“That is Maxime’s portrait.”
After this decisive evidence, there could be no longer any doubt that
Justin Chevassat and Maxime de Brevan were one and the same person. The
investigation was complete, as far as it could be carried on in Saigon;
the remaining evidence had to be collected in Paris. The magistrate
directed, therefore, the clerk to read the deposition; and Crochard
followed it without making a single objection. But when he had signed
it, and the gendarmes were about to carry him off again, and to put
on the handcuffs, he asked leave to make an addition. The magistrate
assented; and Crochard said,--
“I do not want to excuse myself, nor to make myself out innocent; but I
do not like, on the other hand, to seem worse than I am.”
He had assumed a very decided position, and evidently aimed at giving to
his words an expression of coarse but perfect frankness.
“The thing which I had undertaken to do, it was not in my power to do.
It has never entered my head to kill a man treacherously. If I had been
a brute, such as these are, the lieutenant would not be there, wounded
to be sure, but alive. Ten times I might have done his business most
effectively; but I did not care. I tried in vain to think of Chevassat’s
big promises; at the last moment, my heart always failed me. The thing
was too much for me. And the proof of it is, that I missed him at ten
yards’ distance. The only time when I tried it really in earnest was
in the little boat, because there, I ran some risk; it was like a duel,
since my life was as much at stake as the lieutenant’s. I can swim as
well as anybody, to be sure; but in a river like the Dong-Nai, at
night, and with a current like that, no swimmer can hold his own. The
lieutenant got out of it; but I was very near being drowned. I could not
get on land again until I had been carried down two miles or more; and,
when I did get on shore, I sank in the mud up to my hips. Now, I humbly
beg the lieutenant’s pardon; and you shall see if I am going to let
Chevassat escape.”
Thereupon he held out his hands for the handcuffs, with a theatrical
gesture, and left the room.