“Why am I brought here?”
As no one replied, he resumed his look of indifference, and betrayed no
emotion, neither when the carriage stopped nor when he saw Monsieur de
Lamotte enter the widow Masson’s house.
The officer reappeared on the threshold, and ordered Derues to be
brought in.
The previous evening, detectives, mingling with the crowd, had listened
to the hawker’s story of having met Derues near the Louvre escorting a
large chest. The police magistrate was informed in the course of the
evening. It was an indication, a ray of light, perhaps the actual truth,
detached from obscurity by chance gossip; and measures were instantly
taken to prevent anyone either entering or leaving the street without
being followed and examined. Mutel thought he was on the track, but the
criminal might have accomplices also on the watch, who, warned in time,
might be able to remove the proofs of the crime, if any existed.
Derues was placed between two men who each held an arm. A third went
before, holding a torch. The commissioner, followed by men also carrying
torches, and provided with spades and pickaxes, came behind, and in this
order they descended to the vault. It was a dismal and terrifying
procession; anyone beholding these dark and sad countenances, this pale
and resigned man, passing thus into these damp vaults illuminated by the
flickering glare of torches, might well have thought himself the victim
of illusion and watching some gloomy execution in a dream. But all was
real and when light penetrated this dismal charnel-house it seemed at
once to illuminate its secret depths, so that the light of truth might
at length penetrate these dark shadows, and that the voice of the dead
would speak from the earth and the walls.
“Wretch!” exclaimed Monsieur de Lamotte, when he saw Derues appear, “is
it here that you murdered my wife and my son?”