Monsieur Jonquelle (16 page)

The American, amazed and in a profound interest, moved to where he stood on the border of the terrace before the woman in the chair. The woman alone seemed beyond any concern. She neither moved nor spoke. She smiled vaguely, maintaining her posture of repose. The American could not conceal his profound interest.

“Not an accident!” he said. “What do you mean?”

Monsieur Jonquelle held the web up in his fingers, struck a match, and touched the web with the flame. There was no flash. The filaments of the web shriveled a little under the heat.

“I mean,” said Monsieur Jonquelle, “that a spider-web is not inflammable, and therefore the basement of this house could not have taken fire from the flame of a candle.”

After that, two events seemed to happen as though they were timed. The woman laughed,
and the infuriated American lunged toward her; but Monsieur Jonquelle's foot caught his ankle with a swift outward turn, and the man plunged headlong on the terrace. He got a heavy fall, for all the vigor of the infuriated creature was in action.

What followed seemed to attend with an equal swiftness. The two footmen of the Princess Kitzenzof were over the prostrate figure. Instantly his hands and feet were secured; a gag was in his mouth, and they had removed him.

It was all like a flawless scene in a drama, rehearsed to a perfection of detail. In thirty seconds it was ended.

“Monsieur,” said the woman in the chair, “you are very clever, and your agents are perfect.”

She did not move during the whole violence of the scene, and her voice was now in no whit changed. It was the same detached, unemotional voice. She removed her hands from the arms of the chair and extended them, the slender wrists together.

“Do you wish me, also, to accept the
gage d'amour
of the
Service de la Sûreté
?”

Monsieur Jonquelle did not at once reply.

He went back to his chair. He lighted a cigarette, and he remained for some moments like a man at ease. Then he spoke.

“Tell me, Madame,” he said, “why did you destroy
this house in the Faubourg St. Germain?”

The woman replaced her hands on the arms of the chair.

“Monsieur,” she said, “at the end of life, in the face of a death that is inevitable, I have suddenly come to realize a thing that has been an inscrutable mystery to me.”

She extended her hand, on which was a plain, narrow, worn, gold band.

“This bracelet,” she said, “worth, perhaps, a dozen francs, was given me by Paul Verlain, a boy who loved me. He was killed at the Marne.”

She moved her hand, taking up an immense necklace of pearls, matched and priceless, that hung almost to her knees.

“This necklace,” she said, “was given me by Count de Lamare. He was killed in the great allied advance on the Somme.”

She extended her hand to include the place about her.

“This villa,” she said, “was given me by the Marquis de Nord. He died at Verdun.”

She paused.

“Monsieur,” she said, “I, a child of Montmartre, an apache, called ‘Casque d'Or' from the effect of my yellow hair, which I had been taught to put up as though it were the headdress of Minerva; I, who had faith in nothing, realized that these
men—Paul Verlain, who loved me, and who also loved life; Count de Lamare, who loved me, and who also loved pleasure; the Marquis de Nord, who loved me, and who also loved power—these men loved something other than me, or life, or pleasure, or power; loved it infinitely more; loved it beyond any measure of comparison, for they left these things and went eagerly to death for it.

“I thought about it, Monsieur. It obsessed me.”

She suddenly rose as with a single gesture, as though she had been lifted to her feet by invisible hands.

“Then suddenly, Monsieur, with a flash of vision, on that night when I was alone in the house in the Faubourg St. Germain, I understood this thing—I saw that the work in which Monsieur Dillard was engaged—that the prints with which the house was literally packed—would help to destroy the very thing which these men, Paul Verlain, Count de Lamare, and the Marquis de Nord, had given their lives to save.”

She spoke with a sudden, eager vigor.

“It would help to destroy France—and, therefore, I took a candle in my hand and burned it. Do you know what the valuable prints were with which this house in the Faubourg St. Germain was crowded on that night?”

“I do,” replied Monsieur Jonquelle. “Or I
should not have taken these elaborate precautions to secure the American, Dillard.

“The house in the Faubourg St. Germain was packed with conterfeit notes of all the high-denomination paper currency of the French Republic, printed, by this man, from plates etched by the German engraver, Wagenheim of Munich.”

The man's loose body seemed to have been packed into his clothing as though under a pressure. There was the vague note of victory in his voice.

“Monsieur,” he said, “no dead Frenchman has ever been valued to us at less than fifty thousand francs. He may have been a worthless vendor of roast chestnuts before the Madeleine, but if he died in Stamboul, he was straightway worth fifty thousand francs. You will observe, Monsieur, that your government has already fixed the price for murder.”

The Prefect of Police looked across the long, empty room at the closed door.

“But was this dead man a citizen of the Turkish Empire? We seem to have a memory of him.”

The Oriental smiled.

“Citizens,” he said, “are of two classes—your Foreign Office laid it down—the citizen which is born, and the citizen which is acquired. Each are valued to us at fifty thousand francs, as your schedule in the indemnities to the Sublime Porte
so clearly set it out. Dernburg Pasha was
acquired
, Monsieur. But he is dead! And the indemnity for him, as you have so admirably established it, is not subject to a discount.… You came from the Foreign Office, Monsieur?”

The Prefect of Police bowed. He put his hand into the pocket of his coat as with a casual gesture, his fingers closing over an article that lay concealed there.

The Envoy went on:

“I found the Minister Dellaux of an unfailing courtesy; if a subject of our empire has been murdered in Paris, an adequate indemnity would be paid.”

The scene at the Foreign Office, when he had been called in before the Minister, came up for an instant to Monsieur Jonquelle. The tall, elegant old man had been profoundly annoyed. This murder came at a vexatious moment, at precisely the moment when the Foreign Office was pressing for the indemnity on the French subjects slain in Stamboul. The very argument had been unfortunate. Stamboul must be made safe, and here was Paris unsafe! Here was Dernburg Pasha dead in the Faubourg St. Germain.

Monsieur Jonquelle had made no reply to the Minister. He had come down to the house in the Faubourg St. Germain of Paris; he had gone over it; he had examined everything; but he had made
no comment. Either he had arrived at no conclusion, or else he had a large knowledge of the affair, coupled with some definite plan.

It was an old house, maintaining in its essentials a departed elegance. The floor of the drawing-room was of alternate blocks of white and black marble, laid down like a chess-board. There was a door at one end leading into a small walled garden. On the other side of the drawing-room, directly opposite, there was another door of precisely the same character leading into a sort of library—the room in which Dernburg had been found in the morning, dead on the floor.

To the Envoy of the Turkish Government in Paris, this assassination had the aspect of a diplomatic affair. He had gone at once to the Foreign Office with his demand for an indemnity, and then he had come here into this drawing-room and sat down before the door until the matter should be settled.

“Monsieur is satisfied?” he said. “He has seen everything?”

“I have not quite seen everything,” replied Monsieur Jonquelle, his glance traveling to the slight bulge in the man's tight-fitting waistcoat pocket, “but I am entirely satisfied.”

“The evidences are complete, Monsieur,” said the Envoy, smiling. “Dernburg Pasha lived alone in this house. Late last night a Frenchman called
on him. They were in the room yonder together. The windows were open, although the shutters were closed. Persons passing on the street heard the victims distinctly—the voice of a Frenchman, Monsieur, and the voice of Dernburg Pasha. Is it not true?”

“Unfortunately, Monsieur, we cannot deny it. It is precisely the truth.”

“And it is true, also, Monsieur,” the man went on, “that these voices were raised as in anger or as in contention upon some point. The words did not carry accurately to the persons in the street, but the inflections of the words and the menace in them were not to be mistaken. It is established!”

“Quite established, Monsieur,” replied the Prefect of Police. Again the Oriental smiled.

“And it cannot be denied that Dernburg Pasha is dead. He was found this morning on the floor of the library yonder, with his throat cut—Monsieur has himself observed the indicatory evidences of this assassination.… The late visitor”—he looked up sharply—“Monsieur admits that he was a Frenchman?”

“Ah, yes,” replied the Prefect of Police, “the man was a Frenchman.”

The Envoy went on with his summary of the evidence.

“The late visitor, a Frenchman; the quarrel; the dead man remaining in the library; the spots
of blood on this floor that dripped from the weapon in the assassin's hand as he went out—he escaped from the door yonder into the garden and thence into the street: it is all certain, Monsieur?”

“It is all quite certain,” replied the Prefect. He paused then:

“But while the events are certain, I am not precisely certain that we have the same conception of them. For example, Monsieur, will you tell me how, in your opinion, the assassin escaped from the garden into the street? This garden was not used; the gate leading into the street is nailed up. I should be glad of your opinion on this point.”

“With pleasure,” replied the Oriental.

“The man escaped from the garden in the simplest fashion. He climbed over the wall, Monsieur. The wall is of no great height. It is entirely possible.”

Monsieur Jonquelle lifted his eyebrows like one relieved from a perplexity.

“Quite possible,” he said. “An assassin could have climbed over the wall without the slightest difficulty. I am obliged for your opinion on this manner of escape, Monsieur.”

For a moment he seemed to reflect; then he addressed another question to the Envoy.

“Monsieur,” he said, “there are blood drops on this floor.” He looked down at the marble extending to the closed door of the library beyond
them. “I should be glad to know how you think they came here.”

“The explanation is entirely clear,” replied the Turkish Envoy. “The assassin went out in haste with the knife in his hand, and these blood drops dripped from the point of it.”

“That would be possible, Monsieur,” replied Jonquelle. “That might happen!”

The Oriental stooped over a little and glanced along the floor.

“You have observed these blood drops, Monsieur? They are quite clear.”

“I have observed them closely,” replied the Prefect of Police. “There are seven of these blood drops. They are about the length of a man's step apart, and they are each clearly visible on a white square of the floor. Your explanation seems admirable, Monsieur.”

He turned suddenly from a contemplation of these evidences into a vague casuistry.

“Monsieur,” he said, “I have thought a great deal about chance evidences of crime. Do you suppose there are any laws of chance?”

The Oriental seemed to reflect.

“The very word ‘chance,' Monsieur,” he said, “precludes the running of any law. Events which result from the operation of law are naturally outside of the definition of the word ‘chance.'”

The Prefect of Police did not pause to discuss
this comment; he went on, as though the reply were merely an interruption of his discourse.

“Events,” he said, “all indicatory evidences in criminal investigation, we divide into two classes: those which happen by design and those which happen by chance. By
design
we mean by the will and intention of some individual, and by
chance
we mean all those events which happen outside of such an intention. Would you think, Monsieur, that there would be any distinguishing features, by virtue of which one might put indicatory evidences of a crime under one or the other of these heads?”

He continued as though he had entered upon a subject which engaged his attention too closely for the pauses of a dialogue, as though his inquiry were a mere form of statement and not intended for an answer.

“It is an immense and fascinating field for speculation. It seems to be the persistent belief of every human intelligence that it can, by design, create a sequence of indicatory evidences, which will have all the appearance of a happening by chance. But after long reflection and the study of innumerable instances, I have come to the conclusion that this thing cannot be done. It is my opinion that no human intelligence can grasp the vast ramification of events with a sufficient comprehension to enable it to lay down a sequence of
false evidences that will have, at every point, the aspect of a chance happening.”

He did not wait for a reply. He seemed to lose all interest in the subject with the closing word of his final sentence. He turned abruptly to another phase of the matter.

“Monsieur,” he said, “what, in your opinion, was the motive for this death of Dernburg?”

The Oriental replied at once.

“I do not know that, Monsieur,” he said. “But does it matter? We are not concerned to establish the motive for this murder. I do not care even to establish the identity of the assassin. We have established that he is French, and that is sufficient for the indemnity. You may determine the motive, if you like.”