“I thought I said no one was to disturb me, sergeant?”
The sergeant took a pace forward.
“I beg your pardon, Inspector, but I have important news for you.”
For this François Paul, whom the sergeant thus respectfully addressed as Inspector, was no other than an officer of the secret police who had been sent down to Beaulieu the day before from headquarters in Paris.
He was no ordinary officer. As if M. Havard had had an idea that the Langrune affair would prove to be puzzling and complicated, he had singled out the very best of his detectives, the most expert inspector of them all—Juve. It was Juve who for the last forty-eight hours had been prowling about the château of Beaulieu disguised as a tramp, and had had himself arrested with Bouzille that he might prosecute his own investigations without raising the slightest suspicion as to his real identity.
Juve made a face expressive of his vexation at the over-deferential attitude of the sergeant.
“Do pay attention!” he said low. “We are being watched. If I must go back with you, pretend to arrest me. Slip the handcuffs on me!”
“I beg your pardon, Inspector: I don’t like to,” the gendarme answered.
For all reply, Juve turned his back on him.
“Look here,” he said, “I will take a step or two forward as if I meant to run away; then you must put your hand on my shoulder roughly, and I will stumble; when I do, slip the bracelets on.”
From the mouth of the tunnel the platelayer, the foreman and the navvies all followed with their eyes the unintelligible conversation passing between the gendarme and the tramp a hundred yards away. Suddenly they saw the man try to get off and the sergeant seize him almost simultaneously. A few minutes later the individual, with his hands linked together in front of him, was obediently descending the steep slope of the embankment, by the gendarme’s side, and then the two men disappeared behind a clump of trees.
“I understand why that chap was not very keen on getting taken on here,” said the foreman. “His conscience was none too easy!”
As they walked briskly in the direction of Beaulieu Juve asked the sergeant:
“What has happened at the château, then?”
“They know who the murderer is, Inspector,” the sergeant answered. “Little Mlle. Thérèse—”
VI
“Fantômas, It Is Death!”
Hurrying back towards the château with the sergeant, Juve ran into M. de Presles outside the park gate. The magistrate had just arrived from Brives in a motorcar which he had commandeered for his personal use during the last few days.
“Well,” said Juve in his quiet, measured tones, “have you heard the news?” And as the magistrate looked at him in surprise he went on: “I gather from your expression that you have not. Well, sir, if you will kindly fill up a warrant we will arrest M. Charles Rambert.”
Juve briefly repeated to the magistrate what the sergeant had reported to him, and the sergeant added a few further details. The three men had now reached the foot of the steps before the house and were about to go up when the door of the château was opened and Dollon appeared. He hurried towards them, with unkempt hair and haggard face, and excitedly exclaimed:
“Didn’t you meet the Ramberts? Where are they? Where are they?”
The magistrate, who was bewildered by what Juve had told him, was trying to form a coherent idea of the whole sequence of events, but the detective realised the situation at once, and turned to the sergeant.
“The bird has flown,” he said. The sergeant threw up his hands in dismay.
Inside the hall Juve and M. de Presles ordered Dollon to give them an exact account of the discovery made by Thérèse in the course of the previous night.
“Well, gentlemen,” said the old fellow, who was greatly upset by the discovery of the murderer of the Marquise de Langrune, “when I got to the château early this morning I found the two old servants, Marie and Louise, entirely occupied attending to the young mistress. Marie slept in an adjoining room to hers last night, and was awakened about five o’clock by the poor child’s inarticulate cries. Mlle. Thérèse was bathed in perspiration; her face was all drawn and there were dark rings under her eyes; she was sleeping badly and evidently having a dreadful nightmare. She half woke up several times and muttered some unintelligible words to Marie, who thought that it was the result of over-excitement. But about six o’clock, just as I arrived, Mlle. Thérèse really woke up, and bursting into a fit of sobbing and crying, repeated the names of her grandmother and the Ramberts and the Baronne de Vibray. She kept on saying, ‘The murderer! the murderer!’ and making all sorts of signs of terror, but we were not able to get from her a clear statement of what it was all about. I felt her pulse and found she was very feverish, and Louise prepared a cooling drink, which she persuaded her to take. In about twenty minutes—it was then nearly half-past six—Mlle. Thérèse quietened down, and managed to tell us what she had heard during the night, and the dreadful interview and conversation between M. Rambert and his son which she had seen and overheard.”
“What did you do then?” enquired M. de Presles.
“I was dreadfully upset myself, sir, and I sent Jean, the coachman, to
