Complete works of a e w.., p.36
Complete Works of a E W Mason, page 36
A shuffling step which merged into the next step with a curiously slovenly sound rose from the courtyard.
“It was time we made our little arrangements,” said Hanaud in an undertone. “For here comes our hero from the Steppes.”
Jim popped his head through the doorway.
“Monsieur Hanaud!” he whispered excitedly. “Monsieur Hanaud! It cannot be wise to leave those windows open on the courtyard. For if we can hear a footstep so loudly in this room, anything said in this room will be easily overheard in the court.”
“But how true that is!” Hanaud replied in the same voice and struck his forehead with his fist in anger at his folly. “But what are we to do? The day is so hot. This room will be an oven. The ladies and Waberski will all faint. Besides, I have an officer in plain clothes already stationed in the court to see that it is kept empty. Yes, we will risk it.”
Jim drew back.
“That man doesn’t welcome advice from anyone,” he said indignantly, but he said it only to himself; and almost before he had finished, the bell rang. A few seconds afterwards Gaston entered.
“Monsieur Boris,” he said.
“Yes,” said Hanaud with a nod. “And will you tell the ladies that we are ready?”
Boris Waberski, a long, round-shouldered man with bent knees and clumsy feet, dressed in black and holding a soft black felt hat in his hand, shambled quickly into the room and stopped dead at the sight of Hanaud. Hanaud bowed and Waberski returned the bow; and then the two men stood looking at one another — Hanaud all geniality and smiles, Waberski a rather grotesque figure of uneasiness like one of those many grim caricatures carved by the imagination of the Middle Ages on the columns of the churches of Dijon. He blinked in perplexity at the detective and with his long, tobacco-stained fingers tortured his grey moustache.
“Will you be seated?” said Hanaud politely. “I think that the ladies will not keep us waiting.”
He pointed towards a chair in front of the writing-table but on his left hand and opposite to the door.
“I don’t understand,” said Waberski doubtfully. “I received a message. I understood that the examining magistrate had sent for me.”
“I am his agent,” said Hanaud. “I am—” and he stopped. “Yes?”
Boris Waberski stared. “I said nothing.”
“I beg your pardon. I am — Hanaud.” He shot the name out quickly, but he was answered by no start, nor by any sign of recognition.
“Hanaud?” Waberski shook his head. “That no doubt should be sufficient to enlighten me,” he said with a smile, “but it is better to be frank — it doesn’t.”
“Hanaud of the Sûreté of Paris.”
And upon Waberski’s face there came slowly a look of utter consternation.
“Oh!” he said, and again “Oh!” with a lamentable look towards the door as if he was in two minds whether to make a bolt of it. Hanaud pointed again to the chair, and Waberski murmured, “Yes — to be sure,” and made a little run to it and sank down.
Jim Frobisher, watching from his secret place, was certain of one thing. Boris Waberski had not written the anonymous letters to Betty, nor had he contributed the information about Hanaud to the writer. He might well have been thought to have been acting ignorance of Hanaud’s name, up to the moment when Hanaud explained who Hanaud was. But no longer. His consternation then was too genuine.
“You will understand, of course, that an accusation so serious as the one you have brought against Mademoiselle Harlowe demands the closest inquiry,” Hanaud continued without any trace of irony, “and the examining magistrate in charge of the case honoured us in Paris with a request for help.”
“Yes, it is very difficult,” replied Boris Waberski, twisting about as if he was a martyr on red-hot plates.
But the difficulty was Waberski’s, as Jim, with that distressed man in full view, was now able to appreciate. Waberski had rushed to the Prefecture when no answer came from Messrs. Frobisher and Haslitt to his letter of threats, and had brought his charge in a spirit of disappointment and rancour, with a hope no doubt that some offer of cash would be made to him and that he could withdraw it. Now he found the trained detective service of France upon his heels, asking for his proofs and evidence. This was more than he had bargained for.
“I thought,” Hanaud continued easily, “that a little informal conversation between you and me and the two young ladies, without shorthand writers or secretaries, might be helpful.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Waberski hopefully.
“As a preliminary of course,” Hanaud added dryly, “a preliminary to the more serious and now inevitable procedure.”
Waberski’s gleam of hopefulness was extinguished. “To be sure,” he murmured, plucking at his lean throat nervously. “Cases must proceed.”
“That is what they are there for,” said Hanaud sententiously; and the door of the library was pushed open. Betty came into the room with Ann Upcott immediately behind her.
“You sent for me,” she began to Hanaud, and then she saw Boris Waberski. Her little head went up with a jerk, her eyes smouldered. “Monsieur Boris,” she said, and again she spoke to Hanaud. “Come to take possession, I suppose?” Then she looked round the room for Jim Frobisher, and exclaimed in a sudden dismay:
“But I understood that—” and Hanaud was just in time to stop her from mentioning any name.
“All in good time, Mademoiselle,” he said quickly. “Let us take things in their order.”
Betty took her old place in the window-seat. Ann Upcott shut the door and sat down in a chair a little apart from the others. Hanaud folded up his newspaper and laid it aside. On the big blotting-pad which was now revealed lay one of those green files which Jim Frobisher had noticed in the office of the Sûreté. Hanaud opened it and took up the top paper. He turned briskly to Waberski.
“Monsieur, you state that on the night of the 27th of April, this girl here, Betty Harlowe, did wilfully give to her adoptive mother and benefactress Jeanne-Marie Harlowe an overdose of a narcotic by which her death was brought about.”
“Yes,” said Waberski with an air of boldness, “I declare that.”
“You do not specify the narcotic?”
“It was probably morphine, but I cannot be sure.”
“And administered, according to you, if this summary which I hold here is correct, in the glass of lemonade which Madame Harlowe had always at her bedside.”
“Yes.”
Hanaud laid the sheet of foolscap down again.
“You do not charge the nurse, Jeanne Baudin, with complicity in this crime?” he asked.
“Oh, no!” Waberski exclaimed with a sort of horror, with his eyes open wide and his eyebrows running up his forehead towards his hedge of wiry hair. “I have not a suspicion of Jeanne Baudin. I pray you, Monsieur Hanaud, to be clear upon that point. There must be no injustice! No! Oh, it is well that I came here to — day! Jeanne Baudin! Listen! I would engage her to nurse me tomorrow, were my health to fail.”
“One cannot say more than that,” replied Hanaud with a grave sympathy. “I only asked you the question because undoubtedly Jeanne Baudin was in Madame’s bedroom when Mademoiselle entered it to wish Madame good night and show off her new dancing-frock.”
“Yes, I understand,” said Waberski. He was growing more and more confident, so suave and friendly was this Monsieur Hanaud of the Surety. “But the fatal drug was slipped into that glass without a doubt when Jeanne Baudin was not looking. I do not accuse her. No! It is that hard one,” and his voice began to shake and his mouth to work, “who slipped it in and then hurried off to dance till morning, whilst her victim died. It is terrible, that! Yes, Monsieur Hanaud, it is terrible. My poor sister!”
“Sister-in-law.” The correction came with an acid calm from an arm-chair near the door in which Ann Upcott was reclining.
“Sister to me!” replied Waberski mournfully, and he turned to Hanaud. “Monsieur, I shall never cease to reproach myself. I was away fishing in the forest. If I had stayed at home! Think of it! I ask you to—” and his voice broke.
“Yes, but you did come back, Monsieur Waberski,” Hanaud said, “and this is where I am perplexed. You loved your sister. That is clear, since you cannot even think of her without tears.”
“Yes, yes.” Waberski shaded his eyes with his hand.
“Then why did you, loving her so dearly, wait for so long before you took any action to avenge her death? There will be some good reason, not a doubt, but I have not got it.” Hanaud continued, spreading out his hands. “Listen to the dates. Your dear sister dies on the night of the 27th of April. You return home on the 28th; and you do nothing, you bring no charge, you sit all quiet. She is buried on the 30th, and after that you still do nothing, you sit all quiet. It is not until one week after that you launch your accusation against Mademoiselle. Why? I beg you, Monsieur Waberski, not to look at me between the fingers, for the answer is not written on my face, and to explain this difficulty to me.”
The request was made in the same pleasant, friendly voice which Hanaud had used so far and without any change of intonation. But Waberski snatched his hand away from his forehead and sat up with a flush on his face.
“I answer you at once,” he exclaimed. “From the first I knew it here,” and he thumped his heart with his fist, “that murder had been committed. But as yet I did not know it here,” and he patted his forehead, in my head. So I think and I think and I think. I see reasons and motives. They build themselves up. A young girl of beauty and style, but of a strange and secret character, thirsting in her heart for colour and laughter and enjoyment and the power which her beauty offers her if she will but grasp it, and yet while thirsting, very able to conceal all sign of thirst. That is the picture I give you of that hard one, Betty Harlowe.”
For the first time since the interview had commenced, Betty herself showed some interest in it. Up till now she had sat without a movement, a figure of disdain in an ice-house of pride. Now she flashed into life. She leaned forward, her elbow on her crossed knee, her chin propped in her hand, her eyes on Waberski, and a smile of amusement at this analysis of herself giving life to her face. Jim Frobisher, on the other hand, behind his door felt that he was listening to blasphemies. Why did Hanaud endure it? There was information, he had said, which he wanted to get from Boris Waberski. The point on which he wanted information was settled long ago, at the very beginning of this informal session. It was as clear as daylight that Waberski had nothing to do with Betty’s anonymous letter. Why, then, should Hanaud give this mountebank of a fellow a free opportunity to slander Betty Harlowe? Why should he question and question as if there were solid weight in the accusation? Why, in a word, didn’t he fling open this door, allow Frobisher to produce the blackmailing letters to Mr. Haslitt, and then stand aside while Boris Waberski was put into that condition in which he would call upon the services of Jeanne Baudin? Jim indeed was furiously annoyed with Monsieur Hanaud. He explained to himself that he was disappointed.
Meanwhile, Boris Waberski, after a little nervous check when Betty had leaned forward, continued his description.
“For such a one Dijon would be tiresome. It is true there was each year a month or so at Monte Carlo, just enough to give one a hint of what might be, like a cigarette to a man who wants to smoke. And then back to Dijon! Ah, Monsieur, not the Dijon of the Dukes of Burgundy, not even the Dijon of the Parliament of the States, but the Dijon of today, an ordinary, dull, provincial town of France which keeps nothing of its former gaieties and glory but some old rare buildings and a little spirit of mockery. Imagine, then, Monsieur, this hard one with a fortune and freedom within her grasp if only she has the boldness on some night when Monsieur Boris is out of the way to seize them! Nor is that all. For there is an invalid in the house to whom attentions are owed — yes, and must be given.” Waberski, in a flight of excitement, checked himself and half closed his eyes, with a little cunning nod. “For the invalid was not so easy. No, even that dear one had her failings. Oh, yes, and we will not forget them when the moment comes for the extenuating pleas. No, indeed,” and he flung his arm out nobly. “I myself will be the first to urge them to the judge of the Assizes when the verdict is given.”
Betty Harlowe leaned back once more indifferent. From an arm-chair near the door, a little gurgle of laughter broke from the lips of Ann Upcott. Even Hanaud smiled. “Yes, yes,” he said; “but we have not got quite as far as the Court of Assizes, Monsieur Waberski. We are still at the point where you know it in your heart but not in your head.”
“That is so,” Waberski returned briskly. “On the 7th of May, a Saturday, I bring my accusation to the Prefecture. Why? For, on the morning of that day I am certain. I know it at last here, too,” and up went his hand to his forehead, and he hitched himself forward on to the edge of his chair.
“I am in the street of Gambetta, one of the small popular new streets, a street with some little shops and a reputation not of the best. At ten o’clock I am passing quickly through that street when from a little shop a few yards in front of me out pops that hard one, my niece.”
Suddenly the whole character of that session had changed. Jim Frobisher, though he sat apart from it, felt the new tension, and was aware of the new expectancy. A moment ago Boris Waberski as he sat talking and gesticulating had been a thing for ridicule, almost for outright laughter. Now, though his voice still jumped hysterically from high notes to low notes and his body jerked like a marionette’s, he held the eyes of everyone — everyone, that is, except Betty Harlowe. He was no longer vague. He was speaking of a definite hour and a place and of a definite incident which happened there.
“Yes, in that bad little street I see her. I do not believe my senses. I step into a little narrow alley and I peep round the corner. I peep with my eyes,” and Waberski pointed to them with two of his fingers as though there was something peculiarly convincing in the fact that he peeped with them and not with his elbows, “and I am sure. Then I wait until she is out of sight, and I creep forward to see what shop it is she visited in that little street of squalor. Once more I do not believe my eyes. For over the door I read the name, Jean Cladel, Herbalist.”
He pronounced the name in a voice of triumph and sat back in his chair, nodding his head violently at intervals of a second. There was not a sound in the room until Hanaud’s voice broke the silence.
“I don’t understand,” he said softly. “Who is this Jean Cladel, and why should a young lady not visit his shop?”
“I beg your pardon,” Waberski replied. “You are not of Dijon. No! or you would not have asked that question. Jean Cladel has no better name than the street he very suitably lives in. Ask a Dijonnais about Jean Cladel, and you will see how he becomes silent and shrugs his shoulders as if here was a topic on which it was becoming to be silent. Better still, Monsieur Hanaud, ask at the Prefecture. Jean Cladel! Twice he has been tried for selling prohibited drugs.”
Hanaud was stung at last out of his calm. “What is that?” he cried in a sharp voice.
“Yes, twice, Monsieur. Each time he has scraped through, that is true. He has powerful friends, and witnesses have been spirited away. But he is known! Jean Cladel! Yes, Jean Cladel!”
“Jean Cladel, Herbalist of the street Gambetta,” Hanaud repeated slowly. “But” — and he leaned back in an easier attitude— “you will see my difficulty, Monsieur Waberski. Ten o’clock is a public hour. It is not a likely hour for anyone to choose for so imprudent a visit, even if that one were stupid.”
“Yes, and so I reasoned too,” Waberski interposed quickly. “As I told you, I could not believe my eyes. But I made sure — oh, there was no doubt, Monsieur Hanaud. And I thought to myself this. Crimes are discovered because criminals, even the acutest, do sooner or later some foolish thing. Isn’t it so? Sometimes they are too careful; they make their proofs too perfect for an imperfect world. Sometimes they are too careless or are driven by necessity to a rash thing. But somehow a mistake is made and justice wins the game.”
Hanaud smiled. “Aha! a student of crime, Monsieur!” He turned to Betty, and it struck upon Jim Frobisher with a curious discomfort that this was the first time Hanaud had looked directly at Betty since the interview had begun. “And what do you say to this story, Mademoiselle?”
“It is a lie,” she answered quietly.
“You did not visit Jean Cladel in the street of Gambetta at ten o’clock on the morning of the 7th of May?”
“I did not, Monsieur.” Waberski smiled and twisted his moustache.
“Of course! Of course! We could not expect Mademoiselle to admit it. One fights for one’s skin, eh?”
“But, after all,” Hanaud interrupted, with enough savagery in his voice to check all Waberski’s complacency, “let us not forget that on the 7th of May, Madame Harlowe had been dead for ten days. Why should Mademoiselle still be going to the shop of Jean Cladel?”
“To pay,” said Waberski. “Oh, no doubt Jean Cladel’s wares are expensive and have to be paid for more than once, Monsieur.”
“By wares you mean poison,” said Hanaud. “Let us be explicit.”
“Yes.”
“Poison which was used to murder Madame Harlowe.”
“I say so,” Waberski declared, folding his arms across his breast.
“Very well,” said Hanaud. He took from his green file a second paper written over in a fine hand and emphasized by an official stamp. “Then what will you say, Monsieur, if I tell you that the body of Madame Harlowe has been exhumed?” Hanaud continued, and Waberski’s face lost what little colour it had. He stared at Hanaud, his jaw working up and down nervously, and he did not say a word.
“And what will you say if I tell you,” Hanaud continued, “that no more morphia was discovered in it than one sleeping-dose would explain and no trace at all of any other poison?”
