“And how could he have left his father’s house?”
“In a trap, quite simply.”
“Who drove it?”
“The father. This morning the sergeant and I saw the trap and spoke to the father, who was going to market as usual. The son was hidden under the tilt. He took the train at Pompignat and is in Paris by now.”
Rénine’s explanation, as promised, had taken hardly five minutes. He had based it solely on logic and the probabilities of the case. And yet not a jot was left of the distressing mystery in which they were floundering. The darkness was dispelled. The whole truth appeared.
Madame de Gorne wept for joy and Jérôme Vignal thanked the good genius who was changing the course of events with a stroke of his magic wand.
“Shall we examine those footprints together, Mr. Deputy?” asked Rénine. “Do you mind? The mistake which the sergeant and I made this morning was to investigate only the footprints left by the alleged murderer and to neglect Mathias de Gorne’s. Why indeed should they have attracted our attention? Yet it was precisely there that the crux of the whole affair was to be found.”
They stepped into the orchard and went to the well. It did not need a long examination to observe that many of the footprints were awkward, hesitating, too deeply sunk at the heel and toe and differing from one another in the angle at which the feet were turned.
“This clumsiness was unavoidable,” said Rénine. “Mathias de Gorne would have needed a regular apprenticeship before his backward progress could have equalled his ordinary gait; and both his father and he must have been aware of this, at least as regards the zigzags which you see here since old de Gorne went out of his way to tell the sergeant that his son had had too much drink.” And he added “Indeed it was the detection of this falsehood that suddenly enlightened me. When Madame de Gorne stated that her husband was not drunk, I thought of the footprints and guessed the truth.”
The deputy frankly accepted his part in the matter and began to laugh:
“There’s nothing left for it but to send detectives after the bogus corpse.”
“On what grounds, Mr. Deputy?” asked Rénine. “Mathias de Gorne has committed no offence against the law. There’s nothing criminal in trampling the soil around a well, in shifting the position of a revolver that doesn’t belong to you, in firing three shots or in walking backwards to one’s father’s house. What can we ask of him? The sixty thousand francs? I presume that this is not M. Vignal’s intention and that he does not mean to bring a charge against him?”
“Certainly not,” said Jérôme.
“Well, what then? The insurance-policy in favour of the survivor? But there would be no misdemeanour unless the father claimed payment. And I should be greatly surprised if he did. … Hullo, here the old chap is! You’ll soon know all about it.”
Old de Gorne was coming along, gesticulating as he walked. His easygoing features were screwed up to express sorrow and anger.
“Where’s my son?” he cried. “It seems the brute’s killed him! … My poor Mathias dead! Oh, that scoundrel of a Vignal!”
And he shook his fist at Jérôme.
The deputy said, bluntly:
“A word with you, M. de Gorne. Do you intend to claim your rights under a certain insurance-policy?”
“Well, what do you think?” said the old man, off his guard.
“The fact is … your son’s not dead. People are even saying that you were a partner in his little schemes and that you stuffed him under the tilt of your trap and drove him to the station.”
The old fellow spat on the ground, stretched out his hand as though he were going to take a solemn oath, stood for an instant without moving and then, suddenly, changing his mind and his tactics with ingenuous cynicism, he relaxed his features, assumed a conciliatory attitude and burst out laughing:
“That blackguard Mathias! So he tried to pass himself off as dead? What a rascal! And he reckoned on me to collect the insurance-money and send it to him? As if I should be capable of such a low, dirty trick! … You don’t know me, my boy!”
And, without waiting for more, shaking with merriment like a jolly old fellow amused by a funny story, he took his departure, not forgetting, however, to set his great hobnail boots on each of the compromising footprints which his son had left behind him.
Later, when Rénine went back to the manor to let Hortense out, he found that she had disappeared.
He called and asked for her at her cousin Ermelin’s. Hortense sent down word asking him to excuse her: she was feeling a little tired and was lying down.
“Capital!” thought Rénine. “Capital! She avoids me, therefore she loves me. The end is not far off.”
VIII
At the Sign of Mercury
To Madame Daniel,
La Roncière,
near Bassicourt.“Paris 30 November
“My Dearest Friend—
“There has been no letter from you for a fortnight; so I don’t expect now to receive one for that troublesome date of the 5th of December, which we fixed as the last day of our partnership. I rather wish it would come, because you will then be released from a contract which no longer seems to give you pleasure. To me the seven battles which we fought and won together were a time of endless delight and enthusiasm. I was living beside you. I was conscious of all the good which that more active and stirring existence was doing you. My happiness was so great that I dared not speak of it to you or let you see anything of my secret feelings except my desire to please you and my passionate devotion. Today you have had enough of your brother in arms. Your will shall be law.
“But,
