CLASSIC MYSTERIES - The Émile Gaboriau Edition (Detective Novels & Murder Cases). Emile Gaboriau

the peace could not avoid showing his uneasiness.

      “That will, perhaps, be long and difficult?”

      “Bast! Why so? She is on my black ball there—we shall have her, accidents excepted, before night.”

      “You really think so?”

      “I should say I was sure, to anybody but you. Reflect that this girl has been connected with the Count de Tremorel, a man of the world, a prince of the mode. When a girl falls to the gutter, after having, as they say, dazzled all Paris for six months with her luxury, she does not disappear entirely, like a stone in the mud. When she has lost all her friends there are still her creditors, who follow and watch her, awaiting the day when fortune will smile on her once more. She doesn’t trouble herself about them, she thinks they’ve forgotten her; a mistake! I know a milliner whose head is a perfect dictionary of the fashionable world; she has often done me a good turn. We will go and see her if you say so, after breakfast, and in two hours she will give us Jenny’s address. Ah, if I were only as sure of pinching Tremorel!”

      M. Plantat gave a sigh of relief. The conversation at last took the turn he wished.

      “You are thinking of him, then?” asked he.

      “Am I?” shouted M. Lecoq, who started from his seat at the question. “Now just look at my black ball there. I haven’t thought of anybody else, mark you, since yesterday; I haven’t had a wink of sleep all night for thinking of him. I must have him, and I will!”

      “I don’t doubt it; but when?”

      “Ah, there it is! Perhaps to-morrow, perhaps in a month; it depends on the correctness of my calculations and the exactness of my plan.”

      “What, is your plan made?”

      “And decided on.”

      M. Plantat became attention itself.

      “I start from the principle that it is impossible for a man, accompanied by a woman, to hide from the police. In this case, the woman is young, pretty, and in a noticeable condition; three impossibilities more. Admit this, and we’ll study Hector’s character. He isn’t a man of superior shrewdness, for we have found out all his dodges. He isn’t a fool, because his dodges deceived people who are by no means fools. He is then a medium sort of a man, and his education, reading, relations, and daily conversation have procured him a number of acquaintances whom he will try to use. Now for his mind. We know the weakness of his character; soft, feeble, vacillating, only acting in the last extremity. We have seen him shrinking from decisive steps, trying always to delay matters. He is given to being deceived by illusions, and to taking his desires for accomplished events. In short, he is a coward. And what is his situation? He has killed his wife, he hopes he has created a belief in his own death, he has eloped with a young girl, and he has got nearly or quite a million of francs in his pocket. Now, this position admitted, as well as the man’s character and mind, can we by an effort of thought, reasoning from his known actions, discover what he has done in such and such a case? I think so, and I hope I shall prove it to you.”

      M. Lecoq rose and promenaded, as his habit was, up and down the room. “Now let’s see,” he continued, “how I ought to proceed in order to discover the probable conduct of a man whose antecedents, traits, and mind are known to me. To begin with, I throw off my own individuality and try to assume his. I substitute his will for my own. I cease to be a detective and become this man, whatever he is. In this case, for instance, I know very well what I should do if I were Tremorel. I should take such measures as would throw all the detectives in the universe off the scent. But I must forget Monsieur Lecoq in order to become Hector de Tremorel. How would a man reason who was base enough to rob his friend of his wife, and then see her poison her husband before his very eyes? We already know that Tremorel hesitated a good while before deciding to commit this crime. The logic of events, which fools call fatality, urged him on. It is certain that he looked upon the murder in every point of view, studied its results, and tried to find means to escape from justice. All his acts were determined on long beforehand, and neither immediate necessity nor unforeseen circumstances disturbed his mind. The moment he had decided on the crime, he said to himself: ’Grant that Bertha has been murdered; thanks to my precautions, they think that I have been killed too; Laurence, with whom I elope, writes a letter in which she announces her suicide; I have money, what must I do?’ The problem, it seems to me, is fairly put in this way.”

      “Perfectly so,” approved M. Plantat.

      “Naturally, Tremorel would choose from among all the methods of flight of which he had ever heard, or which he could imagine, that which seemed to him the surest and most prompt. Did he meditate leaving the country? That is more than probable. Only, as he was not quite out of his senses, he saw that it was most difficult, in a foreign country, to put justice off the track. If a man flies from France to escape punishment, he acts absurdly. Fancy a man and woman wandering about a country of whose language they are ignorant; they attract attention at once, are observed, talked about, followed. They do not make a purchase which is not remarked; they cannot make any movement without exciting curiosity. The further they go the greater their danger. If they choose to cross the ocean and go to free America, they must go aboard a vessel; and the moment they do that they may be considered as good as lost. You might bet twenty to one they would find, on landing on the other side, a detective on the pier armed with a warrant to arrest them. I would engage to find a Frenchman in eight days, even in London, unless he spoke pure enough English to pass for a citizen of the United Kingdom. Such were Tremorel’s reflections. He recollected a thousand futile attempts, a hundred surprising adventures, narrated by the papers; and it is certain that he gave up the idea of going abroad.”

      “It’s clear,” cried M. Plantat, “perfectly plain and precise. We must look for the fugitives in France.”

      “Yes,” replied M. Lecoq. “Now let’s find out where and how people can hide themselves in France. Would it be in the provinces? Evidently not. In Bordeaux, one of our largest cities, people stare at a man who is not a Bordelais. The shopkeepers on the quays say to their neighbors: ‘Eh! do you know that man?’ There are two cities, however, where a man may pass unnoticed—Marseilles and Lyons; but both of these are distant, and to reach them a long journey must be risked—and nothing is so dangerous as the railway since the telegraph was established. One can fly quickly, it’s true; but on entering a railway carriage a man shuts himself in, and until he gets out of it he remains under the thumb of the police. Tremorel knows all this as well as we do. We will put all the large towns, including Lyons and Marseilles, out of the question.”

      “In short, it’s impossible to hide in the provinces.”

      “Excuse me—there is one means; that is, simply to buy a modest little place at a distance from towns and railways, and to go and reside on it under a false name. But this excellent project is quite above Tremorel’s capacity, and requires preparatory steps which he could not risk, watched as he was by his wife. The field of investigation is thus much narrowed. Putting aside foreign parts, the provinces, the cities, the country, Paris remains. It is in Paris that we must look for Tremorel.”

      M. Lecoq spoke with the certainty and positiveness of a mathematical professor; the old justice of the peace listened, as do the professor’s scholars. But he was already accustomed to the detective’s surprising clearness, and was no longer astonished. During the four-and-twenty hours that he had been witnessing M. Lecoq’s calculations and gropings, he had seized the process and almost appropriated it to himself. He found this method of reasoning very simple, and could now explain to himself certain exploits of the police which had hitherto seemed to him miraculous. But M. Lecoq’s “narrow field” of observation appeared still immense.

      “Paris is a large place,” observed the old justice.

      M. Lecoq smiled loftily.

      “Perhaps so; but it is mine. All Paris is under the eye of the police, just as an ant is under that of the naturalist with his microscope. How is it, you may ask, that Paris still holds so many professional rogues? Ah, that is because we are hampered by legal forms. The law compels us to use only polite weapons against those to whom all weapons are serviceable.