Part 11

“That would matter very little to me,” she said. “I have not made this accusation to avenge my brother, for to punish the criminal would not restore Jean to life. I am merely stating what I believe to be the truth. If Georges Cazévon likes to sue me, he is perfectly free to do so and my defence will simply be what my conscience moves me to say.”

She was silent for a moment, and then added:

“But you can rely on his keeping quiet, gentlemen. I don’t think there is much chance of his bringing any action against me!”

The interview was at an end. Jim Barnett did not attempt to engage the girl in further conversation. Mademoiselle d’Alescar knew her own mind, and no one would be able to intimidate her or upset her evidence in the least.

“Mademoiselle,” said Barnett, “we apologize for this intrusion, but we were obliged to trouble you in order to get at the truth of this tragic affair. You may be sure Inspector Béchoux will make the right deductions from all that you have said and act accordingly.”

He bowed and took his leave. Béchoux bowed likewise, and followed him into the courtyard.

Once they were out of the house, the inspector, who had not spoken during the interview, continued silent, partly in protest against Barnett’s interference in the case, and partly because he was totally bewildered by the turn events were taking. His taciturnity only encouraged the loquacious Barnett.

“Yes, yes, Béchoux,” he said reflectively, “I can easily understand your being puzzled. It’s a matter for deep thought. The lady’s statement had a good deal in it, but it was compounded of such a mixture of the possible with the impossible, the rational with the fantastic, that it needs careful sifting if we are to make use of it. For instance, on the face of it, young d’Alescar’s actions seem pure fantasy. If the unlucky youth got to the top of the tower—and, contrary to your own private belief, I rather think he did get there—then it was due to that unimaginable miracle he had hoped and prayed for—a miracle whose nature we are as yet unable to conceive.

“The problem we are up against is—how could the boy, within the space of two hours, invent a means of climbing the tower, put his scheme into execution, and climb down again, only to be hurled into the abyss by a bullet ... which did not hit him! That’s the culminating impossibility, that he went to his death through a shot which never touched him—that seems to me to have been a miracle from hell!”

Barnett and Béchoux met again that evening at the inn, but dined apart. During the next two days they only saw each other at mealtimes. Béchoux was busy making investigations and inquiries throughout the neighborhood. Barnett, like one of the lilies of the field, took root on a grassy slope some way beyond the terrace, from which spot he had a good view of the Old Dungeon and the river Creuse. He confined his activities to fishing, smoking, and reflection. The heart of a mystery is to be plucked out by sheer divination rather than by fevered probing. So Barnett sat there, angling with his rod for the fish in the river, and with his mind for the nature of the miracle with which Fate had favored Jean d’Alescar.

On the third day, however, he bestirred himself and went off to Guéret in the manner of a man with a definite object. And the day after that he ran into Béchoux, who told him that he had now finished his investigation.

“So have I,” said Barnett. “If you’re going back to Paris, I’ll give you a lift in my car.”

“Thanks,” said Béchoux. “In about half an hour I am going up to see Monsieur Cazévon.”

“Right, I’ll meet you at the Château,” said Barnett. “I’m fed to the teeth with this place, aren’t you?”

He paid his bill at the inn, and drove to the gates of the Château. Leaving his car in the road, he strolled through the park, and when he got to the house presented his card. Underneath his own name he had written the words: “Working in collaboration with Inspector Béchoux.”

He was shown into a vast hall, which spread over the ground floor of an entire wing. Stags’ heads looked down from the walls, which were hung with weapons and trophies of every description. Here he was joined by Georges Cazévon.

“My colleague, Inspector Béchoux,” said Barnett, “is to meet me here. We have been working together on the case, and we are to-day returning to Paris.”

“And what opinion has Inspector Béchoux formed as a result of his investigation?” asked Georges Cazévon, a shade eagerly.

“Oh, he has definitely made up his mind that there is nothing, absolutely nothing to justify any fresh theory of the case. He is satisfied that the rumors set afloat are quite groundless.”

“And Mademoiselle d’Alescar?”

Barnett shrugged his shoulders.

“According to Inspector Béchoux her mind is almost unhinged by her bereavement, so that no reliance can be placed on anything she says at present.”

“And you agree with Inspector Béchoux?”

“I?” Barnett raised his eyes and lowered them, his whole attitude one of abject humility. “I am nothing but a humble assistant. I have no views of my own at all!”

He began wandering aimlessly about the hall, looking at the glass cases full of rifles and shotguns. These exhibits seemed to interest him considerably.

“A fine collection, aren’t they?” said Georges Cazévon at his elbow.

“Magnificent!”

“Are you an enthusiast?”

“I have a great admiration for good marksmanship. I see by these cups and certificates that you must be a remarkable shot. Let’s see—Disciples de Saint Hubert, Creuse Sporting Club—oh, yes, that’s what they were telling me about you yesterday when I was in Guéret.”

“Is the case much talked about at Guéret?”

“Oh, very little. But the accuracy of your shooting is proverbial among the townsfolk!”

Barnett took up a gun, balancing it casually in his hands.

“Careful!” said Cazévon sharply. “That’s a service rifle. It’s loaded.”

“Really?” observed Barnett with polite interest. “Is that in case of burglars?”

Cazévon smiled. “I really keep it handy for poachers. I should never shoot to kill, though. A broken leg would be all I should aim for!”

“And would you shoot from one of these windows?”

“Oh, poachers don’t come so close to the Château!”

“That almost seems a pity,” said Barnett thoughtfully, and opened a very narrow window—almost a loophole—which shed a ray of light into one corner of the hall.

“Fancy that now!” he exclaimed. “Looking through the trees, one can see a section of the Old Dungeon—right across the park. Isn’t that the portion of the ruin which overlooks the river, Monsieur Cazévon?”

“Just about, I should say.”

“Why, yes, it is!” cried Barnett excitedly. “I recognize that tuft of flowers growing between two stones. Isn’t the air wonderfully clear? Can you see that yellow flower, looking along the bore?”

He had raised the gun to his shoulder as he spoke, and without hesitating a moment, he fired. The yellow flower disappeared, while a puff of smoke hung in the still air.

Georges Cazévon made a gesture of annoyance. His displeasure was manifest. This “humble assistant” was an incredibly skilled marksman, and, anyway, it was cool cheek his letting off a gun like that in the house!

“I believe your servants are at the other end of the Château?” said Barnett. “Then they won’t have heard the noise I made. But I’m sorry I did that—it must have startled Mademoiselle d’Alescar, the sound being so painfully associated for her with the memory——” He broke off.

Georges Cazévon smiled sardonically.

“Then does Mademoiselle d’Alescar still believe there is some connection between the shot that was heard that morning and her brother’s death?”

Barnett nodded.

“I wonder where she got the idea?”

“Where I got it myself a minute ago. It’s a curiously vivid picture—the unknown watcher in ambush at this window, while Jean d’Alescar was hanging on half-way down the Dungeon wall!”

“But d’Alescar died of a fall!” protested Cazévon.

“Quite so,” said Barnett, with deadly calm, “of a fall. And the reason for his fall was, of course, the sudden crumbling of some projection or shelf to which he was clinging with both hands at the time!”

Cazévon scowled at the urbane Barnett.

“I didn’t know,” he said, “that Mademoiselle d’Alescar had been so—so definite in her statements to people. Why, this constitutes a direct accusation!”

“Yes, a—direct—accusation,” repeated Barnett slowly, so that the words seemed to hang in the air as the smoke from the gun had done a few moments before.

Cazévon stared at him. The calm self-assurance and decisive manner of this “humble assistant” rather astonished him. He even began to wonder if this detective might not have come to the Château in the rôle of aggressor. For the conversation, begun so casually and conventionally, was now rapidly turning into an attack on Cazévon himself!

He sat down rather heavily, and asked:

“Why, according to Mademoiselle d’Alescar, was her brother climbing that wall?”

“To recover the two hundred thousand francs which the old Comte d’Alescar hid in the place which is marked with a cross on the map you have been shown.”

“But I never for a moment believed in that yarn,” exclaimed Cazévon. “Even presuming that the Comte d’Alescar had managed to raise such a sum, why should he have concealed it instead of immediately handing it over to my father?”

“Quite a valid objection,” admitted Barnett. “Unless the hidden treasure happened not to be a sum of money at all!”

“But what else could it be?”

“That I don’t know. We shall have to use our imaginations a bit.”

Georges Cazévon made a movement of impatience.

“You can be quite sure that Elizabeth d’Alescar and her brother long ago exhausted the possible alternatives!”

“How do you know? They are not professionals like myself.”

“Even a hypersensitized intelligence,” sneered Cazévon, “cannot evolve something from nothing!”

“Yes, it can—sometimes! For example, do you know a man called Gréaume, who is the Guéret newsagent, and was at one time an accountant in your factory?”

“Certainly I know him. A very worthy fellow.”

“Well, Gréaume is prepared to swear that Jean d’Alescar’s father called on your own father the very next day after he had drawn his two hundred thousand francs from the bank.”

“Well?” snapped Cazévon.

“Isn’t it only logical to suppose that the money was handed over to your father on that occasion, and that it was the receipt which was temporarily concealed in some cranny of the Dungeon?”

Georges Cazévon gave a sudden start, then controlled himself.

“Mr.—uh—Barnett, do you realize what you are insinuating? It’s an insult to my father’s memory!”

“An insult! I don’t follow you!” said Barnett innocently.

“If my father had received that money he would most certainly have acknowledged the fact.”

“Why should he? He was under no obligation to tell his neighbors that some one had paid him back a private loan!”

Georges Cazévon’s fist came down with a bang on his desk.

“But if that money had been paid him, how do you explain that a fortnight later, just a few days after his former debtor’s death, he was taking possession of the Mazurech estate?”

“Yet that is exactly what he did!”

“You must be crazy! There’s absolutely no ground for suggesting such a thing. Even granting that my father was capable of demanding to be paid what he had already received, he would never have done it, because he would have known that the receipt could be produced!”

“Perhaps he knew,” suggested Barnett diffidently, “that its existence was a secret and that the heirs were in ignorance of both loan and repayment. And since he had set his heart on owning this place and had, so they tell me, sworn he would get it, he was tempted and fell.”

“But no one would hide a receipt away where it could never be found.”

“Remember that the old Comte died of cerebral congestion. During his last days he was very queer. His mind reasoned imperfectly. He was ashamed of having borrowed that money. He was ashamed of the receipt, yet dared not destroy it. So he evolved a tortuous manner of concealment, with an equally tortuous clew.”

Gradually Barnett was putting a completely different complexion on the whole case. Georges Cazévon’s father was now appearing in the light of a rogue and blackguard. Cazévon himself, pale and shaking, stood with clenched fists, impotent with fear and rage, glaring at the immovable Barnett. The audacity of this “underling” completely unnerved him.

“I protest!” he stammered. “You have no right to jump to these—these abominable conclusions!”

“Believe me,” said Barnett, “I never leap before I look. All my allegations are founded on fact.”

Georges Cazévon darted a hunted look over his shoulder. He felt as if some unseen enemy were closing in on him. In a high, unnatural voice he cried:

“Lies! all lies! You have no proof. To prove that my father ever did such a thing you would—why, you would have to go and look for evidence at the top of the Old Dungeon!”

“Well,” contested Barnett, “Jean d’Alescar managed to get there, didn’t he?”

“He didn’t! I tell you he didn’t! I tell you it’s impossible to scale a ninety-foot tower all in two hours. It’s beyond human power!”

“All the same, Jean d’Alescar accomplished this—impossibility,” pursued Barnett doggedly.

“But how?” asked Georges Cazévon, on a note of sheer exasperation. “Do you expect me to believe he went up on a witch’s broomstick?”

“Not that,” said Barnett gently. “He used a rope!”

Cazévon laughed long and loud, but quite unmirthfully.

“A rope? You’re crazy. Of course, I often saw the boy shooting his arrows in the vain hope that one day his rope would catch hold. Poor devil! Miracles like that never happen nowadays. And anyway, two hours! Oh, it’s out of the question. Besides, the rope would have been found hanging from the tower, or lying on the rocks of the Creuse after the tragedy. Whereas I am told it is at the Manor.”

With unshakable calm Barnett rejoined:

“Quite. But it wasn’t that rope he used, you see.”

“Then what rope did he use?” asked Cazévon, turning a gulp into a laugh. “You can’t expect me to take all this seriously, you know. The Comte Jean d’Alescar, carrying the magic rope, came out on to the terrace of his garden at daybreak. He muttered the one word ‘Abracadabra,’ and lo! his rope uncoiled and rose to the top of the tower, so that he might promptly ascend. The good old Indian rope-trick—retired colonels write to the papers every day and solemnly aver it’s a miracle!”

“And yet you, too, monsieur,” said Barnett, “are driven to conjure up a miracle;—just like Jean d’Alescar—and like myself. There is no other explanation, of course. But the miracle was the opposite of what you imagine—it did not work from bottom to top, as would seem more usual and probable, but from top to bottom!”

Cazévon made a feeble attempt to joke.

“A kind Providence, eh, throwing a life-line to help a struggling mortal?”

“Why call Providence into it?” asked Barnett. “No need for that. This miracle was merely one of those which Chance may perform at any time nowadays.”

“Chance?”

“Remember that Chance knows no impossibilities. Chance is the unknown factor—Chance the disturber, the malicious, capricious visitant, swooping to make fantastic moves on the chessboard of human existence, forever proving the old platitude that truth is stranger than fiction! Chance is to-day the great worker of miracles. And the miracle I have in mind is not so wonderful, really, in an age when meteors are not the only bolts from the blue, so to speak.”

“Do the skies rain ropes?” asked Cazévon sardonically.

“Certainly, ropes among other things. The ocean-bed is strewn with things dropped overboard by the ships that sail the seas!”

“There are no ships in the sky,” observed Cazévon.

“Oh, yes, there are,” Barnett contradicted him, “only we don’t think of them as that. We call them balloons, and aeroplanes, and—after all, airships! They ride the air as ships ride the ocean, and any number of things may fall or be thrown overboard from them! Suppose one of these things is a coil of rope, which slips over the battlements of the Old Dungeon, and there you have the solution of the mystery.”

“A nice, convenient explanation!”

“Pardon me, an extremely well-founded explanation. If you glance through the local papers for the past week, as I did yesterday, you will see that a balloon flew over this part of the country on the night preceding Jean d’Alescar’s death. It was travelling from north to south, and ballast was heaved overboard ten miles north of Guéret. The obvious inference is that a coil of rope was also thrown out, that one end got caught in a tree on the terrace, and to free it Jean d’Alescar had to break off a branch. He then went down to the terrace, tied the two ends of the rope together, and climbed up to the tower. Not an easy thing to do, but possible for a lad of his years.”

“And then?” came in a whisper from Cazévon, whose face had grown suddenly gray.

“Then,” Barnett continued, “someone who was standing here, at this window, and who was a remarkable shot, observed the boy hanging suspended in midair, took aim at the rope, and—severed it!”

Cazévon made a choking noise.

“That is your explanation of the—accident?”

Barnett took no notice of the interruption, but went on:

“Afterwards, this person hurried to the bank of the Creuse and searched the dead body to get the receipt. He took hold of the dangling rope, and hauled it down—then threw the highly compromising piece of evidence into a neighboring well—not a very safe hiding-place!”

The accusation had shifted to Georges Cazévon himself—a kind of guilty legacy from the man’s dead father. The past was being linked up with the present—the net was closing in.

With a convulsive effort, Cazévon shook himself, as if to rid himself of Barnett’s odious presence.

“I’ve had enough of your lies!” he shouted. “The whole thing’s ridiculous invention on your part—you’re simply making this up to terrorize me. I shall tell Monsieur Béchoux that I have had you thrown out as a common blackmailer. That’s what you are, a blackmailer! But you won’t get any change out of me!”

“If I had come here to blackmail you,” said Barnett blithely, “I should have started off by producing my proofs.”

Blind with rage, Cazévon screamed:

“Your proofs! What proofs have you got? Nothing but a cock-and-bull story. You haven’t a single proof of any kind—how could you have? Why, there’s only one proof that would be worth anything—only one. And if you can’t produce that, then your whole story collapses at once, and you’re a fool as well as a knave!”

“And what is that proof?” asked Barnett, still smiling.

“The receipt, of course! The receipt signed by my father!”

“Here it is,” said Barnett, holding out a sheet of stamped paper, frayed and yellow at the edges. “This is your father’s handwriting, isn’t it? Pretty explicit, this document: ‘I, the undersigned, Auguste Cazévon, hereby acknowledge the receipt from the Comte d’Alescar of the sum of two hundred thousand francs previously loaned to him by me, and I hereby declare that this repayment renders null and void any and every claim of mine to the Château and lands of Mazurech.’

“The date,” continued Barnett, “corresponds to that mentioned by Gréaume. The receipt is signed. Therefore it is indisputably genuine, and you, Cazévon, must have known about it from your father’s own lips or from the private papers he left when he died. The discovery of this document meant disgrace for your father and yourself, and the loss of the Château, for which you felt all your father’s attachment. That’s why you killed d’Alescar!”

“If I had killed him,” faltered Cazévon, “I should have removed the receipt from his body.”

“You had a good look for it,” said Barnett grimly, “but it wasn’t on him. Jean d’Alescar had prudently wrapped it round a stone and thrown it down from the top of the tower, meaning to pick it up when he got to the ground again. I found it near the river, some twenty yards away.”

Barnett only just stepped back in time to prevent Cazévon snatching the receipt from his hand. There was a moment’s pause, and then Barnett, breathing a trifle quicker, spoke again:

“That is tantamount to admitting your guilt! Looking at you now, I can well believe Mademoiselle d’Alescar’s statement that you are capable of almost anything. You are the slave of your own unreasoning impulse! Carried away by the passions of greed and hatred, you raised your gun and fired that morning. Steady, man!” as Cazévon seemed about to collapse, “control yourself. Someone’s ringing! It must be Béchoux. Perhaps you won’t want him to know all this!”

A full minute passed in silence. At last, Cazévon, his eyes still those of a maniac, whispered:

“How much? What must I pay you for the receipt?”

“It is not for sale.”

“What do you mean to do with it?”

“It will be handed over to you, on certain conditions, which I will outline in Inspector Béchoux’s presence.”

“And if I refuse to accept your terms?”

“Then it will be my painful duty to expose you!”

“No one will believe you!”

“Oh, won’t they?”

Cazévon’s head slumped in utter dejection. Barnett’s driving, implacable will-power had beaten him. At that moment Béchoux was shown in.

The inspector had not expected to find Barnett on the scene. He was unpleasantly surprised, and wondered what the two men could have been talking about; whether the incalculable Barnett had been busy digging pits for the luckless representative of the law to fall into.

Fearing something of the sort, he was quite aggressively positive in his assertions from the word “go.”

Shaking Cazévon warmly by the hand he declared:

“Monsieur, I promised to let you know the result of my investigations before I left, and to tell you what kind of report I should make. So far, my own views are in complete accord with the construction that has been put upon the case. There is absolutely nothing in what Mademoiselle d’Alescar has been saying against you.”

“Hear, hear,” said Barnett. “That’s just what I’ve been telling Monsieur Cazévon. Béchoux, my guide, philosopher and friend, is displaying his usual acumen. Nevertheless, the fact is that Monsieur Cazévon is bent on returning good for evil, and meeting calumny with generosity. He insists on restoring the domain of her ancestors to Mademoiselle d’Alescar!”

Béchoux looked thunderstruck.

“Wh—what? You mean to say——”

“Just that,” said Barnett. “The affair has not unnaturally filled Monsieur Cazévon with distaste for the district, and he has his eye on a château nearer his factories in Guéret. When I got here this afternoon Monsieur Cazévon was actually drafting the deed of gift. He also expressed his wish to add a bearer check for one hundred thousand francs to be handed to Mademoiselle d’Alescar as compensation. That’s so, isn’t it, Monsieur Cazévon?”

Without a second’s hesitation, Cazévon acted on Barnett’s promptings as if they had been the dictates of his heart’s desires. He seated himself at his desk, wrote out the deed of gift and signed the check.

“There you are,” he said. “For the rest, I will instruct my solicitor.”

Barnett took both check and document, slipped them into an envelope, and said to Béchoux: