Part 35 (1/2)
”No; I think I have told you every thing.”
”You cannot furnish any additional evidence of the complicity of Justin Cheva.s.sat, of his efforts to tempt you to commit this crime, or of the forgery he committed in getting up a false set of papers for you?”
”No! Ah, he is a clever one, and leaves no trace behind him that could convict him. But, strong as he is, if we could be confronted in court, I'd undertake, just by looking at him, to get the truth out of him somehow.”
”You shall be confronted, I promise you.”
The prisoner seemed to be amazed.
”Are you going to send for Cheva.s.sat?” he asked.
”No. You will be sent home, to be tried there.”
A flash of joy shone in the eyes of the wretch. He knew the voyage would not be a pleasant one; but the prospect of being tried in France was as good as an escape from capital punishment to his mind. Besides, he delighted in advance in the idea of seeing Cheva.s.sat in court, seated by his side as a fellow-prisoner.
”Then,” he asked again, ”they will send me home?”
”On the first national vessel that leaves Saigon.”
The magistrate went and sat down at the table where the clerk was writing, and rapidly ran his eye over the long examination, seeing if anything had been overlooked. When he had done, he said,- ”Now give me as accurate a description of Justin Cheva.s.sat as you can.”
Crochard pa.s.sed his hand repeatedly over his forehead; and then, his eyes staring at empty s.p.a.ce, and his neck stretched out, as if he saw a phantom which he had suddenly called up, he said,- ”Cheva.s.sat is a man of my age; but he does not look more than twenty seven or eight. That is what made me hesitate at first, when I met him on the boulevard. He is a handsome fellow, very well made, and wears all his beard. He looks clever, with soft eyes; and his face inspires confidence at once.”
”Ah! that is Maxime all over,” broke in Daniel.
And, suddenly remembering something, he called Lefloch. The sailor started, and almost mechanically a.s.sumed the respectful position of a sailor standing before his officer.
”Lieutenant?” he said.
”Since I have been sick, they have brought part of my baggage here; have they not?”
”Yes, lieutenant, all of it.”
”Well. Go and look for a big red book with silver clasps. You have no doubt seen me look at it often.”
”Yes, lieutenant; and I know where it is.”
And he immediately opened one of the trunks that were piled up in a corner of the room, and took from it a photograph alb.u.m, which, upon a sign from Daniel, he handed to the lawyer.
”Will you please,” said Daniel at the same time, ”ask the prisoner, if, among the sixty or seventy portraits in that book, he knows any one?”
The alb.u.m was handed to Crochard, surnamed Bagnolet, who turned over leaf after leaf, till all of a sudden, and almost beside himself, he cried out,- ”Here he is, Justin Cheva.s.sat! Oh! that's he, no doubt about it.”
Daniel could, from his bed, see the photograph, and said,- ”That is Maxime's portrait.”
After this decisive evidence, there could be no longer any doubt that Justin Cheva.s.sat and Maxime de Brevan were one and the same person. The investigation was complete, as far as it could be carried on in Saigon; the remaining evidence had to be collected in Paris. The magistrate directed, therefore, the clerk to read the deposition; and Crochard followed it without making a single objection. But when he had signed it, and the gendarmes were about to carry him off again, and to put on the handcuffs, he asked leave to make an addition. The magistrate a.s.sented; and Crochard said,- ”I do not want to excuse myself, nor to make myself out innocent; but I do not like, on the other hand, to seem worse than I am.”
He had a.s.sumed a very decided position, and evidently aimed at giving to his words an expression of coa.r.s.e but perfect frankness.
”The thing which I had undertaken to do, it was not in my power to do. It has never entered my head to kill a man treacherously. If I had been a brute, such as these are, the lieutenant would not be there, wounded to be sure, but alive. Ten times I might have done his business most effectively; but I did not care. I tried in vain to think of Cheva.s.sat's big promises; at the last moment, my heart always failed me. The thing was too much for me. And the proof of it is, that I missed him at ten yards' distance. The only time when I tried it really in earnest was in the little boat, because there, I ran some risk; it was like a duel, since my life was as much at stake as the lieutenant's. I can swim as well as anybody, to be sure; but in a river like the Dong-Nai, at night, and with a current like that, no swimmer can hold his own. The lieutenant got out of it; but I was very near being drowned. I could not get on land again until I had been carried down two miles or more; and, when I did get on sh.o.r.e, I sank in the mud up to my hips. Now, I humbly beg the lieutenant's pardon; and you shall see if I am going to let Cheva.s.sat escape.”
Thereupon he held out his hands for the handcuffs, with a theatrical gesture, and left the room.
XXVII.
In the meantime, the long, trying scene had exhausted Daniel; and he lay there, panting, on his bed. The surgeon and the lawyer withdrew, to let him have some rest.
He certainly needed it; but how could he sleep with the fearful idea of his Henrietta-she whom he loved with his whole heart-being in the hands of this Justin Cheva.s.sat, a forger, a former galley-slave, the accomplice and friend of Crochard, surnamed Bagnolet?
”And I myself handed her over to him!” he repeated for the thousandth time,-”I, her only friend upon earth! And her confidence in me was so great, that, if she had any presentiment, she suppressed it for my sake.”
Daniel had, to be sure, a certain a.s.surance now, that Maxime de Brevan would not be able to escape from justice. But what did it profit him to be avenged, when it was too late, long after Henrietta should have been forced to seek in suicide the only refuge from Brevan's persecution? Now it seemed to him as if the magistrate was far more anxiously concerned for the punishment of the guilty than for the safety of the victims. Blinded by pa.s.sion, so as to ask for impossibilities, Daniel would have had this lawyer, who was so clever in unearthing crimes committed in Saigon, find means rather to prevent the atrocious crime which was now going on in France. On his part, he had done the only thing that could be done.
At the first glimpse of reason that had appeared after his terrible sufferings, he had hastened to write to Henrietta, begging her to take courage, and promising her that he would soon be near her. In this letter he had enclosed the sum of four thousand francs.
This letter was gone. But how long would it take before it could reach her? Three or four months, perhaps even more.
Would it reach her in time? Might it not be intercepted, like the others? All these anxieties made a bed of burning coals of the couch of the poor wounded man. He twisted and turned restlessly from side to side, and felt as if he were once more going to lose his senses. And still, by a prodigious effort of his will, his convalescence pursued its normal, steady way in spite of so many contrary influences.
A fortnight after Crochard's confession, Daniel could get up; he spent the afternoon in an arm-chair, and was even able to take a few steps in his chamber. The next week he was able to get down into the garden of the hospital, and to walk about there, leaning on the arm of his faithful Lefloch. And with his strength and his health, hope, also, began to come back; when, all of a sudden, two letters from Henrietta rekindled the fever.
In one the poor girl told him how she had lived so far on the money obtained from the sale of the little jewelry she had taken with her, but added that she was shamefully cheated, and would soon be compelled to seek employment of some sort in order to support herself.
”I am quite sure,” she said, with a kind of heartrending cheerfulness, ”that I can earn my forty cents a day; and with that, my friend, I shall be as happy as a queen, and wait for your return, free from want.”
In the other she wrote,- ”None of my efforts to procure work has so far succeeded. The future is getting darker and darker. Soon I shall be without bread. I shall struggle on to the last extremity, were it only not to give my enemies the joy of seeing me dead. But, Daniel, if you wish to see your Henrietta again, come back; oh, come back!”
Daniel had not suffered half as much the day when the a.s.sa.s.sin's ball ploughed through his chest. He was evidently reading one of those last cries which precede agony. After these two fearful letters, he could only expect a last one from Henrietta,-a letter in which she would tell him, ”All is over. I am dying. Farewell!”
He sent for the chief surgeon, and said, as soon as he entered,- ”I must go!”
The good doctor frowned, and replied rudely,- ”Are you mad? Do you know that you cannot stand up fifteen minutes?”
”I can lie down in my berth.”
”You would kill yourself.”
”What of that? I would rather suffer death than what I now endure. Besides, I have made up my mind irrevocably! Read this, and you will see yourself that I cannot do otherwise.”
The chief surgeon took in Henrietta's last letter almost at a single glance; but he held it in his hand for some time, pretending to read it, but in reality meditating.
”I am sure,” the excellent man thought in his heart, ”I am sure, in this man's place, I should do the same. But would this imprudence be of any use to him? No; for he could not reach the mouth of the Dong-Nai alive. Therefore it is my duty to keep him here: and that can be done, since he is as yet unable to go out alone; and Lefloch will obey me, I am sure, when I tell him that his master's life depends upon his obedience.”
Too wise to meet so decided a determination as Daniel's was by a flat refusal, he said,- ”Very well, then; be it as you choose!”