“We shall have to forget our relations, sir. It is not as a friend I
come to-day, but as a magistrate.”
M. de Boiscoran looked confounded; but not a shadow of trouble appeared
on his frank and open face.
“I’ll be hanged,” he said, “if I understand”--
“Let us go in,” said M. Galpin.
They went in; and, as they passed the door, Mechinet whispered into the
attorney’s ear,--
“Sir, that man is certainly innocent. A guilty man would never have
received us thus.”
“Silence, sir!” said the commonwealth attorney, however much he was
probably of his clerk’s opinion. “Silence!”
And grave and sad he went and stood in one of the window embrasures. M.
Galpin remained standing in the centre of the room, trying to see every
thing in it, and to fix it in his memory, down to the smallest details.
The prevailing disorder showed clearly how hastily M. de Boiscoran had
gone to bed the night before. His clothes, his boots, his shirt, his
waistcoat, and his straw hat lay scattered about on the chairs and
on the floor. He wore those light gray trousers, which had been
succcessively seen and recognized by Cocoleu, by Ribot, by Gaudry, and
by Mrs. Courtois.
“Now, sir,” began M. de Boiscoran, with that slight angry tone of voice
which shows that a man thinks a joke has been carried far enough, “will
you please tell me what procures for me the honor of this early visit?”
Not a muscle in M. Galpin’s face was moving. As if the question had been
addressed to some one else, he said coldly,--
“Will you please show us your hands, sir?”
M. de Boiscoran’s cheeks turned crimson; and his eyes assumed an
expression of strange perplexity.
“If this is a joke,” he said, “it has perhaps lasted long enough.”
He was evidently getting angry. M. Daubigeon thought it better to
interfere, and thus he said,--
“Unfortunately, sir, the question is a most serious one. Do what the
magistrate desires.”
More and more amazed, M. de Boiscoran looked rapidly around him. In the
door stood Anthony, his faithful old servant, with anguish on his face.
Near the fireplace, the clerk had improvised a table, and put his paper,
his pens, and his horn inkstand in readiness. Then with a shrug of his
shoulders, which showed that he failed to understand, M. de Boiscoran
showed his hands.
They were perfectly clean and white: the long nails were carefully
cleaned also.
“When did you last wash your hands?” asked M. Galpin, after having
examined them minutely.
At this question, M. de Boiscoran’s face brightened up; and, breaking
out into a hearty laugh, he said,--
“Upon my word! I confess you nearly caught me. I was on the point of
getting angry. I almost feared”--
“And there was good reason for fear,” said M. Galpin; “for a terrible
charge has been brought against you. And it may be, that on your answer
to my question, ridiculous as it seems to you, your honor may depend,
and perhaps your liberty.”
This time there was no mistake possible. M. de Boiscoran felt that kind
of terror which the law inspires even in the best of men, when they find
themselves suddenly accused of a crime. He turned pale, and then he said
in a troubled voice,--
“What! A charge has been brought against me, and you, M. Galpin, come to
my house to examine me?”
“I am a magistrate, sir.”
“But you were also my friend. If anyone should have dared in my presence
to accuse you of a crime, of a mean act, of something infamous, I should
have defended you, sir, with all my energy, without hesitation, and
without a doubt. I should have defended you till absolute, undeniable
evidence should have been brought forward of your culpability; and even
then I should have pitied you, remembering that I had esteemed you so
highly as to favor your alliance with my family. But you--I am accused,
I do not know of what, falsely, wrongly; and at once you hasten hither,
you believe the charge, and consent to become my judge. Well, let it be
so! I washed my hands last night after coming home.”
M. Galpin had not boasted too much in praising his self-possession and
his perfect control over himself. He did not move when the terrible
words fell upon his ear; and he asked again in the same calm tone,--
“What has become of the water you used for that purpose?”
“It is probably still there, in my dressing-room.”
The magistrate at once went in. On the marble table stood a basin full
of water. That water was black and dirty. At the bottom lay particles
of charcoal. On the top, mixed with the soapsuds, were swimming some
extremely slight but unmistakable fragments of charred paper. With
infinite care the magistrate carried the basin to the table at
which Mechinet had taken a seat; and, pointing at it, he asked M. de
Boiscoran,--
“Is that the water in which you washed your hands last night after
coming home?”
“Yes,” replied the other with an air of careless indifference.
“You had been handling charcoal, or some inflammable material.”
“Don’t you see?”
Standing face to face, the commonwealth attorney and clerk exchanged
rapid glances. They had had the same feeling at that moment. If M.
de Boiscoran was innocent, he was certainly a marvellously cool and
energetic man, or he was carrying out a long-premeditated plan of
action; for every one of his answers seemed to tighten the net in which
he was taken. The magistrate himself seemed to be struck by this; but it
was only for a moment, and then, turning to the clerk, he said,--
“Write that down!”
He dictated to him the whole evidence, most minutely and accurately,
correcting himself every now and then to substitute a better word, or to
improve his style. When he had read it over he said,--
“Let us go on, sir. You were out last night?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Having left the house at eight, you returned only around midnight.”
“After midnight.”
“You took your gun?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where is it?”
With an air of indifference, M. de Boiscoran pointed at it in the corner
of the fireplace, and said,--
“There it is!”
M. Galpin took it up quickly. It was a superb weapon, double-barrelled,
of unusually fine make, and very elegant. On the beautifully carved
woodwork the manufacturer’s name, Clebb, was engraven.
“When did you last fire this gun?” asked the magistrate.
“Some four or five days ago.”
“What for?”
“To shoot some rabbits who infested my woods.”
M. Galpin raised and lowered the cock with all possible care: he noticed
that it was the Remington patent. Then he opened the chamber, and found
that the gun was loaded. Each barrel had a cartridge in it. Then he
put the gun back in its place, and, pulling from his pocket the leaden
cartridge-case which Pitard had found, he showed it to M. de Boiscoran,
and asked him,--
“Do you recognize this?”
“Perfectly!” replied the other. “It is a case of one of the cartridges
which I have probably thrown away as useless.”
“Do you think you are the only one in this country who has a gun by this
maker?”
“I do not think it: I am quite sure of it.”
“So that you must, as a matter of course, have been at a spot where such
a cartridge-case as this has been found?”
“Not necessarily. I have often seen children pick up these things, and
play with them.”
The clerk, while he made his pen fly across his paper, could not resist
the temptation of making all kinds of faces. He was too well acquainted
with lawyers’ tactics not to understand M. Galpin’s policy perfectly
well, and to see how cunningly it was devised to make every fact
strengthen the suspicion against M. de Boiscoran.
“It is a close game,” he said to himself.
The magistrate had taken a seat.
“If that is so,” he began again, “I beg you will give me an account of
how you spent the evening after eight o’clock: do not hurry, consider,
take your time; for your answers are of the utmost importance.”
M. de Boiscoran had so far remained quite cool; but his calmness
betrayed one of those terrible storms within, which may break forth, no
one knows when. This warning, and, even more so, the tone in which it
was given, revolted him as a most hideous hypocrisy. And, breaking out
all of a sudden, he cried,--
“After all, sir, what do you want of me? What am I accused of?”