The Mark Of Cain Part 16

The clerkly-looking person now courteously motioned Maitland to take a chair.

The Englishman sat down in some surprise.

"Where," he asked, "was the bearskin coat?"

"Would monsieur first deign to answer a few inquiries? Was the coat his own, or a friend's?"

"A friend's," said Maitland, and then, beginning to hesitate, admitted that the garment only belonged to "a man he knew something about."

"What is his name?" asked the clerkly man, who was taking notes.

His name, indeed! If Maitland only knew that! His French now began to grow worse and worse in proportion to his flurry.

Well, he explained, it was very unlucky, but he did not exactly remember the man's name. It was quite a common name. He had met him for the first time on board the steamer; but the man was going to Brussels, and, finding that Maitland was on his way to Paris, had asked him to make inquiries.

Here the clerkly person, laying down his notes, asked if English gentlemen usually spoke of persons whom they had just met for the first time on board the steamer as their friends?

Maitland, at this, lost his temper, and observed that, as they seemed disposed to give him more trouble than information, he would go and see the play.

Hereupon the clerkly person requested monsieur to remember, in his deportment, what was due to Justice; and when Maitland rose, in a stately way, to leave the room, he also rose and stood in front of the door.

However little of human nature an Englishman may possess, he is rarely unmoved by this kind of treatment. Maitland took the man by the collar, _sans phrase_, and spun him round, amid the horrified clamor of the porter. But the man, without any pa.s.sion, merely produced and displayed a card, containing a voucher that he belonged to the Secret Police, and calmly asked Maitland for "his papers."

Maitland had no papers. He had understood that pa.s.sports were no longer required.

The detective a.s.sured him that pa.s.sports "spoil nothing." Had monsieur nothing stating his ident.i.ty? Maitland, entirely forgetting that he had artfully entered his name as "Buchanan" on the hotel book, produced his card, on the lower corner of which was printed, _St. Gatien's College._ This address puzzled the detective a good deal, while the change of name did not allay his suspicions, and he ended by requesting Maitland to accompany him into the presence of Justice. As there was no choice, Maitland obtained leave to put some linen in his travelling-bag, and was carried off to what we should call the nearest police-station. Here he was received in a chill bleak room by a formal man, wearing a decoration, who (after some private talk with the detective) asked Maitland to explain his whole conduct in the matter of the coat. In the first place, the detective's notes on their conversation were read aloud, and it was shown that Maitland had given a false name; had originally spoken of the object of his quest as "the coat of a friend;"

then as "the coat of a man whom he knew something about;" then as "the coat of a man whose name he did not know;" and that, finally, he had attempted to go away without offering any satisfactory account of himself.

All this the philanthropist was constrained to admit; but he was, not unnaturally, quite unable to submit any explanation of his proceedings.

What chiefly discomfited him was the fact that his proceedings were a matter of interest and observation. Why, he kept wondering, was all this fuss made about a coat which had, or had not, been left by a traveller at the hotel? It was perfectly plain that the hotel was used as a _souriciere_, as the police say, as a trap in which all inquirers after the coat could be captured. Now, if he had been given time (and a French dictionary), Maitland might have set before the Commissaire of Police the whole story of his troubles. He might have begun with the discovery of s.h.i.+elds' body in the snow; he might have gone on to Margaret's disappearance (_enlevement_), and to a description of the costume (bearskin coat and all) of the villain who had carried her away. Then he might have described his relations with Margaret, the necessity of finding her, the clew offered by the advertis.e.m.e.nt in the _Times_, and his own too subtle and ingenious attempt to follow up that clew. But it is improbable that this narrative, had Maitland told it ever so movingly, would have entirely satisfied the suspicions of the Commissaire of Police. It might even have prejudiced that official against Maitland. Moreover, the Fellow of St. Gatien's had neither the presence of mind nor the linguistic resources necessary to relate the whole plot and substance of this narrative, at a moment's notice, in a cold police-office, to a sceptical alien. He therefore fell back on a demand to be allowed to communicate with the English Amba.s.sador; and that night Maitland of Gatien's pa.s.sed, for the first time during his blameless career, in a police-cell.

It were superfluous to set down in detail all the humiliations endured by Maitland. Do not the newspapers continually ring with the laments of the British citizen who has fallen into the hands of Continental Justice? Are not our countrymen the common b.u.t.ts of German, French, Spanish, and even Greek and Portuguese Jacks in office? When an Englishman appears, do not the foreign police usually arrest him at a venture, and inquire afterward?

Maitland had, with the best intentions, done a good deal more than most of these innocents to deserve incarceration. His conduct, as the Juge d'Instruction told him, without mincing matters, was undeniably _louche_.

In the first place, the suspicions of M. Dupin, of the Hotel Alsace et Lorraine, had been very naturally excited by seeing the advertis.e.m.e.nt about the great-coat in the _Times_, for he made a study of "the journal of the City."

Here was a notice purporting to be signed by himself, and referring to a bearskin coat, said (quite untruly) to have been left in his own hotel. A bearskin coat! The very words breathe of Nihilism, dynamite, stratagems, and spoils. Then the advertis.e.m.e.nt was in English, which is, at present and till further notice, the language spoken by the brave Irish. M. Dupin, as a Liberal, had every sympathy with the brave Irish in their n.o.ble struggle for whatever they _are_ struggling for; but he did not wish his hostelry to become, so to speak, the mountain-cave of Freedom, and the great secret storehouse of nitro-glycerine. With a view to elucidating the mystery of the advertis.e.m.e.nt, he had introduced the police on his premises, and the police had hardly settled down in its _affut_, when, lo! a stranger had been captured, in most suspicious circ.u.mstances. M. Dupin felt very clever indeed, and his friends envied him the distinction and advertis.e.m.e.nt which were soon to be his.

When Maitland appeared, as he did in due course, before the Juge d'Instruction, he attempted to fall back on the obsolete _Civis Roma.n.u.s sum!_ He was an English citizen. He had written to the English amba.s.sador, or rather to an old St. Gatien's man, an _attache_ of the emba.s.sy, whom he luckily happened to know. But this great ally chanced to be out of town, and his name availed Maitland nothing in his interview with the Juge d'Instruction. That magistrate, sitting with his back to the light, gazed at Maitland with steady, small gray eyes, while the scribble of the pen of the _greffier_, as he took down the Englishman's deposition, sounded shrill in the bleak torture-chamber of the law.

"Your name?" asked the Juge d'Instruction.

"Maitland," replied the Fellow of St. Gatien's.

"You lie!" said the Juge d'Instruction. "You entered the name of Buchanan in the book of the hotel."

"My name is on my cards, and on that letter," said Maitland, keeping his temper wonderfully.

The doc.u.ments in question lay on a table, as _pieces justificatives_.

"These cards, that letter, you have robbed them from some unfortunate person, and have draped (_affluble_) yourself in the trappings of your victim! Where is his body?"

This was the working hypothesis which the Juge d'Instruction had formed within himself to account for the general conduct and proceedings of the person under examination.

"Where is _whose_ body?" asked Maitland, in unspeakable surprise.

"Buchanan," said the Juge d'Instruction. (And to hear the gallantry with which he attacked this difficult name, of itself insured respect.) "Buchanan, you are acting on a deplorable system. Justice is not deceived by your falsehoods, nor eluded by your subterfuges. She is calm, stern, but merciful. Unbosom yourself freely" (_repandez franchement_), "and you may learn that justice can be lenient It is your interest to be frank." (_Il est de votre interet d'etre franc_.)

"But what do you want me to say?" asked the prevenu, "What is all this pother about a great-coat?" (_Tant de fracas pour un paletot?_)

Maitland was rather proud of this sentence.

"It is the part of Justice to ask questions, not to answer them,"

said the Juge d'Instruction. "Levity will avail you nothing. Tell me, Buchanan, why did you ask for the coat at the Hotel Alsace et Lorraine?"

"In answer to that advertis.e.m.e.nt in the Times."

"That is false; you yourself inserted the advertis.e.m.e.nt. But, on your own system, bad as it is, what did you want with the coat?"

"It belonged to a man who had done me an ill-turn."

"His name?"

"I do not know his name; that is just what I wanted to find out I might have found his tailor's name on the coat, and then have discovered for whom the coat was made."

"You are aware that the proprietor of the hotel did not insert the forged advertis.e.m.e.nt?"

"So he says."

"You doubt his word? You insult France in one of her citizens!"

Maitland apologized.

"Then whom do you suspect of inserting the advertis.e.m.e.nt, as you deny having done it yourself, for some purpose which does not appear?"

"I believe the owner of the coat put in the advertis.e.m.e.nt."

"That is absurd. What had he to gain by it?"

"To remove me from London, where he is probably conspiring against me at this moment."

"Buchanan, you trifle with Justice!"

"I have told you that my name is not Buchanan."

"Then why did you forge that name in the hotel book?"