"It is for me to question. But I know it: that is enough. Your occupation and position in life?"
"I am a gentleman, living on my means."
"It is false." An angry flush rose to Gascoigne's face as the judge thus gave him the lie. "It is falseyou are a professional gamblera Greeka sharper, with no ostensible means!"
"Pardon me, monsieur; you are quite misinformed. I could prove to you "
"It would be useless; the police have long known and watched you."
"Such espionage is below contempt," cried Gascoigne, indignantly.
"Silence! Do not dare to question the conduct of the authorities. It is the visit of persons of your stamp to Paris that renders such precautions necessary."
"If you believe all you hear from your low agents, with their lying, scandalous reports"
"Be careful, prisoner; your demeanour will get you into trouble. Our information about you is accurate and trustworthy. Judge for yourself."
Gascoigne looked incredulous.
"Listen; you arrived in Paris three months ago, accompanied by a young demoiselle whom you had decoyed from her home."
"She was my wife."
"Yes; you married her after your arrival here. The official records of the 21st arrondisement prove thatmarried her without her parents' consent."
"That is not so. They approved."
"How could they? Your wife's father is French vice-consul at Gibraltar. Her mother is dead. Neither was present at your marriage; how, then, could they approve?"
Gascoigne did not answer.
"On your first arrival you were well provided with fundsthe proceeds, no doubt, of some nefarious scheme; a run of luck at the tables; the plunder of some pigeon"
"The price of my commission in the English Army."
"Bah! You never were in the English Army."
"I can prove it."
"I shall not believe you. Being in funds, I say, you lived riotously, stayed at one of the best hotels, kept a landau and pair, dined at the Trois Frères and the Rocher de Cancale, frequented the theatres; madame wore the most expensive toilettes. But you presently ran short of cash."
"It's not surprising. But I presume I was at liberty to do what I liked with my own."
"Coming to the end of your resources," went on the judge, coldly ignoring the sneer, "you tried the gaming-table again, with varying success. You went constantly to the Hôtel Paradis"
"On the contrary, occasionally, not often."
"You were there last night; it is useless to deny it. We have the deposition of the proprietor, who is well known to the policeM. Hippolyte Ledantec; you shall be confronted with him."
"Is he in custody?" asked Gascoigne, eagerly.
"I tell you it is not your place to question."
"He ought to be. It was he who committed the murder."
"You know there was a murder, then? Curious. When the body was discovered by the porter there was no one present. How could you know of the crime unless you had a hand in it?"
"I saw it committed. I tried my best to save the Baron, but Ledantec stabbed him before I could interpose."
"An ingenious attempt to shift the guilt; but it will not serve. We know better."
"I am prepared to swear it was Ledantec. Why should I attack the Baron? I owed him no grudge."
"Why? I will tell you. For some time past, as I have reminded you, your funds have been running low, fortune has been against you at the tables, and you could not correct it at the Hôtel Paradis as you do with less clever players"
"You are taking an unfair advantage of your position, Monsieur le Juge. Any one else who dared accuse me of cheating"
"Bah! no heroics. You could not correct fortune, I say; yet money you must have. The hotel-keeper was pressing for his long-unpaid account. Madame, your smart wife, was dissatisfied; she made you scenes because you refused her money; in return, you ill-used her."
"It is false! My wife has always received proper consideration at my hands."
"You ill-used her, ill-treated her; we have it from herself."
"Do you know, then, where she is?" interrupted Gascoigne, with so much eagerness that it was plain he had taken his wife's defection greatly to heart. "Why has she left me? With whom? I have always suspected that villain Ledantec; he is an arch scoundrel, a very devil!"
"The reasons for your wife's disappearance are sufficiently explained by this letter."
"To me?" said Gascoigne, stretching out his hand for it.
"To you, but impounded by us. It was found, in our search of your apartments yesterday, placed in a prominent place upon your dressing-table."
"Give it meit is mine!"
"No! but you shall hear what it says. Listen:
"'I could have borne with resignation the miserable part you have imposed upon me. After luring me from my home with dazzling offers, after promising me a life of luxury and splendid ease, you rudely, cruelly dispelled the illusion, and made it plain to me that I had shared the lot of a pauper. All this I could have bornepoverty, however distasteful, but not the infamy, the degradation, of being the partner and associate of your evil deeds. Sooner than fall so low I prefer to leave you for ever. Do not seek for me. I have done with you. All is at an end between us!'"
CHAPTER III.
THE MOUSETRAP
"Well," said the judge, when he had finished reading, "you see what your wife thinks of you. What do you say now?"
"There is not a word of truth in that letter. It is a tissue of misstatements from beginning to end. You must place no reliance upon it."
"There you must allow me to differ from you. This letter is, in my belief, perfectly genuine. It supplies a most important link in the chain of evidence, and I shall give it the weight it deserves. But enoughwill you still deny your guilt?"
"It is Ledantec's doing," said Gascoigne, following out a line of thought of his own. "She was nothing loth, perhaps, for he has been instilling insidious poison into her ears for these weeks past. I had my suspicions, but could prove nothing; now I know. It was for this, to put money in his purse for her extravagance, that he first robbed, then struck down the baron."
"Why do you still persist in this shallow line of defence? You cannot deceive me; it would be far better to make a clean breast of it at once."
"I have already told you all I know. I repeat, I saw Ledantec strike the blow."
"Psha! this is puerile. I will be frank with you. We have the fullest and strongest evidence of your guiltwhy, then, will you not confess it?"
"I have nothing to confess; I am perfectly innocent. I was the poor man's friend, not his murderer. I tried hard to save him, but, unhappily, I was too late."
"You will not confess?"
A flush of anger rose to Gascoigne's cheek; his eyes flashed with the indignation he felt at being thus bullied and browbeaten; his lips quivered, but still he made no reply.
"Come! you have played this comedy long enough," said the judge, his manner growing more insolent, his look more threatening. "Will you, or will you not, confess?"
Gascoigne met his gaze resolutely, but with a dogged, obstinate silence, the result of a firm determination not to utter a word.
"This is unbearable," said the judge, angrily, after having repeated his question several times without eliciting any reply. "Take him away! Let him be kept in complete isolation, in one of the separate cells of the Mousetrapthe Souricière."
At a signal from within the police entered, resumed charge of the prisoner, and escorted him, by many winding passages, down a steep staircase to an underground passage, ending in a dungeon-like room, badly lighted by one small, heavily-barred window, through which no glimpse of the sky was seen.
Here he was left alone, and for a long time utterly neglected. No one came near him till late in the day, when he was brought a basin of thin soup and a hunch of coarse ammunition bread. He spoke to his jailers, asking for more and better food, but obtained no reply. He asked them for paper, pens, and ink; he wished, he said, to make a full statement of his case to the British Embassy, and demand its protection. Still no reply. Maddened by this contemptuous treatment, and despairing almost of justice, he begged, entreated the warder to take pity on him, to tell him at least how long they meant to keep him there in such terrible solitude, cut off altogether from the advice and assistance of friends. The warder shook his head stolidly, and at length broke silence, but only to say, "It is by superior order," then left him.
Gascoigne passed a terrible night, the second night in durance, but far worse than the first. He was torn now with apprehensions as to his fate; circumstances seemed so much against him; the facts, as stated by the judge, might be grossly misrepresented; but how was he to dispute them? There was no justice in this miserable country, with such a partial and one-sided system of law. He began to fear that his life was in their hands; already he felt his head on the block, under the shadow of the awful guillotine.
Nor were his personal terrors the only nightmare that visited and oppressed him. He was harassed, tortured, by the shameless conduct of his wife; of the woman for whom he had sacrificed everythingprofession, fortune, name, the affection of relatives, the respect of friends. With base, black-hearted perfidy, she had deserted him for another, had plotted against him, had helped to bring him into his present terrible straits.
Once again they awoke him, unrefreshed, from the deep sleep haunted by such hideous dreams. He was told to dress himself and come out. At the door of his cell the same escorttwo police-agentsawaited him.
"Where are you taking me? Again before that hateful judge?"
"Monsieur had better speak more respectfully," replied one of them, in a warning voice.
"It is no use, I tell you, his interrogating me. I have nothing more to say."
"Silence!" cried the other, "and march."
They led him along the passage and upstairs, but not, as before, to the judge's cabinet. Turning aside, they passed on one side of it, and out into the open air. There was a cab drawn up close to the door, the prisoner was ordered to get in, one police-agent taking his seat alongside, the other mounting on the box. The glasses were drawn up, and the cab drove rapidly away.
"Where are you taking me?" asked Gascoigne.
"You will see," replied his conductor, coldly.
"To another prison?"
"Silence! A prisoner is not permitted to enter into conversation with his guard."
Thus rebuffed, Gascoigne resigned himself to gazing mournfully through the windows as the cab rattled along. He did not know this quarter of Paris well, but he could see that they were passing along one of the quays of the Ile de la Cité. He could see the houses on the opposite bank, and knew from the narrowness of the river that it was not the main stream of the Seine. It was still early morning; the streets were not as yet very crowded, but as the cab entered a wide square it came upon a throng issuing from the portals of a large church, the congregation that had been attending some celebration at Notre Dame. He recognised the church as he passed it, still driving, however, by the quays. Then they came to a low building, with a dirty, ill-kept, unpretentious doorway. The cab passed through into an inner court, stopped, and Gascoigne was ordered to alight.
The police-agents, one on each side of him, took him to a rather large but dirty, squalid-looking room, which might have been part of an old-clothes shop. All round, hanging from pegs, each neatly ticketed with its own number, were sets of garments, male and female, of every description: rags and velvets, a common blouse and good broadcloth, side by side.
At a small common table in the centre of the room sat Gascoigne's judge, with the same cold face, only darkened now by a frown.
"Once more," he said, abruptly"will you confess your crime?"
Gascoigne looked at him contemptuously, but held his tongue.
"Do you still refuse? Do you still obstinately persist in remaining dumb? Very well, we shall see."
The judge got up from his chair, and disappeared through a side-door.
After a short pause, Gascoigne's escort bade him march, and the three followed through the same door.
They entered a second chamber, smaller than the first, the uses of which were at once obvious to Gascoigne, although he had never been there before. It was like a low shed or workroom, lighted from above, perfectly plaineven baldin its decoration, but in the centre, occupying the greater part of the space, and leaving room only for a passage around, was a large flat slab of marble, something like that seen in fishmongers' shops. The similarity was maintained by the sound of water constantly flowing and falling upon the marble slab, as though to keep it and its burden always fresh and cool.
But that burden! Three corpses, stark naked but for a decent waistband, were laid out upon the marble table. One was that of a child who had been fished up from the Seine that morning; the second that of a stonemason who had fallen from a scaffolding and broken his neck and both legs; the third was the murdered man of the Hôtel Paradis, the Baron d'Enot, stripped of his well-made clothes, lying stark and stiff on his back, with the great knife-wound gaping red and festering in his breast.
"There!" cried the judge, triumphantly, leaning forward to scrutinise narrowly the effect of this hideous confrontation upon the prisoner.
To his bitter disappointment, this carefully prepared theatrical effect, so frequently practised and so often successful with French criminals, altogether failed with Gascoigne. The Englishman certainly had started at the first sight of the corpse, but it was a natural movement of horror which might have escaped any unconcerned spectator at being brought into the presence of death in such a hideous form. After betraying this first and not unnatural sign of emotion, Gascoigne remained perfectly cool, self-possessed, and unperturbed.
"You see your victim there; now will you confess?" cried the judge, almost passionately.
"Ledantec's victim, not mine," replied Gascoigne, quietly. Then, as if in apology to himself, he added, "I could not help speaking, but I shall say nothing more."
"He is very strong, extraordinarily strong!" cried the judge, his rage giving place to admiration at the obstinate fortitude of his prisoner. "In all my experience"this was to the police and the chief custodian of the Morgue"I have never come across a more cold-blooded, cynical wretch; but he shall not beat me; he shall not outrage and set the law at defiance; we will bend his spirit yet. Take him back to the Mousetrap; he shall stay there until he chooses to speak."
With this unfair threat, which was tantamount to a sentence of unlimited imprisonment, the judge dismissed his prisoner.
Gascoigne was marched back to the cab; the police-agents ordered him to re-enter it; one of them took his seat by his side as before, the other remounted the box. Then the cab started on its journey back to the Préfecture.
Gascoigne, silent, pre-occupied, and outwardly calm, was yet inwardly consumed with a fierce though impotent rage. He was indignant at the shameful treatment he had received. To be arraigned as a criminal prematurely, his guilt taken for granted on the testimony of unseen witnesses whose evidence he had no chance of rebuttingall this, so intolerable to the spirit of British justice, revolted him and outraged his sense of fair play.