“The deuce!” he exclaimed softly; “who can be coming to ring Gurn up when everybody in Paris knows he has been arrested?” and he felt mechanically in his pocket to make sure that his revolver was there. Then he smiled. “What a fool I am! Of course it is only Mme. Doulenques, wondering why I am staying here so long.”
He strode to the door, flung it wide open, and then recoiled in astonishment.
“You?” he exclaimed, surveying the caller from top to toe. “You? Charles Rambert! Or, I should say, Jérôme Fandor! Now what the deuce does this mean?”
XXIII
The Wreck of the Lancaster
Jérôme Fandor entered the room without a word. Juve closed the door behind him. The boy was very pale and manifestly much upset.
“What is the matter?” said Juve.
“Something terrible has happened,” the boy answered. “I have just heard awful news: my poor father is dead!”
“What?” Juve exclaimed sharply. “M. Etienne Rambert dead?”
Jérôme Fandor put a newspaper into the detective’s hand. “Read that,” he said, and pointed to an article on the front page with a huge headline: “Wreck of the Lancaster: 150 Lives Lost.” There were tears in his eyes, and he had such obvious difficulty in restraining his grief, that Juve saw that to read the article would be the speediest way to find out what had occurred.
The Red Star liner Lancaster, plying between Caracas and Southampton, had gone down with all hands the night before, just off the Isle of Wight, and at the moment of going to press only one person was known to have been saved. There was a good sea running, but it was by no means rough, and the vessel was still within sight of the lighthouse and making for the open sea at full speed, when the lighthousemen suddenly saw her literally blown into the air and then disappear beneath the waves. The alarm was given immediately and boats of all kinds put off to the scene of the disaster, but though a great deal of wreckage was still floating about, only one man of the crew was seen, clinging to a spar; he was picked up by the Campbell and taken to hospital, where he was interviewed by The Times, without, however, being able to throw any light upon what was an almost unprecedented catastrophe in the history of the sea. All he could say was that the liner had just got up full speed and was making a perfectly normal beginning of her trip, when suddenly a tremendous explosion occurred. He himself was engaged at the moment fastening the tarpaulins over the baggage hold, and he was confident that the explosion occurred among the cargo. But he could give absolutely no more information: the entire ship seemed to be riven asunder, and he was thrown into the sea, stunned, and knew no more until he recovered consciousness and found himself aboard the Campbell.
“It’s quite incomprehensible,” Juve muttered; “surely there can’t have been any powder aboard? No explosives are carried on these great liners; they only take passengers and the mails.” He scanned the list of passengers. “Etienne Rambert’s name is given among the first-class passengers, right enough,” he said. “Well, it’s odd!”
Jérôme Fandor heaved a profound sigh.
“It is a fatality which I shall never get over,” he said. “When you told me the other day that you knew I was innocent, I ought to have gone to see my father, in spite of what you said. I am sure he would have believed me and come to see you; then you could have convinced him, and I should not have this horrible grief of remembering that he had died without learning that his son was not a bad man, but was quite deserving of his affection.”
Jérôme Fandor was making a brave struggle to maintain his self-control, and Juve looked at him without concealing the real sympathy he felt for him in his grief. He put his hand kindly on his shoulder.
“Listen, my dear boy; odd as you may think it, you can take my word for it that there is no need for you to despair; there is nothing to prove that your father is dead; he may not have been on board.”
The boy looked up in surprise.
“What do you mean, Juve?”
“I don’t want to say anything, my boy, except that you would be very wrong to give way to distress at present. If you have any confidence in me, you may believe me when I say that. There is nothing yet to prove that you have had this loss: and, besides, you still have your mother, who is perfectly sure to get quite well: do you understand?—perfectly sure!” He changed the subject abruptly. “There is one thing I should like to know: what the dickens brought you here?”
“You were the first person I thought of in my trouble,” Fandor replied. “Directly I read about the disaster in that paper I came to tell you at once.”
“Yes, I quite understand that,” Juve answered. “What I do not understand is how you guessed that you would find me here, in Gurn’s flat.”
The question seemed to perturb the boy.
“It—it was quite by chance,” he stammered.
“That is the kind of explanation one offers to fools,” Juve retorted. “By what chance did you see me come into this house? What the deuce were you doing in the rue Lévert?” The lad showed some inclination to make for the door, but Juve stayed him peremptorily. “Answer my question, please: how did you know I was here?”
Driven into a corner, the boy blurted out the truth:
“I had followed you.”
“Followed me?” Juve exclaimed. “Where from?”
“From your rooms.”
“You mean, and you may as well own up to it at once, that you were shadowing me.”
“Well, yes, M. Juve, it is true,” Fandor confessed, all in
