“I do not want him punished, any more than the ball which hit me. That
wretched creature is a mere tool. But, doctor, you know who are the real
guilty ones.”
“And justice shall be done, I swear!” broke in the old surgeon, who
looked upon the cause of his patient with as much interest as if it were
his own. “Our lucky star has sent us a lawyer who is no trifler, and
who, if I am not very much mistaken, would like very much to leave
Saigon with a loud blast of trumpets.”
He remained buried in thought for a while, watching his patient out of
the corner of his eye, and then said suddenly,--
“Now I think of it, why could you not see the lawyer? He is all anxiety
to examine you. Consider, lieutenant, do you feel strong enough to see
him?”
“Let him come,” cried Daniel, “let him come! Pray, doctor, go for him at
once!”
“I shall do my best, my dear Champcey. I will go at once, and leave you
to finish your correspondence.”
He left the room with these words; and Daniel turned to the letters,
which were still lying on his bed. There were seven of them,--four from
the Countess Sarah, and three from Maxime. But what could they tell
him now? What did he care for the falsehoods and the calumnies they
contained? He ran over them, however.
Faithful to her system, Sarah wrote volumes; and from line to line, in
some way or other, her real or feigned love for Daniel broke forth more
freely, and no longer was veiled and hidden under timid reserve and
long-winded paraphrases. She gave herself up, whether her prudence had
forsaken her, or whether she felt quite sure that her letters could
never reach Count Ville-Handry. It sounded like an intense, irresistible
passion, escaping from the control of the owner, and breaking forth
terribly, like a long smouldering fire. Of Henrietta she said but
little,--enough, however, to terrify Daniel, if he had not known the
truth.
“That unfortunate, wayward girl,” she wrote, “has just caused her aged
father such cruel and unexpected grief, that he was on the brink of
the grave. Weary of the control which her indiscretions rendered
indispensable, she has fled, we know not with whom; and all our efforts
to find her have so far been unsuccessful.”
On the other hand, M. de Brevan wrote, “Deaf to my counsel and prayers
even, Miss Ville-Handry has carried out the project of leaving her
paternal home. Suspected of having favored her escape, I have been
called out by Sir Thorn, and had to fight a duel with him. A paper which
I enclose will give you the details of our meeting, and tell you that I
was lucky enough to wound that gentleman of little honor, but of great
skill with the pistol.
“Alas! my poor, excellent Daniel, why should I be compelled by the
duties of friendship to confess to you that it was not for the purpose
of remaining faithful to you, that Miss Henrietta was so anxious to be
free? Do not desire to return, my poor friend! You would suffer too much
in finding her whom you have loved so dearly unworthy of an honest
man, unworthy of you. Believe me, I did all I could to prevent her
irregularities, which now have become public. I only drew her hatred
upon me, and I should not be surprised if she did all she could to make
us all cut our throats.”
This impudence was bold enough to confound anybody’s mind, and to make
one doubt one’s own good sense. Still he found the newspaper, which
had been sent to him with the letter, and in it the account of the duel
between M. de Brevan and M. Thomas Elgin. What did that signify? He once
more read over, more attentively than at first, the letters of Maxime
and the Countess Sarah; and, by comparing them with each other, he
thought he noticed in them some traces of a beginning disagreement.
“It may be that there is discord among my enemies,” he said to himself,
“and that they do no longer agree, now that, in their view, the moment
approaches when they are to divide the proceeds of their crimes. Or did
they never agree, and am I the victim of a double plot? Or is the whole
merely a comedy for the purpose of deceiving me, and keeping me here,
until the murderer has done his work?”
He was not allowed to torture his mind long with efforts to seek the
solution of this riddle. The old doctor came back with the lawyer, and
for more than half an hour he had to answer an avalanche of questions.
But the investigation had been carried on with such rare sagacity,
that Daniel could furnish the prosecution only a single new fact,--the
surrender of his entire fortune into the hands of M. de Brevan.
And even this fact must needs, on account of its extreme improbability,
remain untold in an investigation which was based upon logic alone.
Daniel very naturally, somewhat ashamed of his imprudence, tried to
excuse himself; and, when he had concluded his explanations, the lawyer
said,--
“Now, one more question: would you recognize the man who attempted to
drown you in the Dong-Nai in a boat which he had offered to you, and
which he upset evidently on purpose?”
“No, sir.”
“Ah! that is a pity. That man was Crochard, I am sure; but he will deny
it; and the prosecution will have nothing but probabilities to oppose to
his denial, unless I can find the place where he changed his clothes.”
“Excuse me, there is a way to ascertain his identity.”
“How?”
“The voice of the wretch is so deeply engraven on my mind, that even
at this moment, while I am speaking to you, I think I can hear it in my
ear; and I would recognize it among a thousand.”
The lawyer made no reply, weighing, no doubt, in his mind the chances of
a confrontation. Then he made up his mind, and said,--
“It is worth trying.”
And handing his clerk, who had been a silent witness of this scene, an
order to have the accused brought to the hospital, he said,--
“Take this to the jail, and let them make haste.”
It was a month now since Crochard had been arrested; and his
imprisonment, so far from discouraging him, had raised his spirits. At
first, his arrest and the examination had frightened him; but, as the
days went by, he recovered his insolence.
“They are evidently looking for evidence,” he said; “but, as they cannot
find any, they will have to let me go.”
He looked, therefore, as self-assured as ever when he came into Daniel’s
room, and exclaimed, while still in the door, with an air of intolerable
arrogance,--
“Well? I ask for justice; I am tired of jail. If I am guilty, let them
cut my throat; if I am innocent”--
But Daniel did not let him finish.
“That is the man!” he exclaimed; “I am ready to swear to it, that is the
man!”
Great as was the impudence of Crochard, surnamed Bagnolet, he was
astonished, and looked with rapid, restless eyes at the chief surgeon,
at the magistrate, and last at Lefloch, who stood immovable at the foot
of the bed of his lieutenant. He had too much experience of legal forms
not to know that he had given way to absurd illusions,--and that his
position was far more dangerous than he had imagined. But what was their
purpose? what had they found out? and what did they know positively?
The effort he made to guess all this gave to his face an atrocious
expression.
“Did you hear that, Crochard?” asked the lawyer.
But the accused had recovered his self-control by a great effort; and he
replied,--
“I am not deaf.” And there was in his voice the unmistakable accent
of the former vagabond of Paris. “I hear perfectly well; only I don’t
understand.”
The magistrate, finding that, where he was seated, he could not very
well observe Crochard, had quietly gotten up, and was now standing near
the mantle-piece, against which he rested.
“On the contrary,” he said severely, “you understand but too well Lieut.
Champcey says you are the man who tried to drown him in the Dong-Nai. He
recognizes you.”
“That’s impossible!” exclaimed the accused. “That’s impossible; for”--
But the rest of the phrase remained in his throat. A sudden reflection
had shown him the trap in which he had been caught,--a trap quite
familiar to examining lawyers, and terrible by its very simplicity. But
for that reflection, he would have gone on thus,--
“That’s impossible; for the night was too dark to distinguish a man’s
features.”
And that would have been equivalent to a confession; and he would have
had nothing to answer the magistrate, if the latter had asked at once,--
“How do you know that the darkness was so great on the banks of the
Dong-Nai? It seems you were there, eh?”