M. FORMERY OPENS THE INQUIRY
The examining magistrate came into the room. He was a plump and pink
little man, with very bright eyes. His bristly hair stood up straight
all over his head, giving it the appearance of a broad, dapple-grey
clothes-brush. He appeared to be of the opinion that Nature had given
the world the toothbrush as a model of what a moustache should be; and
his own was clipped to that pattern.
“The Duke of Charmerace, M. Formery,” said the inspector.
The little man bowed and said, “Charmed, charmed to make your
acquaintance, your Grace—though the occasion—the occasion is somewhat
painful. The treasures of M. Gournay-Martin are known to all the world.
France will deplore his losses.” He paused, and added hastily, “But we
shall recover them—we shall recover them.”
The Duke rose, bowed, and protested his pleasure at making the
acquaintance of M. Formery.
“Is this the scene of the robbery, inspector?” said M. Formery; and he
rubbed his hands together with a very cheerful air.
“Yes, sir,” said the inspector. “These two rooms seem to be the only
ones touched, though of course we can’t tell till M. Gournay-Martin
arrives. Jewels may have been stolen from the bedrooms.”
“I fear that M. Gournay-Martin won’t be of much help for some days,”
said the Duke. “When I left him he was nearly distracted; and he won’t
be any better after a night journey to Paris from Charmerace. But
probably these are the only two rooms touched, for in them M.
Gournay-Martin had gathered together the gems of his collection. Over
the doors hung some pieces of Flemish tapestry—marvels—the composition
admirable—the colouring delightful.”
“It is easy to see that your Grace was very fond of them,” said M.
Formery.
“I should think so,” said the Duke. “I looked on them as already
belonging to me, for my father-in-law was going to give them to me as a
wedding present.”
“A great loss—a great loss. But we will recover them, sooner or later,
you can rest assured of it. I hope you have touched nothing in this
room. If anything has been moved it may put me off the scent
altogether. Let me have the details, inspector.”
The inspector reported the arrival of the Duke at the police-station
with Arsène Lupin’s letter to M. Gournay-Martin; the discovery that the
keys had been changed and would not open the door of the house; the
opening of it by the locksmith; the discovery of the concierge and his
wife gagged and bound.
“Probably accomplices,” said M. Formery.
“Does Lupin always work with accomplices?” said the Duke. “Pardon my
ignorance—but I’ve been out of France for so long—before he attained to
this height of notoriety.”
“Lupin—why Lupin?” said M. Formery sharply.
“Why, there is the letter from Lupin which my future father-in-law
received last night; its arrival was followed by the theft of his two
swiftest motor-cars; and then, these signatures on the wall here,” said
the Duke in some surprise at the question.
“Lupin! Lupin! Everybody has Lupin on the brain!” said M. Formery
impatiently. “I’m sick of hearing his name. This letter and these
signatures are just as likely to be forgeries as not.”
“I wonder if Guerchard will take that view,” said the Duke.
“Guerchard? Surely we’re not going to be cluttered up with Guerchard.
He has Lupin on the brain worse than any one else.”
“But M. Gournay-Martin particularly asked me to send for Guerchard if I
arrived too late to prevent the burglary. He would never forgive me if
I had neglected his request: so I telephoned for him—to the Prefecture
of Police,” said the Duke.
“Oh, well, if you’ve already telephoned for him. But it was
unnecessary—absolutely unnecessary,” said M. Formery sharply.
“I didn’t know,” said the Duke politely.
“Oh, there was no harm in it—it doesn’t matter,” said M. Formery in a
discontented tone with a discontented air.
He walked slowly round the room, paused by the windows, looked at the
ladder, and scanned the garden:
“Arsène Lupin,” he said scornfully. “Arsène Lupin doesn’t leave traces
all over the place. There’s nothing but traces. Are we going to have
that silly Lupin joke all over again?”
“I think, sir, that this time joke is the word, for this is a burglary
pure and simple,” said the inspector.
“Yes, it’s plain as daylight,” said M. Formery “The burglars came in by
this window, and they went out by it.”
He crossed the room to a tall safe which stood before the unused door.
The safe was covered with velvet, and velvet curtains hung before its
door. He drew the curtains, and tried the handle of the door of the
safe. It did not turn; the safe was locked.
“As far as I can see, they haven’t touched this,” said M. Formery.
“Thank goodness for that,” said the Duke. “I believe, or at least my
fiancée does, that M. Gournay-Martin keeps the most precious thing in
his collection in that safe—the coronet.”
“What! the famous coronet of the Princesse de Lamballe?” said M.
Formery.
“Yes,” said the Duke.
“But according to your report, inspector, the letter signed ‘Lupin’
announced that he was going to steal the coronet also.”
“It did—in so many words,” said the Duke.
“Well, here is a further proof that we’re not dealing with Lupin. That
rascal would certainly have put his threat into execution, M. Formery,”
said the inspector.
“Who’s in charge of the house?” said M. Formery.
“The concierge, his wife, and a housekeeper—a woman named Victoire,”
said the inspector.
“I’ll see to the concierge and his wife presently. I’ve sent one of
your men round for their dossier. When I get it I’ll question them. You
found them gagged and bound in their bedroom?”
“Yes, M. Formery; and always this imitation of Lupin—a yellow gag, blue
cords, and the motto, ‘I take, therefore I am,’ on a scrap of
cardboard—his usual bag of tricks.”
“Then once again they’re going to touch us up in the papers. It’s any
odds on it,” said M. Formery gloomily. “Where’s the housekeeper? I
should like to see her.”
“The fact is, we don’t know where she is,” said the inspector.
“You don’t know where she is?” said M. Formery.
“We can’t find her anywhere,” said the inspector.
“That’s excellent, excellent. We’ve found the accomplice,” said M.
Formery with lively delight; and he rubbed his hands together. “At
least, we haven’t found her, but we know her.”
“I don’t think that’s the case,” said the Duke. “At least, my future
father-in-law and my fiancée had both of them the greatest confidence
in her. Yesterday she telephoned to us at the château de Charmerace.
All the jewels were left in her charge, and the wedding presents as
they were sent in.”
“And these jewels and wedding presents—have they been stolen too?” said
M. Formery.
“They don’t seem to have been touched,” said the Duke, “though of
course we can’t tell till M. Gournay-Martin arrives. As far as I can
see, the burglars have only touched these two drawing-rooms.”
“That’s very annoying,” said M. Formery.
“I don’t find it so,” said the Duke, smiling.
“I was looking at it from the professional point of view,” said M.
Formery. He turned to the inspector and added, “You can’t have searched
thoroughly. This housekeeper must be somewhere about—if she’s really
trustworthy. Have you looked in every room in the house?”
“In every room—under every bed—in every corner and every cupboard,”
said the inspector.
“Bother!” said M. Formery. “Are there no scraps of torn clothes, no
blood-stains, no traces of murder, nothing of interest?”
“Nothing!” said the inspector.
“But this is very regrettable,” said M. Formery. “Where did she sleep?
Was her bed unmade?”
“Her room is at the top of the house,” said the inspector. “The bed had
been slept in, but she does not appear to have taken away any of her
clothes.”
“Extraordinary! This is beginning to look a very complicated business,”
said M. Formery gravely.
“Perhaps Guerchard will be able to throw a little more light on it,”
said the Duke.
M. Formery frowned and said, “Yes, yes. Guerchard is a good assistant
in a business like this. A little visionary, a little
fanciful—wrong-headed, in fact; but, after all, he IS Guerchard. Only,
since Lupin is his bugbear, he’s bound to find some means of muddling
us up with that wretched animal. You’re going to see Lupin mixed up
with all this to a dead certainty, your Grace.”
The Duke looked at the signatures on the wall. “It seems to me that he
is pretty well mixed up with it already,” he said quietly.
“Believe me, your Grace, in a criminal affair it is, above all things,
necessary to distrust appearances. I am growing more and more confident
that some ordinary burglars have committed this crime and are trying to
put us off the scent by diverting our attention to Lupin.”
The Duke stooped down carelessly and picked up a book which had fallen
from a table.
“Excuse me, but please—please—do not touch anything,” said M. Formery
quickly.
“Why, this is odd,” said the Duke, staring at the floor.
“What is odd?” said M. Formery.
“Well, this book looks as if it had been knocked off the table by one
of the burglars. And look here; here’s a footprint under it—a footprint
on the carpet,” said the Duke.
M. Formery and the inspector came quickly to the spot. There, where the
book had fallen, plainly imprinted on the carpet, was a white
footprint. M. Formery and the inspector stared at it.
“It looks like plaster. How did plaster get here?” said M. Formery,
frowning at it.
“Well, suppose the robbers came from the garden,” said the Duke.
“Of course they came from the garden, your Grace. Where else should
they come from?” said M. Formery, with a touch of impatience in his
tone.
“Well, at the end of the garden they’re building a house,” said the
Duke.
“Of course, of course,” said M. Formery, taking him up quickly. “The
burglars came here with their boots covered with plaster. They’ve swept
away all the other marks of their feet from the carpet; but whoever did
the sweeping was too slack to lift up that book and sweep under it.
This footprint, however, is not of great importance, though it is
corroborative of all the other evidence we have that they came and went
by the garden. There’s the ladder, and that table half out of the
window. Still, this footprint may turn out useful, after all. You had
better take the measurements of it, inspector. Here’s a foot-rule for
you. I make a point of carrying this foot-rule about with me, your
Grace. You would be surprised to learn how often it has come in
useful.”
He took a little ivory foot-rule from his waist-coat pocket, and gave
it to the inspector, who fell on his knees and measured the footprint
with the greatest care.
“I must take a careful look at that house they’re building. I shall
find a good many traces there, to a dead certainty,” said M. Formery.
The inspector entered the measurements of the footprint in his
note-book. There came the sound of a knocking at the front door.
“I shall find footprints of exactly the same dimensions as this one at
the foot of some heap of plaster beside that house,” said M. Formery;
with an air of profound conviction, pointing through the window to the
house building beyond the garden.
A policeman opened the door of the drawing-room and saluted.
“If you please, sir, the servants have arrived from Charmerace,” he
said.
“Let them wait in the kitchen and the servants’ offices,” said M.
Formery. He stood silent, buried in profound meditation, for a couple
of minutes. Then he turned to the Duke and said, “What was that you
said about a theft of motor-cars at Charmerace?”
“When he received the letter from Arsène Lupin, M. Gournay-Martin
decided to start for Paris at once,” said the Duke. “But when we sent
for the cars we found that they had just been stolen. M.
Gournay-Martin’s chauffeur and another servant were in the garage
gagged and bound. Only an old car, a hundred horse-power Mercrac, was
left. I drove it to Paris, leaving M. Gournay-Martin and his family to
come on by train.”
“Very important—very important indeed,” said M. Formery. He thought for
a moment, and then added. “Were the motor-cars the only things stolen?
Were there no other thefts?”
“Well, as a matter of fact, there was another theft, or rather an
attempt at theft,” said the Duke with some hesitation. “The rogues who
stole the motor-cars presented themselves at the château under the name
of Charolais—a father and three sons—on the pretext of buying the
hundred-horse-power Mercrac. M. Gournay-Martin had advertised it for
sale in the Rennes Advertiser. They were waiting in the big hall of the
château, which the family uses as the chief living-room, for the return
of M. Gournay-Martin. He came; and as they left the hall one of them
attempted to steal a pendant set with pearls which I had given to
Mademoiselle Gournay-Martin half an hour before. I caught him in the
act and saved the pendant.”
“Good! good! Wait—we have one of the gang—wait till I question him,”
said M. Formery, rubbing his hands; and his eyes sparkled with joy.
“Well, no; I’m afraid we haven’t,” said the Duke in an apologetic tone.
“What! We haven’t? Has he escaped from the police? Oh, those country
police!” cried M. Formery.
“No; I didn’t charge him with the theft,” said the Duke.
“You didn’t charge him with the theft?” cried M. Formery, astounded.
“No; he was very young and he begged so hard. I had the pendant. I let
him go,” said the Duke.
“Oh, your Grace, your Grace! Your duty to society!” cried M. Formery.
“Yes, it does seem to have been rather weak,” said the Duke; “but there
you are. It’s no good crying over spilt milk.”
M. Formery folded his arms and walked, frowning, backwards and forwards
across the room.
He stopped, raised his hand with a gesture commanding attention, and
said, “I have no hesitation in saying that there is a connection—an
intimate connection—between the thefts at Charmerace and this
burglary!”
The Duke and the inspector gazed at him with respectful eyes—at least,
the eyes of the inspector were respectful; the Duke’s eyes twinkled.
“I am gathering up the threads,” said M. Formery. “Inspector, bring up
the concierge and his wife. I will question them on the scene of the
crime. Their dossier should be here. If it is, bring it up with them;
if not, no matter; bring them up without it.”
The inspector left the drawing-room. M. Formery plunged at once into
frowning meditation.
“I find all this extremely interesting,” said the Duke.
“Charmed! Charmed!” said M. Formery, waving his hand with an
absent-minded air.
The inspector entered the drawing-room followed by the concierge and
his wife. He handed a paper to M. Formery. The concierge, a bearded man
of about sixty, and his wife, a somewhat bearded woman of about
fifty-five, stared at M. Formery with fascinated, terrified eyes. He
sat down in a chair, crossed his legs, read the paper through, and then
scrutinized them keenly.
“Well, have you recovered from your adventure?” he said.
“Oh, yes, sir,” said the concierge. “They hustled us a bit, but they
did not really hurt us.”
“Nothing to speak of, that is,” said his wife. “But all the same, it’s
a disgraceful thing that an honest woman can’t sleep in peace in her
bed of a night without being disturbed by rascals like that. And if the
police did their duty things like this wouldn’t happen. And I don’t
care who hears me say it.”
“You say that you were taken by surprise in your sleep?” said M.
Formery. “You say you saw nothing, and heard nothing?”
“There was no time to see anything or hear anything. They trussed us up
like greased lightning,” said the concierge.
“But the gag was the worst,” said the wife. “To lie there and not be
able to tell the rascals what I thought about them!”
“Didn’t you hear the noise of footsteps in the garden?” said M.
Formery.
“One can’t hear anything that happens in the garden from our bedroom,”
said the concierge.
“Even the night when Mlle. Germaine’s great Dane barked from twelve
o’clock till seven in the morning, all the household was kept awake
except us; but bless you, sir, we slept like tops,” said his wife
proudly.
“If they sleep like that it seems rather a waste of time to have gagged
them,” whispered the Duke to the inspector.
The inspector grinned, and whispered scornfully, “Oh, them common
folks; they do sleep like that, your Grace.”
“Didn’t you hear any noise at the front door?” said M. Formery.
“No, we heard no noise at the door,” said the concierge.
“Then you heard no noise at all the whole night?” said M. Formery.
“Oh, yes, sir, we heard noise enough after we’d been gagged,” said the
concierge.
“Now, this is important,” said M. Formery. “What kind of a noise was
it?”
“Well, it was a bumping kind of noise,” said the concierge. “And there
was a noise of footsteps, walking about the room.”
“What room? Where did these noises come from?” said M. Formery.
“From the room over our heads—the big drawing-room,” said the
concierge.
“Didn’t you hear any noise of a struggle, as if somebody was being
dragged about—no screaming or crying?” said M. Formery.
The concierge and his wife looked at one another with inquiring eyes.
“No, I didn’t,” said the concierge.
“Neither did I,” said his wife.
M. Formery paused. Then he said, “How long have you been in the service
of M. Gournay-Martin?”
“A little more than a year,” said the concierge.
M. Formery looked at the paper in his hand, frowned, and said severely,
“I see you’ve been convicted twice, my man.”
“Yes, sir, but—”
“My husband’s an honest man, sir—perfectly honest,” broke in his wife.
“You’ve only to ask M. Gournay-Martin; he’ll—”
“Be so good as to keep quiet, my good woman,” said M. Formery; and,
turning to her husband, he went on: “At your first conviction you were
sentenced to a day’s imprisonment with costs; at your second conviction
you got three days’ imprisonment.”
“I’m not going to deny it, sir,” said the concierge; “but it was an
honourable imprisonment.”
“Honourable?” said M. Formery.
“The first time, I was a gentleman’s servant, and I got a day’s
imprisonment for crying, ‘Hurrah for the General Strike!’—on the first
of May.”
“You were a valet? In whose service?” said M. Formery.
“In the service of M. Genlis, the Socialist leader.”
“And your second conviction?” said M. Formery.
“It was for having cried in the porch of Ste. Clotilde, ‘Down with the
cows!’—meaning the police, sir,” said the concierge.
“And were you in the service of M. Genlis then?” said M. Formery.
“No, sir; I was in the service of M. Bussy-Rabutin, the Royalist
deputy.”
“You don’t seem to have very well-defined political convictions,” said
M. Formery.
“Oh, yes, sir, I have,” the concierge protested. “I’m always devoted to
my masters; and I have the same opinions that they have—always.”
“Very good; you can go,” said M. Formery.
The concierge and his wife left the room, looking as if they did not
quite know whether to feel relieved or not.
“Those two fools are telling the exact truth, unless I’m very much
mistaken,” said M. Formery.
“They look honest enough people,” said the Duke.
“Well, now to examine the rest of the house,” said M. Formery.
“I’ll come with you, if I may,” said the Duke.
“By all means, by all means,” said M. Formery.
“I find it all so interesting,” said the Duke.