“The man who has been capable of assuming in turn the guise of Gurn, and of Etienne Rambert, and of the man of fashion at the Royal Palace Hotel: who has had the genius to devise and to accomplish such terrible crimes in incredible circumstances, and to combine audacity with skill, and a conception of evil with a pretence of respectability; who has been able to play the Proteus eluding all the efforts of the police;—this man, I say, ought not to be called Gurn! He is, and can be, no other than Fantômas!”
The detective suddenly broke off from his long statement, and the syllables of the melodramatic name seemed to echo through the court, and, taken up by all those present, to swell again into a dread murmur.
“Fantômas! He is Fantômas!”
For a space of minutes judges and jury seemed to be absorbed in their own reflections; and then the President of the Court made an abrupt gesture of violent dissent.
“M. Juve, you have just enunciated such astounding facts, and elaborated such an appalling indictment against this man Gurn, that I have no doubt the Public Prosecutor will ask for a supplementary examination, which this Court will be happy to grant, if he considers your arguments worth consideration. But are they? I will submit three objections.” Juve bowed coldly. “First of all, M. Juve, do you believe that a man could assume disguise with the cleverness that you have just represented? M. Etienne Rambert is a man of sixty; Gurn is thirty-five. M. Rambert is an elderly man, slow of movement, and the man who robbed Princess Sonia Danidoff was a nimble, very active man.”
“I have anticipated that objection, sir,” Juve said with a smile, “by saying that Gurn is Fantômas! Nothing is impossible for Fantômas!”
“Suppose that is true,” said the President with a wave of his hand, “but what have you to say to this: you charge Etienne Rambert with the murder of Mme. de Langrune; but do you not know that Etienne Rambert’s son, Charles Rambert, who, according to the generally received, and most plausible, opinion was the real murderer of the Marquise, committed suicide from remorse? If Etienne Rambert was the guilty party, Charles Rambert would not have taken his own life.”
Juve’s voice shook a little.
“You would be quite right, sir, if again it were not necessary to add that Etienne Rambert is Gurn—that is to say, Fantômas! Is it not a possible hypothesis that Fantômas might have affected the mind of that lad: have suggested to him that it was he who committed the crime in a period of somnambulism: and at last have urged him to suicide? Do you not know the power of suggestion?”
“Suppose that also is true,” said the President with another vague wave of his hand. “I will only put two incontestable facts before you. You accuse Etienne Rambert of being Gurn, and Etienne Rambert was lost in the wreck of the Lancaster; you also accuse Gurn of having murdered Dollon, and at the time that murder was committed Gurn was in solitary confinement in the Santé prison.”
This time the detective made a sign as if of defeat.
“If I have waited until today to make the statement you have just listened to, it was obviously because hitherto I have had no absolute proofs, but merely groups of certainties. I spoke today, because I could keep silent no longer; if I am still without some explanations in detail, I am sure I shall have them some day. Everything comes to light sooner or later. And as to the two facts you have just put before me, I would reply that there is no proof that M. Rambert was lost in the wreck of the Lancaster: it has not been legally established that he ever was on board that ship. Of course, I know his name was in the list of passengers, but a child could have contrived a device of that sort. Besides, all the circumstances attending that disaster are still an utter mystery. My belief is that a Fantômas would be perfectly capable of causing an explosion on a ship and blowing up a hundred and fifty people, if thereby he could dispose of one of his identities, especially such a terribly compromising identity as that of Etienne Rambert.”
The President dismissed the theory with a word.
“Pure romance!” he said. “And what about the murder of Dollon? I should like, further, to remind you that the fragment of map which, according to you, was the real reason for this man’s death, was found on his body, and does not correspond in the least with the hole cut in the map you found in Gurn’s rooms.”
“As for that,” Juve said with a smile, “the explanation is obvious. If Gurn, whom I charge with the murder of Dollon, had been content merely to abstract the real fragment, he would so to speak have set his signature to the crime. But he was much too clever for that: he was subtle enough to abstract the compromising fragment and substitute another fragment for it—the one found on the body.”
“Perhaps,” said the President; “that is possible, but I repeat, Gurn was in prison at the time.”
“True! True!” said Juve, throwing up his hands. “I am prepared to swear that it was Gurn who did the murder, but I cannot yet explain how he did it, since he was in solitary confinement in the Santé.”
Silence fell upon the court; Juve refrained from saying anything more, but a sarcastic smile curled his lip.
“Have you anything else to say?” the President asked after a pause.
“Nothing: except that anything is possible to Fantômas.”
The President turned to the prisoner.
“Gurn, have you anything to say, any confession to make? The jury will
