Within an Inch of His Life by Emile Gaboriau (good summer reads .TXT) 📖

“Ah! And does that profession also prevent you from giving us that letter after having read it?”

“Yes. But I may tell you what is in it.”

He took it out of a drawer, and the younger of the two sisters, Miss Elizabeth, copied it in pencil. Then they withdrew, almost without saying good-by.

M. Galpin was furious. He exclaimed,—

“Ah, old witches! I see clearly you do not believe in Jacques’s innocence. Why else should his family be so very anxious to see him? No doubt they want to enable him to escape by suicide the punishment of his crime. But, by the great God, that shall not be, if I can help it!”

M. Folgat was, as we have seen, excessively annoyed at this step taken by the Misses Lavarande; but he did not let it be seen. It was very necessary that he at least should retain perfect presence of mind and calmness in this cruelly tried family. M. de Chandore, on the other hand, could not conceal his dissatisfaction so well; and, in spite of his deference to his grandchild’s wishes, he said,—

“I am sure, my dear child, I don’t wish to blame you. But you know your aunts, and you know, also, how uncompromising they are. They are quite capable of exasperating M. Galpin.”

“What does it matter?” asked the young girl haughtily. “Circumspection is all very well for guilty people; but Jacques is innocent.”

“Miss Chandore is right,” said M. Folgat, who seemed to succumb to Dionysia like the rest of the family. “Whatever the ladies may have done, they cannot make matters worse. M. Galpin will be none the less our bitter enemy.”

Grandpapa Chandore started. He said,—

“But”—

“Oh! I do not blame him,” broke in the young lawyer; “but I blame the laws which make him act as he does. How can a magistrate remain perfectly impartial in certain very important cases, like this one, when his whole future career depends upon his success? A man may be a most upright magistrate, incapable of unfairness, and conscientious in fulfilling all his duties, and yet he is but a man. He has his interest at stake. He does not like the court to find that that there is no case. The great rewards are not always given to the lawyer who has taken most pains to find out the truth.”

“But M. Galpin was a friend of ours, sir.”

“Yes; and that is what makes me fear. What will be his fate on the day when M. Jacques’s innocence is established?”

They were just coming home, quite proud of their achievement, and waving in triumph the copy of Jacques’s letter. Dionysia seized upon it; and, while she read it aside, Miss Adelaide described the interview, stating how haughty and disdainful she had been, and how humble and repentant M. Galpin had seemed to be.

“He was completely undone,” said the two old ladies with one voice: “he was crushed, annihilated.”

“Yes, you have done a nice thing,” growled the old baron; “and you have much reason to boast, forsooth.”

“My aunts have done well,” declared Dionysia. “Just see what Jacques has written! It is clear and precise. What can we fear when he says, ‘Be reassured: when the time comes, I shall be able to set matters right’?”

M. Folgat took the letter, read it, and shook his head. Then he said,—

“There was no need of this letter to confirm my opinion. At the bottom of this affair there is a secret which none of us have found out yet. But M. de Boiscoran acts very rashly in playing in this way with a criminal prosecution. Why did he not explain at once? What was easy yesterday may be less easy to-morrow, and perhaps impossible in a week.”

“Jacques, sir, is a superior man,” cried Dionysia, “and whatever he says is perfectly sure to be the right thing.”

His mother’s entrance prevented the young lawyer from making any reply. Two hours’ rest had restored to the old lady a part of her energy, and her usual presence of mind; and she now asked that a telegram should be sent to her husband.

“It is the least we can do,” said M. de Chandore in an undertone, “although it will be useless, I dare say. Boiscoran does not care that much for his son. Pshaw! Ah! if it was a rare faience, or a plate that is wanting in his collection, then would it be a very different story.”

Still the despatch was drawn up and sent, at the very moment when a servant came in, and announced that dinner was ready. The meal was less sad than they had anticipated. Everybody, to be sure, felt a heaviness at heart as he thought that at the same hour a jailer probably brought Jacques his meal to his cell; nor could Dionysia keep from dropping a tear when she saw M. Folgat sitting in her lover’s place. But no one, except the young advocate, thought that Jacques was in real danger.

M. Seneschal, however, who came in just as coffee was handed round, evidently shared M. Folgat’s apprehensions. The good mayor came to hear the news, and to tell his friends how he had spent the day. The funeral of the firemen had passed off quietly, although amid deep emotion. No disturbance had taken place, as was feared; and Dr. Seignebos had not spoken at the graveyard. Both a disturbance and a row would have been badly received, said M. Seneschal; for he was sorry to say, the immense majority of the people of Sauveterre did not doubt M. de Boiscoran’s guilt. In several groups he had heard people say, “And still you will see they will not condemn him. A poor devil who should commit such a horrible crime would be hanged sure enough; but the son of the Marquis de Boiscoran—you will see, he’ll come out of it as white as snow.”

The rolling of a carriage, which stopped at the door, fortunately interrupted him at this point.

“Who can that be?” asked Dionysia, half frightened.

They heard in the passage the noise of steps and voices, something like a scuffle; and almost instantly the tenant’s son Michael pushed open the door of the sitting-room, crying out,—

“I have gotten him! Here he is!”

And with these words he pushed in Cocoleu, all struggling, and looking around him, like a wild beast caught in a trap.

“Upon my word, my good fellow,” said M. Seneschal, “you have done better than the gendarmes!”

The manner in which Michael winked with his eye showed that he had not a very exalted opinion of the cleverness of the gendarmes.

“I promised the baron,” he said, “I would get hold of Cocoleu somehow or other. I knew that at certain times he went and buried himself, like the wild beast that he is, in a hole which he has scratched under a rock in the densest part of the forest of Rochepommier. I had discovered this den of his one day