THE PRISONER OF THE SANTÉ
It was the hour of general _réveillée_ at the prison of _La Santé_.
Along the corridors, still in semi-darkness, tramped the warders,
jangling their ponderous bunches of keys, on their way to wake the
prisoners for the morning meal. Before the door of the cell where
Juve was confined, Hervé, the turnkey, usually entrusted with the
surveillance of the ex-detective, stood hesitating, only finally making
up his mind to go in on hearing the step of a chief warder at the far
end of the paved passage.
The door turned slowly on its hinges. As a rule the sound of the key
turning in the lock was the signal for Juve to start wide awake and sit
up in his bed, in eager expectation of ... what? Perhaps his release!
But alas! morning after morning the apparition of the turnkey’s sullen
countenance only brought bitter disappointment with it.
But this morning the prisoner did not wake; he was sleeping heavily
and, if appearances were to be trusted, very uneasily. He kept groaning
and crying out peevishly, muttering incoherently, twisting and turning
in his bed, waving about his arms, one of which showed stains of blood,
blood that had run down in two red rivulets over his torn shirt and
marked the white sheet with little brown spots.
Hervé approached the bed and stood looking down at the sleeper. The
turnkey showed no particular signs of surprise at seeing the condition
his prisoner was in, but wore rather the preoccupied look of a man who
cannot make up his mind to one course of action more than another.
Eventually, he shook the sleeper roughly, hauled him up by the shoulder
into a sitting posture, and when the prisoner, though still looking
dazed and rubbing his eyes sleepily, seemed more or less awake,
apostrophized him angrily:
“What’s wrong with you? where does that blood come from?”
“Blood? Where do you see any blood?”
“There, on your arm, on your shirt, on your bed-sheet. How came you to
hurt yourself?”
“I don’t know; I hadn’t noticed it before; it must have been in the
night, I must have torn the skin tossing about.”
“Come, come, that’s an impossible story! What could you have done it
with?”
“There, look at the corner of the bed, there’s a blood stain there:
that’s where I hurt myself, no doubt. I’ve had a shocking night—bad
dreams, nightmare: my head aches, I feel tired out, I must have kicked
about ever so in my bed, it’s no wonder I knocked the skin off banging
my arm against one of the iron bars.”
“H’m! it don’t seem to me just as clear as daylight, somehow. Anyway
be quick and get dressed, I must report to the Governor, and he’ll see
what’s best to do.”
* * * * *
M. Chaigniste, the able and well-known Governor of the _Santé_ prison
was in his working room, engaged in reading through again a report
he had drawn up the night before on the general condition of his
establishment; he was rubbing his hands in token of satisfaction,
equally pleased with the elegance of his own composition and his skill
as an administrator that had enabled him up to the present to avoid
any, even the most trifling, of those “affairs” that are the _bête
noire_ of persons in authority, when the warder appeared: “I’ve come,
sir, to let you know I found Number 55 wounded in his cell when I went
there this morning.”
“Number 55! Why, that’s Juve, is it not, the ex-police-officer?”
“Yes sir.”
“Is it serious?”
“No, sir, only a bit of a cut on the arm.”
“Take him to the infirmary; I will go there myself, as soon as the
doctor arrives.”
At that very moment a bell tinkled in the Governor’s study; it was the
house-porter ’phoning M. Chaigniste that Doctor Du Marvier was come for
his daily visit. The Governor and the practitioner found Juve in the
waiting room, sitting on a stool, holding his head between his hands
and puzzling over his wound, which struck him as, after all, hard to
account for. The doctor tapped him lightly on the shoulder. He was a
little round man, with a merry face, a smile for ever on his lips, the
very spirit of gaiety, a man to heal his patients by the mere sight of
his beaming face! “My standing panacea,” he was in the habit of saying,
“is a funny story.”
Accordingly it was with a pleasantry he greeted the ex-police-officer,
with whom he had already come in contact previously to his imprisonment.
“Well, what’s the matter now? We’re not satisfied with the Governor’s
treatment of us, eh? so we go and try to kill ourselves, is that it?”
“Doctor,” Juve replied in the same vein; “I could very readily dispense
with the privilege of being Monsieur Chaigniste’s guest, but all
the same I can assure you I have not the smallest wish in the world
to escape his hospitality by committing suicide. I am just as much
surprised as anybody else at the wound in my arm. I can only account
for it by the supposition that in my sleep I knocked up against a
corner of my iron bedstead.” While speaking, Juve had removed his
jacket and turned up his shirt sleeve. The wound was plainly visible, a
clear cut an inch or a trifle over in length on the upper part of the
arm pointing downwards. The trifling nature of the hurt indeed made the
doctor’s whimsical suggestion seem utterly absurd—a man wanting to kill
himself would set about the job in quite another fashion.
But was Juve’s own hypothesis any more probable? Was it against the
corner of his bed the police-officer had hurt himself while asleep?
Evidently such was not the view taken by the doctor, who after a rapid
examination, turned to the Governor, saying:
“The wound is quite superficial, the skin is only slightly broken, and
if the hurt has bled rather copiously, that is only because one or two
small veins have been divided. With every confidence I can assure you
the prisoner’s bed has nothing whatever to do with the accident. It is
a cut is in question, and a cut that cannot have been made by anything
except an implement with a cutting edge. A blow, as violent as is
assumed, would have produced a bruise, a swelling, the blood would have
collected under the epidermis, might indeed have spurted out, but we
should never have seen an incision so clean-cut as that.”
But whilst the doctor was speaking, Juve had turned as pale as death;
he seemed to have lost all power in his limbs and sank down exhausted
on a stool. Doctor Du Marvier was quick to notice the prisoner’s
condition; taking his hand he felt his pulse carefully.
“Tell me,” he said, “is your pulse so slow usually?”
“No, doctor, I have always supposed myself to have a normally rapid
pulse, but to-day I don’t feel quite well, I slept very badly last
night and I have a violent headache.”
“Let me see your tongue!” It was quite white, like a man’s after a
high fever. Then the doctor put his ear to the prisoner’s heart; when
he raised his head after a long auscultation, he had apparently found
the solution of the problem, for a look of conviction illuminated
his face. Drawing the Governor on one side, he spoke to him in a low
voice. What he said must have been of the very gravest import for,
when he had done, the Governor was as pale as Juve himself and seemed
to be profoundly agitated. M. Chaigniste was turning to the prisoner,
no doubt intending to question him further, when one of his private
servants came in to tell him:
“M. Havard, sir, is waiting in your room to speak to you on some very
urgent business.”
“I will go to him,” replied the Governor, and beckoning to the warders:
“Take the man back to his cell,” he ordered, “and keep him under
observation.”
M. Havard was much excited. His idea had been to follow up his
researches regarding the crime committed at the grand duchess’s by
satisfying himself as to Juve’s condition. Inasmuch as it was a proven
fact that Fantômas had been wounded in the arm, if Juve was really and
truly Fantômas, he argued, Juve must be wounded. Accordingly, M. Havard
had betaken himself to the _Santé_ prison. Well, scarcely had he
arrived there before he learned that the Governor and the doctor were
with Juve, who had been wounded in the night! It was the confirmation
of all his hypotheses; it was the new and unexpected fact that should
bring daylight into a laborious investigation, hitherto anything
but fruitful in results! Juve was verily and indeed Fantômas! the
ex-detective was the most redoubtable of all malefactors! If he showed
such acuteness and sagacity in unravelling the most tangled affairs,
it was because the very crimes he brought to light he had himself
committed!
Easy to imagine with what impatience the Head of the Criminal Bureau
awaited M. Chaigniste’s arrival! The latter was hardly in the room
before he sprang to meet him:
“Juve! What ails him! He is wounded? wounded where?”
The Governor was barely recovered from the agitation caused him by the
doctor’s startling announcement. So it was in a rather shaky voice, and
after a moment’s pause to recover his self-possession, that he answered:
“He has given himself a slight, quite a slight wound.”
“How?”
“With an implement, knife or penknife, we do not yet know which.”
“Whereabouts is the wound?”
“In the arm.”
“Why, the man’s a demon, nothing less!”
The Governor had no knowledge of the events that had occurred the night
before at the grand duchess’s, so he was quite at a loss as to the
meaning of M. Havard’s exclamation. In amazement he watched the latter
as he strode up and down the length of the great room, lost apparently
in the deepest thought. But his amazement grew to stupefaction when
M. Havard went on to say:
“What, can a prisoner contrive to leave your prison of an evening and
return again before daylight?”
The question was, indeed, of a sort to rouse M. Chaigniste’s
indignation. He, the model administrator, he who since first he came
to the _Santé_ had never had an “affair”; he, who was so proud of his
staff that he looked upon himself as the father of his subordinates;
he, who, only yesterday, had written a masterly report declaring in
good set terms that everything was for the best in this best of all
possible prisons; _he_ was suspected of having allowed prisoners the
possibility of taking their walks abroad in the night! “His” prison, it
seemed, was a hotel which people might quit at will, to go about their
private affairs and come back again when they had enjoyed their liberty
long enough!
He was on the point of returning M. Havard a cutting and dignified
answer when the latter, guessing his thoughts, broke in:
“Monsieur Chaigniste, I feel convinced all duties are performed to
perfection in your establishment. But still, answer me this question:
Does Juve’s cell contain any implement capable of making the wound you
have noted?”
The Governor was nonplussed; shaking his head emphatically, he declared:
“I can confidently say no! There are numbers of prisoners who, when
they are locked up, try to make away with themselves, so not only do we
search everyone, but every article that might be dangerous is removed
and the cells hold no single thing that could cause a wound, even the
most trifling.”
“Then,” M. Havard went on, “if Juve did not hurt himself in his cell,
he must have left his cell. You see that, surely! Now listen, Monsieur
Chaigniste, I came here this morning to inquire into Juve’s condition.
But long before your warder opened the prisoner’s cell door and saw his
bleeding arm, _I_ knew that Juve must be wounded, and all I came for
was to have my suspicions corroborated. A horrible crime was committed
last night; its author was wounded in the arm; I suspected Juve, and
Juve is wounded in the arm! Then, I say, Juve did that crime! Juve
escaped from your prison last night, committed a cowardly murder in
the middle of a ball, killing one of my inspectors, who no doubt had
managed to penetrate his disguise; then he came back and voluntarily
put himself under lock and key, in order to provide himself an
alibi ...”
“Horrible! horrible!” stammered the Governor, quite overcome.
“Yes, _it_ is horrible, but the culprit shall pay dear for his
misdeeds, for we have him now safe and sure!”
“Horrible!” again groaned M. Chaigniste.
“Yes, indeed ... and yet there’s something strikes me as strange about
the business and makes me hesitate. Let us reason it out calmly and
quietly. There is one quality we cannot deny Juve possesses, and that
is intelligence. He must have felt pretty sure the murderer’s wounded
arm had been noticed at the grand duchess’s; he must have seen that it
would be proof positive, irrefragable proof of his crime. He was not
pursued, he had time enough to leave Paris and gain the frontier. That,
to my eyes, constitutes a problem it is necessary to solve in order to
hold the key to the mystery, and it seems to me difficult to solve it
except in favour of my old subordinate.”
Little by little, M. Chaigniste had succeeded in gathering his wits
together and reducing his thoughts to some sort of order after all the
successive shocks he had undergone in so short a space of time. He
now recalled the startling confidence Dr. Du Marvier had whispered in
his ear and felt it was incumbent in him to share his knowledge with
M. Havard.
“I am going to tell you one thing,” he began, after some hesitation,
“a thing that will possibly help you to clear up this mystery. Dr. Du
Marvier, after examining Juve’s wound, noticed that the prisoner looked
pale and appeared greatly exhausted; he questioned him, listened to
his heart, and observed that its action was considerably retarded. By
what he told me in confidence, all this would seem to point to his
having been poisoned, very probably with hydrate of chloral. But that
is, after all, only a hypothesis, and besides, I don’t quite see how
one could establish a connection between this kind of poisoning and the
wound we are talking about.”
But at the words, M. Havard sprang up from the chair in which he had at
last seated himself.
“What!” he cried, “you don’t see the connection? Why, don’t you know
that chloral is not only a poison, but also a soporific? Juve would
seem to have taken a soporific? But why? With what object? Not only
does this not throw light on the mystery, but it makes it still more
obscure ... Monsieur Chaigniste, are you sure your staff are to be
trusted?”
The Governor threw up his head like a man deeply offended, and replied
in a grave voice:
“I can answer for them as surely as I can for myself. I have carefully
studied the characters of all my warders, and I can assure you there is
not a single one of them on whom the fullest and most implicit reliance
may not be placed.”
“And since Juve’s incarceration there have been no changes? Which is
the warder specially in charge of him?”
“A man called Hervé, a man employed here ten years or more, and of
whose conduct I have never had any but excellent reports.”
“Then, sir, I have one favour left to ask you, to be authorized to
visit the prisoner in his cell; after that I need only thank you for
the information you have been so good as to give me this morning.”
* * * * *
The Governor was hardly out of the Infirmary before Juve’s wound was
summarily attended to, and he was then handed over to the warders’
tender mercies. Not without the accompaniment of some hearty cuffs,
the strait-waistcoat was put on and the prisoner was taken back to his
cell. Juve made no protest, the same state of weakness and prostration
still continued and reduced him to a condition of unresisting and
silent passivity. It was only by degrees that he recovered his
self-composure and could look the new situation in which he found
himself in the face. His first impulse was to give way to the utter
abandonment of despair. Alas! even in prison he was not secure from his
adversary’s machinations! He had thought that, after thus depriving him
of all power to act, Fantômas would be satisfied with the freedom so
secured him to pursue at his ease the series of his crimes, and would
forget the existence of his foe.
But lo! he now found himself once more the prey of his savage
adversary! For Juve felt no doubt the wound in his arm, the distress
that tormented his whole body, were Fantômas’ work. Fantômas had
accomplices inside the prison, and it was these confederates who had
come at night to make a cut on his arm as if he had been wounded,
after first sending him to sleep by means of the drug the debilitating
effects of which he still experienced. With what object had they so
acted? He did not know and he could not guess, ponder the matter as
he might. But at least the fact was certain, undeniable, and it put
the crown on his calamity! Fantômas had accomplices in his prison! The
thought never ceased tormenting the unhappy man with ever increasing
intensity, when suddenly a new idea struck him that made him spring up
joyfully from his chair and stride up and down his narrow cell.
“If Fantômas has accomplices in the prison, I am bound to know them,
these same accomplices, they must come in contact with me every day,”
thought Juve: “but if I know them, it will be possible for me to
detect them and confound their plans. What was the saddest feature of
my position was that I was powerless, and could expect the discovery
of the truth only from the efforts of others. Now I am going to work
for myself, and deep as the mystery may be, I shall clear it up, just
because I am so resolved to do so.”
Juve was at this point in his reflections when M. Havard entered his
cell. At sight of his old Chief the prisoner made a movement of recoil.
The Head of the Criminal Bureau pretended not to see this and took a
seat on a stool; then he signed to the two warders, who since morning
had been permanently stationed in the cell, to withdraw, and when they
had shut the door behind them, he began in these terms:
“Juve, since this morning, a grave suspicion rests upon you; the wound
you have on your arm is a very damning proof of your guilt.”
Juve was persuaded that M. Havard was the prime mover in his ruin, so
that the friendship and devotion he bore his Chief previously to his
imprisonment had been succeeded by something of rancour.
“Sir,” he replied, “you think you have been clever enough already to
discover many indications of my guilt; I make no doubt you will be
ingenious enough to discover many more. What I am afraid of is that you
are not clever enough ever to find the proofs of my innocence.”
“Juve, you are in error in supposing I nourish any fixed prejudice
against you. You know in what esteem I have held you and what
friendship I have felt for you? I have deplored more than anybody
the combination of circumstances that led to your arrest, and ever
since then I have conducted my investigation loyally and without
preconceptions. It is highly important in your own interest to answer
frankly the questions I am going to ask you about your wound and your
illness in the night ... now ...”
It was plain from the tone of studied moderation exhibited by M. Havard
that the Head of the Criminal Bureau desired but one thing, to throw
some light on the mystery that so distressed them both, and that the
information M. Chaigniste had given him with regard to the prisoner’s
having swallowed a strong dose of hydrate of chloral had very
considerably shaken the conviction he at first professed as to Juve’s
culpability. It followed that the way he put the questions he had
indicated was such as little by little to bring about in the prisoner’s
breast a return to feelings of trust and friendliness. Without making
any definite confidences to his former Chief, Juve gave the latter a
glimpse of the hopes he entertained of succeeding by way of the inside
of the prison in unveiling a corner of the mystery.
The conversation was a long and evidently a satisfactory one, for on
parting, M. Havard extended his hand cordially to his erstwhile fellow
worker, while Juve’s face beamed with glad relief, and reawakened hope.