Nibet pushed Gurn into the barristers’ room, saying respectfully to the person in it already, “You only have to ring, sir, when you have finished,” and then withdrew, leaving Gurn in presence, not of his counsel as he had expected, but of that personage’s assistant, a young licentiate in law named Roger de Seras, who was also a most incredible dandy.
Roger de Seras greeted Gurn with an engaging smile and advanced as if to shake hands with him, but suddenly wondering whether that action might not suggest undue familiarity, he raised his hand to his own head instead and scratched it; the young fellow was still younger in his business, and did not rightly know whether it was etiquette for a barrister, or even a barrister’s junior, to shake hands with a prisoner who was implicated in a notorious murder.
Gurn felt inclined to laugh, and on the whole was glad that it was the junior whom he had to see; the futile verbosity of this very young licentiate might possibly be amusing.
Maître Roger de Seras began with civil apologies.
“You will excuse me if I only stay for a few minutes, but I am most frightfully busy; besides, two ladies are waiting for me outside in my carriage: I may say confidentially that they are actresses, old friends of mine, and, just fancy, they are most frightfully anxious to see you! That’s what it means to be famous, M. Gurn; eh, what?” Gurn nodded, not feeling unduly flattered. Roger de Seras continued. “Just to please them I have made any number of applications to the governor of the prison, but there was nothing doing, my dear chap; that beast of a magistrate, Fuselier, insists on your being kept in absolute seclusion. But none the less, I’ve got some news for you. I know heaps: why, my friends at the Law Courts call me ‘the peripatetic paragraph!’ Not bad, eh, what?” Gurn smiled and Roger de Seras was encouraged. “It’s given me no end of a boom, my leader acting for you, and my being able to come and see you whenever I like! Everybody asks me how you are, and what you are like, and what you say, and what you think. You can congratulate yourself on having caused a sensation in Paris.”
Gurn began to be irritated by all this chatter.
“I must confess I’m not the least interested in what people are saying about me. Is there anything new in my case?”
“Absolutely nothing that I am aware of,” Roger de Seras replied serenely, without stopping to think whether there was or not. “I say—Lady Beltham—”
“Yes?” said Gurn.
“Well, I know her very well, you know: I go out a frightful lot and I have often met her: a charming woman, Lady Beltham!”
Gurn really did not know how to treat the idiot. Never one to suffer fools gladly, he grew irritable and would almost certainly have said something that would have put the garrulous young bungler in his place, had not the latter suddenly remembered something, just as he was on the point of getting up to go.
“Oh, by the way,” he said with a laugh, “I was nearly forgetting the most important thing of all. Just fancy, that beast Juve, the marvellous detective whom the newspapers rave about, went to your place yesterday afternoon to make another official search!”
“Alone?” enquired Gurn, much interested.
“Quite alone. Now what do you suppose he found; the place has been ransacked dozens of times, you know; of course I mean something sensational in the way of a find. I bet you a thousand—”
“I never bet,” Gurn snapped. “Tell me at once what it was.”
The young fellow was proud of having caught the attention of his leader’s notorious client, if only for a moment; he paused and wagged his head, weighing each word to give them greater emphasis.
“He found an ordnance map in your bookcase, my dear chap—an ordnance map with a bit torn out of it.”
“Oh! And what then?” said Gurn, a frown upon his face.
The young barrister did not notice the expression on the murderer’s countenance.
“Well, then it appears that Juve thought it was very important. Between you and me, my opinion is that Juve tries to be frightfully clever and succeeds in looking a fool. How, I ask you, can the discovery of that map affect your case or influence the decision of the jury? By the way, there is no need for you to worry about the result; I have had a frightful lot of experience in criminal cases, and so be assured you are all right: extenuating circumstances, you know. But—oh, yes, there is one thing more I wanted to tell you. A fresh witness is going to be called at the examination; let me see, what’s his name? Dollon: that’s it: the steward, Dollon.”
“I don’t understand,” said Gurn; his head was bent and his eyes cast down.
A glimmer of light dawned in the young licentiate’s brain.
“Wait, there is some connection,” he said. “The steward, Dollon, is in the employment of a lady who calls herself the Baronne de Vibray. And the Baronne de Vibray is guardian to the young lady who was staying with Lady Beltham the day, or rather the night, when you—you—well, you know. And that young lady, Mlle. Thérèse Auvernois, was placed with Lady Beltham by M. Etienne Rambert. And M. Etienne Rambert is the father of the young man who murdered the Marquise de Langrune last year. I tell you all these things without attempting to draw any deductions from them, for, for my own part, I haven’t the least idea why the steward, Dollon, has been summoned in our case at all.”
“Nor have I,” said Gurn, and the frown on his brow was deeper.
Roger de Seras hunted all round the
