Part 35

“There can be no doubt about it,” he murmured. “It is to the crime committed to-day that these pressing recommendations relate; and, directed as they are to Vincent Favoral, they attest his complicity. It was he who had charge of finishing the Van Klopen affair; in other words, to get rid of Lucienne. It was he, I’d wager my head, who had treated with the false coachman.”

He remained for over a minute absorbed in his own thoughts, then,

“But who is the author of these recommendations to Vincent Favoral? Do you know that, M. le Marquis?” he said.

They looked at each other; and the same name rose to their lips,

“The Baroness de Thaller!”

This name, however, they did not utter.

The commissary had placed himself under the gasburner which gave light to the Fortin’s office; and, adjusting his glasses, he was scrutinizing the note with the most minute attention, studying the grain and the transparency of the paper, the ink, and the handwriting. And at last,

“This note,” he declared, “cannot constitute a proof against its author: I mean an evident, material proof, such as we require to obtain from a judge an order of arrest.”

And, as Marius was protesting,

“This note,” he insisted, “is written with the left hand, with common ink, on ordinary foolscap paper, such as is found everywhere. Now all left-hand writings look alike. Draw your own conclusions.”

But M. de Tregars did not give it up yet.

“Wait a moment,” he interrupted.

And briefly, though with the utmost exactness, he began telling his visit to the Thaller mansion, his conversation with Mlle. Cesarine, then with the baroness, and finally with the baron himself.

He described in the most graphic manner the scene which had taken place in the grand parlor between Mme. de Thaller and a worse than suspicious-looking man,--that scene, the secret of which had been revealed to him in its minutest details by the looking-glass. Its meaning was now as clear as day.

This suspicious-looking man had been one of the agents in arranging the intended murder: hence the agitation of the baroness when she had received his card, and her haste to join him. If she had started when he first spoke to her, it was because he was telling her of the successful execution of the crime. If she had afterwards made a gesture of joy, it was because he had just informed her that the coachman had been killed at the same time, and that she found herself thus rid of a dangerous accomplice.

The commissary of police shook his head.

“All this is quite probable,” he murmured; “but that’s all.”

Again M. de Tregars stopped him.

“I have not done yet,” he said.

And he went on saying how he had been suddenly and brutally assaulted by an unknown man in a restaurant; how he had collared this abject scoundrel, and taken out of his pocket a crushing letter, which left no doubt as to the nature of his mission.

The commissary’s eyes were sparkling,

“That letter!” he exclaimed, “that letter!” And, as soon as he had looked over it,

“Ah! This time,” he resumed, “I think that we have something tangible. ‘A troublesome gentleman to keep quiet,’--the Marquis de Tregars, of course, who is on the right track. ‘It will be for you the matter of a sword-thrust.’ Naturally, dead men tell no tales. ‘It will be for us the occasion of dividing a round amount.’ An honest trade, indeed!”

The good man was rubbing his hand with all his might.

“At last we have a positive fact,” he went on,--“a foundation upon which to base our accusations. Don’t be uneasy. That letter is going to place into our hands the scoundrel who assaulted you,--who will make known the go-between, who himself will not fail to surrender the Baroness de Thaller. Lucienne shall be avenged. If we could only now lay our hands on Vincent Favoral! But we’ll find him yet. I set two fellows after him this afternoon, who have a superior scent, and understand their business.”

He was here interrupted by Maxence, who was returning all out of breath, holding in his hand the medicines which he had gone after.

“I thought that druggist would never get through,” he said.

And regretting to have remained away so long, feeling uneasy, and anxious to return up stairs,

“Don’t you wish to see Lucienne?” he added, addressing himself to M. de Tregars rather more than to the commissary.

For all answer, they followed him at once.

A cheerless-looking place was Mlle. Lucienne’s room, without any furniture but a narrow iron bedstead, a dilapidated bureau, four straw-bottomed chairs, and a small table. Over the bed, and at the windows, were white muslin curtains, with an edging that had once been blue, but had become yellow from repeated washings.

Often Maxence had begged his friend to take a more comfortable lodging, and always she had refused.

“We must economize,” she would say. “This room does well enough for me; and, besides, I am accustomed to it.”

When M. de Tregars and the commissary walked in, the estimable hostess of the Hotel des Folies was kneeling in front of the fire, preparing some medicine.

Hearing the footsteps, she got up, and, with a finger upon her lips,

“Hush!” she said. “Take care not to wake her up!” The precaution was useless.

“I am not asleep,” said Mlle. Lucienne in a feeble voice. “Who is there?”

“I,” replied Maxence, advancing towards the bed.

It was only necessary to see the poor girl in order to understand Maxence’s frightful anxiety. She was whiter than the sheet; and fever, that horrible fever which follows severe wounds, gave to her eyes a sinister lustre.

“But you are not alone,” she said again.

“I am with him, my child,” replied the commissary. “I come to beg your pardon for having so badly protected you.”

She shook her head with a sad and gentle motion.

“It was myself who lacked prudence,” she said; “for to-day, while out, I thought I noticed something wrong; but it looked so foolish to be afraid! If it had not happened to-day, it would have happened some other day. The villains who have been pursuing me for years must be satisfied now. They will soon be rid of me.”

“Lucienne,” said Maxence in a sorrowful tone.

M. de Tregars now stepped forward.

“You shall live, mademoiselle,” he uttered in a grave voice. “You shall live to learn to love life.”

And, as she was looking at him in surprise,

“You do not know me,” he added.

Timidly, and as if doubting the reality,

“You,” she said, “the Marquis de Tregars!”

“Yes, mademoiselle, your brother.”

Had he had the control of events, Marius de Tregars would probably not have been in such haste to reveal this fact.

But how could he control himself in presence of that bed where a poor girl was, perhaps, about to die, sacrificed to the terrors and to the cravings of the miserable woman who was her mother,--to die at twenty, victim of the basest and most odious of crimes? How could he help feeling an intense pity at the sight of this unfortunate young woman who had endured every thing that a human being can suffer, whose life had been but a long and painful struggle, whose courage had risen above all the woes of adversity, and who had been able to pass without a stain through the mud and mire of Paris.

Besides, Marius was not one of those men who mistrust their first impulse, who manifest their emotion only for a purpose, who reflect and calculate before giving themselves up to the inspirations of their heart.

Lucienne was the daughter of the Marquis de Tregars: of that he was absolutely certain. He knew that the same blood flowed in his veins and in hers; and he told her so.

He told her so, above all, because he believed her in danger; and he wished, were she to die, that she should have, at least, that supreme joy. Poor Lucienne! Never had she dared to dream of such happiness. All her blood rushed to her cheeks; and, in a voice vibrating with the most intense emotion,

“Ah, now, yes,” she uttered, “I would like to live.”

The commissary of police, also, felt moved.

“Do not be alarmed, my child,” he said in his kindest tone. “Before two weeks you will be up. M. de Tregars is a great physician.”

In the mean time, she had attempted to raise herself on her pillow; and that simple effort had wrung from her a cry of anguish.

“Dear me! How I do suffer!”

“That’s because you won’t keep quiet, my darling,” said Mme. Fortin in a tone of gentle scolding. “Have you forgotten that the doctor has expressly forbidden you to stir?”

Then taking aside the commissary, Maxence, and M. de Tregars, she explained to them how imprudent it was to disturb Mlle. Lucienne’s rest. She was very ill, affirmed the worthy hostess; and her advice was, that they should send for a sick-nurse as soon as possible.

She would have been extremely happy, of course, to spend the night by the side of her dear lodger; but, unfortunately, she could not think of it, the hotel requiring all her time and attention. Fortunately, however, she knew in the neighborhood a widow, a very honest woman, and without her equal in taking care of the sick.

With an anxious and beseeching look, Maxence was consulting M. de Tregars. In his eyes could be read the proposition that was burning upon his lips,

“Shall I not go for Gilberte?”

But that proposition he had no time to express. Though they had been speaking very low, Mlle. Lucienne had heard.

“I have a friend,” she said, “who would certainly be willing to sit up with me.”

They all went up to her.

“What friend,” inquired the commissary of police.

“You know her very well, sir. It is that poor girl who had taken me home with her at Batignolles when I left the hospital, who came to my assistance during the Commune, and whom you helped to get out of the Versailles prisons.”

“Do you know what has become of her?”

“Only since yesterday, when I received a letter from her, a very friendly letter. She writes that she has found money to set up a dressmaking establishment, and that she is relying upon me to be her forewoman. She is going to open in the Rue St. Lazare; but, in the mean time, she is stopping in the Rue du Cirque.”

M. de Tregars and Maxence had started slightly.

“What is your friend’s name?” they inquired at once.

Not being aware of the particulars of the two young men’s visit to the Rue du Cirque, the commissary of police could not understand the cause of their agitation.

“I think,” he said, “that it would hardly be proper now to send for that girl.”

“It is to her alone, on the contrary, that we must resort,” interrupted M. de Tregars.

And, as he had good reasons to mistrust Mme. Fortin, he took the commissary outside the room, on the landing; and there, in a few words, he explained to him that this Zelie was precisely the same woman whom they had found in the Rue du Cirque, in that sumptuous mansion where Vincent Favoral, under the simple name of Vincent, had been living, according to the neighbors, in such a princely style.

The commissary of police was astounded. Why had he not known all this sooner? Better late than never, however.

“Ah! you are right, M. le Marquis, a hundred times right!” he declared. “This girl must evidently know Vincent Favoral’s secret, the key of the enigma that we are vainly trying to solve. What she would not tell to you, a stranger, she will tell to Lucienne, her friend.”

Maxence offered to go himself for Zelie Cadelle.

“No,” answered Marius. “If she should happen to know you, she would mistrust you, and would refuse to come.”

It was, therefore, M. Fortin who was despatched to the Rue du Cirque, and who went off muttering, though he had received five francs to take a carriage, and five francs for his trouble.

“And now,” said the commissary of police to Maxence, “we must both of us get out of the way. I, because the fact of my being a commissary would frighten Mme. Cadelle; you because, being Vincent Favoral’s son, your presence would certainly prove embarrassing to her.”

And so they went out; but M. de Tregars did not remain long alone with Mlle. Lucienne. M. Fortin had had the delicacy not to tarry on the way.

Eleven o’clock struck as Zelie Cadelle rushed like a whirlwind into her friend’s room.

Such had been his haste, that she had given no thought whatever to her dress. She had stuck upon her uncombed hair the first bonnet she had laid her hand upon, and thrown an old shawl over the wrapper in which she had received Marius in the afternoon.

“What, my poor Lucienne!” she exclaimed. “Are you so sick as all that?”

But she stopped short as she recognized M. de Tregars; and, in a suspicious tone,

“What a singular meeting!” she said.

Marius bowed.

“You know Lucienne?”

What she meant by that he understood perfectly. “Lucienne is my sister, madame,” he said coldly.

She shrugged her shoulders. “What humbug!”

“It’s the truth,” affirmed Mlle. Lucienne; “and you know that I never lie.”

Mme. Zelie was dumbfounded.

“If you say so,” she muttered. “But no matter: that’s queer.”

M. de Tregars interrupted her with a gesture,

“And, what’s more, it is because Lucienne is my sister that you see her there lying upon that bed. They attempted to murder her to-day!”

“Oh!”

“It was her mother who tried to get rid of her, so as to possess herself of the fortune which my father had left her; and there is every reason to believe that the snare was contrived by Vincent Favoral.”

Mme. Zelie did not understand very well; but, when Marius and Mlle. Lucienne had informed her of all that it was useful for her to know,

“Why,” she exclaimed, “what a horrid rascal that old Vincent must be!”

And, as M. de Tregars remained dumb,

“This afternoon,” she went on, “I didn’t tell you any stories; but I didn’t tell you every thing, either.” She stopped; and, after a moment of deliberation,

“Well, I don’t care for old Vincent,” she said. “Ah! he tried to have Lucienne killed, did he? Well, then, I am going to tell every thing I know. First of all, he wasn’t any thing to me. It isn’t very flattering; but it is so. He has never kissed so much as the end of my finger. He used to say that he loved me, but that he respected me still more, because I looked so much like a daughter he had lost. Old humbug! And I believed him too! I did, upon my word, at least in the beginning. But I am not such a fool as I look. I found out very soon that he was making fun of me; and that he was only using me as a blind to keep suspicion away from another woman.”

“From what woman?”

“Ah! now, I do not know! All I know is that she is married, that he is crazy about her, and that they are to run away together.”

“Hasn’t he gone, then?”

Mme. Cadelle’s face had become somewhat anxious, and for over a minute she seemed to hesitate.

“Do you know,” she said at last, “that my answer is going to cost me a lot? They have promised me a pile of money; but I haven’t got it yet. And, if I say any thing, good-by! I sha’n’t have any thing.”

M. de Tregars was opening his lips to tell her that she might rest easy on that score; but she cut him short.

“Well, no,” she said: “Old Vincent hasn’t gone. He got up a comedy, so he told me, to throw the lady’s husband off the track. He sent off a whole lot of baggage by the railroad; but he staid in Paris.”

“And do you know where he is hid?”

“In the Rue St. Lazare, of course: in the apartment that I hired two weeks ago.”

In a voice trembling with the excitement of almost certain success, “Would you consent to take me there?” asked M. de Tregars.

“Whenever you like,--to-morrow.”

IX

As he left Mlle. Lucienne’s room,

“There is nothing more to keep me at the Hotel des Folies,” said the commissary of police to Maxence. “Every thing possible will be done, and well done, by M. de Tregars. I am going home, therefore; and I am going to take you with me. I have a great deal to do and you’ll help me.”

That was not exactly true; but he feared, on the part of Maxence, some imprudence which might compromise the success of M. de Tregars’ mission.

He was trying to think of every thing to leave as little as possible to chance; like a man who has seen the best combined plans fail for want of a trifling precaution.

Once in the yard, he opened the door of the lodge where the honorable Fortins, man and wife, were deliberating, and exchanging their conjectures, instead of going to bed. For they were wonderfully puzzled by all those events that succeeded each other, and anxious about all these goings and comings.

“I am going home,” the commissary said to them; “but, before that, listen to my instructions. You will allow no one, you understand, --no one who is not known to you, to go up to Mlle. Lucienne’s room. And remember that I will admit of no excuse, and that you must not come and tell me afterwards, ‘It isn’t our fault, we can’t see everybody that comes in,’ and all that sort of nonsense.”

He was speaking in that harsh and imperious tone of which police-agents have the secret, when they are addressing people who have, by their conduct, placed themselves under their dependence.

“We are going to close our front-door,” replied the estimable hotel-keepers. “We will comply strictly with your orders.”

“I trust so; because, if you should disobey me, I should hear it, and the result would be a serious trouble to you. Besides your hotel being unmercifully closed up, you would find yourselves implicated in a very bad piece of business.”

The most ardent curiosity could be read in Mme. Fortin’s little eyes.

“I understood at once,” she began, “that something extraordinary was going on.”

But the commissary interrupted her,

“I have not done yet. It may be that to-night or to-morrow some one will call and inquire how Mlle. Lucienne is.”

“And then?”

“You will answer that she is as bad as possible; and that she has neither spoken a word, nor recovered her senses, since the accident; and that she will certainly not live through the day.”

The effort which Mme. Fortin made to remain silent gave, better than any thing else, an idea of the terror with which the commissary inspired her.

“That is not all,” he went on. “As soon as the person in question has started off, you will follow him, without affectation, as far as the street-door, and you will point him out with your finger, here, like that, to one of my agents, who will happen to be on the Boulevard.”

“And suppose he should not be there?”

“He shall be there. You can make yourself easy on that score.”

The looks of distress which the honorable hotel-keepers were exchanging did not announce a very tranquil conscience.

“In other words, here we are under surveillance,” said M. Fortin with a groan. “What have we done to be thus mistrusted?”

To reply to him would have been a task more long than difficult.

“Do as I tell you,” insisted the commissary harshly, “and don’t mind the rest, and, meantime, good-night.”

He was right in trusting implicitly to his agent’s punctuality; for, as soon as he came out of the Hotel des Folies, a man passed by him, and without seeming to address him, or even to recognize him, said in a whisper,

“What news?”

“Nothing,” he replied, “except that the Fortins are notified. The trap is well set. Keep your eyes open now, and spot any one who comes to ask about Mlle. Lucienne.”

And he hurried on, still followed by Maxence, who walked along like a body without soul, tortured by the most frightful anguish.

As he had been away the whole evening, four or five persons were waiting for him at his office on matters of current business. He despatched them in less than no time; after which, addressing himself to an agent on duty,

“This evening,” he said, “at about nine o’clock, in a restaurant on the Boulevard, a quarrel took place. A person tried to pick a quarrel with another.

“You will proceed at once to that restaurant; you will get the

## particulars of what took place; and you will ascertain exactly who

this man is, his name, his profession, and his residence.”

Like a man accustomed to such errands,

“Can I have a description of him?” inquired the agent.

“Yes. He is a man past middle age, military bearing, heavy mustache, ribbons in his buttonhole.”

“Yes, I see: one of your regular fighting fellows.”

“Very well. Go then. I shall not retire before your return. Ah, I forgot; find out what they thought to-night on the ‘street’ about the Mutual Credit affair, and what they said of the arrest of one Saint Pavin, editor of ‘The Financial Pilot,’ and of a banker named Jottras.”

“Can I take a carriage?”

“Do so.”

The agent started; and he was not fairly out of the house, when the commissary, opening a door which gave into a small study, called, “Felix!”

It was his secretary, a man of about thirty, blonde, with a gentle and timid countenance, having, with his long coat, somewhat the appearance of a theological student. He appeared immediately.

“You call me, sir?”

“My dear Felix,” replied the commissary, “I have seen you, sometimes, imitate very nicely all sorts of hand-writings.”

The secretary blushed very much, no doubt on account of Maxence, who was sitting by the side of his employer. He was a very honest fellow; but there are certain little talents of which people do not like to boast; and the talent of imitating the writing of others is of the number, for the reason, that, fatally and at once, it suggests the idea of forgery.

“It was only for fun that I used to do that, sir,” he stammered.

“Would you be here if it had been otherwise?” said the commissary. “Only this time it is not for fun, but to do me a favor that I wish you to try again.”

And, taking out of his pocket the letter taken by M. de Tregars from the man in the restaurant,

“Examine this writing,” he said, “and see whether you feel capable of imitating it tolerably well.”

Spreading the letter under the full light of the lamp, the secretary spent at least two minutes examining it with the minute attention of an expert. And at the same time he was muttering,

“Not at all convenient, this. Hard writing to imitate. Not a salient feature, not a characteristic sign! Nothing to strike the eye, or attract attention. It must be some old lawyer’s clerk who wrote this.”

In spite of his anxiety of mind, the commissary smiled.

“I shouldn’t be surprised if you had guessed right.”

Thus encouraged,

“At any rate,” Felix declared, “I am going to try.”