Monsieur Jonquelle (17 page)

“I have already determined it,” replied Jonquelle.

“And what was it, Monsieur, since you have determined it?”

“It was despair!” replied the Prefect of Police. “Do you know what Dernburg Pasha was doing in Paris?”

The Envoy's eyes narrowed. He looked at Jonquelle a moment as in a furtive inquiry.

“I do not,” he said. “What was his mission in Paris, Monsieur?”

“You will be surprised to learn it,” continued the Prefect of Police. “Dernburg was undertaking
to falsify a work of art. It was a very remarkable work of art, and one of value. The persons who originally produced this work of art expended a great sum of money, an almost incredible sum of money, to perfect it. If one could falsify it successfully, one could make a fortune at the venture. Dernburg knew this. He had thought about it for a long time. He had conducted a great number of experiments. Finally he was satisfied that the thing could be successfully done, and he came here from Stamboul, took this abandoned house in the Faubourg St. Germain, brought with him his devices, and prepared to undertake the great thing which he had in mind. Then, Monsieur, before the thing could be accomplished, the mysterious visitor appeared; and this morning Dernburg is dead.”

It was evident that the Oriental was profoundly puzzled.

“I do not understand you, Monsieur,” he said. “You say that Dernburg Pasha had perfected a method by which he intended to falsify a work of art?”

“Yes, Monsieur.”

“Then he was called upon by one who knew of this method and wished to rob him of it?”

“No, Monsieur.”

“Then by those to whom the original of the art
belonged, and wished to prevent this falsification?”

“No, Monsieur,” replied the Prefect of Police. “Dernburg Pasha's death resulted from a sense of despair.”

Jonquelle took his hand from his pocket, revealed the thing upon which his fingers had closed when he sat down to this conference. He opened his hand so that the thing was visible. It looked like a little square box of some white substance, as of marble or chalk or alabaster. It was not larger than two inches square. It was, perhaps, an inch thick, made in two pieces. There was a tiny hole, like a keyhole with a beveled edge, on the line where these pieces joined. The box had a heavy rubber band about it. It lay for a moment exposed in the palm of Monsieur Jonquelle's hand.

“I have here,” he said, “the thing that was the cause of this man's death. It was also the cause of his misfortunes leading up to this fatal morning. It has been an obsession with him. In the German Empire he undertook this thing. His design was discovered, and he fled to Turkey. But he took his obsession with him, and when the war was ended, he saw a method of getting an indemnity out of France with it—a method by which he could enrich himself at the cost of France. He worked out his plan carefully; he came to Paris;
he got this house. He was ready to put his plan into effect when, unfortunately for him, the mysterious visitor of last night appeared.

“Dernburg was shrewd, unscrupulous and farsighted. But he was not shrewd enough, and he was not farsighted enough. The stranger, who came to see him last night, knew all about him, knew every detail of his activities, knew the big plan that he had in mind. He had watched him, had followed his career. He knew the very day that he came to Paris. He knew his object in taking this empty house in the Faubourg St. Germain. He knew every step of the secret arrangements which Dernburg had perfected for the carrying out of his scheme; and at the opportune hour he entered this house. These are the facts, Monsieur, which I have accurately ascertained, which are true beyond doubt.”

“And so,” said the Oriental, “this mysterious stranger finally ran Dernburg Pasha to earth here and killed him.”

The Prefect of Police arrested the man's discourse with a gesture.

“You travel, Monsieur,” he said, “a point beyond my conclusions. Do we know that this midnight visitor is the assassin? We must consider the evidences as they are presented to us.”

“The evidences are conclusive of this fact,” replied the Envoy, “if circumstantial evidences
can ever be conclusive of a murder. Here is the opportunity, the quarrel, the dead man remaining in the library, blood drops falling from the weapon on this drawing-room floor as he hastily crossed it, and the escape over the wall of the garden.”

“But, Monsieur,” said the Prefect of Police, “where is the motive? The writers on the value of indicatory evidences, in the investigation of a criminal case, tell us that there should be time, opportunity and motive. The time, Monsieur, and the opportunity are here, plainly indicated; but the motive? Where shall we look for that?”

The Oriental turned, as with an inspiration, in his chair.

“Why, Monsieur,” he said, “you spoke at considerable length upon the motive. You seemed to know it quite well. You conceal, as you have indicated, the somewhat concrete evidence of it in your hand.”

“Quite true, Monsieur,” replied the Prefect of Police; “but you will observe that it is I who am familiar with this motive. It is I who have what you are pleased to call ‘this concrete evidence' in my hand. And that brings me to an interesting hypothesis with three phases to be considered. Let us consider them, Monsieur! I name them in the order in which they occur to me: first, Monsieur, that I killed the man; second, that you
killed him; and third, that the agency that killed Dernburg Pasha is no longer living in this world.”

The Oriental turned suddenly, his face contracted and tense, but his voice firm.

“Very well, Monsieur,” he said; “whither do these suggestions lead you?”

Jonquelle continued in an even voice.

“To arrive at that,” he said, “we must first consider the evidences which have led us to believe that Dernburg was killed by the man with whom he quarreled last night in the library. Now, if you please, Monsieur, we will look a little at the indicatory signs.”

He paused.

“There is always this disturbing feature about circumstantial evidence, the trick of pointing in the direction that one is going. If one has a conclusion, one will find that the circumstantial evidence supports it. You have a theory, Monsieur, that this visitor was Dernburg's assassin, and consequently, to you, the indicatory evidence supports that theory. But, Monsieur, I have the theory that the visitor was not the assassin, and I bid you observe how the indicatory evidences will turn themselves about in order to support the theory which I maintain. Take, for example, these blood drops on the marble floor of the drawing-room. In support of your theory, they have fallen by hazard from the assassin's knife in his flight, and
you would cite them as confirmatory of your theory.

“Now, Monsieur, I would cite them also as confirmatory of mine.

“You will observe that each of these seven blood drops has fallen on a white square of this checkered marble floor. There is no drop of blood on a black square. Why, Monsieur, should these drops appear only on the white squares? I consider that fact with my theory in mind, and I conclude that they so appear because the one who placed them there wished them to be seen. We cannot conceive that he would undertake to create evidence against himself. And it is beyond our conception of coincidence that each of these seven blood drops should, by accident, have fallen precisely on a white square when there was an equal number of black squares intervening. Therefore, Monsieur, these evidences did not come by chance; they came by design.”

He continued like one who recites the details of a formula:

“I find my theory also confirmed at a farther point. You explained to me, when I inquired, that the assassin, after fleeing through this drawing-room into the walled garden, had escaped by climbing over the wall, since the gate was nailed up and had been so nailed up for a long time. Now, Monsieur, I caused this wall to be examined.
The whole of the top of it is coated over with dust. At no point has any of this dust been removed; consequently the assassin did not escape by climbing over the wall, for if he had undertaken to climb the wall at any point, his body, in that labor, would have removed the coating of dust. You see, Monsieur, I do not find your indicatory evidences designed to support your theory. They seem rather conclusively to establish my own.”

He made a vague gesture as though to dismiss the matter.

“And so, Monsieur, we find ourselves before the triangular hypothesis! Did I murder Dernburg Pasha, or did you, or was he, in fact, murdered at all?”

The Oriental looked at the man in a sort of wonder.

“He was surely murdered,” he said.

The Prefect of Police spoke like one in some reflection.

“It is by no means certain.”

“Not certain?” echoed the Envoy. “The man is dead!”

“One may be dead without having been murdered,” replied the Prefect of Police. “It is possible that the hand that gave Dernburg Pasha his fatal wound is no longer alive in this world.”

The Turkish Envoy made an exclamation of surprise.

“You cannot mean that Dernburg Pasha was murdered by a dead man!”

“It is a conceivable theory,” replied Monsieur Jonquelle, “that Dernburg Pasha was struck down by a hand that we can no longer consider to be living.

“But if you please, we will take up these theories in their order. Did I murder Dernburg Pasha? It is an interesting hypothesis, and I should be glad to consider it at some length. But it seems to require no extended deductions to conclude it. We have shown that the mysterious visitor who called on Dernburg last night was not his assassin, because the evidences which seem so to indicate were laid down by design and did not come about by accident. They were laid down by the intention of some person, some person who wished to establish that this visitor
was
the assassin. But the visitor himself could not have wished to establish that he was the assassin; consequently he could not have made these indicatory evidences, and therefore he was not the assassin of Dernburg Pasha.”

He paused.

“And now, Monsieur, as I was the visitor who called on Dernburg Pasha last night, it must be
clear that I was not the assassin that struck him down. These conclusions may seem to interlock with a slight obscurity. But if you reflect upon them, Monsieur, you will observe that they are sound and convincing.”

There was a moment's silence. The Oriental did not speak, and the Prefect of Police continued:

“Now, Monsieur, we approach the second hypothesis: did you murder Dernburg Pasha?

“Here, Monsieur, one finds himself confronted with certain difficulties. You took charge of this house the moment it was ascertained that the man was dead.”

The Envoy interrupted:

“I did, Monsieur. As a representative of the Turkish Government, it was my duty to take charge at once of the property of one of its murdered citizens. I came at once and took charge of it.”

“That is true, Monsieur,” continued the Prefect of Police. “You came as you had the right to do, and you took over this house as it was your duty to do. And from this base we may go forward with the hypothesis in its first inquiry— namely, did I create these false evidences on the floor of this drawing-room, or did you, or did the agency not now living undertake it?

“Now Monsieur, let us consider these suggestions in a reverse order. If Dernburg Pasha was
struck down by a hand not moving alive in the world after he died on the floor of the library yonder, then such a hand could not have gone forward with the manufacture of these false evidences of his assassination, and we may dismiss it. I cannot have manufactured them, Monsieur, because it is not conceivable that one undertaking the assassination would construct evidence of his crime to convict himself. Therefore, Monsieur, by elimination, we seem to arrive at the conclusion that it was you who manufactured them.”

The Envoy's face seemed to form itself into a sort of plastic mask.

“Now,” Jonquelle went on, “if you manufactured them, Monsieur, it was with a deliberate object. That object would be to fasten the crime upon another. But one does not undertake to fasten a crime upon another without an adequate reason in himself. Now, what reason, Monsieur, could you have had for wishing to establish that I, who called upon Dernburg late last night, had accomplished his murder and fled, carefully dropping splotches of blood on the white squares of the floor of this drawing-room, and escaping over a wall covered with a coating of dust which I did not remove? What could have been your object in undertaking to establish these facts, if you were yourself guiltless of his death?”

The man's reply was quite simple and without emotion.

“Why, Monsieur, should I wish to assassinate Dernburg Pasha?”

“Did you not wish to take over this house?” replied the Prefect of Police. “And if you took it over, you would take it over with what it contains. Let me show you, Monsieur, the treasure that it contains!”

He stooped over, slipped the point of a knife-blade under one of the large white marble squares in the drawing-room floor, and lifted it up.

These squares had been laid down on wooden sills, nailed together, and floored over underneath. Each square had, therefore, a sort of wooden pocket beneath it. This wooden pocket under the white square that Monsieur Jonquelle removed was filled with gold pieces.

The Oriental, bending over, made a profound exclamation of surprise. He remained immovable in an overwhelming wonder. That the man was amazed at something of which, up to that moment, he had not had the slightest conception, was clearly evident.

Monsieur Jonquelle permitted the marble square to go back into its place, and he returned to his chair. The Oriental sat down beyond him, speechless in his amazement. The Prefect of Police continued to speak as though the man's concern were not a thing which he had observed.

“And so you see, Monsieur, we have here the motive, the opportunity, and the construction of
these false evidences, to indicate that you were the assassin of Dernburg Pasha. And again I beg you to observe how fatal it is to proceed with indicatory evidences when one wishes to establish a theory. It is fortunate, Monsieur, that it is I who considered these evidences against you, for it is I who know that Dernburg Pasha was dead when you arrived in this house.”