The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood Part 73

CHAPTER XIV.

THE SCALES REMOVED.

The capture made by the police in the Faubourg St. Martin was kept secret. Under the Second Empire nothing was published except with the permission of the authorities, and they had their reasons for not talking too openly of Hyde's arrest. He was a British subject, a military officer moreover, and these were claims to the consideration of French justice that would not have been so readily recognised fifteen years before.

It was, of course, inevitable that the affair of Tinplate Street should be re-opened. But a new complexion was given to it by the recent arrests. Hyde had been interrogated at once by the magistrate who had examined him before; the same man, but so different; no longer insolently positive and threatening unjustly, but bland, considerate, obliging. The fact was he had had a hint from his superiors to treat the Englishman gently.

"The truth must come out now," Hyde had said, when asked if he remembered the circ.u.mstances of his former arrest. "You have the real culprit in custody."

"This Ledantec, I suppose?" asked the judge.

"It was he who struck the blow; I saw him with my own eyes, as I told you years ago. Then he escaped by the window into a back-street; I followed him, but he was too quick for me. A cab waited for him, picked him up, and he was driven away."

While Hyde was speaking the judge had turned over the pages of a voluminous doc.u.ment in front of him,--a detailed report of the previous interrogation.

"Your story does not vary. You have either an excellent memory, or--" and the stern magistrate smiled quite archly--"or you are really telling me the truth."

"The truth! I can swear to it."

"What is more, your story is in the main corroborated. Shortly after your escape we laid hands on the very cabman who had helped Ledantec away. He described the scene as you have, and through him we got upon the trace of his fare--Ledantec, as you call him."

"But you never arrested him?"

"Until now he carefully kept away from Paris."

"But you have him now on a double charge."

"Him and his accomplice. Justice will be satisfied, never fear."

"How long will you keep me here?"

"I regret that for the present it will be impossible to release you.

We are compelled first to verify the facts before us. But in a few days at the latest I hope your trouble will be at an end. You have powerful friends, Monsieur."

"The British Emba.s.sy, I suppose?" said Hyde, complacently.

"Yes; and his Imperial Majesty has deigned to go personally into your case."

"Then I can wait events calmly and without fear."

Presently, when Hyde had been removed, Ledantec was introduced, and was received with the brutal harshness which was the judge's habitual manner towards prisoners.

"Your name, profession, address?" he asked abruptly.

"Silas Hobson, an English journalist, residing in Duke Street, St.

James's, London."

"It is false! You have no right to the name of Hobson. You are not an Englishman. You may reside in London, but it is only temporarily."

"Who am I then?" asked Ledantec with a sneer.

"In Paris, at your last visit, you pa.s.sed as Hippolyte Ledantec, but your real name is Serge Michaelovitch Vasilenikoff. You are a Russian by birth, by profession a gambler, a blackleg, a cheat."

Ledantec, as I shall still call him, merely shrugged his shoulders in sarcastic helplessness at this abuse.

"You are worse. You are a spy in the service of the enemies of the State; an unconvicted murderer--"

He bent his eyes upon the prisoner with a piercing gaze, to watch the effect of this accusation.

Ledantec never blenched, and the judge presently continued--

"You are the real author of the crime in Tinplate Street."

"M. Rupert Gascoigne is your informant, I presume," said Ledantec sneering; "it is easy to rebut a charge by throwing it on another. But you are too clever, M. le Juge, to be imposed upon."

"You at least cannot hoodwink me. We have the fullest evidence, let me tell you, of the crime--all the crimes--laid to your charge. Your accomplice has confessed."

This was said to try the prisoner, and it succeeded, for he started slightly at the word "crimes."

"Accomplice! Of whom do you speak?"

"There is a woman in custody who has been a.s.sociated with you for years. It was she who instigated you to the robbery and murder of the Baron d'Enot. She joined you when you fled from the gambling-den in Tinplate Street, and shared your flight from Paris. She was with you in St. Petersburg till you separated after a violent quarrel--"

"The blame was hers," interrupted Ledantec.

"Possibly, but you were equally to blame. In any case she left you to s.h.i.+ft for herself. She entered a great English family by a false marriage, and, when next you met her, conspired with her to bring the wealth of that family within her grasp. You again became her guilty partner, and plotted to take the life of the heir to a n.o.ble English t.i.tle and great estates."

He was referring now to McKay, but Ledantec, misled by a guilty conscience, was thinking of Lord Lydstone, and his mysteriously sudden death.

"That was her doing!" he cried remorsefully. "In removing Lord Lydstone--"

The judge caught quickly at the new name.

"You removed, or, more plainly, you murdered Lord Lydstone at the instigation of your accomplice--is that so?"

Ledantec would not confess to this, but the judge felt certain that he had come upon the track of another dreadful crime.

"There is enough against you," he went on slowly, "to convict you a dozen times over, enough to send you to the guillotine. Your only hope will be to make a clean breast of everything. By helping us to convict your accomplice you may save your forfeited life."

"But I shall be sent to the galleys; to Toulon or Brest. Life as a French galley-slave is worse than death."

"You will not think so when the alternative is put before you," said the judge, dryly; "and my advice to you is to make a full confession."

Ledantec shook his head, but it was with far less a.s.surance than he had shown at the beginning of his examination. It was clear that he saw himself fast in the toils; that the law held him tight in its clutch; that unqualified submission was the only course to pursue.

He had spoken fully and unreservedly, confessing freely to every guilty deed in his long career of wickedness, possessing the judge with every detail of his own and his accomplice's crimes, when that accomplice was brought up for interrogation in her turn.