“Silence!” the crier repeated.
Again the room was humming like a wasp’s nest. But this time it was murmurous with applause. In the subsidence of that applause the fat man stood up. In his hand he held a paper, at which he glanced. Then he bowed, first to the bench, afterward to the jury.
“Gentlemen,” he began, “it had been my intention when I reached here this morning to open my address to you with a citation, not from the code, but from a novel. In the Affaire Lerouge, the most famous story of the famous Gaboriau, a man is arrested for murder. Against him are advanced proofs quite as convincing as those that have been brought against Monsieur de Parabole. But the magistrate having asked him where he was during the night of the crime, and he having refused to reply, the magistrate cried: ‘Release him; he has no alibi, he is innocent.’ Gentlemen, after reminding you of that subtle and, as it was subsequently shown, correct deduction, it had been my intention to demonstrate to you that the essence of crime is the motive, and that here none has been shown. It had also been my intention to display to you my client in his true light, a young seigneur who, through unfortunate speculations at the Bourse, had lost, not merely his wife’s fortune, but his own, and who was seeking to recover both through the transmutation of metals. Whether such transmutation be possible, whether or not—as Monsieur de Parabole had confided to me—he was on the point of recovering that solvent which is alleged to have existed, I am not competent to affirm. But on entering here this morning I did feel competent to use the exhibits that are piled on this table, and to show from them that whether or not the pursuits of Monsieur de Parabole were chimerical, at least they were not criminal. Among those exhibits but one object embarrassed me. That object is the diamond tooth. Even with my client’s aid and my best endeavors I felt unable to explain its presence by any theory of coincidences that would have been satisfactory, but it had been my intention to leave it to you to decide whether a man should lose his head because someone else had lost a tooth. These demonstrations that I was prepared to set before you I am now dispensed from elaborating. I let them go, vaguely outlined as they are, for, gentlemen, the Marquise de Parabole is dead indeed, only she did not die in the Rue de la Pompe, she did not die on the . She died the day before yesterday in Rio de Janeiro!”
“Silence in this court!” It was the president who was commanding quiet now. There was no longer a murmur, there was a tumult, in which the whole vast room had joined.
“Silence!” he commanded again. Then, turning to Maître Dupin, “What evidence,” he asked, “have you in support of this statement?”
“A cablegram brought to me half an hour ago, which I shall have the honor of submitting to you. Dated Rio, it is addressed to Dr. Rosa e Silva, the Brazilian Consul here, and it states that Madame de Parabole died there, as I have represented, the day before yesterday, twenty-four hours after landing. I am aware, monsieur le président, that it will have to be verified, but meanwhile I ask that the trial be adjourned.”
Mopping his fat face, Maître Dupin bowed and sat down. I could have embraced him. I wanted to tell him so. But the avocat général was speaking now.
“The obvious good faith and high professional standing of the gentleman for the defense relieve me,” he was saying, “from opposing his suggestion. Yet I must admit—”
What he was about to admit no one heeded. The salle was again in commotion. Everybody was talking at once. At the moment I could not see the prisoner. Maître Dupin was bending over him, and presently, through the tumult, circulating above and accentuating it, mounted the shrill call of the crier. Then I became conscious that I had assisted at a coup de théâtre which, for sheer poignancy, I had never seen equaled on the stage, and, precisely as from a play, I found myself drifting out with the crowd to the street.
It was months later, in the multiple brilliancies of the Malakoff dining-room, that the last act was given. Meanwhile I had gone to New York and returned. It was June again; and again, in defiance of every canon of precedence, I was seated at Sally’s left. Across the table was the young musketeer, and across the table, too, was the delicious vision. On the other side of me was Mrs. Manhattan. From beyond, through the gold branches of the lusters, came the rich voice of the duke. He was philosophizing, as a great noble may, on the superiority of white truffles over black. In appreciating the fine discrimination I could not but reflect that his ancestor, the Napoleonic hero, who had won a duchy with a sword, would have appreciated it still more. These reflections Mrs. Manhattan interrupted.
“There is a subject for you. Why not write it up?”
“Monsieur de Malakoff’s physiology of taste?” I asked.
“No; Monsieur de Parabole’s physiology of marriage. You know, do you not, that he is engaged to—” and Mrs. Manhattan, with a quiver of the eyelids, indicated the delicious vision. “That is what killed the Hottentot. The poor old thing knew what was going on. A man may betray the woman who loves him, but never can he deceive her.”
“Quite so,” I answered; “and it was by way of love-token, I suppose, that she extracted that ornament from her mouth and left it where the police could make the worst of it. When I read in the papers that this lady had first planted her tooth and then vanished
