Part 59 (2/2)
”Dead!” was Monsieur Havard's cry.
”Horribly dead!” echoed Fandor.
”Shall we never lay hands on those wretches?” Monsieur Havard stared, horrified, at the hanging corpse. He brought a chair, grasped the strong sharp knife he always carried about him, and, aided by Fandor, he cut the rope, laid the hanged man flat on the floor, and proceeded to examine the miserable remnant of a human being.
The face was swollen, gashed, crushed....
”The hands have been dipped in vitriol--they did not want finger prints taken--it is--it is Jacques Dollon!”
Fandor shook his head.
”Jacques Dollon? Of course, it isn't!... If it were Dollon, he would not hang himself here.... Why should he hang himself?”
Monsieur Havard remarked:
”He has not hanged himself. Again the stage has been set!... I could swear the man had been killed by blows from a hammer and hanged afterwards!... It seems to me, that if death had been caused through strangulation, there would have been marks round the neck.... But see, Fandor, the rope has hardly made a mark.”
”No, the man was dead when they strung him up.”
”It is of secondary importance!” remarked Fandor, who was preoccupied.
”You are mistaken: it matters a great deal! It decidedly looks as if Dollon had accomplices, who wished to be rid of him.”
Fandor shook his head.
”It is not Dollon! It cannot be Dollon!”
”Look at the vitriolised hands--that was a precaution.”
”I say, as you did just now: it's like a set piece--a bit of slag a.s.sa.s.sins' stage craft.”
”I say, in Dollon's house, we have found Dollon at home!”
Fandor was not convinced. He felt certain Dollon had lied in the Depot.
”Well, Elizabeth Dollon can settle the question for us. There may be some physical peculiarity, some mark by which she can identify her brother's body!”
But Fandor was examining the body very carefully. Suddenly he rose from his stooping posture, exclaiming:
”I know who it is!”
”Who?”
”Jules! None other than Madame Bourrat's servant, Jules!... That is to say, an accomplice whom the bandits we are after wanted to be rid of. He might give them away when brought up for examination. That was why they managed his escape: they killed him afterwards, because he had served their turn, and was now an enc.u.mbrance.”
”Your explanation is plausible, Fandor; but how about the truth of it?”
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