THE MOVING PICTURE
"Are you feeling better?" asked the judge an hour later when the accused
was led back.
"Yes," answered Groener with recovered self-possession, and again the
detective noticed that he glanced anxiously at the clock. It was a quarter
past eleven.
"We will have the visual test now," said Hauteville; "we must go to another
room. Take the prisoner to Dr. Duprat's laboratory," he directed the guard.
Passing down the wide staircase, strangely silent now, they entered a long
narrow passageway leading to a remote wing of the Palais de Justice. First
went the guard with Groener close beside him, then twenty paces, behind
came M. Paul and the magistrate and last came the weary clerk with Maître
Curé. Their footsteps, echoed ominously along the stone floor, their
shadows danced fantastically before them and behind them under gas jets
that flared through the tunnel.
"I hope this goes off well," whispered the judge uneasily. "You don't think
they have forgotten anything?"
"Trust Papa Tignol to obey orders," replied Coquenil. "Ah!" he started and
gripped his companion's arm. "Do you remember what I told you about those
alleyway footprints? About the pressure marks? Look!" and he pointed ahead
excitedly. "I knew it, he has gout or rheumatism, just touches that come
and go. He had it that night when he escaped from the Ansonia and he has
it now. See!"
The judge observed the prisoner carefully and nodded in agreement. There
was no doubt about it, as he walked _Groener was limping noticeably on his
left foot!_
Dr. Duprat was waiting for them in his laboratory, absorbed in recording
the results of his latest experiments. A kind-eyed, grave-faced man was
this, who, for all his modesty, was famous over Europe as a brilliant
worker in psychological criminology. Bertillon had given the world a method
of identifying criminals' bodies, and now Duprat was perfecting a method of
recognizing their mental states, especially any emotional disturbances
connected with fear, anger or remorse.
Entering the laboratory, they found themselves in a large room, quite dark,
save for an electric lantern at one end that threw a brilliant circle on a
sheet stretched at the other end. The light reflected from this sheet
showed the dim outlines of a tiered amphitheater before which was a long
table spread with strange-looking instruments, electrical machines and
special apparatus for psychological experiments. On the walls were charts
and diagrams used by the doctor in his lectures.
"Everything ready?" inquired the magistrate after an exchange of greetings
with Dr. Duprat.
"Everything," answered the latter. "Is this the--er--the subject?" he
glanced at the prisoner.
Hauteville nodded and the doctor beckoned to the guard.
"Please bring him over here. That's right--in front of the lantern." Then
he spoke gently to Groener: "Now, my friend, we are not going to do
anything that will cause you the slightest pain or inconvenience. These
instruments look formidable, but they are really good friends, for they
help us to understand one another. Most of the trouble in this world comes
because half the people do not understand the other half. Please turn
sideways to the light."
For some moments he studied the prisoner in silence.
"Interesting, _ve_-ry interesting," murmured the doctor, his fine student's
face alight. "Especially the lobe of this ear! I will leave a note about it
for Bertillon himself, he mustn't miss the lobe of this ear. Please turn a
little for the back of the head. Thanks! Great width! Extraordinary
fullness. Now around toward the light! The eyes--ah! The brow--excellent!
Yes, yes, I know about the hand," he nodded to Coquenil, "but the head is
even more remarkable. I must study this head when we have time--_ve_-ry
remarkable. Tell me, my friend, do you suffer from sudden shooting
pains--here, over your eyes?"
"No," said Groener.
"No? I should have thought you might. Well, well!" he proceeded kindly, "we
must have a talk one of these days. Perhaps I can make some suggestions. I
see so _many_ heads, but--not many like yours, no, no, not many like
yours."
He paused and glanced toward an assistant who was busy with the lantern.
The assistant looked up and nodded respectfully.
"Ah, we can begin," continued the doctor. "We must have these off," he
pointed to the handcuffs. "Also the coat. Don't be alarmed! You will
experience nothing unpleasant--nothing. There! Now I want the right arm
bare above the elbow. No, no, it's the left arm, I remember, I want the
left arm bare above the elbow."
When these directions had been carried out, Dr. Duprat pointed to a heavy
wooden chair with a high back and wide arms.
"Please sit here," he went on, "and slip your left arm into this leather
sleeve. It's a little tight because it has a rubber lining, but you won't
mind it after a minute or two."
Groener walked to the chair and then drew back. "What are you going to do
to me?" he asked.
"We are going to show you some magic lantern pictures," answered the
doctor.
"Why must I sit in this chair? Why do you want my arm in that leather
thing?"
"I told you, Groener," put in the judge, "that we were coming here for the
visual test; it's part of your examination. Some pictures of persons and
places will be thrown on that sheet and, as each one appears, I want you to
say what it is. Most of the pictures are familiar to everyone."
"Yes, but the leather sleeve?" persisted the prisoner.
"The leather sleeve is like the stop watch, it records your emotions. Sit
down!"
Groener hesitated and the guard pushed him toward the chair. "Wait!" he
said. "I want to know _how_ it records my emotions."
The magistrate answered with a patience that surprised M. Paul.
"There is a pneumatic arrangement," he explained, "by which the
pulsations of your heart and the blood pressure in your arteries
are registered--automatically. Now then! I warn you if you don't
sit down willingly--well, you had better sit down."
Coquenil was watching closely and, through the prisoner's half shut eyes,
he caught a flash of anger, a quick clenching of the freed hands and
then--then Groener sat down.
Quickly and skillfully the assistant adjusted the leather sleeve over the
bared left arm and drew it close with straps.
"Not too tight," said Duprat. "You feel a sense of throbbing at first, but
it is nothing. Besides, we shall take the sleeve off shortly. Now then," he
turned toward the lantern.
Immediately a familiar scene appeared upon the sheet, a colored photograph
of the Place de la Concorde.
"What is it?" asked the doctor pleasantly.
The prisoner was silent.
"You surely recognize this picture. Look! The obelisk and the fountain, the
Tuileries gardens, the arches of the Rue de Rivoli, and the Madeleine,
there at the end of the Rue Royale. Come, what is it?"
"The Place de la Concorde," answered Groener sullenly.
"Of course. You see how simple it is. Now another."
The picture changed to a view of the grand opera house and at the same
moment a point of light appeared in the headpiece back of the chair. It was
shaded so that the prisoner could not see it and it illumined a graduated
white dial on which was a glass tube about thirty inches long, the whole
resembling a barometer. Inside the tube a red column moved regularly up and
down, up and down, in steady beats and Coquenil understood that this column
was registering the beating of Groener's heart. Standing behind the chair,
the doctor, the magistrate, and the detective could at the same time watch
the pulsating column and the pictures on the sheet; but the prisoner could
not see the column, he did not know it was there, he saw only the pictures.
"What is that?" asked the doctor.
Groener had evidently decided to make the best of the situation for he
answered at once: "The grand opera house."
"Good! Now another! What is that?"
"The Bastille column."
"Right! And this?"
"The Champs Elysées."
"And this?"
"Notre-Dame church."
So far the beats had come uniformly about one in a second, for the man's
pulse was slow; at each beat the liquid in the tube shot up six inches and
then dropped six inches, but, at the view of Notre-Dame, the column rose
only three inches, then dropped back and shot up seven inches.
The doctor nodded gravely while Coquenil, with breathless interest, with a,
morbid fascination, watched the beating of this red column. It was like the
beating of red blood.
"_And this?_"
As the picture changed there was a quiver in the pulsating column, a
hesitation with a quick fluttering at the bottom of the stroke, then the
red line shot up full nine inches.
M. Paul glanced at the sheet and saw a perfect reproduction of private room
Number Six in the Ansonia. Everything was there as on the night of the
crime, the delicate yellow hangings, the sofa, the table set for two. And,
slowly, as they looked, two holes appeared in the wall. Then a dim shape
took form upon the floor, more and more distinctly until the dissolving
lens brought a man's body into clear view, a body stretched face downward
in a dark red pool that grew and widened, slowly straining and wetting the
polished wood.
"Groener," said the magistrate, his voice strangely formidable in the
shadows, "do you recognize this room?"
"No," said the prisoner impassively, but the column was pulsing wildly.
"You have been in this room?"
"Never."
"Nor looked through these eyeholes?"
"No."
"Nor seen that man lying on the floor?"
"No."
Now the prisoner's heart was beating evenly again, somehow he had regained
his self-possession.
"You are lying, Groener," accused the judge. "You remember this man
perfectly. Come, we will lift him from the floor and look him in the face,
full in the face. There!" He signaled the lantern operator and there leaped
forth on the sheet the head of Martinez, the murdered, mutilated head with
shattered eye and painted cheeks and the greenish death pallor showing
underneath. A ghastly, leering cadaver in collar and necktie, dressed up
and photographed at the morgue, and now flashed hideously at the prisoner
out of the darkness. Yet Groener's heart pulsed on steadily with only a
slight quickening, with less quickening than Coquenil felt in his own
heart.
"Who is it?" demanded the judge.
"I don't know," declared the accused.
Again the picture changed.
"Who is this?"
"Napoleon Bonaparte."
"And this?"
"Prince Bismarck."
"And this?"
"Queen Victoria."
Here, suddenly, at the view of England's peaceful sovereign, Groener seemed
thrown into frightful agitation, not Groener as he sat on the chair, cold
and self-contained, but Groener as revealed by the unsuspected dial. Up and
down in mad excitement leaped the red column with many little breaks and
quiverings at the bottom of the beats and with tremendous up-shootings as
if the frightened heart were trying to burst the tube with its spurting red
jet.
The doctor put his mouth close to Coquenil's ear and whispered: "It's the
shock showing now, the shock that he held back after the body."
Then he leaned over Groener's shoulder and asked kindly: "Do you feel your
heart beating fast, my friend?"
"No," murmured the prisoner, "my--my heart is beating as usual."
"You will certainly recognize the next picture," pursued the judge. "It
shows a woman and a little girl! There! Do you know these faces, Groener?"
As he spoke there appeared the fake photograph that Coquenil had found in
Brussels, Alice at the age of twelve with the smooth young widow.
The prisoner shook his head. "I don't know them--I never saw them."
"Groener," warned the magistrate, "there is no use keeping up this denial,
you have betrayed yourself already."
"No," cried the prisoner with a supreme rally of his will power, "I have
betrayed nothing--nothing," and, once more, while the doctor marveled, his
pulse steadied and strengthened and grew normal.
"What a man!" muttered Coquenil.
"We know the facts," went on Hauteville sternly, "we know why you killed
Martinez and why you disguised yourself as a wood carver."
The prisoner's face lighted with a mocking smile. "If you know all that,
why waste time questioning me?"
"You're a good actor, sir, but we shall strip off your mask and quiet your
impudence. Look at the girl in this _false_ picture which you had cunningly
made in Brussels. Look at her! Who is she? There is the key to the mystery!
There is the reason for your killing Martinez! _He knew the truth about
this girl_."
Now the prisoner's pulse was running wild, faster and faster, but with no
more violent spurtings and leapings; the red column throbbed swiftly and
faintly at the bottom of the tube as if the heart were weakening.
"A hundred and sixty to the minute," whispered Duprat to the magistrate.
"It is dangerous to go on."
Hauteville shrugged his shoulders.
"Martinez knew the truth," he went on, "Martinez held your secret. How had
Martinez come upon it? Who was Martinez? A billiard player, a shallow
fellow, vain of his conquests over silly women. The last man in Paris, one
would say, to interfere with your high purposes or penetrate the barriers
of wealth and power that surrounded you."
"You--you flatter me! What am I, pray, a marquis or a duke?" chaffed the
other, but the trembling dial belied his gayety, and even from the side
Coquenil could see that the man's face was as tense and pallid as the sheet
before him.
"As I said, the key to this murder," pursued the magistrate, "is the secret
that Martinez held. Without that nothing can be understood and no justice
can be done. The whole aim of this investigation has been to get the secret
and _we have got it!_ Groener, you have delivered yourself into our hands,
you have written this secret for us in words of terror and we have read
them, we know what Martinez knew when you took his life, we know the story
of the medal that he wore on his breast. Do _you_ know the story?"
"I tell you I know nothing about this man or his medal," flung back the
prisoner.
"No? Then you will be glad to hear the story. It was a medal of solid gold,
awarded Martinez by the city of Paris for conspicuous bravery in saving
lives at the terrible Charity Bazaar fire. You have heard of the Charity
Bazaar fire, Groener?"
"Yes, I--I have heard of it."
"But perhaps you never heard the details or, if you did, you may have
forgotten them. _Have_ you forgotten the details of the Charity Bazaar
fire?"
Charity Bazaar fire! Three times, with increasing emphasis, the magistrate
had spoken those sinister words, yet the dial gave no sign, the red column
throbbed on steadily.
"I am not interested in the subject," answered the accused.
"Ah, but you are, or you ought to be. It was such a shocking affair.
Hundreds burned to death, think of that! Cowardly men trampling women and
children! Our noblest families plunged into grief and bereavement!
Princesses burned to death! Duchesses burned to death! Beautiful women
burned to death! _Rich women burned to death!_ Think of it, Groener, and--"
he signaled the operator, "_and look at it!_"
As he spoke the awful tragedy began in one of those extraordinary moving
pictures that the French make after a catastrophe, giving to the imitation
even greater terrors than were in the genuine happening. Here before them
now leaped redder and fiercer flames than ever crackled through the real
Charity Bazaar; here were women and children perishing in more savage
torture than the actual victims endured; here were horrors piled on
horrors, exaggerated horrors, manufactured horrors, until the spectacle
became unendurable, until one all but heard the screams and breathed the
sickening odor of burning human flesh.
Coquenil had seen this picture in one of the boulevard theaters and,
straightway, after the precious nine-second clew of the word test, he had
sent Papa Tignol off for it posthaste, during the supper intermission. If
the mere word "Charity Bazaar" had struck this man dumb with fear what
would the thing itself do, the revolting, ghastly thing?
That was the question now, what would this hideous moving picture do to a
fire-fearing assassin already on the verge of collapse? Would it break the
last resistance of his overwrought nerves or would he still hold out?
Silently, intently the three men waited, bending over the dial as the test
proceeded, as the fiends of torture and death swept past in lurid triumph.
The picture machine whirled on with droning buzz, the accused sat still,
eyes on the sheet, the red column pulsed steadily, up and down, up and
down, now a little higher, now a little quicker, but--for a minute, for two
minutes--nothing decisive happened, nothing that they had hoped for; yet
Coquenil felt, he knew that something was going to happen, he _knew_ it by
the agonized tension of the room, by the atmosphere of _pain_ about them.
If Groener had not spoken, he himself, in the poignancy of his own
distress, must have cried out or stamped on the floor or broken something,
just to end the silence.
Then, suddenly, the tension snapped, the prisoner sprang to his feet and,
tearing his arm from the leather sleeve, he faced his tormentors
desperately, eyes blazing, features convulsed:
"No, no, no!" he shrieked. "You dogs! You cowards!"
"Lights up," ordered Hauteville. Then to the guard: "Put the handcuffs on
him."
[Illustration: "'No, no, no!' he shrieked. 'You dogs! You cowards!'"]
But the prisoner would not be silenced. "What does all this prove?" he
screamed in rage. "Nothing! Nothing! You make me look at disgusting,
abominable pictures and--why _shouldn't_ my heart beat? Anybody's heart
would beat--if he had a heart."
The judge paid no attention to this outburst, but went on in a tone as keen
and cold as a knife: "Before you go to your cell, Groener, you shall hear
what we charge against you. Your wife perished in the Charity Bazaar fire.
She was a very rich woman, probably an American, who had been married
before and who had a daughter by her previous marriage. That daughter is
the girl you call Alice. Her true name is Mary. She was in the fire with
her mother and was rescued by Martinez, but the shock of seeing her mother
burned to death _and, perhaps, the shock of seeing you refuse to save her
mother----_"
"It's a lie!" yelled the prisoner.
"All this terror and anguish caused a violent mental disturbance in the
girl and resulted in a failure of her memory. When she came out of the fire
it was as if a curtain had fallen over her past life, she had lost the
sense of her own personality, she did not know her own name, she was
helpless, you could do as you pleased with her. _And she was a great
heiress!_ If she lived, she inherited her mother's fortune; if she died,
this fortune reverted to you. So shrinking, perhaps, from the actual
killing of this girl, you destroyed her identity; you gave it out that she,
too, had perished in the flames and you proceeded to enjoy her stolen
fortune while she sold candles in Notre-Dame church."
"You have no proof of it!" shouted Groener.
"No? What is this?" and he signaled the operator, whereupon the lights went
down and the picture of Alice and the widow appeared again. "There is the
girl whom you have wronged and defrauded. Now watch the woman, your
Brussels accomplice, watch her carefully--carefully," he motioned to the
operator and the smooth young widow faded gradually, while the face and
form of another woman took her place beside the girl. "Now we have the
picture as it was before you falsified it. Do you recognize _this_ face?"
"No," answered the prisoner, but his heart was pounding.
"It is your wife. Look!"
Under the picture came the inscription: "_To my dear husband Raoul with the
love of Margaret and her little Mary_."
"I wish we had the dial on him now," whispered Duprat to M. Paul.
"There are your two victims!" accused the magistrate. "Mary and Margaret!
How long do you suppose it will take us to identify them among the Charity
Bazaar unfortunates? It is a matter of a few hours' record searching. What
must we look for? A rich American lady who married a Frenchman. Her name is
Margaret. She had a daughter named Mary. The Frenchman's name is Raoul and
he probably has a title. We have, also, the lady's photograph and the
daughter's photograph and a specimen of the lady's handwriting. Could
anything be simpler? The first authority we meet on noble fortune hunters
will tell us all about it. And then, M. Adolf Groener, we shall know
whether it is a, marquis or a duke whose name _must be added to the list of
distinguished assassins_."
He paused for a reply, but none came. The guard moved suddenly in the
shadows and called for help.
"Lights!" said the doctor sharply and, as the lamps shone out, the prisoner
was seen limp and white, sprawling over a chair.
Duprat hurried to him and pressed an ear to his heart.
"He has fainted," said the doctor.
Coquenil looked half pityingly at his stricken adversary. "Down and out,"
he murmured.
Duprat, meantime, was working over the prisoner, rubbing his wrists,
loosening his shirt and collar.
"Ammonia--quick," he said to his assistant, and a moment later, with the
strong fumes at his nostrils, Groener stirred and opened his eyes weakly.
Just then a sound was heard in the distance as of a galloping horse. The
white-faced prisoner started and listened eagerly. Nearer and nearer came
the rapid hoof beats, echoing through the deserted streets. Now the horse
was crossing the little bridge near the hospital, now he was coming madly
down the Boulevard du Palais. Who was this rider dashing so furiously
through the peaceful night?
As they all turned wondering, the horse drew up suddenly before the palace
and a voice was heard in sharp command. Then the great iron gates swung
open and the horse stamped in.
Hauteville hurried to the open window and stood there listening. Just below
him in the courtyard he made out of the flashing helmet and imposing
uniform of a mounted _garde de Paris_. And he caught some quick words that
made him start.
"A messenger from the Prime Minister," muttered the judge, "on urgent
business _with me_."
Groener heard and, with a long sigh, sank back against the chair and closed
his eyes, but Coquenil noticed uneasily that just a flicker of the old
patronizing smile was playing about his pallid lips.