The Teeth of the Tiger Maurice Leblanc (best novels of all time .txt) 📖

The Prefect rushed to the door, but had not crossed the threshold when a pistol shot echoed down the staircase and there was a yell of pain.

Immediately after came two more shots, accompanied by cries, the sound of a struggle, and yet another shot.

Tearing upstairs, four steps at a time, with an agility not to be expected from a man of his build, the Prefect of Police, followed by the deputy chief, covered the second flight and came to a third, which was narrower and steeper. When he reached the bend, a man’s body, staggering above him, fell into his arms: it was Mazeroux, wounded.

On the stairs lay another body, lifeless, that of Chief Inspector Ancenis.

Above them, in the frame of a small doorway, stood Gaston Sauverand, with a savage look on his face and his arm outstretched. He fired a fifth shot at random. Then, seeing the Prefect of Police, he took deliberate aim.

The Prefect stared at that terrifying barrel levelled at his face and gave himself up for lost. But, at that exact second, a shot was discharged from behind him, Sauverand’s weapon fell from his hand before he was able to fire, and the Prefect saw, as in a dream, a man, the man who had saved his life, striding across the chief inspector’s body, propping Mazeroux against the wall, and darting ahead, followed by the detectives. He recognized the man: it was Don Luis Perenna.

Don Luis stepped briskly into the garret where Sauverand had retreated, but had time only to catch sight of him standing on the window ledge and leaping into space from the third floor.

“Has he jumped from there?” cried the Prefect, hastening up. “We shall never capture him alive!”

“Neither alive nor dead, Monsieur le Préfet. See, he’s picking himself up. There’s a providence which looks after that sort. He’s making for the gate. He’s hardly limping.”

“But where are my men?”

“Why, they’re all on the staircase, in the house, brought here by the shots, seeing to the wounded⁠—”

“Oh, the demon!” muttered the Prefect. “He’s played a masterly game!”

Gaston Sauverand, in fact, was escaping unmolested.

“Stop him! Stop him!” roared M. Desmalions.

There were two motors standing beside the pavement, which is very wide at this spot: the Prefect’s own car, and the cab which the deputy chief had provided for the prisoner. The two chauffeurs, sitting on their seats, had noticed nothing of the fight. But they saw Gaston Sauverand’s leap into space; and the Prefect’s chauffeur, on whose seat a certain number of incriminating articles had been placed, taking out of the heap the first weapon that offered, the ebony walking-stick, bravely rushed at the fugitive.

“Stop him! Stop him!” shouted M. Desmalions.

The encounter took place at the exit from the courtyard. It did not last long. Sauverand flung himself upon his assailant, snatched the stick from him, and broke it across his face. Then, without dropping the handle, he ran away, pursued by the other chauffeur and by three detectives who at last appeared from the house. He had thirty yards’ start of the detectives, one of whom fired several shots at him without effect.

When M. Desmalions and Weber went downstairs again, they found the chief inspector lying on the bed in Gaston Sauverand’s room on the second floor, gray in the face. He had been hit on the head and was dying. A few minutes later he was dead.

Sergeant Mazeroux, whose wound was only slight, said, while it was being dressed, that Sauverand had taken the chief inspector and himself up to the garret, and that, outside the door, he had dipped his hand quickly into an old satchel hanging on the wall among some servants’ wornout aprons and jackets. He drew out a revolver and fired point-blank at the chief inspector, who dropped like a log. When seized by Mazeroux, the murderer released himself and fired three bullets, the third of which hit the sergeant in the shoulder.

And so, in a fight in which the police had a band of experienced detectives at their disposal, while the enemy, a prisoner, seemed to possess not the remotest chance of safety, this enemy, by a strategem of unprecedented daring, had led two of his adversaries aside, disabled both of them, drawn the others into the house and, finding the coast clear, escaped.

M. Desmalions was white with anger and despair. He exclaimed:

“He’s tricked us! His letters, his hiding-place, the movable nail, were all shams. Oh, the scoundrel!”

He went down to the ground floor and into the courtyard. On the boulevard he met one of the detectives who had given chase to the murderer and who was returning quite out of breath.

“Well?” he asked anxiously,

“Monsieur le Préfet, he turned down the first street, where there was a motor waiting for him. The engine must have been working, for our man outdistanced us at once.”

“But what about my car?”

“You see, Monsieur le Préfet, by the time it was started⁠—”

“Was the motor that picked him up a hired one?”

“Yes, a taxi.”

“Then we shall find it. The driver will come of his own accord when he has seen the newspapers.”

Weber shook his head.

“Unless the driver is himself a confederate, Monsieur le Préfet. Besides, even if we find the cab, aren’t we bound to suppose that Gaston Sauverand will know how to front the scent? We shall have trouble, Monsieur le Préfet.”

“Yes,” whispered Don Luis, who had been present at the first investigation and who was left alone for a moment with Mazeroux. “Yes, you will have trouble, especially if you let the people you capture take to their heels. Eh, Mazeroux, what did I tell you last night? But, still, what a scoundrel! And he’s not alone, Alexandre. I’ll answer for it that he has accomplices⁠—and not a hundred yards from my house⁠—do you understand? From my house.”

After questioning Mazeroux upon Sauverand’s attitude and the other incidents of the arrest, Don Luis went back to the Place du Palais-Bourbon.

The inquiry which he had to make related to events that