THE DECOY
It was broad daylight by this time and the morning, still a trifle
chilly, gave promise of a very fine day. The tragic scenes just
enacted had had, thanks to the radiant beams of the rising sun, an
almost cheerful setting. As the forage-wagon, now transformed into a
“Black Maria,” was driving off, loaded up with the sinister crew so
opportunely captured by Juve, the latter rubbed his hands, a customary
mark of inward satisfaction with that officer.
“Good work Fandor!” he said—“and none too soon, neither! I was
beginning to despair.”
Fandor wagged his head sententiously.
“We should never despair, Juve; but all the same, like you, I confess
this morning has held some surprise for us. I was just eating my heart
out down in that cellar; I thought one time neither you nor I would
ever see the light of day again!...”
But Juve was lost in a brown study. With head cast down and hands
clasped behind his back, he paced a few steps in the direction taken by
the army vehicle carrying the gang of apaches.
“We are going to the police-station?” Fandor asked.
“To the station? no! We have something better to do.”
Fandor stood with folded arms, fixing a look of interrogation on his
companion’s face.
“You are leaving all those fellows in the lurch?” he inquired.
“I am not leaving them in the lurch, Fandor! We shall catch up with
them again before long; now at once, if need be. Only we have more
pressing business. Never forget, my boy, that all those fellows are
really and truly only supers. What we want now is to come upon the
leading actor.”
Fandor smiled: “The leader, Fantômas, eh? But I take it, Juve, that
now, like me, you are no longer in ignorance who it is? Moche strikes
me ...”
Juve laughed too, a hearty laugh of triumph. After the terrible hours
the gallant inspector had spent in his prison, after the depressing
times he had known when everybody accused him of being Fantômas, he was
at last nearing the final victory, the rehabilitation of his character,
the arrest of the real culprits! It was in fact barely a few hours
since M. Fuselier and his colleagues had recognized the fact that he
was really Juve, and yet with marvellous skill and coolness, owing more
to his own amazing boldness than to circumstances, he had succeeded
in wresting the mask from a gang of the most dangerous criminals,
accomplices of the ever-elusive arch-criminal himself; nay more, he had
pushed his investigations so far that the actual identity of Fantômas
hardly admitted of further doubt for him, that he could feel confident
the arrest of the _Lord of Terror_ was now only a question of hours.
Taking Fandor by the shoulder, Juve spoke softly:
“Egad! yes, I know who Fantômas is! I even know twice over who he is!”
“Twice over? Juve, what do you mean?”
“You don’t understand me, Fandor? Come now, you accuse Moche, don’t
you? You do this, by reason of the part he played with these apaches?
and you are in the right. But there’s more to follow. For Fantômas
to be Moche was not enough; that travesty held good only for his
confederates. Fantômas, to dupe all Paris as he did, believe me, was
someone else into the bargain, someone I suspect, astounding as the
thing may sound. And it is of this suspicion, Fandor, we must now
establish strict, undoubted, undisputable proof.”
Dumb with amazement at the cool confidence of the man, Fandor demanded
in a stammering voice:
“Whom do you suspect then, Juve? have you a scheme of investigation?”
Juve nodded his head gravely.
“I have more,” he declared: “I have a fear.”
“What do you fear?”
“Have you forgotten the corpse you showed me just now?”
Fandor started back in sudden agitation.
“What!” he gasped, “if I am to believe you, you already think you
know ...”
“The name of the dead man? Yes, by my faith! I do. Come with me.”
The two men re-entered the ill-omened ruin where they had spent such
tragic, such hopeless hours of agony. It was not without a shudder Juve
gazed round the damp, confined cellar where, but for Fandor’s quite
unlooked for intervention, he would inevitably have met an appalling
death.
“Fandor!” began his friend, “it is a hideous job we have to do. It is
the grave there must give us up its secret. The unhappy man who lies in
it, Fantômas’ unsuspected victim, must rise up to accuse his murderer!”
The journalist was livid. A gruesome task indeed, this work of justice
Juve proposed to undertake! For one who had so lately borne such
torments of fear and suspense, it called for nerves of steel, an
extraordinary strength of will, to confront afresh the dismal horrors
of the exhumation he was bent on. The intrepid officer stepped up to
the grim hiding-place, which a few hours before the hideous hag, Mère
Toulouche, had not feared to ransack in search of gold—gold Fantômas
had buried there, and of which she claimed her share, boasting she had
a better right to it than anyone.
Then, in the gloom of the cellar, Juve and Fandor bent over the gaping
hole. A blast of pestilential gases struck them full in the face, the
ignoble horror of what they saw forced them to recoil. Instinctively
the two took hands, panic-stricken, yet resolved to prove their
courage, to manifest at all costs that they had the right, the duty
to break once again the repose of the dead man, who lay there in his
unhallowed grave. The spectacle was appalling. The fleshless face,
in which the eye orbits were two hideous holes, and the hanging jaw
mimicked a dreadful grin, seemed to stare up at them with sightless
orbs.
Bending low, Juve and Fandor, speechless, motionless, shuddering,
anxiously scrutinized the unrecognizable features. Who was the unknown,
this victim of Fantômas’ villainy? After what grim drama had the corpse
been laid in this secret grave, where once again his rest was to be
disturbed, where Fantômas had not feared to deposit his treasure for
safe keeping.
“The dead man is unrecognizable,” pronounced Fandor, “it is impossible
to know who and what he was. Bertillon perhaps, by his scientific
methods, might discover ...”
But Juve interrupted the journalist with a rapid gesture, his agitation
waxing greater every moment. While the other was speaking, he had leant
still closer over the grave and was examining the body with yet keener
attention.
“Bertillon, say you? Fandor, we have no need of him and his system.
I can guess the dead man’s name! This is what I hoped—the dead man
speaks, Fandor, the dead man denounces the impostor. The corpse we
have before our eyes—why hesitate to say it, our conclusion will be
confirmed by the Toulouche woman when we question her—is Tom Bob’s, the
unfortunate American detective Fantômas had them murder directly he
knew of his arrival in France—yes, Tom Bob’s, the real Tom Bob; for the
Tom Bob everybody has known for months, the Tom Bob who was afraid to
meet me, the Tom Bob who was seen at the Grand Duchess Alexandra’s, the
Tom Bob who only yesterday made pretence of struggling with the men who
kidnapped me, you surely know _his_ true name by now?”
Fandor, stunned by his friend’s assertions, durst hardly articulate
the name of terror, “Fantômas!” Indeed the journalist had good right
to be terrified—and overjoyed too! If Juve was correct, if he was not
deceiving himself, the triumph they were winning over Fantômas was even
more complete, more brilliant than they had ever hoped for.
But the journalist was not convinced. Too many improbabilities seemed
to him to forbid Tom Bob’s being Fantômas, too many impossibilities
rose in his memory to suffer him, unprotesting, to listen to Juve’s
assertions.
“I tell you, Juve,” he brought out at last, “I cannot believe you; Tom
Bob can_not_ be Fantômas, the thing is impossible!”
But Juve remained unmoved by the other’s scepticism. “And why not,
pray?” he asked.
“Remember the messages despatched from the _Lorraine_....”
“Yes, Fandor, the messages despatched by the real Tom Bob—the real
Tom Bob whom nobody recognized in the train, because he had been
replaced by the sham—the sham Tom Bob, who, being in fact Moche, knew
the ‘Beauty Boy’ would be there, marked down his man and had the police
arrest the apache—all the time a hundred miles away from recognizing
his denouncer.”
“But then, remember the attempted assassination at the Hôtel Terminus;
Tom Bob, the man you accuse, might well, like me, have lost his life
there ... so ...”
Juve smiled. “Silly boy!” he laughed, “why, don’t you understand that
this attempt, so miraculously frustrated, had all been planned by Tom
Bob himself? My precious innocent, why, that was just the very best way
of avoiding any chance of his being suspected. Look you, I wager, if we
inquire, we shall find the occupant who preceded Tom was Moche—that is
to say himself!”
But again Fandor objected: “I grant your explanation on this point; but
here’s another thing—if Tom Bob is Fantômas, why did he have the body
of the bank messenger he had murdered brought to light?”
“Why, for the same reason, to impress people with his cleverness, my
dear sir.... But what are you laughing for?”
“Because,” returned the journalist, “I’ve kept my best argument for the
last. Remember Fantômas telephoned, before witnesses, to Tom Bob....”
But Juve knew better than to attach much weight to this last objection
of Fandor’s. The latter was very evidently convinced, if he could find
no stronger argument than this to bring against his friend’s theory.
“And do you remember this, my friend—how, a few days ago, they found in
a garret at the Hôtel Terminus a phonograph, the roll missing, hitched
on to the telephone wires. After that, what else can you think of to
say? or do you admit that Tom Bob is Fantômas?”
Fandor nodded, vastly impressed.
“I admit this, Juve, that you are now and always the king of
detectives; and yet, there _is_ a doubt still lingers in my mind”—and
pointing to the corpse; “Look here,” he persisted, “you say this is
truly and indeed Tom Bob’s body—how do you know that?”
“By the finger”—and he drew Fandor’s attention to the dead hand. One
of the bones of the forefinger piercing through the discoloured flesh
hung down, with an uncanny, almost threatening gesture. The bone of the
finger was slightly crushed and crooked.
“Mark that,” said Juve. “In old days, once when I was working with
Tom Bob, without knowing him at all well indeed, in the course of an
investigation we were pursuing amongst certain anarchist associations,
this unlucky Tom Bob came very near being killed by a bomb. Fortunately
the explosion was not so violent as the assassins had expected. Still
Tom Bob was severely hurt; his right hand was hit, and this finger
damaged. The injury is therefore an unmistakable pointer, a bit of
evidence that cannot be challenged. Egad! sir, it will be easy enough
for us to cable to the American Criminal Department and get the precise
details from the descriptive ticket certifying Tom Bob’s identity. It
is only a question of hours; by this evening the dead man will have
definitely avowed his name; by this evening, I tell you, we can be sure
of having discovered the unfortunate Tom Bob, the real Tom Bob.”
Fandor was already on his feet. Less inured than Juve to the sight
of death, he felt an instinctive longing to get back to the light of
day, to be gone from this noisome cellar that had been turned into a
sepulchre.
“And now, Juve,” he asked, “now, by your showing, what is best to do?”
Juve had likewise risen. Casting a last look at the corpse:
“Sleep in peace,” he murmured, “sleep in peace, you shall be avenged!”
Then, turning to Fandor: “Now?” cried Juve in his clear, ringing voice,
“now? Now, it is only left us for one time more to risk our lives! We
must make all speed—you can guess to whose house, I imagine? and with
what object?... My lad, the hour is come at last when Fantômas is to
settle up accounts with us!”
Fandor involuntarily turned pale. Oh! that decisive moment Juve
announced, with what anxiety he had been waiting for it all these long
months! that moment they were now to know! What a joyful triumph they
would both enjoy to grip Fantômas by the collar, the ever elusive
Fantômas! The journalist could hardly credit the reality; he asked:
“Juve! Juve! then we are going to arrest him, him the
never-to-be-captured?”
Juve shrugged his shoulders, smiling, almost unmoved.
“Yes,” he replied, “we are going to arrest Fantômas! But can you guess,
Fandor, where we are going to arrest him?”
“Not I!”
“For sure, you are losing your wits! Come, think! Tom Bob, at this
present moment, must know we are hot on the scent and be thinking of
disappearing. Now, is he the man simply to disappear without reaping
the profits of his crimes?”
“Why, no!”
“Then, my dear man, all we have to do is to go to the grand duchess’s,
to Lady Beltham’s, to seek the organizer of the famous subscription.
It is heavy odds, don’t you see? that Tom Bob, before disappearing,
will want to get hold of the moneys collected for his benefit. The
strong-box where they are locked up, that is the decoy, the bait, that
is bound to attract him powerfully; it is beside it we must take him in
our toils.”
“Or shoot him down like a noxious wild beast,” concluded Fandor,
brandishing his Browning.
* * * * *
M. Landais, Minister of Justice, was that morning at nine o’clock
clad in a very summary costume. Wearing a long dressing-gown, gaping
open over his chest, his naked feet thrust into a pair of slippers,
unshaven, and only half awake, he was seated on his desk in his
official rooms in the Rue Franklin; he held his telephone receiver
in one hand, he was driving his secretaries frantic with a hundred
contradictory orders, while at the same time worrying the unfortunate
girl on duty at the Exchange out of her life.
“Hello!” called the Minister, “I’m asking you to put me through to the
Prefecture. The Prefecture of Police? Yes! that’s plain enough, surely;
_can’t_ you understand?”
Then he dropped the receiver, and swearing out loud a terrific oath, he
yelled, as if to somebody behind the scenes:
“But, hell and damnation! the thing’s outrageous! Havard has not been
told about it! Else he’d be here!”
“You must remember, sir,” observed a valet, who at M. Landais’ summons
had cautiously half opened the door, “it is barely a quarter of an
hour since they went for him. If M. Havard was still in bed ...”
“Well, he had only to get up, eh? _I_’ve got up, haven’t I?...”
But the Minister stopped abruptly; he had just got connection with the
Prefecture of Police:
“Hello!” he called, “well, what news?... What?... What’s that you tell
me? Juve is dead? Good Lord! you are simply mad!... You don’t know?
They never do know anything at the Prefecture! We must make a change
there!”
Trembling with agitation, he hung up the receiver again and, all alone
in the room, began a perplexed soliloquy:
“Juve is dead! Juve is dead! That isn’t true, for I was awakened by
a message informing me that he was tied up at the Palais de Justice,
along with M. Fuselier! But in that case ...”
Suddenly he stopped to listen; there was a knock at the door of his
room.
“What now?” he yelled, “what is it?... Come in, come in!”
The same valet who had just before answered M. Landais’ summons, again
put in his head.
“It is a cyclist constable who would like ...”
“Tell him to come in, for God’s sake!”
The manservant vanished, far from anxious to enjoy a prolonged
tête-à-tête with his master, who was in the vilest of tempers. A
second or two more and a police-officer entered the Minister’s working
room. He had no time to stare in astonishment at the great man’s
unconventional attire; the Minister was down on him instantly:
“Why, what is it now? Where d’you come from?”
The officer saluted respectfully.
“Sir,” he was beginning, “I’ve come from the Commissary’s office at
Alfort....”
“From Alfort? Alfort, what the devil’s up at Alfort? What do you want?”
“Sir,” the man persisted, “they have just captured a dozen brigands ...
a dozen accomplices of Fantômas.”
“Who has captured them?”
“Inspector Juve, sir.”
The Minister stood hesitating a moment. “Juve?” he said at last. “But
that’s impossible; Juve is dead!”
Losing all sense of the respect due to a superior, the officer,
overwhelmed by the news, asked excitedly:
“Juve dead? is Juve dead?”
But, paying no heed to the worthy policeman’s emotion, the Minister
proceeded:
“Or he is tied up in the Palais de Justice, since yesterday evening....”
“Tied up in the Palais de Justice? ... since yesterday evening?”
stammered the officer, opening eyes of sheer amazement.
M. Landais completed the man’s mystification.
“Certainly!” he affirmed. “He is tied up, because he is set at liberty!
You can make nothing of it, my man? No more can I!... And that’s about
enough! Clear out!”
The officer swung round on his heels as if to leave the room; then,
dead set on delivering his message, he repeated:
“Well, sir! Juve may be dead, or he may be tied up, or he may be
at large; anyway this much is certain, he has just arrested twelve
apaches!”
And so saying, while M. Landais sprang to his instrument and began
to ring up the Exchange again with frantic energy, the officer
took himself off. Hardly was the door closed behind him before the
manservant half opened it again cautiously:
“Monsieur le Ministre!”
“Go away! I’m telephoning.... Hello! Hello! put me through to the
Palais de Justice.”
“Monsieur le Ministre!” repeated the servant.
“What is it, in God’s name!”
“It’s a lady crying in the anteroom; she says she _must_ speak to you?”
M. Landais looked up: “A lady? what’s her name?”
“I did not quite catch her name, sir, but it’s a princess, sir, it
seems—the Princess Sonia ...”
“Sonia Danidoff?... What does _she_ want now? Show her in.”
But at that same moment the room door burst open with startling
violence. It was Sonia Danidoff, who, beside herself with excitement,
had forced her way, despite the secretaries’ objurgations, into the
Minister’s private room. The unhappy woman was holding to her forehead
a handkerchief, the muslin and lace of which were dyed red.
“Monsieur le Ministre!” cried Sonia, in a voice choked by emotion,
“they wouldn’t hear me at the Prefecture! Nobody would listen to a
word! Make them do me justice. Look, I have just been the victim of a
dreadful assault! The Grand Duchess Alexandra has disfigured me!”
Sonia Danidoff was exaggerating. With a tragic gesture she took the
handkerchief from her forehead. On the pearly surface of the temple a
cut was bleeding.
“Madam,” said the Minister, who knew Sonia Danidoff very well, “it is
the Commissariat you must apply at!”
“No, Monsieur le Ministre! They would not understand at the police
office the importance of my wound. If I have come to you, it is to
denounce an abominable piece of swindling! The Grand Duchess Alexandra,
the organizer of the subscription for Fantômas’ benefit, is Tom Bob’s
mistress! And it was on account of jealousy, because Tom Bob is my
lover, that she flew at me.”
For once the Minister quite forgot the courtesy due to a lady.
“The Grand Duchess Alexandra is Tom Bob’s mistress?” he cried. “Why,
what fresh complication have we here? And what do you want me to do?”
The door opened yet again, and M. Landais’ private secretary came in,
a very fashionable young man, very elegantly dressed and immaculately
turned out.
“Sir,” he informed the Minister quietly, “here is a fresh communication
come from the Palais.”
“What do they say?”
“It was not Juve, it was Tom Bob, who was tied up last night with
M. Fuselier.”
But Sonia Danidoff, hearing this, broke in, protesting:
“Tom Bob tied up? What next! I have this moment run away from him; he
was at the Grand Duchess Alexandra’s! he is there now!”
“Tom Bob is at the Grand Duchess Alexandra’s?”
M. Landais sprang to his feet once more; he clapped both hands to his
head and vociferated in tones of desperation:
“Oh! I am going mad! I am going mad! They are all dead! they are all
tied up! they are all free and at large! and there are twelve apaches
arrested and the Grand Duchess Alexandra is Tom Bob’s mistress. Don’t,
don’t! it is too much! let me be, give me a moment’s peace!”
Once more the door opened. Calm, cool, collected, M. Havard entered the
room.
“You sent for me, sir?” he asked. “Whatever is going on? I can’t see
one of your secretaries, the doors stand open for anyone to walk into
your working room. Your trusty servant even refuses to show me in,
simply telling me to march straight into your private room! Is it a
revolution?”
M. Landais cut short M. Havard’s exclamations:
“A revolution? I can’t say! It’s just a story for a madhouse—the Grand
Duchess Alexandra is a swindler! Juve is dead! Juve has arrested a
dozen apaches! Tom Bob is tied up at the Palais! Tom Bob is running
away! he’s free and at large: he’s at the grand duchess’s! I tell you
I’ve lost count of everything. I don’t understand one word of it all!”
But seeing M. Havard’s amazed look as he listened to the Minister’s
wild words, the latter realized he would do well to cultivate a little
more calm of manner.
“Listen, Havard,” he said, “I have really lost touch with things. Since
waking this morning I have received twenty contradictory reports.
It will be another dreadful panic in town unless we can clear all
this up”—and the Minister told M. Havard the story of his morning as
intelligibly as he found possible. All the time he was speaking, the
Head of the Criminal Bureau listened quietly, nodding his head at
intervals in silent assent. Where the Minister was all at sea, he,
M. Havard, accustomed to matters of police, could make a shrewd guess
at the truth, and it was in an unruffled voice that the police official
finally proposed:
“If you think well, sir, I am going straight away to Lady Beltham’s?”
“To Lady Beltham’s?”
“Well, the Grand Duchess Alexandra’s, if you like it better.”
“But what for?”
“To beg her—and Tom Bob, who is with her, by what the Princess Sonia
stated—to come and make their deposition before you, and before Juve,
who, I am persuaded, will not be long now in letting us hear of him.”
For the Minister M. Havard’s words were incomprehensible. Still he was
too well assured of the ability invariably displayed by the Head of the
Criminal Department not to agree to his plan.
“Go by all means, Monsieur Havard; but tell me, is it an arrest you are
going to attempt?”
“No, Monsieur le Ministre, it is an invitation I am going to proffer,
_but_ I shall be accompanied by a dozen constables when I make it.”