For several minutes both the Judge and the detective pored over the
note-book, examining page after page, shaking their heads, and
declining to accept the evidence of their eyes.
“I cannot see it,” said the Judge at last; adding reluctantly, “No
doubt there is a difference, but it is to be explained.”
“Quite so,” put in M. Floçon. “When he wrote the early part, he was
calm and collected; the last entries, so straggling, so ragged, and so
badly written, were made when he was fresh from the crime, excited,
upset, little master of himself. Naturally he would use a different
hand.”
“Or he would wish to disguise it. It was likely he would so wish,”
further remarked the Judge.
“You admit, then, that there is a difference?” argued the General,
shrewdly. “But there is more than a disguise. The best disguise leaves
certain unchangeable features. Some letters, capital G’s, H’s, and
others, will betray themselves through the best disguise. I know what I
am saying. I have studied the subject of handwriting; it interests me.
These are the work of two different hands. Call in an expert; you will
find I am right.”
“Well, well,” said the Judge, after a pause, “let us grant your
position for the moment. What do you deduce? What do you infer
therefrom?”
“Surely you can see what follows—what this leads us to?” said Sir
Charles, rather disdainfully.
“I have formed an opinion—yes, but I should like to see if it coincides
with yours. You think—”
“I _know_,” corrected the General. “I know that, as two persons wrote
in that book, either it is not Ripaldi’s book, or the last of them was
not Ripaldi. I saw the last writer at his work, saw him with my own
eyes. Yet he did not write with Ripaldi’s hand—this is incontestable, I
am sure of it, I will swear it—_ergo_, he is not Ripaldi.”
“But you should have known this at the time,” interjected M. Floçon,
fiercely. “Why did you not discover the change of identity? You should
have seen that this was not Ripaldi.”
“Pardon me. I did not know the man. I had not noticed him particularly
on the journey. There was no reason why I should. I had no
communication, no dealings, with any of my fellow passengers except my
brother and the Countess.”
“But some of the others would surely have remarked the change?” went on
the Judge, greatly puzzled. “That alone seems enough to condemn your
theory, M. le General.”
“I take my stand on fact, not theory,” stoutly maintained Sir Charles,
“and I am satisfied I am right.”
“But if that was not Ripaldi, who was it? Who would wish to masquerade
in his dress and character, to make entries of that sort, as if under
his hand?”
“Some one determined to divert suspicion from himself to others—”
“But stay—does he not plainly confess his own guilt?”
“What matter if he is not Ripaldi? Directly the inquiry was over, he
could steal away and resume his own personality—that of a man supposed
to be dead, and therefore safe from all interference and future
pursuit.”
“You mean—Upon my word, I compliment you, M. le Général. It is really
ingenious! remarkable, indeed! superb!” cried the Judge, and only
professional jealousy prevented M. Floçon from conceding the same
praise.
“But how—what—I do not understand,” asked Colonel Papillon in
amazement. His wits did not travel quite so fast as those of his
companions.
“Simply this, my dear Jack,” explained the General: “Ripaldi must have
tried to blackmail Quadling, as he proposed, and Quadling turned the
tables on him. They fought, no doubt, and Quadling killed him, possibly
in self-defence. He would have said so, but in his peculiar position as
an absconding defaulter he did not dare. That is how I read it, and I
believe that now these gentlemen are disposed to agree with me.”
“In theory, certainly,” said the Judge, heartily. “But oh! for some
more positive proof of this change of character! If we could only
identify the corpse, prove clearly that it is not Quadling. And still
more, if we had not let this so-called Ripaldi slip through our
fingers! You will never find him, M. Floçon, never.”
The detective hung his head in guilty admission of this reproach.
“We may help you in both these difficulties, gentlemen,” said Sir
Charles, pleasantly. “My friend here, Colonel Papillon, can speak as to
the man Quadling. He knew him well in Rome, a year or two ago.”
“Please wait one moment only;” the detective touched a bell, and
briefly ordered two fiacres to the door at once.
“That is right, M. Floçon,” said the Judge. “We will all go to the
Morgue. The body is there by now. You will not refuse your assistance,
monsieur?”
“One moment. As to the other matter, M. le General?” went on M. Floçon.
“Can you help us to find this miscreant, whoever he may be?”
“Yes. The man who calls himself Ripaldi is to be found—or, at least,
you would have found him an hour or so ago—at the Hotel Ivoire, Rue
Bellechasse. But time has been lost, I fear.”
“Nevertheless, we will send there.”
“The woman Hortense was also with him when last I heard of them.”
“How do you know?” began the detective, suspiciously.
“Psha!” interrupted the Judge; “that will keep. This is the time for
action, and we owe too much to the General to distrust him now.”
“Thank you; I am pleased to hear you say that,” went on Sir Charles.
“But if I have been of some service to you, perhaps you owe me a little
in return. That poor lady! Think what she is suffering. Surely, to
oblige me, you will now set her free?”
“Indeed, monsieur, I fear—I do not see how, consistently with my
duty”—protested the Judge.
“At least allow her to return to her hotel. She can remain there at
your disposal. I will promise you that.”
“How can you answer for her?”
“She will do what I ask, I think, if I may send her just two or three
lines.”
The Judge yielded, smiling at the General’s urgency, and shrewdly
guessing what it implied.
Then the three departures from the Prefecture took place within a short
time of each other.
A posse of police went to arrest Ripaldi; the Countess returned to the
Hotel Madagascar; and the Judge’s party started for the Morgue,—only a
short journey,—where they were presently received with every mark of
respect and consideration.
The keeper, or officer in charge, was summoned, and came out bareheaded
to the fiacre, bowing low before his distinguished visitors.
“Good morning, La Pêche,” said M. Floçon in a sharp voice. “We have
come for an identification. The body from the Lyons Station—he of the
murder in the sleeping-car—is it yet arrived?”
“But surely, at your service, Chief,” replied the old man,
obsequiously. “If the gentlemen will give themselves the trouble to
enter the office, I will lead them behind, direct into the mortuary
chamber. There are many people in yonder.”
It was the usual crowd of sightseers passing slowly before the plate
glass of this, the most terrible shop-front in the world, where the
goods exposed, the merchandise, are hideous corpses laid out in rows
upon the marble slabs, the battered, tattered remnants of outraged
humanity, insulted by the most terrible indignities in death.
Who make up this curious throng, and what strange morbid motives drag
them there? Those fat, comfortable-looking women, with their baskets on
their arms; the decent workmen in dusty blouses, idling between the
hours of work; the riffraff of the streets, male or female, in various
stages of wretchedness and degradation? A few, no doubt, are impelled
by motives we cannot challenge—they are torn and tortured by suspense,
trembling lest they may recognize missing dear ones among the exposed;
others stare carelessly at the day’s “take,” wondering, perhaps, if
they may come to the same fate; one or two are idle sightseers, not
always French, for the Morgue is a favourite haunt with the
irrepressible tourist doing Paris. Strangest of all, the murderer
himself, the doer of the fell deed, comes here, to the very spot where
his victim lies stark and reproachful, and stares at it spellbound,
fascinated, filled more with remorse, perchance, than fear at the risk
he runs. So common is this trait, that in mysterious murder cases the
police of Paris keep a disguised officer among the crowd at the Morgue,
and have thereby made many memorable arrests.
“This way, gentlemen, this way;” and the keeper of the Morgue led the
party through one or two rooms into the inner and back recesses of the
buildings. It was behind the scenes of the Morgue, and they were made
free of its most gruesome secrets as they passed along.
The temperature had suddenly fallen far below freezing-point, and the
icy cold chilled to the very marrow. Still worse was an all-pervading,
acrid odour of artificially suspended animal decay. The cold-air
process, that latest of scientific contrivances to arrest the waste of
tissue, has now been applied at the Morgue to preserve and keep the
bodies fresh, and allow them to be for a longer time exposed than when
running water was the only aid. There are, moreover, many specially
contrived refrigerating chests, in which those still unrecognized
corpses are laid by for months, to be dragged out, if needs be, like
carcasses of meat.
“What a loathsome place!” cried Sir Charles. “Hurry up, Jack! let us
get out of this, in Heaven’s name!”
“Where’s my man?” quickly asked Colonel Papillon in response to this
appeal.
“There, the third from the left,” whispered M. Floçon. “We hoped you
would recognize the corpse at once.”
“That? Impossible! You do not expect it, surely? Why, the face is too
much mangled for any one to say who it is.”
“Are there no indications, no marks or signs, to say whether it is
Quadling or not?” asked the Judge in a greatly disappointed tone.
“Absolutely nothing. And yet I am quite satisfied it is not him. For
the simple reason that—”
“Yes, yes, go on.”
“That Quadling in person is standing out there among the crowd.”