BETWEEN the examining Magistrate, who questioned, and the man cited to
appear before him, who replied, it was a duel; a close game, rapid and
tragic, in which each feint might make a mortal wound; in which each
parry and thrust might be decisive. No one in the world has the power of
the man who, in a word, can change to a prisoner the one who enters the
Palais as a passer-by. Behind this inquisitor of the law the prison
stands; the tribunal in its red robes appears; the beams of the scaffold
cast their sinister shadows, and the magistrate's cold chamber already
seems to have the lugubrious humidity of the dungeons where the
condemned await their fate.
Jacques Dantin arrived at the Palais in answer to the Magistrate's
citation, with the apparent alacrity of a man who, regretting a friend
tragically put out of the world, wishes to aid in avenging him. He did
not hesitate a second, and Bernardet, who saw him enter the carriage,
was struck with the seeming eagerness and haste with which he responded
to the Magistrate's order. When M. Ginory was informed that Jacques
Dantin had arrived, he allowed an involuntary "Ah!" to escape him. This
ah! seemed to express the satisfaction of an impatient spectator when
the signal is given which announces that the curtain is about to be
raised. For the Examining Magistrate, the drama in which he was about to
unravel the mystery was to begin. He kept his eyes fixed upon the door,
attributing, correctly, a great importance to the first impression the
comer would make upon him as he entered the room. M. Ginory found that
he was much excited; this was to him a novel thing; but by exercising
his strong will he succeeded in mastering the emotion, and his face and
manner showed no trace of it.
In the open door M. Jacques Dantin appeared. The first view, for the
Magistrate, was favorable. The man was tall, well built; he bowed with
grace and looked straight before him. But at the same time M. Ginory was
struck by the strange resemblance of this haughty face to that image
obtained by means of Bernardet's kodak. It seemed to him that this image
had the same stature, the same form as that man surrounded by the hazy
clouds. Upon a second examination it seemed to the Magistrate that the
face betrayed a restrained violence, a latent brutality. The eyes were
stern, under their bristling brows; the pointed beard, quite thin on the
cheeks, showed the heavy jaws, and under the gray mustache the under lip
protruded like those of certain Spanish cavaliers painted by Velasquez.
"Prognathous," thought M. Ginory, as he noticed this characteristic.
With a gesture he motioned M. Dantin to a chair. The man was there
before the Judge who, with crossed hands, his elbows leaning on his
papers, seemed ready to talk of insignificant things, while the
registrar's bald head was bent over his black table as he rapidly took
notes. The interview took on a grave tone, but as between two men who,
meeting in a salon, speak of the morning or of the premiere of the
evening before, and M. Ginory asked M. Dantin for some information in
regard to M. Rovere.
"Did you know him intimately?"
"Yes, M. le Juge."
"For how many years?"
"For more than forty. We were comrades at a school in Bordeaux."
"You are a Bordelais?"
"Like Rovere, yes," Dantin replied.
"Of late, have you seen M. Rovere frequently?"
"I beg your pardon, M. le Juge, but what do you mean by of late?"
M. Ginory believed that he had discovered in this question put by a man
who was himself being interrogated--a tactic--a means of finding before
replying, time for reflection. He was accustomed to these manoeuvres
of the accused.
"When I say of late," he replied, "I mean during the past few weeks or
days which preceded the murder--if that suits you."
"I saw him often, in fact, even oftener than formerly."
"Why?"
Jacques Dantin seemed to hesitate. "I do not know--chance. In Paris one
has intimate friends, one does not see them for some months; and
suddenly one sees them again, and one meets them more frequently."
"Have you ever had any reason for the interruptions in your relations
with M. Rovere when you ceased to see him, as you say?"
"None whatever."
"Was there between you any sort of rivalry, any motive for coldness?"
"Any motive--any rivalry. What do you mean?"
"I do not know," said the great man; "I ask you. I am questioning you."
The registrar's pen ran rapidly and noiselessly over the paper, with the
speed of a bird on the wing.
These words, "I am questioning you," seemed to make an unexpected,
disagreeable impression on Dantin, and he frowned.
"When did you visit Rovere the last time?"
"The last time?"
"Yes. Strive to remember."
"Two or three days before the murder."
"It was not two or three days; it was two days exactly before the
assassination."
"You are right, I beg your pardon."
The Examining Magistrate waited a moment, looking the man full in the
eyes. It seemed to him that a slight flush passed over his hitherto pale
face.
"Do you suspect anyone as the murderer of Rovere?" asked M. Ginory after
a moment's reflection.
"No one," said Dantin. "I have tried to think of some one."
"Had Rovere any enemies?"
"I do not know of any."
The Magistrate swung around by a detour habitual with him to Jacques
Dantin's last visit to the murdered man, and begged him to be precise,
and asked him if anything had especially struck him during that last
interview with his friend.
"The idea of suicide having been immediately dropped on the simple
examination of the wound, no doubt exists as to the cause of death.
Rovere was assassinated. By whom? In your last interview was there any
talk between you of any uneasiness which he felt in regard to anything?
Was he occupied with any especial affair? Had he--sometimes one has
presentiments--any presentiment of an impending evil, that he was
running any danger?"
"No," Dantin replied. "Rovere made no allusion to me of any peril which
he feared. I have asked myself who could have any interest in his death.
One might have done the deed for plunder."
"That seems very probable to me," said the Magistrate, "but the
examination made in the apartment proves that not a thing had been
touched. Theft was not the motive."
"Then?" asked Dantin.
The sanguine face of the Magistrate, that robust visage, with its
massive jaws, lighted up with a sort of ironical expression.
"Then we are here to search for the truth and to find it." In this
response, made in a mocking tone, the registrar, who knew every varying
shade of tone in his Chief's voice, raised his head, for in this tone he
detected a menace.
"Will you tell me all that passed in that last interview?"
"Nothing whatever which could in any way put justice on the track of the
criminal."
"But yet can you, or, rather, I should say, ought you not to relate to
me all that was said or done? The slightest circumstance might enlighten
us."
"Rovere spoke to me of private affairs," Dantin replied, but quickly
added: "They were insignificant things."
"What are insignificant things?"
"Remembrances--family matters."
"Family things are not insignificant, above all in a case like this. Had
Rovere any family? No relative assisted at the obsequies."
Jacques Dantin seemed troubled, unnerved rather, and this time it was
plainly visible. He replied in a short tone, which was almost brusque:
"He talked of the past."
"What past?" asked the Judge, quickly.
"Of his youth--of moral debts."
M. Ginory turned around in his chair, leaned back, and said in a caustic
tone: "Truly, Monsieur, you certainly ought to complete your information
and not make an enigma of your deposition. I do not understand this
useless reticence, and moral debts, to use your words; they are only to
gain time. What, then, was M. Rovere's past?"
Dantin hesitated a moment; not very long. Then he firmly said: "That,
Monsieur le Juge, is a secret confided to me by my friend, and as it has
nothing to do with this matter, I ask you to refrain from questioning me
about it."
"I beg your pardon," the magistrate replied. "There is not, there cannot
be a secret for an Examining Magistrate. In Rovere's interests, whose
memory ought to have public vindication, yes, in his interests, and I
ought to say also in your own, it is necessary that you should state
explicitly what you have just alluded to. You tell me that there is a
secret. I wish to know it."
"It is the confidence of a dead person, Monsieur," Dantin replied, in
vibrating tones.
"There are no confidences when justice is in the balance."
"But it is also the secret of a living person," said Jacques Dantin.
"Is it of yourself of whom you speak?"
He gazed keenly at the face, now tortured and contracted.
Dantin replied: "No, I do not speak of myself, but of another."
"That other--who is he?"
"It is impossible to tell you."
"Impossible?"
"Absolutely impossible!"
"I will repeat to you my first question--'Why?'"
"Because I have sworn on my honor to reveal it to no one."
"Ah, ah!" said Ginory, mockingly; "it was a vow? That is perfect!"
"Yes, Monsieur le Juge; it was a vow."
"A vow made to whom?"
"To Rovere."
"Who is no longer here to release you from it. I understand."
"And," asked Dantin, with a vehemence which made the registrar's thin
hand tremble as it flew over the paper, "what do you understand?"
"Pardon," said M. Ginory; "you are not here to put questions, but to
answer those which are asked you. It is certain that a vow which binds
the holder of a secret is a means of defence, but the accused have, by
making common use of it, rendered it useless."
The Magistrate noticed the almost menacing frown with which Dantin
looked at him at the words, "the accused."
"The accused?" said the man, turning in his chair. "Am I one of the
accused?" His voice was strident, almost strangled.
"I do not know that," said M. Ginory, in a very calm tone; "I say that
you wish to keep your secret, and it is a claim which I do not admit."
"I repeat, Monsieur le Juge, that the secret is not mine."
"It is no longer a secret which can remain sacred here. A murder has
been committed, a murderer is to be found, and everything you know you
ought to reveal to justice."
"But if I give you my word of honor that it has not the slightest
bearing on the matter--with the death of Rovere?"
"I shall tell my registrar to write your very words in reply--he has
done it--I shall continue to question you, precisely because you speak
to me of a secret which has been confided to you and which you refuse to
disclose to me. Because you do refuse?"
"Absolutely!"
"In spite of what I have said to you? It is a warning; you know it
well!"
"In spite of your warning!"
"Take care!" M. Ginory softly said. His angry face had lost its wonted
amiability. The registrar quickly raised his head. He felt that a
decisive moment had come. The Examining Magistrate looked directly into
Dantin's eyes and slowly said: "You remember that you were seen by the
portress at the moment when Rovere, standing with you in front of his
open safe, showed you some valuables?"
Dantin waited a moment before he replied, as if measuring these words,
and searching to find out just what M. Ginory was driving at. This
silence, short and momentous, was dramatic. The Magistrate knew it
well--that moment of agony when the question seems like a cord, like a
lasso suddenly thrown, and tightening around one's neck. There was
always, in his examination, a tragic moment.
"I remember very well that I saw a person whom I did not know enter the
room where I was with M. Rovere," Jacques Dantin replied at last.
"A person whom you did not know? You knew her very well, since you had
more than once asked her if M. Rovere was at home. That person is Mme.
Moniche, who has made her deposition."
"And what did she say in her deposition?"
The Magistrate took a paper from the table in front of him and read:
"When I entered, M. Rovere was standing before his safe, and I noticed
that the individual of whom I spoke (the individual is you) cast upon
the coupons a look which made me cold. I thought to myself: 'This man
looks as if he is meditating some bad deed.'"
"That is to say," brusquely said Dantin, who had listened with frowning
brows and with an angry expression, "that Mme. Moniche accuses me of
having murdered M. Rovere!"
"You are in too much haste. Mme. Moniche has not said that precisely.
She was only surprised--surprised and frightened--at your expression as
you looked at the deeds, bills and coupons."
"Those coupons," asked Dantin rather anxiously, "have they, then, been
stolen?"
"Ah, that we know nothing about," and the Magistrate smiled.
"One has found in Rovere's safe in the neighborhood of 460,000 francs in
coupons, city of Paris bonds, shares in mining societies, rent rolls;
but nothing to prove that there was before the assassination more than
that sum."
"Had it been forced open?"
"No; but anyone familiar with the dead man, a friend who knew the secret
of the combination of the safe, the four letters forming the word, could
have opened it without trouble."
Among these words Dantin heard one which struck him full in the
face--"friend." M. Ginory had pronounced it in an ordinary tone, but
Dantin had seized and read in it a menace. For a moment the man who was
being questioned felt a peculiar sensation. It seemed to him one day
when he had been almost drowned during a boating party that same agony
had seized him; it seemed that he had fallen into some abyss, some icy
pool, which was paralyzing him. Opposite to him the Examining Magistrate
experienced a contrary feeling. The caster of a hook and line feels a
similar sensation; but it was intensified a hundred times in the
Magistrate, a fisher of truth, throwing the line into a human sea, the
water polluted, red with blood and mixed with mud.
A friend! A friend could have abused the dead man's secret and opened
that safe! And that friend--what name did he bear? Whom did M. Ginory
wish to designate? Dantin, in spite of his _sang froid_, experienced a
violent temptation to ask the man what he meant by those words. But the
strange sensation which this interview caused him increased. It seemed
to him that he had been there a long time--a very long time since he
had crossed that threshold--and that this little room, separated from
the world like a monk's cell, had walls thick enough to prevent any one
from hearing anything outside. He felt as if hypnotized by that man, who
at first had met him with a pleasant air, and who now bent upon him
those hard eyes. Something doubtful, like vague danger, surrounded him,
menaced him, and he mechanically followed the gesture which M. Ginory
made as he touched the ivory button of an electric bell, as if on this
gesture depended some event of his life. A guard entered. M. Ginory said
to him in a short tone: "Have the notes been brought?"
"M. Bernardet has just brought them to me, Monsieur le Juge."
"Give them to me!" He then added: "Is Monsieur Bernardet here?"
"Yes, Monsieur le Juge."
"Very well."
Jacques Dantin remembered the little man with whom he had talked in the
journey from the house of death to the tomb, where he had heard some one
call "Bernardet." He did not know at the time, but the name had struck
him. Why did his presence seem of so much importance to this Examining
Magistrate? And he looked, in his turn, at M. Ginory, who, a little
near-sighted, was bending his head, with its sandy hair, its bald
forehead, on which the veins stood out like cords, over his notes,
which had been brought to him. Interesting notes--important, without
doubt--for, visibly satisfied, M. Ginory allowed a word or two to escape
him: "Good! Yes--Yes--Fine! Ah! Ah!--Very good!" Then suddenly Dantin
saw Ginory raise his head and look at him--as the saying is--in the
white of the eyes. He waited a moment before speaking, and suddenly put
this question, thrust at Dantin like a knife-blow:
"Are you a gambler, as I find?"
The question made Jacques Dantin fairly bound from his chair. A gambler!
Why did this man ask him if he was a gambler? What had his habits, his
customs, his vices even, to do with this cause for which he had been
cited, to do with Rovere's murder?
"You are a gambler," continued the Examining Magistrate, casting from
time to time a keen glance toward his notes. "One of the inspectors of
gambling dens saw you lose at the Cercle des Publicistes 25,000 francs
in one night."
"It is possible; the only important point is that I paid them!" The
response was short, crisp, showing a little irritation and stupefaction.
"Assuredly," said the Judge. "But you have no fortune. You have recently
borrowed a considerable sum from the usurers in order to pay for some
losses at the Bourse."
Dantin became very pale, his lips quivered, and his hands trembled.
These signs of emotion did not escape the eyes of M. Ginory nor the
registrar's.
"Is it from your little notes that you have learned all that?" he
demanded.
"Certainly," M. Ginory replied. "We have been seeking for some hours for
accurate information concerning you; started a sort of diary or rough
draught of your biography. You are fond of pleasure. You are seen, in
spite of your age--I pray you to pardon me, there is no malice in the
remark: I am older than you--everywhere where is found the famous
Tout-Paris which amuses itself. The easy life is the most difficult for
those who have no fortune. And, according to these notes--I refer to
them again--of fortune you have none."
"That is to say," interrupted Dantin, brusquely, "it would be very
possible that, in order to obtain money for my needs, in order to steal
the funds in his iron safe, I would assassinate my friend?"
M. Ginory did not allow himself to display any emotion at the insolent
tone of these words, which had burst forth, almost like a cry. He looked
Dantin full in the face, and with his hands crossed upon his notes, he
said:
"Monsieur, in a matter of criminal investigation a Magistrate, eager for
the truth ought to admit that anything is possible, even probable, but
in this case I ought to recognize the fact that you have not helped me
in my task. A witness finds you tete-a-tete with the victim and
surprises your trouble at the moment when you are examining Rovere's
papers. I ask what it was that happened between you, you reply that that
is your secret, and for explanation you give me your word of honor that
it had nothing whatever to do with the murder. You would yourself think
that I was very foolish if I insisted any longer. True, there was no
trace of any violence in the apartment, whatever subtraction may have
been made from the safe. It appears that you are in a position to know
the combination; it appears, also, that you are certainly in need of
money; as clearly known as it is possible to learn in a hurried inquiry
such as has been made, while you have been here. I question you. I let
you know what you ought to know, and you fly into a passion. And note
well! it is you yourself, in your anger and your violence, who speaks
first the word of which I have not pronounced a syllable. It is you who
have jumped straight to a logical conclusion of the suppositions which
are still defective, without doubt, but are not the less suppositions;
yes, it is you who say that with a little logic one can certainly accuse
you of the murder of the one whom you called your friend."
Each word brought to Dantin's face an angry or a frightened expression,
and the more slowly M. Ginory spoke, the more measured his words,
emphasizing his verbs, with a sort of professional habit, as a surgeon
touches a wound with a steel instrument, the questioned man, put through
a sharp cross-examination, experienced a frightful anger, a strong
internal struggle, which made the blood rush to his ears and ferocious
lightnings dart through his eyes.
"It is easy, moreover," continued M. Ginory, in a paternal tone, "for
you to reduce to nothingness all these suppositions, and the smallest
expression in regard to the role which you played in your last interview
with Rovere would put everything right."
"Ah! must we go back to that?"
"Certainly, we must go back to that! The whole question lies there! You
come to an Examining Magistrate and tell him that there is a secret; you
speak of a third person, of recollections of youth, of moral debts--and
you are astonished that the Judge strives to wrest the truth from you?"
"I have told it."
"The whole truth?"
"It has nothing to do with Rovere's murder, and it would injure some one
who knows nothing about it. I have told you so. I repeat it."
"Yes," said M. Ginory, "you hold to your enigma! Oh, well, I, the
Magistrate, demand that you reveal the truth to me. I command you to
tell it."
The registrar's pen ran over the paper and trembled as if it scented a
storm. The psychological moment approached. The registrar knew it
well--that moment--and the word which the Magistrate would soon
pronounce would be decisive.
A sort of struggle began in Dantin's mind--one saw his face grow
haggard, his eyes change their expression. He looked at the papers upon
which M. Ginory laid his fat and hairy hands; those police notes _which
gossiped_, as peasants say, in speaking of papers or writing which they
cannot read and which denounce them. He asked himself what more would be
disclosed by those notes of the police agents of the scandals of the
club, of the neighbors, of the porters. He passed his hands over his
forehead as if to wipe off the perspiration or to ease away a headache.
"Come, now, it is not very difficult, and I have the right to know,"
said M. Ginory. After a moment Jacques Dantin said in a strong voice: "I
swear to you, Monsieur, that nothing Rovere said to me when I saw him
the last time could assist justice in any whatsoever, and I beg of you
not to question me further about it."
"Will you answer?"
"I cannot, Monsieur."
"The more you hesitate the more reason you give me to think that the
communication would be grave."
"Very grave, but it has nothing to do with your investigation."
"It's not for you to outline the duties of my limits or my rights. Once
more, I order you to reply."
"I cannot."
"You will not."
"I cannot," brusquely said the man run to earth, with accent of
violence.
The duel was finished.
M. Ginory began to laugh, or, rather, there was a nervous contraction of
his mouth, and his sanguine face wore a scoffing look, while a
mechanical movement of his massive jaws made him resemble a bulldog
about to bite.
"Then," said he, "the situation is a very simple one and you force me to
come to the end of my task. You understand?"
"Perfectly," said Jacques Dantin, with the impulsive anger of a man who
stumbles over an article which he has left there himself.
"You still refuse to reply?"
"I refuse. I came here as a witness. I have nothing to reproach myself
with, especially as I have nothing to fear. You must do whatever you
choose to do."
"I can," said the Magistrate, "change a citation for appearance to a
citation for retention. I will ask you once more"----
"It is useless," interrupted Dantin. "An assassin. I! What folly!
Rovere's murderer! It seems as if I were dreaming! It is absurd, absurd,
absurd!"
"Prove to me that it is absurd in truth. Do you not wish to reply?"
"I have told you all I know."
"But you have said nothing of what I have demanded of you."
"It is not my secret."
"Yes; there is your system. It is frequent, it is common. It is that of
all the accused."
"Am I already accused?" asked Dantin, ironically.
M. Ginory was silent a moment, then, slowly taking from the drawer of
his desk some paper upon which Dantin could discern no writing this
time, but some figures, engraved in black--he knew not what they
were--the Magistrate held them between his fingers so as to show them.
He swung them to and fro, and the papers rustled like dry leaves. He
seemed to attach great value to these papers, which the registrar looked
at from a corner of his eye, guessing that they were the photographic
proofs which had been taken.
"I beg of you to examine these proofs," said the Magistrate to Dantin.
He held them out to him, and Dantin spread them on the table (there
were four of them), then he put on his eyeglasses in order to see
better. "What is that?" he asked.
"Look carefully," replied the Magistrate. Dantin bent over the proofs,
examined them one by one, divined, rather than saw, in the picture which
was a little hazy, the portrait of a man; and upon close examination
began to see in the spectre a vague resemblance.
"Do you not see that this picture bears a resemblance to you?"
This time Dantin seemed the prey of some nightmare, and his eyes
searched M. Ginory's face with a sort of agony. The expression struck
Ginory. One would have said that a ghost had suddenly appeared to
Dantin.
"You say that it resembles me?"
"Yes. Look carefully! At first the portrait is vague; on closer
examination it comes out from the halo which surrounds it, and the
person who appears there bears your air, your features, your
characteristics"----
"It is possible," said Dantin. "It seems to resemble me; it seems as if
I were looking at myself in a pocket mirror. But what does that
signify?"
"That signifies--Oh! I am going to astonish you. That signifies"--M.
Ginory turned toward his registrar: "You saw the other evening, Favarel,
the experiment in which Dr. Oudin showed us the heart and lungs
performing their functions in the thorax of a living man, made visible
by the Roentgen Rays. Well! This is not any more miraculous. These
photographs (he turned now toward Dantin) were taken of the retina of
the dead man's eye. They are the reflection, the reproduction of the
image implanted there, the picture of the last living being contemplated
in the agony; the last visual sensation which the unfortunate man
experienced. The retina has given to us--as a witness--the image of the
living person seen by the dead man for the last time!"
A deep silence fell upon the three men in that little room, where one of
them alone, lost his foothold at this strange revelation. For the
Magistrate it was a decisive moment; when all had been said, when the
man having been questioned closely, jumps at the foregone conclusion. As
for the registrar, however blase he may have become by these daily
experiences, it was the decisive moment! the moment when, the line drawn
from the water, the fish is landed, writhing on the hook!
Jacques Dantin, with an instinctive movement, had rejected, pushed back
on the table those photographs which burned his fingers like the cards
in which some fortune teller has deciphered the signs of death.
"Well?" asked M. Ginory.
"Well!" repeated Dantin in a strangled tone, either not comprehending or
comprehending too much, struggling as if under the oppression of a
nightmare.
"How do you explain how your face, your shadow if you prefer, was found
reflected in Rovere's eyes, and that in his agony, this was probably
what he saw; yes, saw bending over him?"
Dantin cast a frightened glance around the room, and asked himself if he
was not shut up in a maniac's cell; if the question was real; if the
voice he heard was not the voice of a dream!
"How can I explain? but I cannot explain, I do not understand, I do not
know--it is madness, it is frightful, it is foolish!"
"But yet," insisted M. Ginory, "this folly, as you call it, must have
some explanation."
"What do you wish to have me say? I do not understand. I repeat, I do
not understand."
"What if you do not, you cannot deny your presence in the house at the
moment of Rovere's death"----
"Why cannot I deny it?" Dantin interrupted.
"Because the vision is there, hidden, hazy, in the retina; because this
photograph, in which you recognized yourself, denounces, points out,
your presence at the moment of the last agony."
"I was not there! I swear that I was not there!" Dantin fervently
declared.
"Then, explain," said the Magistrate.
Dantin remained silent a moment, as if frightened. Then he stammered: "I
am dreaming!--I dreaming!" and M. Ginory replied in a calm tone:
"Notice that I attribute no exaggerated importance to these proofs. It
is not on them alone that I base the accusation. But they constitute a
strange witness, very disquieting in its mute eloquence. They add to the
doubt which your desire for silence has awakened. You tell me that you
were not near Rovere when he died. These proofs, irrefutable as a fact,
seem to prove at once the contrary. Then, the day Rovere was
assassinated where were you?"
"I do not know. At home, without doubt. I will have to think it over. At
what hour was Rovere killed?"
M. Ginory made a gesture of ignorance and in a tone of raillery said:
"That! There are others who know it better than I." And Dantin,
irritated, looked at him.
"Yes," went on the Magistrate, with mocking politeness, "the surgeons
who can tell the hour in which he was killed." He turned over his
papers. "The assassination was about an hour before midday. In Paris, in
broad daylight, at that hour, a murder was committed!"
"At that hour," said Jacques Dantin, "I was just leaving home."
"To go where?"
"For a walk. I had a headache. I was going to walk in the Champs-Elysees
to cure it."
"And did you, in your walk, meet any one whom you knew?"
"No one."
"Did you go into some shop?"
"I did not."
"In short, you have no _alibi_?"
The word made Dantin again tremble. He felt the meshes of the net
closing around him.
"An _alibi_! Ah that! Decidedly. Monsieur, you accuse me of
assassinating my friend," he violently said.
"I do not accuse; I ask a question." And M. Ginory in a dry tone which
gradually became cutting and menacing said: "I question you, but I warn
you that the interview has taken a bad turn. You do not answer; you
pretend to keep secret I know not what information which concerns us.
You are not yet exactly accused. But--but--but--you are going to be"----
The Magistrate waited a moment as if to give the man time to reflect,
and he held his pen suspended, after dipping it in the ink, as an
auctioneer holds his ivory hammer before bringing it down to close a
sale. "I am going to drop the pen," it seemed to say. Dantin, very
angry, remained silent. His look of bravado seemed to say: "Do you
dare? If you dare, do it!"
"You refuse to speak?" asked Ginory for the last time.
"I refuse."
"You have willed it! Do you persist in giving no explanation; do you
entrench yourself behind I know not what scruple or duty to honor; do
you keep to your systematic silence? For the last time, do you still
persist in this?"
"I have nothing--nothing--nothing to tell you!" Dantin cried in a sort
of rage.
"Oh, well! Jacques Dantin," and the Magistrate's voice was grave and
suddenly solemn. "You are from this moment arrested." The pen, uplifted
till this instant, fell upon the paper. It was an order for arrest. The
registrar looked at the man. Jacques Dantin did not move. His expression
seemed vague, the fixed expression of a person who dreams with wide-open
eyes. M. Ginory touched one of the electric buttons above his table and
pointed Dantin out to the guards, whose shakos suddenly darkened the
doorway. "Take away the prisoner," he said shortly and mechanically,
and, overcome, without revolt, Jacques Dantin allowed himself to be led
through the corridors of the Palais, saying nothing, comprehending
nothing, stumbling occasionally, like an intoxicated man or a
somnambulist.