The Teeth of the Tiger Part 50

"Quick! Why can't you hurry?" said Don Luis, urged by his longing to know more. "Look sharp and come to the facts. Speak!"

He had become suddenly afraid lest he should not hear the remainder of the explanation; and he suddenly perceived that Gaston Sauverand's words were making their way into his mind as words that were perhaps not untrue. Though he strove to fight against them, they were stronger than his prejudices and triumphed over his arguments.

The fact is, that deep down in his soul, tortured with love and jealousy, there was something that disposed him to believe this man in whom hitherto he had seen only a hated rival, and who was so loudly proclaiming, in Florence's very presence, his love for Marie.

"Hurry!" he repeated. "Every minute is precious!"

Sauverand shook his head.

"I shall not hurry. All my words were carefully thought out before I decided to speak. Every one of them is essential. Not one of them can be omitted, for you will find the solution of the problem not in facts presented anyhow, separated one from the other, but in the concatenation of the facts, and in a story told as faithfully as possible."

"Why? I don't understand."

"Because the truth lies hidden in that story."

"But that truth is your innocence, isn't it?"

"It is Marie's innocence."

"But I don't dispute it!"

"What is the use of that if you can't prove it?"

"Exactly! It's for you to give me proofs."

"I have none."

"What!"

"I tell you, I have no proof of what I am asking you to believe."

"Then I shall not believe it!" cried Don Luis angrily. "No, and again no!

Unless you supply me with the most convincing proofs, I shall refuse to believe a single word of what you are going to tell me."

"You have believed everything that I have told you so far," Sauverand retorted very simply.

Don Luis offered no denial. He turned his eyes to Florence Leva.s.seur; and it seemed to him that she was looking at him with less aversion, and as though she were wis.h.i.+ng with all her might that he would not resist the impressions that were forcing themselves upon him. He muttered:

"Go on with your story."

And there was something really strange about the att.i.tude of those two men, one making his explanation in precise terms and in such a way as to give every word its full value, the other listening attentively and weighing every one of those words; both controlling their excitement; both as calm in appearance as though they were seeking the philosophical solution in a case of conscience. What was going on outside did not matter. What was to happen presently did not count.

Before all, whatever the consequences of their inactivity at this moment when the circle of the police was closing in around them, before all it was necessary that one should speak and the other listen.

"We are coming," said Sauverand, in his grave voice, "we are coming to the most important events, to those of which the interpretation, which is new to you, but strictly true, will make you believe in our good faith.

Ill luck having brought me across Hippolyte Fauville's path in the course of one of my walks in the Bois, I took the precaution of changing my abode and went to live in the little house on the Boulevard Richard-Wallace, where Florence came to see me several times.

"I was even careful to keep her visits a secret and, moreover, to refrain from corresponding with her except through the _poste restante_. I was therefore quite easy in my mind.

"I worked in perfect solitude and in complete security. I expected nothing. No danger, no possibility of danger, threatened us. And, I may say, to use a commonplace but very accurate expression, that what happened came as an absolute bolt from the blue. I heard at the same time, when the Prefect of Police and his men broke into my house and proceeded to arrest me, I heard at the same time and for the first time of the murder of Hippolyte Fauville, the murder of Edmond, and the arrest of my adored Marie."

"Impossible!" cried Don Luis, in a renewed tone of aggressive wrath.

"Impossible! Those facts were a fortnight old. I cannot allow that you had not heard of them."

"Through whom?"

"Through the papers," exclaimed Don Luis. "And, more certainly still, through Mlle. Leva.s.seur."

"Through the papers?" said Sauverand. "I never used to read them. What!

Is that incredible? Are we under an obligation, an inevitable necessity, to waste half an hour a day in skimming through the futilities of politics and the piffle of the news columns? Is your imagination incapable of conceiving a man who reads nothing but reviews and scientific publications?

"The fact is rare, I admit," he continued. "But the rarity of a fact is no proof against it. On the other hand, on the very morning of the crime I had written to Florence saying that I was going away for three weeks and bidding her good-bye. I changed my mind at the last moment; but this she did not know; and, thinking that I had gone, not knowing where I was, she was unable to inform me of the crime, of Marie's arrest, or, later, when an accusation was brought against the man with the ebony walking-stick, of the search that was being made for me."

"Exactly!" declared Don Luis. "You cannot pretend that the man with the ebony walking-stick, the man who followed Inspector Verot to the Cafe du Pont-Neuf and purloined his letter--"

"I am not the man," Sauverand interrupted.

And, when Don Luis shrugged his shoulders, he insisted, in a more forcible tone of voice:

"I am not that man. There is some inexplicable mistake in all this, but I have never set foot in the Cafe du Pont-Neuf. I swear it. You must accept this statement as positively true. Besides, it agrees entirely with the retired life which I was leading from necessity and from choice. And, I repeat, I knew nothing.

"The thunderbolt was unexpected. And it was precisely for this reason, you must understand, that the shock produced in me an equally unexpected reaction, a state of mind diametrically opposed to my real nature, an outburst of my most savage and primitive instincts. Remember, Monsieur, that they had laid hands upon what to me was the most sacred thing on earth. Marie was in prison. Marie was accused of committing two murders!... I went mad.

"At first controlling myself, playing a part with the Prefect of Police, then overthrowing every obstacle, shooting Chief Inspector Ancenis, shaking off Sergeant Mazeroux, jumping from the window, I had only one thought in my head--that of escape. Once free, I should save Marie. Were there people in my way? So much the worse for them.

"By what right did those people dare to attack the most blameless of women? I killed only one man that day! I would have killed ten! I would have killed twenty! What was Chief Inspector Ancenis's life to me? What cared I for the lives of any of those wretches? They stood between Marie and myself; and Marie was in prison!"

Gaston Sauverand made an effort which contracted every muscle of his face to recover the coolness that was gradually leaving him. He succeeded in doing so, but his voice, nevertheless, remained tremulous, and the fever with which he was consumed shook his frame in a manner which he was unable to conceal.

He continued:

"At the corner of the street down which I turned after outdistancing the Prefect's men on the Boulevard Richard-Wallace, Florence saved me just as I believed that all was lost. Florence had known everything for a fortnight past. She learnt the news of the double murder from the papers, those papers which she used to read out to you, and which you discussed with her. And it was by being with you, by listening to you, that she acquired the opinion which everything that happened tended to confirm: the opinion that Marie's enemy, her only enemy, was yourself."

"But why? Why?"

"Because she saw you at work," exclaimed Sauverand, "because it was more to your interest than to that of any one else that first Marie and then I should not come between you and the Mornington inheritance, and lastly--"

"What?"

Gaston Sauverand hesitated and then said, plainly:

"Lastly, because she knew your real name beyond a doubt, and because she felt that a.r.s.ene Lupin was capable of anything."

They were both silent; and their silence, at such a moment, was impressive to a degree. Florence remained impa.s.sive under Don Luis Perenna's gaze; and he was unable to discern on her sealed face any of the feelings with which she must needs be stirred.

Gaston Sauverand continued:

"It was against a.r.s.ene Lupin, therefore, that Florence, Marie's terrified friend, engaged in the struggle. It was to unmask Lupin that she wrote or rather inspired the article of which you found the original in a ball of string. It was Lupin whom she spied upon, day by day, in this house. It was Lupin whom she heard one morning telephoning to Sergeant Mazeroux and rejoicing in my imminent arrest. It was to save me from Lupin that she let down the iron curtain in front of him, at the risk of an accident, and took a taxi to the corner of the Boulevard Richard-Wallace, where she arrived too late to warn me, as the detectives had already entered my house, but in time to screen me from their pursuit.