"I DO not know," thought Bernardet as he returned home. "What one knows
very well indeed, what one cannot deny, oh, that would be impossible! is
that on the retina of the dead man's eye, reflected there at the supreme
moment of the agony, is found the image of this Dantin, his face, his
features; this man, in a word, denounced by this witness which is worth
all other witnesses in the world! This assassinated man cast a last look
upon his murderer as he called for aid; a last cry for 'Help!' in the
death rattle!--and this man says: 'I do not know!' But the dead man
knew; and the kodak knows, also. It has no passion, no anger, no hate,
because it registers what passes; fixes that which is fleeting!"
Bernardet was obstinate in his conviction. He was perfectly rooted in
it. What if he had not persisted in believing that photography would
reveal the truth? What weighty reason, what even acceptable one was
there which obliged Dantin to retain silent in the presence of the
Examining Magistrate and his registrar--in the secret interview of an
examination--when in order to escape a prison, an accusation, he had
only to speak two words? But if Dantin said nothing, was it because he
had nothing to say? If he had given no explanation, was it because he
had none to give? An innocent man does not remain silent. If at the
instant when M. Ginory pressed the ivory button the other day, if the
man had been able to defend himself, would he not have done it? One knew
the secret reason of criminals for keeping silent. Their best reason is
their guilt.
Only, it seemed now certain that Dantin, although guilty, had an
accomplice. Yes, without doubt, the man with the sombrero, the seller of
the portrait. Where could he now be in hiding?
"Not easy," Bernardet repeated the words: "Not easy; no, not easy at all
to run him out of his rabbit hutch."
The Woman in Black, the visitor, would be another important clue. On
this side the situation seemed a simple one. Or was this woman also an
accomplice, and would she remain silent, hidden in the Province? Or
would the death of Rovere draw her to Paris, where she might be
recognized and become a witness for Justice?
But the days passed. What was called the mystery of the Boulevard de
Clichy continued to interest and excite the public. Violent and
perplexing Parliamentary discussions could not distract attention from a
crime committed in broad daylight, almost as one might say, in the
street, and which made one doubt the security of the city, the
efficiency of the police. The fall of a Ministry, predicted each morning
and anticipated in advance, could not thrust aside morbid interest in
this murder. The death of the ex-Consul was a grand actuality!
Jacques Dantin thus became a dramatic personage; the reporters created
legends about him; some declared him guilty and brought up in support of
their conviction some anecdotes, some tales from the clubs, given as
proofs; others asked if the suppositions were sufficiently well based to
accuse a man in advance of trial, and these latter ardently took up his
defense. Paul Rodier had even, with much dexterity and eloquence,
diplomatically written two articles, one on either side of the question.
"It is," he said to himself, "the sure way of having told the truth on
one side or the other."
Bernardet did not renounce for an instant the hope of finding the man
who had sold the picture. It was not the first time that he had picked
the needle from a cartful of hay. Paris is large, but this human sea has
its particular currents, as the ocean has special tides, and the police
officer knew it well. Here or there, some day he would meet the man,
cast up by the torrent like a waif.
First of all, the man was probably a stranger from some foreign land.
Wearing a hat like a Spaniard, he had not had time to change the style
of dress of the country from which he had come in search of adventures.
Bernardet haunted the hotels, searched the registers, made conversation
with the lodgers. He found poor persons who had come from foreign
countries, but whose motives for coming to Paris were all right.
Bernardet never stopped searching a moment; he went everywhere, curious
and prying--and it pleased him, when he found a leisure evening, to go
to some of the strange wine shops or ale houses (called cabarets) to
find subjects for observation. These cabarets are very numerous on the
outskirts of Montmartre, in the streets and boulevards at the foot of
the Butte. Bizarre inventions, original and disagreeable creations,
where the ingenuity of the enterprisers sometimes made them hideous in
order to attract; to cater to the idle, and to hold the loungers from
among the higher classes. Cabarets born of the need for novelty, which
might stimulate the blase; the demand for something eccentric almost to
morbid irony. A _Danse Macabre_ trod to the measures of an operetta;
pleasantries of the bunglers adopting the cure-alls of the saw-bones,
and juggling with their empty heads while dreaming the dreams of a
Hamlet.
Cabaret du Squelette!
The announcement of the droll promises--apparitions, visions,
phantoms--had often made him smile when he passed near there to go to
the Prefecture; this wineshop, the front of which was bordered with
black, like a letter announcing a death, and which bore, grating as it
swung at the end of an iron rod, a red lantern for a sign.
His little girls, when he laughingly spoke of the cabaret where the
waiters were dressed like undertakers' assistants, turned pale, and
plump little Mme. Bernardet, ordinarily smiling, would say with a sigh:
"Is it possible that such sacrilegious things are permitted in the
quarter?"
Bernardet good-naturedly replied: "Ah, my dear, where is the harm?"
"I know what I am talking about," his good wife said; "they are the
pleasure of the unhealthy minded. They mock at death as they mock at
everything else. Where will it all end? We shall see it"----
"Or we shall not see it," interrupted her husband, laughingly.
He went in there one evening, having a little time to himself, as he
would have gone into a theatre. He knew something about this Cabaret du
Squelette (meaning the wine shop of the skeleton). He found the place
very droll.
A small hall which had a few months before been a common wine shop had
been transformed into a lugubrious place. The walls were painted a dead
black, and were hung with a large number of paintings--scenes from
masked balls, gondola parades, serenades with a balcony scene, some of
the lovers' rendezvous of Venice and an ideal view of Granada, with
couples gazing at each other and sighing in the gondolas on the lagoons,
or in the Andalusian courts--and in this strange place with its romantic
pictures, souvenirs of Musset or of Carlo Gozzi, the tables were made in
the form of coffins with lighted candles standing upon them, and the
waiters were dressed as undertakers' assistants, with shiny black hats
trimmed with crape, on their heads.
"What poison will you drink before you die?" asked one of the creatures
of Bernardet.
Bernardet sat and gazed about him. A few "high-flyers" from the other
side of Paris were there. Here and there a thief from that quarter sat
alone at a table. Some elegants in white cravats, who had come there in
correct evening dress, were going later, after the opera, to sup with
some premiere. The police officer understood very well why the blase
came there. They wished to jog their jaded appetites; they sought to
find some _piment_, a curry, spice to season the tameness of their daily
existence. The coffin-shaped tables upon which they leaned their elbows
amused them. Several of them had asked for a _bavaroise_, as they were
on milk diet.
They pointed out to each other the gas flaming from the jets fashioned
in the form of a broken shin-bone.
"A little patience, my friends," said a sort of manager, who was dressed
in deep mourning. "Before long we will adjourn to the Cave of Death!"
The drinkers in white cravats shouted. Bernardet experienced, on the
contrary, what Mme. Bernardet would have called a "creepy" sensation.
Seasoned as he was to the bloody and villainous aspect of crime, he felt
the instinctive shrinking of a healthy and level-headed bourgeois
against these drolleries of the brain-diseased upper class and the
pleasantries of the blase decadents.
At a certain moment, and after an explanation given by the manager, the
gas was turned off, and the lovers in the gondolas, the guitar players,
the singers of Spanish songs, the dancers infatuated with the Moulin
Rouge, changed suddenly in sinister fashion. In place of the blond heads
and rosy cheeks, skulls appeared; the smiles became grins which showed
the teeth in their fleshless gums. The bodies, clothed in doublets, in
velvets and satins, a moment ago, were made by some interior
illumination to change into hideous skeletons. In his mocking tones the
manager explained and commented on the metamorphosis, adding to the
funeral spectacle the pleasantry of a buffoon.
"See! diseased Parisians, what you will be on Sunday!"
The light went out suddenly; the skeletons disappeared; the sighing
lovers in the gondolas on the lagoons of Venice reappeared; the
Andalusian sweethearts again gazed into each other's eyes and sang their
love songs. Some of the women laughed, but the laughs sounded
constrained.
"Droll! this city of Paris," Bernardet thought. He sat there, leaning
back against the wall, where verses about death were printed among the
white tears--as in those lodges of Free Masons where an outsider is shut
up in order to give him time to make his will--when the door opened and
Bernardet saw a tall young man of stalwart and resolute mien enter. A
black, curly beard surrounded his pale face. As he entered he cast a
quick glance around the hall, the air of which was rather thick with
cigar smoke. He seemed to be about thirty years of age, and had the air
of an artist, a sculptor, or a painter, together with something military
in his carriage. But what suddenly struck Bernardet was his hat, a large
gray, felt hat, with a very wide brim, like the sombreros which the bull
fighters wear.
Possibly, a few people passing through Paris might be found wearing such
hats. But they would probably be rare, and in order to find the seller
of Jacques Dantin's portrait, Bernardet had only this one clew.
"Oh! such a mean, little, weak, clew! But one must use it, just the
same!" Bernardet had said.
What if this young man with the strange hat was, by chance, the unknown
for whom he was seeking? It was not at all probable. No, when one
thought of it--not at all probable. But truth is sometimes made up of
improbabilities, and Bernardet again experienced the same shock, the
instinctive feeling that he had struck the trail, which he felt when the
young man entered the wine shop.
"That hat!" murmured Bernardet, sipping his wine and stealing glances
over the rim of his glass at the young man. The unknown seemed to play
directly into the police officer's hand. After standing by the door a
few moments, and looking about the place, he walked over to the
coffin-shaped table at which Bernardet was seated, bringing himself face
to face with the officer. One of the waiters in his mourning dress came
to take his order, and lighted another candle, which he placed where its
rays fell directly on the young man's face. Thus Bernardet was able to
study him at his ease. The pale face, with its expression, uneasy and
slightly intense, struck Bernardet at once. That white face, with its
black beard, with its gleaming eyes, was not to be passed by with a
casual glance. The waiter placed a glass of brandy before him; he placed
his elbows on the table and leaned his chin upon his hands. He was
evidently not a habitue of the place nor a resident of the quarter.
There was something foreign about his appearance. His glance was steady,
as that of one who searches the horizon, looks at running water,
contemplates the sea, asking for some "good luck" of the unknown.
"It would be strange," thought Bernardet, "if a simple hat and no other
clew should put us upon the track of the man for whom we are searching."
At once, with the ingenuity of a master of dramatic art, the agent began
to plot, and to put into action what lawyers, pleading and turning and
twisting a cause this way and that, call _an effect_. He waited until
the manager informed them that they were about to pass into the Cave of
Death, and gave them all an invitation into the adjoining hall; then,
profiting by the general movement, he approached the unknown, and,
almost shoulder to shoulder, he walked along beside him, through a
narrow, dark passage to a little room, where, on a small stage stood,
upright, an empty coffin.
It was a doleful spectacle, which the Cabaret du Squelette (the wine
shop of the skeleton) offered to its clientele of idle loungers and
morbid curiosity seekers attracted to its halls by these exhibitions.
Bernardet knew it all very well, and he knew by just what play of
lights, what common chemical illuminations, they gave to the lookers on
the sinister illusion of the decomposition of a corpse in its narrow
home. This phantasmagoria, to which the people from the Boulevard came,
in order to be amused, he had seen many times in the little theatres in
the fairs at Neuilly. The proprietor of the cabaret had explained it to
him; he had been curious and very keen about it, and so he followed the
crowd into this little hall, to look once more at the image of a man in
the coffin. He knew well to what purpose he could put it. The place was
full. Men and women were standing about; the black walls made the narrow
place look still smaller. Occasional bizarre pleasantries were heard and
nervous laughs rang out. Why is it, that no matter how sceptical people
may be, the idea, the proximity, the appearance of death gives them an
impression of uneasiness, a singular sensation which is often displayed
in nervous laughs or sepulchral drolleries?
Bernardet had not left the side of the young man with the gray felt hat.
He could see his face distinctly in the light of the little hall, and
could study it at his ease. In the shadows which lurked about them the
young man's face seemed like a white spot. The officer's sharp eyes
never left it for a moment.
The manager now asked if some one would try the experiment. This was to
step into the open coffin--that box, as he said--"from which your
friends, your neighbors, can see you dematerialize and return to
nothingness."
"Come, my friends," he continued, in his ironical tones, "this is a fine
thing; it will permit your best friends to see you deliquesce! Are there
any married people here? It is only a question of tasting, in advance,
the pleasures of a widowhood. Would you like to see your husband
disappear, my sister? My brother, do you wish to see your wife
decompose? Sacrifice yourselves, I beg of you! Come! Come up here! Death
awaits you!"
They laughed, but here and there a laugh sounded strident or hysterical;
the laugh did not ring true, but had the sound of cracked crystal. No
one stirred. This parody of death affected even these hardened
spectators.
"Oh, well, my friends, there is a cadaver belonging to the establishment
which we can use. It is a pity! You may readily understand that we do
not take the dead for companions."
As no one among the spectators would enter the coffin, the manager, with
a gesture, ordered one of the supernumeraries of the cabaret to enter;
from an open door the figurant glided across the stage and entered the
coffin, standing upright. The manager wrapped him about with a shroud,
leaving only the pale face of the pretended dead man exposed above this
whiteness. The man smiled.
"He laughs, Messieurs, he laughs still!" said the manager. "You will
soon see him pay for that laugh. '_Rome rit et mourut!_' as Bossuet
said."
Some of the audience shouted applause to this quotation from a famous
author. Bernardet did not listen; he was studying from a corner of his
eye his neighbor's face. The man gazed with a sort of fascination at
this fantastic performance which was taking place before him. He
frowned, he bit his lips; his eyes were almost ferocious in expression.
The figurant in the coffin continued to laugh.
"Look! look keenly!" went on the manager, "you will see your brother
dematerialize after becoming changed in color. The flesh will disappear
and you will see his skeleton. Think, think, my brothers, this is the
fate which awaits you, perhaps, soon, on going away from here; think of
the various illnesses and deaths by accidents which await you!
Contemplate the magic spectacle offered by the Cabaret du Squelette and
remember that you are dust and that to dust you must return! Make,
wisely, this reflection, which the intoxicated man made to another man
in like condition, but asleep. 'And that is how I shall be on Sunday!'
While waiting, my brothers and sisters, for nothingness, look at the
dematerialization of your contemporary if you please!"
The play of lights, while the man was talking, began to throw a greenish
pallor and to make spots at first transparent upon the orbits of the
eyes, then, little by little, the spots seemed to grow stronger, to
blacken, to enlarge. The features, lightly picked out, appeared to
change gradually, to take on gray and confused tints, to slowly
disappear as under a veil, a damp vapor which covered, devoured that
face, now unrecognizable! It has been said that the manner in which this
phenomenon was managed was a remarkable thing; it is true, for this
human body seemed literally to dissolve before this curious crowd, now
become silent and frightened. The work of death was accomplished there
publicly, thanks to the illusion of lighting. The livid man who smiled a
few moments before was motionless, fixed, then passing through some
singular changes, the flesh seemed to fall from him in----
Suddenly the play of lights made him disappear from the eyes of the
spectators and they saw, thanks to reflections made by mirrors, only a
skeleton. It was the world of spectres and the secret of the tombs
revealed to the crowd by a kind of scientific magic lantern.
Bernardet did not desire to wait longer to strike his blow--this was the
exact moment to do it--the psychological moment!
The eager look of the man in the sombrero revealed a deep trouble. There
was in this look something more than the curiosity excited by a novel
spectacle. The muscles of his pale face twitched as with physical
suffering; in his eyes Bernardet read an internal agony.
"Ah!" thought the police officer, "the living eye is a book which one
can read, as well as a dead man's eye."
Upon the stage the lights were rendering even more sinister the figurant
who was giving to this morbidly curious crowd the comedy of death. One
would have now thought it was one of those atrocious paintings made in
the studios of certain Spanish painters in the _putridero_ of a Valles
Leal. The flesh, by a remarkable scientific combination of lights, was
made to seem as if falling off, and presented the horrible appearance of
a corpse in a state of decomposition. The lugubrious vision made a very
visible shudder pass over the audience. Then Bernardet, drawing himself
up to his full height so as to get a good view of the face of this man
so much taller, and approaching as near to him as possible, in fact, so
that his elbow and upper arm touched the young man's, he slowly,
deliberately dropped, one by one, these words:
"That is about how M. Rovere ought to be now"----
And suddenly the young man's face expressed a sensation of fright, as
one sees in the face of a pedestrian who suddenly finds that he is about
to step upon a viper.
"Or how he will be soon!" added the little man, with an amiable smile.
Bernardet dissimulated under this amiability an intense joy. Holding his
arm and elbow in an apparently careless manner close to his neighbor as
he pronounced Rovere's name, Bernardet felt his neighbor's whole body
tremble, and that he gave a very perceptible start. Why had he been so
quickly moved by an unknown name if it had not recalled to his mind some
frightful thought? The man might, of course, know, as the public did,
all the details of the crime, but, with his strong, energetic face, his
resolute look, he did not appear like a person who would be troubled by
the recital of a murder, the description of a bloody affray, or even by
the frightful scene which had just passed before his eyes in the hall.
"A man of that stamp is not chicken-hearted," thought Bernardet. "No!
no!" Hearing those words evoked the image of the dead man, Rovere; the
man was not able to master his violent emotion, and he trembled, as if
under an electrical discharge. The shudder had been violent, of short
duration, however, as if he had mastered his emotion by his strong will.
In his involuntary movement he had displayed a tragic eloquence.
Bernardet had seen in the look, in the gesture, in the movement of the
man's head, something of trouble, of doubt, of terror, as in a flash of
lightning in the darkness of night one sees the bottom of a pool.
Bernardet smilingly said to him:
"This sight is not a gay one!"
"No," the man answered, and he also attempted to smile.
He looked back to the stage, where the sombre play went on.
"That poor Rovere!" Bernardet said.
The other man now looked at Bernardet as if to read his thoughts and to
learn what signification the repetition of the same name had. Bernardet
sustained, with a naive look, this mute interrogation. He allowed
nothing of his thoughts to be seen in the clear, childlike depths of his
eyes. He had the air of a good man, frightened by a terrible murder, and
who spoke of the late victim as if he feared for himself. He waited,
hoping that the man would speak.
In some of Bernardet's readings he had come across the magic rule
applicable to love: "Never go! Wait for the other to come!"--"_Nec ire,
fac venire_"--applicable also to hate, to that duel of magnetism between
the hunted man and the police spy, and Bernardet waited for the other to
"come!"
Brusquely, after a silence, while on the little stage the transformation
was still going on, the man asked in a dry tone:
"Why do you speak to me of M. Rovere?"
Bernardet affably replied: "I? Because every one talks of it. It is the
actuality of the moment. I live in that quarter. It was quite near there
that it happened, the affair"----
"I know!" interrupted the other.
The unknown had not pronounced ten words in questioning and replying,
and yet Bernardet found two clues simply insignificant--terrible in
reality. "I know!" was the man's reply, in a short tone, as if he wished
to push aside, to thrust away, a troublesome thought. The tone, the
sound of the words, had struck Bernardet. But one word especially--the
word Monsieur before Rovere's name. "Monsieur Rovere? Why did he speak
to me of Monsieur Rovere?" Bernardet thought.
It seemed, then, that he knew the dead man.
All the people gathered in this little hall, if asked in regard to this
murder would have said: "Rovere!" "The Rovere affair!" "The Rovere
murder!" Not one who had not known the victim would have said:
"Monsieur Rovere!"
The man knew him then. This simple word, in the officer's opinion, meant
much.
The manager now announced that, having become a skeleton, the dear
brother who had lent himself to this experiment would return to his
natural state, "fresher and rosier than before." He added, pleasantly,
"A thing which does not generally happen to ordinary skeletons!"
This vulgar drollery caused a great laugh, which the audience heartily
indulged in. It made an outlet for their pent-up feelings, and they all
felt as if they had awakened from a nightmare. The man in the sombrero,
whose pale face was paler than before, was the only one who did not
smile. He even frowned fiercely (noted by Bernardet) when the manager
added:
"You are not in the habit of seeing a dead man resuscitated the next
day. Between us, it would keep the world pretty full."
"Evidently," thought Bernardet, "my young gentleman is ill at ease."
His only thought was to find out his name, his personality, to establish
his identity and to learn where he had spent his life, and especially
his last days. But how?
He did not hesitate long. He left the place, even before the man in the
coffin had reappeared, smiling at the audience. He glided through the
crowd, repeating, "Pardon!" "I beg pardon!" traversed rapidly the hall
where newcomers were conversing over their beverages, and stepped out
into the street, looked up and down. A light fog enveloped everything,
and the gaslights and lights in the shop windows showed ghostly through
it. The passers-by, the cabs, the tramways, bore a spectral look.
What Bernardet was searching for was a policeman. He saw two chatting
together and walking slowly along under the leafless trees. In three
steps, at each step turning his head to watch the people coming out of
the cabaret, he reached the men. While speaking to them he did not take
his eyes from the door of that place where he had left the young man in
the gray felt hat.
"Dagonin," he said, "you must follow me, if you please, and 'pull me
in!' I am going to pick a drunken quarrel with a particular person.
Interfere and arrest us both. Understand?"
"Perfectly," Dagonin replied.
He looked at his comrade, who carried his hand to his shako and saluted
Bernardet.
The little man who had given his directions in a quick tone, was already
far away. He stood near the door of the cabaret gazing searchingly at
each person who came out. The looks he cast were neither direct,
menacing nor even familiar. He had pulled his hat down to his eyebrows,
and he cast side glances at the crowd pouring from the door of the wine
shop.
He was astonished that the man in the sombrero had not yet appeared.
Possibly he had stopped, on his way out, in the front hall. Glancing
through the open door, Bernardet saw that he was right. The young man
was seated at one of those coffin-shaped oaken tables, with a glass of
greenish liquor before him. "He needs alcohol to brace him up," growled
the officer.
The door was shut again.
"I can wait till he has finished his absinthe," said Bernardet to
himself.
He had not long to wait. After a small number of persons had left the
place, the door opened and the man in the gray felt hat appeared,
stopped on the threshold, and, as Bernardet had done, scanned the
horizon and the street. Bernardet turned his back and seemed to be
walking away from the wine shop, leaving the man free. With a keen
glance or two over his shoulder toward him, Bernardet crossed the street
and hurried along at a rapid pace, in order to gain on the young man,
and by this manoeuvre to find himself directly in front of the
unknown. The man seemed to hesitate, walked quickly down the Boulevard a
few steps toward the Place Pigalle, in the direction where Rovere's
apartments were, but suddenly stopped, turned on his heel, repassed the
Cabaret du Squelette, and went toward the Moulin Rouge, which at first,
Bernardet thought, he was about to enter. As he stood there the vanes of
the Moulin Rouge, turning about, lighted up the windows of the opposite
buildings and made them look as if they were on fire. At last, obeying
another impulse, he suddenly crossed the Boulevard, as if to return
into Paris, leaving Montmartre, the cabarets, and Rovere's house behind
him. He walked briskly along, and ran against a man--a little man--whom
he had not noticed, who seemed to suddenly detach himself from the wall,
and who fell against his breast, hiccoughing and cursing in vicious
tones.
"Imbecile!"
The young man wished to push away the intoxicated man who, with hat over
his eyes, clung to him and kept repeating:
"The street--the street--is it not free--the street?"
Yes, it was certainly a drunken man. Not a man in a smock, but a little
fellow, a bourgeois, with hat askew and thick voice.
"I--I am not stopping you. The street is free--I tell you!"
"Well, if it is free, I want it!"
The voice was vigorous, but showed sudden anger, a strident tone, a
slight foreign accent, Spanish, perhaps.
The drunken man probably thought him insolent for, still hiccoughing, he
answered:
"Oh, you want it, do you? You want it? I want it! The king says 'we
wish!' don't you know?"
With another movement, he lost his equilibrium and half fell, his head
hanging over, and he clutched the man he held in a sudden embrace.
"It is mine also--the street--you know!"
With sudden violence, the man disembarrassed himself of this caressing
creature; he thrust aside his clinging arms with a movement so quick and
strong that the intoxicated man, this time, fell, his hat rolled into
the gutter, and he lay on the sidewalk.
But immediately, with a bound, he was on his feet, and as the man went
calmly on his way, he followed him, seized his coat and clutched him so
tightly that he could not proceed.
"Pardon;" he said, "you cannot go away like that!"
Then, as the light from a gas lamp fell on the little man's face, the
young man recognized his neighbor of the cabaret, who had said to him:
"See, that is how Rovere must look!"
At this moment, Dagonin and his comrade appeared on the scene and laid
vigorous hands on them both; the young man made a quick, instinctive
movement toward his right pocket, where, no doubt, he kept a revolver or
knife. Bernardet seized his wrist, he twisted it and said:
"Do nothing rash!"
The young man was very strong, but the huge Dagonin had Herculean biceps
and the other man did not lack muscles. Fright, moreover, seemed to
paralyze this tall, young gallant, who, as he saw that he was being
hustled toward a police station, demanded:
"Have you arrested me, and why?"
"First for having struck me," Bernardet replied, still bareheaded, and
to whom a gamin now handed his soiled hat, saying to him:
"Is this yours, Monsieur Bernardet?"
Bernardet recognized in his own quarter! That was glory!
The man seemed to wish to defend himself and still struggled, but one
remark of Dagonin's seemed to pacify him:
"No rebellion! There is nothing serious about your arrest. Do not make
it worse."
The young man really believed that it was only a slight matter and he
would be liberated at once. The only thing that disquieted him was that
this intoxicated man, suddenly become sober, had spoken to him as he did
a few moments before in the cabaret.
The four men walked quickly along in the shadow of the buildings,
through the almost deserted streets, where the shopkeepers were putting
out their lights and closing up their shops. Scarcely any one who met
them would have realized that three of these men were taking the fourth
to a police station.
A tri-color flag floated over a door lighted by a red lantern; the four
men entered the place and found themselves in a narrow, warm hall, where
the agents of the police were either sleeping on benches or reading
around the stove by the light of the gas jets above their heads.
Bernardet, looking dolefully at his broken and soiled hat, begged the
young man to give his name and address to the Chief of the Post. The
young man then quickly understood that his questioner of the Cabaret du
Squelette had caught him in a trap. He looked at him with an expression
of violent anger--of concentrated rage.
Then he said:
"My name? What do you want of that? I am an honest man. Why did you
arrest me? What does it mean?"
"Your name?" repeated Bernardet.
The man hesitated.
"Oh, well! I am called Prades. Does that help you any?"
The man wrote: "Prades. P-r-a-d-e-s with an accent. Prades. First name?"
"Charles, if you wish!"
"Oh!" said Bernardet, noticing the slight difference in the tone of his
answer. "We wish nothing. We wish only the truth."
"I have told it."
Charles Prades furnished some further information in regard to himself.
He was staying at a hotel in the Rue de Paradis-Poissonsiere, a small
hotel used by commercial travelers and merchants of the second class. He
had been in Paris only a month.
Where was he from? He said that he came from Sydney, where he was
connected with a commercial house. Or rather he had given up the
situation to come to Paris to seek his fortune. But while speaking of
Sydney he had in his rather rambling answers let fall the name of Buenos
Ayres, and Bernardet remembered that Buenos Ayres was the place where M.
Rovere had been French Consul. The officer paid no attention to this at
the time. For what good? Prades's real examination would be conducted by
M. Ginory. He, Bernardet, was not an examining magistrate. He was the
ferret who hunted out criminals.
This Prades was stupefied, then furious, when, the examination over, he
learned that he was not to be immediately set at liberty.
What! An absurd quarrel, a collision without a wound, in a street in
Paris, was sufficient to hold a man and make him pass the night in the
station house, with all the vagabonds of both sexes collected there!
"You may bemoan your fate to yourself to-morrow morning!" said
Bernardet.
In the meantime they searched this man, who, very pale, making visibly
powerful efforts to control himself, biting his lips and his black
beard, while they examined his pocketbook, while they looked at a
Spanish knife with a short blade, which he had (Bernardet had divined it
at the time of his arrest) in his right pocket.
The pocketbook revealed nothing. It contained some receipted weekly
bills of the hotel in the Rue de Paradis, some envelopes without
letters, without stamps and bearing the name, "Charles Prades,
Merchant," two bank bills of 100 francs--nothing more.
Bernardet very simply asked Prades how it was that he had upon his
person addressed letters which he evidently had not received, as they
were not stamped. He replied:
"They are not letters. They are addresses which I gave instead of
visiting cards, as I had not had time to procure cards."
"Then the addresses are in your writing?"
"Yes," Prades answered.
The police officer looked at them again; then, saluting the brigadier
and his men, wished them good-night, and even added a little gesture,
rather mocking, in the direction of the arrested man. Prades made an
angry, almost menacing, movement toward Bernardet. The guards standing
about pulled him back, while the plump, smiling little man, caressing
his sandy mustache and humming a tune, went out into the street.
As he reached the passage which led to his house this couplet came
merrily from his lips as walked quickly along:
"Prends ton fusil, Gregoire,
Prends ta gourde pourboire,
Nos Messieurs sont partis
A la chasse aux perdrix."
One would have taken M. Bernardet for a happy little bourgeois, going
home from some theatre through the deserted streets and repeating a
verse from some vaudeville, rather than a police spy who had just
secured a prize. He walked quickly, he walked gaily. He reached his
home, where Mme. Bernardet, always rosy and pleasant, awaited him, and
where his three little girls were sleeping. He felt that, like the Roman
emperor, he had not lost his day.
He again hummed the quatrain, and, although not in a loud tone, still it
sounded like a far off fanfare of victory in the gray fog of this Paris
night.