the age of seventeen the boy was to go to
sea on the sailing ship _La Turenne_. Owing to some trouble with the
customs authorities the sailing of the ship was delayed twenty-four
hours. The boy was given shore leave. He hung about the docks. There
was nothing to do. He had no money to spend on entertainment. My
conjecture is this. Let us suppose it was a day like this, calm
and sunny with a certain quiet exhilaration in the air. Eh? The
boy wanders around the quays and stares in the shops. Suddenly at
the corner of the Rue Bayard he peeps down into a narrow gally and
beholds a sight which drives the blood wildly through his veins.”
“What sight, Monsieur Tolozan?”
“The Chinaman, Ching Loo, being cruel to a dog.”
“Ah! I see your implication.”
“The boy sees red. There is the usual brawl and scuffle. He possibly
does not realize his own strength. Follow the law court and the
penitentiary. Can you not understand how such an eventuality would
embitter him against society? To him in the hereafter the dog would
stand as the symbol of patient suffering, humanity as the tyrant.
He would be at war for ever, an outcast, a derelict. He was raw,
immature, uneducated. He was at the most receptive stage. His sense
of justice was outraged. The penitentiary made him a criminal.”
“Then from this you mean----”
“I mean that if the good ship _La Turenne_ had sailed to time, or if
he had not been given those few hours’ leave, he might by this time
have been a master mariner, or in any case a man who could look the
world in the face. That is what I mean by the accident----”
“Excuse me.”
A messenger had handed Monsieur Colbert a telegram. He tore it open
feverishly and glanced at the contents. An expression of annoyance
crept over his features. He tore the form up in little pieces and
threw it petulantly upon the ground. He glanced up at Tolozan
absently as though he had seen him for the first time. Then he
muttered vaguely:
“The accident, eh? Oh, yes, yes. Quite so, quite so.”
But he did not tell Inspector Tolozan what the telegram contained.
“OLD FAGS”
The boys called him “Old Fags,” and the reason was not far to seek.
He occupied a room in a block of tenements off Lisson Grove, bearing
the somewhat grandiloquent title of Bolingbroke Buildings, and
conspicuous among the many doubtful callings that occupied his time
was one in which he issued forth with a deplorable old canvas sack,
which, after a day’s peregrination along the gutters, he would manage
to partly fill with cigar and cigarette ends. The exact means by
which he managed to convert this patiently gathered garbage into the
wherewithal to support his disreputable body nobody took the trouble
to enquire. Neither were their interests any further aroused by the
disposal of the contents of the same sack when he returned with the
gleanings of dustbins distributed thoughtfully at intervals along
certain thoroughfares by a maternal borough council.
No one had ever penetrated to the inside of his room, but the general
opinion in Bolingbroke Buildings was that he managed to live in a
state of comfortable filth. And Mrs. Read, who lived in the room
opposite, No. 477, with her four children, was of opinion that “Old
Fags ’ad ’oarded up a bit.” He certainly never seemed to be behind
with the payment of the weekly three-and-sixpence that entitled him
to the sole enjoyment of No. 475, and when the door was opened, among
the curious blend of odours that issued forth, that of onions and
other luxuries of this sort was undeniable.
Nevertheless, he was not a popular figure in the Buildings. Many, in
fact, looked upon him as a social blot on the Bolingbroke escutcheon.
The inhabitants were mostly labourers and their wives, charwomen and
lady helps, dressmakers’ assistants, and several mechanics. There was
a vague tentative effort among a great body of them to be a little
respectable, and among some even to be clean.
No such uncomfortable considerations hampered the movements of
Old Fags. He was frankly and ostentatiously a social derelict. He
had no pride and no shame. He shuffled out in the morning, his
blotchy face covered with dirt and black hair, his threadbare green
clothes tattered and in rags, the toes all too visible through his
forlorn-looking boots. He was rather a large man with a fat, flabby
person and a shiny face that was over-affable and bleary through a
too constant attention to the gin bottle. He had a habit of ceaseless
talk. He talked and chuckled to himself all the time, he talked to
every one he met in an undercurrent of jeering affability. Sometimes
he would retire to his room with a gin bottle for days together and
then (the walls at Bolingbroke Buildings are not very thick) he
would be heard to talk and chuckle and snore alternately, until the
percolating atmosphere of stewed onions heralded the fact that Old
Fags was shortly on the war-path again.
He would meet Mrs. Read with her children on the stairs and would
mutter, “Oh, here we are again! All these dear little children been
out for a walk, eh? Oh, these dear little children!” and he would pat
one of them gaily on the head.
And Mrs. Read would say: “’Ere, you keep your filthy ’ands off my
kids, you dirty old swine, or I’ll catch you a swipe over the mouth!”
And Old Fags would shuffle off muttering: “Oh, dear! Oh, dear! these
dear little children! Oh, dear! Oh, dear!”
And the boys would call after him and even throw orange peel and
other things at him, but nothing seemed to disturb the serenity of
Old Fags. Even when young Charlie Good threw a dead mouse that hit
him on the chin he only said: “Oh, these boys! these _boys_!”
Quarrels, noise and bad odours were the prevailing characteristics
of Bolingbroke Buildings and Old Fags, though contributing in some
degree to the latter quality, rode serenely through the other two in
spite of multiform aggression. The penetrating intensity of his onion
stews had driven two lodgers already from No. 476, and was again a
source of aggravation to the present holders, old Mrs. Birdle and her
daughter Minnie.
Minnie Birdle was what was known as a “tweeny” at a house in
Hyde Park Square, but she lived at home. Her mistress--to whom
she had never spoken, being engaged by the housekeeper--was Mrs.
Bastien-Melland, a lady who owned a valuable collection of little
dogs. These little dogs somehow gave Minnie an unfathomable sense of
respectability. She loved to talk about them. She told Mrs. Read that
her mistress paid “’undreds and ’undreds of pahnds for each of them.”
They were taken out every day by a groom on two leads of five--ten
highly groomed, bustling, yapping, snapping, vicious little luxuries.
Some had won prizes at dog shows, and two men were engaged for the
sole purpose of ministering to their creature comforts.
The consciousness of working in a house which furnished such an
exhibition of festive cultivation brought into sharp relief the
degrading social condition of her next room neighbour.
Minnie hated Old Fags with a bitter hatred. She even wrote to a firm
of lawyers who represented some remote landlord and complained of
“the dirty habits of the old drunken wretch next door.” But she never
received any answer to her complaint. It was known that Old Fags had
lived there for seven years and paid his rent regularly.
Moreover, on one critical occasion, Mrs. Read, who had periods of
rheumatic gout, and could not work, had got into hopeless financial
straits, having reached the very limit of her borrowing capacity,
and being three weeks in arrears with her rent, Old Fags had come
over and had insisted on lending her fifteen shillings! Mrs. Read
eventually paid it back, and the knowledge of the transaction further
accentuated her animosity toward him.
One day Old Fags was returning from his dubious round and was passing
through Hyde Park Square with his canvas bag slung over his back,
when he ran into the cortège of little dogs under the control of
Meads, the groom.
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” muttered Old Fags to himself. “What dear little
dogs! H’m! What dear little dogs!”
A minute later Minnie Birdle ran up the area steps and gave Meads a
bright smile.
“Good-night, Mr. Meads,” she said.
Mr. Meads looked at her and said: “’Ullo! you off?”
“Yes!” she answered.
“Oh, well,” he said, “Good-night! Be good!”
They both sniggered and Minnie hurried down the street. Before she
reached Lisson Grove Old Fags had caught her up.
“I say,” he said, getting into her stride. “What dear little dogs
those are! Oh, dear! what dear little dogs!”
Minnie turned, and when she saw him her face flushed, and she said:
“Oh, you go to hell!” with which unladylike expression she darted
across the road and was lost to sight.
“Oh, these women!” said Old Fags to himself, “these _women_!”
It often happened after that Old Fags’s business carried him in the
neighbourhood of Hyde Park Square, and he ran into the little dogs.
One day he even ventured to address Meads, and to congratulate him on
the beauty of his canine protégés, an attention that elicited a very
unsympathetic response, a response, in fact, that amounted to being
told to “clear off.”
The incident of Old Fags running into this society was entirely
accidental. It was due in part to the fact that the way lay through
there to a tract of land in Paddington that Old Fags seemed to
find peculiarly attractive. It was a neglected strip of ground by
the railway that butted at one end on to a canal. It would have
made quite a good siding but that it seemed somehow to have been
overlooked by the railway company and to have become a dumping ground
for tins and old refuse from the houses in the neighbourhood of
Harrow Road. Old Fags would spend hours there alone with his canvas
bag.
When winter came on there was a great wave of what the papers call
“economic unrest.” There were strikes in three great industries, a
political upheaval, and a severe “tightening of the money market.”
All these misfortunes reacted on Bolingbroke Buildings. The dwellers
became even more impecunious, and consequently more quarrelsome, more
noisy and more malodorous. Rents were all in arrears, ejections were
the order of the day, and borrowing became a tradition rather than
an actuality. Want and hunger brooded over the dejected buildings.
But still Old Fags came and went, carrying his shameless gin and
permeating the passages with his onion stews.