Jaubourg's cousinships. He himself had been the fashionable bourgeois
who becomes an aristocrat. He had, unconsciously, in a liaison with a
great lady, gratified the craving for being ennobled which is the
natural instinct, and if well directed, perfectly legitimate and
praiseworthy, of the best representatives of the middle classes. To
Landri's mind the stations occupied by the dead man's relations were
simply a guaranty that no one of them was the denouncer he sought. These
first "definite facts" suggested no tenable hypothesis.
Another "definite fact" was the theft of Madame de Claviers' letter. A
letter may be stolen only from the person who sends it or the person to
whom it is sent. The Marquise de Claviers-Grandchamp had been dead
fifteen years. It was possible that the letter had been stolen fifteen
years before, and that the thief had let all that time pass without
using it, but it was most improbable. Now, when one is pursuing an
investigation of this sort, the rule is not to turn to the improbable
until one has followed all the probable clues. The wisest course
therefore was to assume that it had been stolen at Jaubourg's apartment.
What a contradiction it was that a man so prudent, so on his guard, who
had worked so hard to conceal his fatherhood should preserve such
terribly condemnatory pages! It might be explained by the ardor of a
passion that must have been very great. Did he not sacrifice his whole
life to it? Precisely because he knew the danger of not destroying such
a correspondence, Madame de Claviers' lover must have multiplied his
precautions. That letter and the others referred to by the anonymous
writer could have been stolen therefore only by a person familiar with
all his habits, and at a time when he was incapable of keeping watch on
them. The theft must have been committed either during his sickness or
immediately after his death. What was the meaning of those words, "other
documents?" Evidently, the rest of the correspondence. But why was that
single letter sent, unaccompanied by any demand for money, and followed
by several weeks of silence? That was an enigma. But it did not explain
away the "definite fact."
That fact seemed to require that a wisely conducted inquiry should begin
with an interview with Joseph, the confidential servant of whom Jaubourg
had said on his death-bed: "You can believe him. He is reliable,
perfectly reliable." Landri had not seen him since the time in the
chamber of death when the marquis was kneeling at the bedside, praying.
In imagination he saw that figure, in black coat and white cravat,
making the final arrangements--that impassive face of a close-mouthed
witness or confederate. Joseph had been in his master's service thirty
years. He must inevitably have discovered Jaubourg's liaison with Madame
de Claviers. He knew the secret of Landri's birth. The young man
recalled his singular expression when he brought him a message, at
Grandchamp, on the day before his master's death. Moreover, was not
Joseph there, assisting Dr. Pierre Chaffin, when the invalid, in his
delirium, said so many terribly incriminating things? That thought made
the prospect of a conversation with the man so painful that Landri
recoiled at first.
"This is cowardly," he said to himself the next moment. "If I can't face
suffering of that sort for _him_, of what am I capable?"
Having determined upon this interview, the most elementary shrewdness
bade him bring it about without warning. The young man was not aware of
one fact which was likely to facilitate his task: M. de Claviers, as may
be imagined, had shrunk in horror from the thought of putting his foot
in Jaubourg's apartment again. Having resolved to return the detestable
legacy, and not choosing to order a sale, which would have attracted
notice, he had placed the apartment, until further orders, in charge of
the old maître d'hôtel. When Landri went to Rue de Solferino to ask
his address, the concierge replied with evident surprise, "Why, he's
upstairs, Monsieur le Comte!" which proved to the investigator what a
delicate affair he had undertaken. The slightest imprudence was likely
to arouse a very dangerous curiosity. And so all the efforts of his will
were combined to make his face impenetrable while he awaited the maître
d'hôtel in the library, into which an old woman who answered his ring
had ushered him. She was the "spouse" of "Monsieur Joseph," who acted as
laundress to the establishment during Jaubourg's lifetime. The couple
had a daughter. Mademoiselle Amélie, whom their indulgent employer had
allowed them to keep with them. How was it possible to associate the
idea of a criminal conspiracy with the head of a bourgeois family,
hungry for respectability?
Madame Joseph had a certain matronly dignity, which she displayed as she
opened the windows and explained the music of a piano, which was
Mademoiselle Amélie's.
"We had it brought into the apartment," she said, "because we never
leave it now, on account of the bric-à-brac."
The pianiste's father appeared, sad and deferential, respectful and
curious. The change in the Marquis de Claviers since his master's death
had not escaped that sagacious observer. He had guessed its secret
cause, but had not been able to divine how his long-abused credulity had
been so suddenly enlightened. When he found himself in Landri's
presence, his desire to find out gave to his ordinarily expressionless
eyes, in spite of himself, a sharpness which was hateful to Landri--less
so, however, than another circumstance both ghastly and comical. Joseph
was in deep mourning. He was dressed in garments which had belonged to
the dead man. The folds of the coat and trousers, which were of English
cut, as befitted a man of Jaubourg's pretensions to style, had retained
the outlines of their former owner's body, the features, so to speak, of
his movements. This evocation of the dead was made to assume a
caricaturish aspect by the servant's involuntary mimicry of his master,
who had evidently had a hypnotic influence upon him. He regretted him
sincerely, and there was genuine grief in his voice when he said to
Landri:--
"Ah! Monsieur le Comte, I told Monsieur le Comte at Grandchamp that
monsieur would not last two days longer. Such a kind master! Monsieur le
Comte knows that he left my wife and me an annuity of thirty-six hundred
francs and ten thousand francs for Amélie's marriage portion. I am
going to be able to retire to a little place in my province that I had
bought already with my savings. People tell me: 'You're going to be
happy, Monsieur Joseph.' But that isn't true, Monsieur le Comte. To have
watched him go, as I did, spoils everything for me."
"Since you were so devoted to him," rejoined Landri, studying the effect
of his words on that face, which was gradually overspread by amazement,
"you will certainly assist me in an investigation, which indeed
interests you yourself. Some papers have disappeared--letters, to which
Monsieur Jaubourg attached the greatest importance. Observe, Joseph,
that I do not accuse you. I came here to ask you simply, is it possible
that anybody entered the apartment while Monsieur Jaubourg was ill, and
took these papers?"
"No, Monsieur le Comte," replied the servant eagerly, "it isn't
possible."
The gleam that flashed from his eyes betrayed an alarm that was not
feigned. It was not for himself that he was afraid. He had nothing to do
with the horrible deed. But, in that case, who was it? as M. de Claviers
had said with a groan--who?
"Monsieur kept no papers, on principle," Joseph continued. "I have heard
him say many a time: 'When I am gone, there'll be no need to schedule
anything. I destroy everything.'--But he had preserved one package of
letters. This is how I know. The morning of the day he sent me to
Grandchamp--that was Monday--he felt very sick. He insisted on my
helping him to get up, in spite of the doctor's orders. He opened a
strong-box that he kept in his room. He took out two bundles of papers
with his own hands and put them in the fire. He wouldn't go back to bed
till he saw that there was nothing left of them but ashes. And as the
key of the strong-box never left him--"
"But during the days just before that Monday, he was in bed. Where was
the key then?"
"Hanging on his watch-chain, in the drawer of his night-table."
"Couldn't some one have come in, while he was asleep, for instance, and
you were not there?"
"One of the other servants, perhaps. I'll answer for them as for myself.
I was the one who selected them."
"But the doctor?" queried Landri.
"Monsieur le Docteur Chaffin?" said the maître-d'hôtel. "Of course.
But I can't believe it of him," he added, after a few seconds'
reflection. "Now, if it was his father--"
"His father?" Landri repeated. "Come, tell me your whole thought."
"I haven't any thought," replied Joseph, "except that I know that
monsieur was very suspicious of him."
"And he didn't come here during his illness?"
"Yes, I remember now--on Saturday. But he didn't see monsieur, for I was
with him. He sent for me to get late news to carry to Monsieur le
Marquis."
Thus Chaffin's image was associated once more in Landri's mind with the
mysterious scenes that must have been enacted about that bed of death.
Chaffin had wandered around that death-chamber during the last hours.
Chaffin had been in the apartment. Once, the servant said. What did he
know about it? Notwithstanding that he had lavished the most assiduous
attentions on the sick man, he must have been absent at times. It might
be that Chaffin, advised of his absence, had seized the opportunity, had
entered the sick-room with the doctor's connivance. If at that moment
the invalid was asleep, morphine assisting, the theft of the letters was
explained.
The young man had not left Joseph ten minutes before this explanation
had taken shape in his mind. It rested upon a series of almost fantastic
hypotheses: that Chaffin knew of the existence of Madame de Claviers'
letters; that he knew where Jaubourg kept them locked up; that Pierre
Chaffin was in connivance with his father; that the strong-box had not a
combination lock. But nothing appeared fantastic to Landri since the
terrible scene during which he had learned the secret of his birth. When
everything of which we were certain, which was, as it were, a part of
us,--loving regard for a mother's memory, respectful affection for a
father, family pride, assurance of social rank,--has crumbled at one
stroke, nothing surprises us. The most extraordinary events seem simple
to us.
Not one of these difficulties deterred Landri. The one thing that he did
not understand was Chaffin's interest in the theft and in the
denunciation that followed it. From the moment that he knew that his
former tutor was capable of malversation in managing the property of
such a man as the marquis, he adjudged him a scoundrel and capable of
the worst crimes. He remembered the step he had undertaken at the time
of his last visit to Grandchamp, and he interpreted it as being in
pursuance of one of his detestable schemes: to precipitate a disaster
under cover of which his peculations would pass unnoticed. All this was
true, but it came in collision with the further "definite fact," that
the denunciatory letter, according to M. de Claviers' own testimony, was
sent some time before the dishonest manager was dismissed. So that
Chaffin could not have been guided, in sending it, by a desire for
revenge. But a man does not act without a motive, especially when the
inevitable consequence of his action is the ruin of two lives. At that
time Chaffin had no motive for committing that useless and barbarous
villainy. No. He must seek elsewhere.
"No motive?" the young man asked himself a few days later. He had
exhausted himself in hypotheses and efforts, each more unavailing than
the last, even to the point of taking the trouble to interview
personally all the people who had been in Jaubourg's service under
Joseph, and he returned to the hypothesis to which, in spite of all the
objections to it, an unconquerable instinct guided him. "But I know
absolutely nothing about that man, whom I thought I knew so well, and in
whom I was so deceived. I don't even know why he was dismissed. From
whom can I find out? Why, from Métivier, of course. Besides, I shall
need him in connection with my marriage."
They had been discussing the date, Valentine and he, during the day.
True to their compact of silence, neither of them had mentioned M. de
Claviers. Landri continued to avoid explaining why he delayed in making
the _sommation_, which would hasten the longed-for moment of their
union, and she continued to avoid questioning him. He foresaw, however,
from various indications,--glances, tones of voice, gestures,--that the
heroic marquis himself would not endure much longer their too painful
relations, and he was beginning to discuss with the dear companion of
his life to come the details of their plans. In these discussions she
showed herself as he had always known her, delicately judicious, and
strong of heart.
The project of living on a large estate in the country gave place more
and more definitely to the dream of carrying on a "ranch" in Western
Canada--Ontario or Manitoba. A large amount of ready money would be
necessary. So that a pretext was at hand for the visit to Métivier.
The apprehension of an overstrained perspicacity is so distressing at
critical moments that Landri went several times as far as Place de la
Madeleine before he could make up his mind to go up to the notary's
office. He succeeded at last, as generally happens with over-sensitive
imaginations, in overcoming that apprehension, and realized that it had
been entirely subjective.
Métivier greeted him with the simple courtesy of a notary employed to
do a certain thing, with whom to think of his client is to think of
documents and figures. Of the family tragedy in which the
Claviers-Grandchamps were nearing shipwreck he had no suspicion. On the
other hand, he had shrewdly unravelled all the threads of the conspiracy
entered into by Chaffin and his confederates, and when Landri, after
speaking of certain formalities that were indispensable for the final
settlement of his mother's estate, in order to account for his visit,
touched upon the subject of his former tutor, Métivier exclaimed:--
"What did he do? Why, it's the simplest thing in the world. He came to
an understanding with certain people from whom your father had borrowed
money, in such wise as to secure a percentage of their profits. I am
expecting Altona this very morning. If he should happen to come while
you are here, you would see a superb specimen of the usurer of to-day.
He is the dealer in curiosities, who sells you a portrait by Velasquez,
a Boule cabinet, a bust by Houdon, for a hundred thousand or two hundred
thousand francs, and buys them back for fifty or sixty thousand. The
amusing feature of it is that the Velasquez and the Boule and the Houdon
are genuine, and that the customer wouldn't do a bad bit of business by
keeping them. This enables Master Altona to pass himself off as a
collector, a dilettante, a connoisseur of art!--This fellow and his gang
learned of Monsieur le Marquis de Claviers' financial embarrassment. I
am somewhat to blame. I recommended your father to apply to a certain
Gruet, whom I thought trustworthy, and he was of the same stripe as
they! They knew also what the treasures of Grandchamp were worth. You
see the scheme; it's familiar enough: to force the marquis to a sale by
getting all his debts in one hand. Chaffin was to have his
commission--thirty or forty thousand francs, perhaps more. He undertook
to offer Monsieur de Claviers four millions, in Altona's name, for a
list catalogued in the notes to your family history! He had the audacity
to do that! And Monsieur le Marquis is so kind-hearted that he explained
it to me: 'He thought he was doing me a service,' he said.--Luckily we
were able to enlighten him by discovering the traces of a most
commonplace rascality: bills settled twice, if you please--once to the
tradesman, and once, to whom?--to Master Chaffin.--Monsieur de Claviers
cut off his head. When I wrote you that he was severe, Cauvet, the
advocate I got for you, had found only one of these bills. I said to
myself that there was a chance for a mistake. For all a man's a notary,
he has difficulty in believing in certain comedies, and this Chaffin
played one for me when I questioned him, with your letter in my hand. To
dismiss him so summarily was to run the risk of never getting to the
bottom of many things. However, we're beginning to see daylight. As I
always say to my cousin Jacques Molan, the dramatic author, the true
modern comedy is played in our own homes."
"Then," queried Landri, as Métivier complacently mentioned his
cousinship to an illustrious writer, of whom he was proud after having
been very much ashamed of him, "then you think that Chaffin was
interested in the Altona deal?"
"There's no doubt of it!" replied the notary. "By the way,"--one of his
clerks had just knocked at the door and handed him a card,--"if you'll
allow me to have him shown in here, you will see Altona himself. He is
here. You can measure up the man; you will be able to judge whether it
is possible that, having chosen the end, he resorted to the means, every
means," and going through the motion of counting money, "this included."
Landri did not need this meeting with the usurer-antiquary to know what
to think concerning the nature of the conspiracy against the pictures,
the tapestries and the furniture of the château of Grandchamp. The
recollection of the advice insinuated by Chaffin: "Ask for your
property," would have sufficed of itself, without this visit to
Métivier, to convince him that the sending of the anonymous letter
might be explained simply by a desire for money. At the moment that
Jaubourg's legacy fell in, M. de Claviers was in the clutches of the
Altona claim. He could free himself only by selling the treasures of the
château. Chaffin's disappointment was proportioned, no doubt, to the
commission that he lost. His knew his master's temperament. To betray to
him his wife's liaison with his false friend was to make that money
impossible of acceptance by him. If the rascal had letters of Madame de
Claviers in hand, all was explained. This theory was less chimerical
than the other, but upon how many hypotheses did even it rest! For a
moment it seemed certainty to Landri, ready to collapse, as the first
had done, upon examination.
Meanwhile he exchanged a salutation with Master Altona, as the notary
had slightingly dubbed the dealer in antiques. One had but to see the
two men side by side, to understand that ten years earlier he would have
called him "my boy," and ten years later he would call him "monsieur le
baron."
Altona had one of those bloodless faces, faded for good and all, which
have no age. He was very black-haired, with moustaches and an imperial
cut in a fashion to give him the aspect of one of the portraits he dealt
in. His brown, velvety eyes, which were like two spots on his pale face,
betrayed his Oriental origin, as did the strange mixture of servility
and arrogance displayed by his whole person. A little too well-dressed,
with too much jewelry, too faultlessly correct, one realized
nevertheless that one last touch of "side"--we use the language of the
sharpers in his employ--would make of him a passably successful
make-believe _grand seigneur_. Métivier, on the contrary, that highly
esteemed notary, well-to-do and well established, but dull and heavy,
and made apoplectic at fifty-five by his sedentary profession and by
over-indulgence in eating and smoking, would never be anything more than
a vulgar French bourgeois. Through the chance that brought them
together, in the presence of the heir of a very great name on the eve of
disappearing forever, the four walls of that green-box-lined office
contained a striking abstract of contemporary history.
Maxwell Altona--although born in Germany he bore that English baptismal
name--seemed in no wise embarrassed to find himself in the presence of
a son of the debtor he had plotted to rob, and when Métivier had named
them to each other, he said calmly, with his shrewdest glance and his
most engaging smile:--
"I am the more pleased to have the honor of being presented to you,
Monsieur le Comte, because I followed your trial with the deepest
interest and greatly admired your action at Hugueville. You have taken
your leave."--Here the foreigner betrayed himself, by that little
Germanism; no one is perfect.--"You are proposing, no doubt, to devote
yourself to your fine château. I am well acquainted with its
marvels."--At this point, one of the indescribably ironical expressions
that play over the mysterious features of these international
tradesmen.--"Allow me to suggest to you an opportunity that is perhaps
unique. You have but one of the two Gobelins of the Turkish Embassy. It
is the entry of Mehemet Effendi into Paris, in 1721, with the mission of
congratulating the King on his accession," he added, addressing
Métivier. Then, turning again to the possible purchaser, "I know where
the other is."
"Isn't he amazing?" the notary asked Landri as he showed him out. "One
affair has failed. He goes about another at once. He was going to strip
you. He sells to you. Faith, I advise you to look at the tapestry. I am
sure it's genuine. That's his probity, the pirate! He doesn't cheat
about his wares. And Cauvet won't have a commission, I promise you."
A commission? Was it possible that Chaffin had in very truth not
hesitated to commit the most shocking of private crimes, the betrayal of
a dead wife to her husband, of an illegitimate son to the head of a
family, after all the benefactions he had received, and all for fear of
losing his percentage, as Métivier had said, of the four millions? Was
it possible? At all events the objection urged at first by M. de
Claviers was removed: the fact that the anonymous letter was sent before
Chaffin's dismissal did not prove that he was not guilty. And yet how
many things still made it improbable that he was! And in the first
place, that he had had Madame de Claviers' letters in his possession!
Improbability? Yes. Impossibility? No. Here the son's complicity once
more appeared as the essential and sufficient condition.
All these ideas were whirling about in Landri's mind as he returned from
Place de la Madeleine toward Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré. They
suddenly crystallized in a resolution which caused him to turn his back
on his home and walk toward Place de la Concorde, then through the
Tuileries toward the Seine, Notre-Dame, and Ile Saint-Louis. How many
times he had followed that route, a mere child, on his way from the
paternal abode to Quai de Béthune, where Chaffin's family then lived.
Having agreed, it will be remembered, to live with his pupil, he often
took him on Sunday to pass a few hours with Madame Chaffin, their
daughter Louise, and their son Pierre, in the fourth floor apartment,
from the balcony of which one commanded such a beautiful view of the
Seine, with the chevet of Notre-Dame at the right, the dome of the
Panthéon and of the Val-de-Grâce in front, and at the left the
thickets of the Jardin des Plantes and the Salpêtrière. In course of
time the Chaffins had gone down to the third floor, then to the first,
without leaving the house, which was convenient to the young medical
student because of the proximity of the Hôtel-Dieu and the Latin
Quarter. Louise had never married, and Madame Chaffin was still living.
These recollections of an existence apparently so upright protested in
the former pupil's heart against the insulting step he was preparing to
take. He was going to question Pierre Chaffin. But great heaven! That
virtuous occupant of an old house on a patriarchal quay had actually put
his fingers in his master's fortune. Were there but one chance in a
thousand, in ten thousand, that he had likewise stolen Madame de
Claviers' letters, with the connivance of his son Pierre, that one
chance was enough to cause Landri to try, at whatever cost, to find out.