The Lerouge Case Part 54

"I am not the hero that you suppose, sir," replied the prisoner simply.

"If I told you that I did not count on Claire, I should be telling a falsehood. I was waiting for her. I knew that, on learning of my arrest, she would brave everything to save me. But her friends might have hid it from her; and that was what I feared. In that event, I do not think, so far as one can answer for oneself, that I should have mentioned her name."

There was no appearance of bravado. What Albert said, he thought and felt. M. Daburon regretted his irony.

"Sir," he said kindly, "you must return to your prison. I cannot release you yet; but you will be no longer in solitary confinement. You will be treated with every attention due to a prisoner whose innocence appears probable."

Albert bowed, and thanked him; and was then removed.

"We are now ready for Gevrol," said the magistrate to his clerk.

The chief of detectives was absent: he had been sent for from the Prefecture of Police; but his witness, the man with the earrings, was waiting in the pa.s.sage.

He was told to enter.

He was one of those short, thick-set men, powerful as oaks, who look as though they could carry almost any weight on their broad shoulders.

His white hair and whiskers set off his features, hardened and tanned by the inclemency of the weather, the sea winds and the heat of the tropics.

He had large callous black hands, with big sinewy fingers which must have possessed the strength of a vice.

Great earrings in the form of anchors hung from his ears. He was dressed in the costume of a well-to-do Normandy fisherman, out for a holiday.

The clerk was obliged to push him into the office, for this son of the ocean was timid and abashed when on sh.o.r.e.

He advanced, balancing himself first on one leg, then on the other, with that irregular walk of the sailor, who, used to the rolling and tossing of the waves, is surprised to find anything immovable beneath his feet.

To give himself confidence, he fumbled over his soft felt hat, decorated with little lead medals, like the cap of king Louis XI. of devout memory, and also adorned with some if that worsted twist made by the young country girls, on a primitive frame composed of four or five pins stuck in a hollow cork.

M. Daburon examined him, and estimated him at a glance. There was no doubt but that he was the sunburnt man described by one of the witnesses at La Jonchere.

It was also impossible to doubt his honesty. His open countenance displayed sincerity and good nature.

"Your name?" demanded the investigating magistrate.

"Marie Pierre Lerouge."

"Are you, then, related to Claudine Lerouge?"

"I am her husband, sir."

What, the husband of the victim alive, and the police ignorant of his existence!

Thus thought M. Daburon.

What, then, does this wonderful progress in invention accomplish?

To-day, precisely as twenty years ago, when Justice is in doubt, it requires the same inordinate loss of time and money to obtain the slightest information.

On Friday, they had written to inquire about Claudine's past life; it was now Monday, and no reply had arrived.

And yet photography was in existence, and the electric telegraph. They had at their service a thousand means, formerly unknown; and they made no use of them.

"Every one," said the magistrate, "believed her a widow. She herself pretended to be one."

"Yes, for in that way she partly excused her conduct. Besides, it was an arrangement between ourselves. I had told her that I would have nothing more to do with her."

"Indeed? Well, you know that she is dead, victim of an odious crime?"

"The detective who brought me here told me of it, sir," replied the sailor, his face darkening. "She was a wretch!" he added in a hollow voice.

"How? You, her husband, accuse her?"

"I have but too good reason to do so, sir. Ah, my dead father, who foresaw it all at the time, warned me! I laughed, when he said, 'Take care, or she will dishonour us all.' He was right. Through her, I have been hunted down by the police, just like some skulking thief.

Everywhere that they inquired after me with their warrant, people must have said 'Ah, ha, he has then committed some crime!' And here I am before a magistrate! Ah, sir, what a disgrace! The Lerouges have been honest people, from father to son, ever since the world began.

Inquire of all who have ever had dealings with me, they will tell you, 'Lerouge's word is as good as another man's writing.' Yes, she was a wicked woman; and I have often told her that she would come to a bad end."

"You told her that?"

"More than a hundred times, sir."

"Why? Come, my friend, do not be uneasy, your honour is not at stake here, no one questions it. When did you warn her so wisely?"

"Ah, a long time ago, sir," replied the sailor, "the first time was more than thirty years back. She had ambition even in her blood; she wished to mix herself up in the intrigues of the great. It was that that ruined her. She said that one got money for keeping secrets; and I said that one got disgraced and that was all. To help the great to hide their villainies, and to expect happiness from it, is like making your bed of thorns, in the hope of sleeping well. But she had a will of her own."

"You were her husband, though," objected M. Daburon, "you had the right to command her obedience."

The sailor shook his head, and heaved a deep sigh.

"Alas, sir! it was I who obeyed."

To proceed by short inquiries with a witness, when you have no idea of the information he brings, is but to lose time in attempting to gain it.

When you think you are approaching the important fact, you may be just avoiding it. It is much better to give the witness the rein, and to listen carefully, putting him back on the track should he get too far away. It is the surest and easiest method. This was the course M. Daburon adopted, all the time cursing Gevrol's absence, as he by a single word could have shortened by a good half the examination, the importance of which, by the way, the magistrate did not even suspect.

"In what intrigues did your wife mingle?" asked he. "Go on, my friend, tell me everything exactly; here, you know, we must have not only the truth, but the whole truth."

Lerouge placed his hat on a chair. Then he began alternately to pull his fingers, making them crack almost sufficiently to break them, and ultimately scratched his head violently. It was his way of arranging his ideas.

"I must tell you," he began, "that it will be thirty-five years on St.

John's day since I fell in love with Claudine. She was a pretty, neat, fascinating girl, with a voice sweeter than honey. She was the most beautiful girl in our part of the country, straight as a mast, supple as a willow, graceful and strong as a racing boat. Her eyes sparkled like old cider; her hair was black, her teeth as white as pearls, and her breath was as fresh as the sea breeze. The misfortune was, that she hadn't a sou, while we were in easy circ.u.mstances. Her mother, who was the widow of I can't say how many husbands, was, saving your presence, a bad woman, and my father was the worthiest man alive. When I spoke to the old fellow of marrying Claudine he swore fiercely, and eight days after, he sent me to Porto on a schooner belonging to one of our neighbours, just to give me a change of air. I came back, at the end of six months, thinner than a marling spike, but more in love than ever.

Recollections of Claudine scorched me like a fire. I could scarcely eat or drink; but I felt that she loved me a little in return, for I was a fine young fellow, and more than one girl had set her cap at me. Then my father, seeing that he could do nothing, that I was wasting away, and was on the road to join my mother in the cemetery, decided to let me complete my folly. So one evening, after we had returned from fis.h.i.+ng and I got up from supper without tasting it, he said to me, 'Marry the hag's daughter, and let's have no more of this.' I remember it distinctly, because, when I heard the old fellow call my love such a name, I flew into a great pa.s.sion, and almost wanted to kill him. Ah, one never gains anything by marrying in opposition to one's parents!"

The worthy fellow was lost in the midst of his recollections. He was very far from his story. The investigating magistrate attempted to bring him back into the right path, "Come to the point," he said.

"I am going to, sir; but it was necessary to begin at the beginning.

I married. The evening after the wedding, and when the relatives and guests had departed, I was about to join my wife, when I perceived my father all alone in a corner weeping. The sight touched my heart, and I had a foreboding of evil; but it quickly pa.s.sed away. It is so delightful during the first six months one pa.s.ses with a dearly loved wife! One seems to be surrounded by mists that change the very rocks into palaces and temples so completely that novices are taken in. For two years, in spite of a few little quarrels, everything went on nicely.

Claudine managed me like a child. Ah, she was cunning! She might have seized and bound me, and carried me to market and sold me, without my noticing it. Her great fault was her love of finery. All that I earned, and my business was very prosperous, she put on her back. Every week there was something new, dresses, jewels, bonnets, the devil's baubles, which the dealers invent for the perdition of the female s.e.x. The neighbors chattered, but I thought it was all right. At the baptism of our son, who was called Jacques after my father, to please her, I squandered all I had economized during my youth, more than three hundred pistoles, with which I had intended purchasing a meadow that lay in the midst of our property."

M. Daburon was boiling over with impatience, but he could do nothing.