Arsène Lupin intervenes
“And your letters are now in the hands of his family?”
“Of his father.”
“Who, I suppose, is determined the letters shall be read in court so
that his son’s death shall be avenged at all costs.”
“Yes. Those letters prove the harmless character of our relations.
But—they prove that I met Paul Erstein without my husband’s knowledge.
And in one of them I wrote: ‘I beg of you, Paul, do be reasonable. My
husband is extremely jealous and very violent. If he should suspect me
for an instant, he would be capable of doing almost anything.’ So you
see, monsieur, that letter would considerably strengthen the case
against my husband. Jealousy would provide the police with the motive
they want. It would explain the murder and the discovery of the weapon
in the flower-box just outside my husband’s room.”
“Are you yourself sure, madame, that Monsieur Fougeraie suspected
nothing?”
She nodded.
“And you believe him innocent?”
“Oh, there can be no doubt—no doubt at all!” she cried impulsively.
Barnett, meeting her steadfast gaze, realized how this woman’s
conviction of her husband’s innocence could have influenced Béchoux to
the extent of making him her ally despite the public prosecutor and his
minions, and despite professional etiquette.
Barnett asked a few more questions, was lost in thought for some
moments, and at last announced solemnly:
“Madame, I can hold out no hopes. Logically, your husband must be
guilty. It is for me to try to disprove logic.”
“Do see my husband,” Madame Fougeraie besought him. “He will be able to
explain——”
“That’s quite useless, madame. I cannot help you unless I first of all
put your husband right out of the running in my own mind, and work on
the basis of your belief in his innocence.”
The preliminaries were over. Barnett was in the ring at once, and,
accompanied by Inspector Béchoux, called on the victim’s father. With
Erstein senior he came straight to the point:
“Monsieur, I am looking after Madame Fougeraie’s interests for her. You
are turning over your son’s correspondence to the prosecution, aren’t
you?”
“To-day, monsieur.”
“You have no hesitation in ruining the life of the woman your son loved
so dearly?”
“If that woman’s husband was my son’s murderer, I shall be sorry for
her sake, but my son’s death shall be avenged.”
“Wait five days, monsieur. Next Tuesday the murderer shall be
unmasked.”
Against his will, Erstein made the concession.
Barnett’s procedure in those five days of grace often disconcerted
Inspector Béchoux. He took—and made Béchoux take—the most irregular
steps, interviewed and organized a band of helpers, and spent money
like water. However, he seemed dissatisfied, and, contrary to habit,
was taciturn and inclined to sulk.
On Tuesday morning he had a talk with Madame Fougeraie and told her:
“Béchoux has got the prosecution to agree to a reconstruction of the
events of the fatal night, in detail, at the Norman Club, and it’s to
take place this afternoon. They have summoned both you and your husband
to appear. I implore you to control yourself, whatever happens, and to
try to appear almost indifferent.”
She looked at him trustingly, through unshed tears.
“Is there any hope...?” she faltered.
“I don’t know myself. As I told you before, I am simply playing your
hunch that Monsieur Fougeraie is innocent. I shall try to prove his
innocence by demonstrating a possible theory, but it’s a difficult
business. Even admitting that I am on the right track, as I believe I
am, the truth may yet elude us up to the very last moment.”
The public prosecutor and the examining magistrate who had investigated
the case proved to be a conscientious pair. They put their trust in
facts alone and refrained from interpreting these in the light of
preconceived theories.
“With such men,” said Béchoux, “I have no fear of your starting a row
or employing your usual bright badinage. They have very kindly given me
carte blanche to act as I see fit—or rather as you see fit—and don’t
you forget it.”
“My dear Béchoux,” replied Barnett, “I never indulge in badinage except
when victory is within my grasp, which is not the case to-day.”
The third room at the Norman Club was crowded. The magistrates talked
together at the threshold of the Round Room; then they went into it,
but came out again in a little while. The manufacturers waited in a
group. Policemen and inspectors came and went. Both Paul Erstein’s
father and Joseph, the club servant, stood apart from the rest.
Monsieur and Madame Fougeraie were together in a corner. He looked
gloomy and preoccupied; she was even paler than usual. It was common
knowledge now that the police had decided to arrest the engineer.
One of the magistrates addressed the four men who had played baccarat
with Paul Erstein:
“Gentlemen, we are about to reconstruct what took place on the fatal
Friday night. Will each of you please take up the position in which he
sat at this table so that we have the game of baccarat exactly as it
was played? Inspector Béchoux, you will hold the bank. Have you asked
these gentlemen to bring exactly the same sums in notes as they had
with them on the occasion in question?”
Béchoux nodded and sat down in the middle seat, with Alfred Auvard and
Raoul Dupin on his left and Louis Batinet and Maxime Tuillier on his
right. Six packs of cards were put out. The cards were cut to him and
he shuffled.
Then an odd thing happened. Immediately, just as on that tragic night,
luck favored the banker. With the same ease as Paul Erstein, Béchoux
won. He won steadily, automatically, as it were, in an unbroken run,
without any of the fluctuations and turns of fortune which had, after
all, characterized the original game. This mechanical continuity gave
the scene a strange, cinematographic quality. The game might have been
a fantastic “quick motion” picture of what had originally taken place.
The atmosphere of the proceedings began to tell on the players. Maxime
Tuillier seemed ill at ease and twice made mistakes in his play. Jim
Barnett grew irritated by the young man and at last officiously took
his place at Béchoux’s right hand.
Ten minutes later—for the film-like speed of the game accelerated
unchecked—more than half the banknotes produced for the game by the
four friends were stacked on the green cloth in front of Béchoux.
Maxime Tuillier, as represented by Jim Barnett, began handing over
I.O.U’s.
The pace quickened again. The end of the game came soon. Suddenly
Béchoux, as Paul Erstein had done, divided his winnings into four wads
of notes, proportionate to the other men’s losses, and subdivided each
wad into three, thus leading up to Erstein’s dramatic offer of “double
or quits” on three deals.
His opponents’ eyes never left him. The four men were evidently
stricken by the memory of that other game.
Three times Béchoux dealt on the two tableaux.
And three times, instead of losing, like Paul Erstein, Béchoux won!
A murmur of surprise rose from the onlookers. The miraculous
reconstruction of the original game had been unaccountably flawed. The
luck should have turned—but it had remained in the banker’s favor.
Supposing—the thought slipped into being—supposing this was indeed a
miracle, and this new ending to the game was not new at all?
“I am sorry,” said Béchoux, his words oddly remote as he continued to
act his rôle of banker. He stood up, first pocketing all the banknotes.
Then, as Paul Erstein had done, he complained of a headache and
expressed his wish that someone would come out on the balcony with him.
He went out, lighting a cigarette.
The other men remained motionless, with set faces. The cards lay
scattered on the table.
Then, and only then, Jim Barnett rose from his chair. But now, by some
wizardry, his face and his general appearance had taken on the outward
semblance of Maxime Tuillier, whom he had so lately supplanted in the
game of baccarat. Maxime Tuillier, clean-shaven, about thirty, wearing
a tight-fitting, double-breasted coat.... Maxime Tuillier, looking
morose and dissatisfied.... Jim Barnett was the young man to the life!
He went slowly towards the Round Room, moving like an automaton, his
expression an alternating study in callous ruthlessness and frightened
indecision—the expression of a man on the verge of doing something
terrible, but a man who might yet perhaps take to his heels with the
deed unaccomplished.
The players could not see his face, which was turned away from them.
But the magistrates saw it. And they forgot Jim Barnett, the skilled
impersonator, and thought only of Maxime Tuillier, the ruined gambler,
who was going to join his triumphant opponent. His face, which he
apparently strove to compose, gave ample indication of his mental
turmoil. Was he about to make a plea, a demand, or—a threat? When he
opened the door of the Round Room, he was once more master of his
emotions; he had regained his self-control.
The door closed behind him.
The staging of the imaginary “reconstruction” of the drama had been so
vivid that everyone waited in silence. The other players also waited,
staring at that closed door behind which was being repeated what had
taken place on the night of the tragedy—behind which it was not Barnett
and Béchoux who were playing their respective rôles of murderer and
victim, but Maxime Tuillier and Paul Erstein pitted against one
another.
After what seemed an eternity, the murderer—there was nothing else to
call him—came out. He staggered back to his friends, his eyes wild with
horror. In one hand he held the four bundles of notes. One he threw
down on the table. The other three he pressed upon the three players,
saying in queer, strained tones:
“I’ve been having a talk with Erstein. He asked me to give you back
this money. He doesn’t want it. Let’s go home.”
A yard or so away Maxime Tuillier, the real Maxime Tuillier, leaned on
a chair for support. His face was pale and drawn. His jaw had fallen.
Jim Barnett turned and spoke to him in his normal voice.
“Am I right, Monsieur Tuillier? The scene has been reproduced correctly
in all essential details, hasn’t it? My rendering of the part you
played the other night was pretty accurate? Don’t you think I’ve
reconstructed the crime rather cleverly—your crime?”
Maxime Tuillier seemed not to hear the words. His head was bowed; his
arms hung limp. He was a mere husk of a man, all the life gone out of
him. He reeled drunkenly, sagged at the knees, and collapsed on the
chair.
Barnett was at him at once, jerking him roughly to his feet.
“You admit it? But anyway, nothing can save you. I can prove
everything. First, that knuckle-duster—you always carried one. Then,
you were ruined by your losses at baccarat that night. Investigations
have established the fact that you were in financial straits. You had
no money with which to meet your creditors at the end of the month. You
were on the verge of bankruptcy. When you followed Erstein into the
Round Room, you struck out, murderously. Afterwards, not knowing what
to do with your weapon, you climbed over on to the other balcony and
hid it in the flower-box. Then you altered the hands of the dead man’s
watch to establish your alibi, and joined your friends!”
But Barnett’s eloquent denunciation was unnecessary. Maxime Tuillier
made no attempt at denial. Overwhelmed by the terrible burden of crime
under which he had labored for weeks, he stammered out the confession
of his guilt like a man in delirium.
The onlookers were roused almost to frenzy. The examining magistrates
bent over the murderer and took down his involuntary, unprompted
confession. Paul Erstein’s father tried to hurl himself upon his son’s
slayer. Fougeraie’s voice was raised excitedly. But the most rabid were