RGL e-Book Cover 2018©
RGL e-Book Cover 2018©
Ladbroke (Lionel Day) Black (1877-1940) was an English writer and journalist who also wrote under the pseudonym Paul Urquhart. His life and career are summarised in the following entry in Steve Holland's Bear Alley blog:
Black, born in Burley-in-Wharfdale, Yorkshire, on 21 June 1877, was educated in Ireland and at Cambridge where he earned a B.A. He became assistant editor of The Phoenix in 1897 before moving to London in 1899 where he joined The Morning Herald as assistant editor in 1900. He later became assistant editor of the Echo in 1901, joint editor of Today, 1904-05, and special writer on the Weekly Dispatch, 1905-11. After a forgettable first novel, "A Muddied Oaf" (1902), co-written with Francis Rutter, Black collaborated on the collection "The Mantle of the Emperor" (1906) with Robert Lynd, later literary editor of the News Chronicle. He then produced a series of novels in collaboration with [Thomas] Meech under the name Paul Urquhart, beginning with "The Eagles" (1906). Black also wrote for various magazines and newspapers, sometimes using the pen-name Lionel Day. His books ranged from romances to Sexton Blake detective yarns. His recreations included sports (boxing and rugby), reading and long walks. He lived in Wendover, Bucks, for many years and was Chairman of the Mid-Bucks Liberal Party in 1922-24. He died on 27 July 1940, aged 63, survived by his wife (Margaret, née Ambrose), two sons and two daughters."
The Australian newspaper Truth published the three short stories in this collection in 1908 as a series under the unweildy general title:
"FAMOUS DETECTIVE'S AMAZING EXPLOITS.
M. LECOQ'S REMARKABLE WORK."
They are extraordinary re-writes of three novels by Émile
Gaboriau (1832-1873), the creator of the renowned French
detective Monsieur Lecoq. They have been condensed from
typically 120,000 words to 3,000 words or so each!
"The Great Bank Safe Mystery", is condensed from File No. 113 (1867).
"The Blackmailers" is condensed from The Champdoce Mystery (1891, posthumous).
"The Country House Tragedy" is condensed from The Mystery at Orcival (1867).
Rather cheekily, Ladbroke Black changed the stories from third
person to first person narratives, and cast Lecoq himself as
the story-teller.
As published in Truth, Brisbane, 12 April 1908
BEFORE recounting my own personal interest in the amazing safe robbery at M. Fauvel's bank I will set out briefly the facts of the case as they were first reported to the public.
On February 27, Count Louis de Clameran sent word to M. Fauvel that he wished to withdraw the following morning at ten o'clock the sum of £12,000, which had been deposited at the bank by his brother—an ironmaster from the South of France—who had recently died.
M. Fauvel made it a rule never to keep any large sums of money on the premises, but to deposit all such amounts in the keeping of the Bank of France. As this sum, however, had to be paid the first thing in the morning, the chief cashier, Mr. Prosper Bertomy. thought he was justified in obtaining the amount from the Bank of France on the evening of the 27th, and in locking it up in the bank's safe, to have it ready for the morning.
The safe was a formidable-looking affair, constructed entirely of wrought-iron of treble thickness. An ingenious device regulated its opening. On the massive door were five movable steel buttons, engraved with the letters of the alphabet. Before the key could be inserted in the lock these buttons had to be manipulated in the same order in which they had been used when the safe was last shut. The buttons were arranged so that the letters on them formed some word, which from time to time was changed, and this word was known only to M. Fauvel himself and the cashier, each of whom possessed a key.
On the count presenting his request for the money, Bertomy went to the safe. When, a second later, he reappeared his face was ashey pale, and he walked with tottering steps. The £12,000 had disappeared. And what, made the affair all the more mysterious, he had found the safe locked, as he had left it the night before.
The room in which the safe was situated communicated with the bank by another room, in which every night a tried servant of the establishment slept. By a second door egress was obtained to the private apartments of M. Fauvel himself and his wife and his niece Madeline.
M. Fauvel was at once summoned. On learning the startling news he sent a messenger with certain documents to the Bank of France, obtained the £12,000 which his client required, and having settled this affair sought a private explanation from his chief cashier.
Bertomy was a young man of thirty, to whom M. Fauvel had shown great kindness, advancing his interests wherever possible until, though very young for the position, he was his most important and most confidential employee. Besides the paternal affection with which the bank manager regarded his cashier, another tie tended to make their relation all the stronger and more personal. Bertomy loved M. Fauvel's niece Madeline, and, though a curious estrangement had sprung up between them during the previous nine or ten months, the banker had always regarded their marriage as practically arranged.
The interview between the banker and the cashier was a curious one. To each it appeared that the other must be the thief. They alone had the key of the safe; they alone knew the magic word which could open the massive door. The banker urged Bertomy to confess, promising his forgiveness; the other haughtily rejected the suggestion, and hinted that his employer had converted the £12,000 to his own use.
In the end M. Fauvel lost his temper, sent for the police, and before 24 hours were up. Prosper Bertomy, who but the day before had held one of the most important and envied positions in the financial world of Paris, was charged before a magistrate with being a common thief.
I HAVE hinted that I, Lecoq, had a personal, apart from a
professional, interest in this mystery. Even detectives are
human. I own it without a blush that I loved with all my heart
and soul a charming young girl called Nina Gipsy. Under the
name of Gildus, and in one of my innumerable
disguises—for I am always disguised, and no one knows
the exact features of M. Lecoq, even at headquarters—I
wooed her for many months. When I thought I had won her heart
she fled to the protection of no less a person than Prosper
Bertomy himself.
The cashier cared nothing for her, but, embittered by the estrangement that had sprung up between the banker's daughter and himself, he sought forgetfulness in her society, and in a round of dissolute pleasure.
The bank robbery gave me an opportunity for a noble revenge. I determined to prove my superiority over my rival to the woman I loved by saving him from disgrace.
My first step was to examine the safe. On the door I detected a scratch, some six inches long, running diagonally from the keyhole from left to right; that scratch was my starting point. How had it been made? I took a key from my pocket, and attempted to make a similar scratch on the varnish. I found that, without the exercise of considerable force, it was impossible. It was clear, therefore, that the scratch by the keyhole could not have been made by the thief in his trembling anxiety to get the business he had undertaken over. To make even such a little scratch a great deal of force was required. But why was the force used? I asked myself. For days I puzzled over that problem, and then, suddenly, the solution came to me.
In my room was an iron box varnished like the safe, and, with the aid of one of my assistants, a man called Fanferlot, I tried the following experiment. I ordered him to seize my arm when I put the key of the iron box near the lock. He followed my instructions, and the key, as I anticipated, pulled away from the lock, and, slipping along the surface of the door, left upon it a diagonal scratch, almost an exact reproduction of the one on the bank safe. From this simple experiment I argued that two people, were present when the safe was robbed; one wanted to take the money, the other tried to prevent it being taken...
On this basis I started to build up my structure of deduction. Both M. Fauvel and Bertomy, having each of them keys, and knowing each of them the secret word, could have robbed the safe whenever they pleased. Therefore, neither of them would have committed the theft in the presence of somebody else. But a second person had been present when the robbery was committed, as my theory of the scratch proved. Therefore, neither M. Fauvel nor Bertomy was the guilty party.
My next step was to secure the release of Bertomy on the grounds of insufficient evidence, and to find him quarters where I could see him whenever I wished.
WITH Bertomy safe at my disposal I began rapidly to sort out the threads of the tangle. The very morning of the cashier's release he received a letter composed of printed words, cut from some book and pasted together on paper. The letter was from a friend, begging him to leave France, enclosing at the same time bank notes for 400 pounds.
I found it impossible to trace the sender of the letter, but my knowledge of the various types used by the printers in Paris enabled me to see at once that the words had been printed by a well-known firm who published books of devotion.
I satisfied myself as to the correctness of this conclusion by discovering on the back of one of the small cuttings the word "Deus"—the Latin for God. The words had been cut from a Catholic prayer-book. If I could only find that mutilated prayer-book!
In a disguise I sought out Nina Gipsy, the girl I loved, and by holding out to her the bait of clearing the man she loved—ridiculous fellow enough, I must admit—I persuaded her to take up the position of lady's maid in the Fauvel family. There, I felt certain, I would find the secret that I sought. My judgment was so far ratified that in two days I received from Nina the mutilated prayer-book.
It belonged to Madeline and had been given her by Bertomy, Why had she sent him this elaborately-disguised letter? Why did she wish him to leave France, confident, as she was, so she had told him, of his innocence? The scent was getting hot.
My examination of Bertomy opened out a great deal of new ground for my inquiries. The night before the robbery he had dined with his friend Raoul de Lagors, the wealthy, dissolute young nephew of M. Fauvel's wife. Besides being Bertomy's friend, Lagors, I learnt, was exceedingly friendly with Count Louis de Clameran, whose demand for the £12,000 left him by his dead brother had resulted in the discovery of the mysterious robbery.
Bertomy had nothing but the highest praise for Lagors. Of the Count, on the other hand, he spoke more than disparagingly. I was not long in discovering the reason. The count had proposed for the hand of Madeline, and had pressed his suit with great determination. And Madeline—that was what puzzled me—had tacitly accepted his attentions.
Through Nina I arranged a meeting between Bertomy and Madeline. What I overheard at that interview satisfied me that Madeline loved Bertomy wholeheartedly and devotedly. Then why was she favouring the suit of the count? Clearly some influence must have been brought to bear upon the girl to make her thus oppose the dictates of her heart. Who was exercising this influence?
I made it my business to inquire into the count's past, and a very unpleasant past I found it. He was the second son of an old and noble family, but his elder brother Gaston, having to fly the country as the result of killing several men to protect the name of a lady, he inherited the property. By his fast life he soon exhausted his patrimony, and was reduced to living by his wits.
Seven weeks before the robbery he discovered that his brother Gaston was alive, and was living on a large estate in the south of France, which he had purchased with the wealth he had accumulated in business. Six weeks after the two brothers met again the elder died, and the younger inherited his vast fortune.
When I began to Inquire into the part of Lagors my discoveries startled even me. Lagors, it was said, was the nephew of Mme. Fauvel. I found that the banker's wife had never had any brothers or sisters, so that this young man could not be her nephew. Moreover, Lagors was supposed to be a native of St. Rémy. No family of that name, I discovered, had ever lived there. There was something shady and suspicious about the connection of this man with Mme. Fauvel! But what it was, and what bearing it had upon the robbery, it was no easy business, even for me, Lecoq, to discover.
I had established a strict watch on the movements of Madeline, and one night, warned by my spies, I followed her through the streets of Paris until she arrived at a lonely house on the outskirts of the city. When she had gained admittance I saw by a light that suddenly appeared in one of the windows the room on the first floor to which she had been conducted.
By the aid of a ladder I was able to peer through the shutters and see what was going on within. I saw Madeline, standing opposite Lagors, evidently, from her attitude, pleading with him. For some time he listened to her with a cynical smile upon his face; then, at last, after nearly an hour had slipped by, he seemed to decide, with evident reluctance to comply with her request. Going to a cabinet, he took out some papers and flung them on the table. To my surprise I saw they were pawn tickets. Three of them Madeline selected, and, concealing them in her dress, left the house.
Following Madeline, I saw her enter a pawnshop, and without difficulty I discovered that with the three tickets she had obtained from Lagors she regained possession of some valuable jewellery—the property of Madame Fauvel. From Nina I learned that the following evening both Mme. Fauvel and Madeline were to attend a fancy dress ball. Clearly, therefore, Mme. Fauvel required the jewellery for the ball. But why had she pawned it for Lagors? The solution of the problem seamed so tantalisingly near, and, yet it still eluded my comprehension.
AS is my custom when in doubt, I began to theorise. Supposing, I said to myself, this precious count and this extraordinary nephew, that nobody had ever heard about, committed the robbery, how had they become possessed of the magic word without which the safe could not be opened?.
The word, I learn from Bertomy, had been "Gipsy." He was confident he had never mentioned it to anybody. I questioned Nina Gipsy on the subject, and at once she recollected a chance remark of Bertomy's while sitting at dinner the night before the robbery with herself and Lagors. Nina had reproached Bertomy with neglecting her, and Bertomy had replied, "It's too bad for you. to reproach me, for it is your name that at this very moment guards the safe of M. Fauvel."
Lagors therefore had learnt the magic word. But how had he used it, and who was his accomplice?
I now had the following facts at my disposal:—Lagors, who masqueraded as a nephew of Mme. Fauvel, was not her nephew; Mme. Fauvel had given him money and pawned her jewels for his benefit; Lagors had learn the word which opened the safe.
Lagors was the intimate friend of the Count de Clameran, a man with a very shady past, who had obtained the consent of Madeline in marriage. But Madeline loved Bertomy, and, therefore must have been influenced by some weighty reasons to give her hand to the count.
To piece these facts together, and to fill in the gaps, I spent a month in visiting the old home of the de Clamerans, the estate occupied by Gaston de Clameran, who died shortly before the robbery, and while on a short trip to England.
When I returned to Paris I had-found the solution to the whole mystery. I will set the story down here briefly:—
Mme. Fauvel in her extreme youth had secretly married Gaston
de Clameran. Shortly afterwards her husband had to fly the
country. Finding that she was about to give birth to a child,
she imparted her secret to her mother. Fearing a scandal, the
mother, accompanied by a faithful nurse, took her daughter
over to England. There, near London, a child was born, who was
immediately handed over to some simple country people to
adopt. The unhappy girl was brought back to France, and was
shortly afterwards married to M. Fauvel, the banker.
Years after the Count de Clameran discovered this secret from the nurse, and finding, on inquiries in London, that the child had died, persuaded a young ne'er-do-well Englishman to play the role of his brother's son. He introduced him to Mme. Fauvel, and through this means obtained what money he required from the terrified banker's wife.
The situation was complicated by the count falling in love with Madeline and the sudden appearance of Gaston de Clameran, who was thought to be dead. The count poisoned his brother, and then, finding that Madeline refused to give up Bertomy, determined to accomplish the cashier's ruin, and at the same time obtain an amount of money large enough to buy off his fellow-conspirator, Lagors.
Lagors, having, learnt by chance the secret name that guarded the safe, was sent to Mme. Fauvel late at night with a request for some money. By this time Mme. Fauvel was absolutely without resources, and Lagors suggested taking the money from the safe.
Torn between a desire to help her supposed son and the risk of discovery, she at last consented. Taking. M. Fauvel's key, they descended silently to the safe-room. At the last moment Mme. Fauvel attempted to prevent Lagors from opening the safe. In the struggle that scratch was made on the door, from which I was able to solve the whole mystery.
Madeline, half guessing the truth, and knowing that Mme. Fauvel was at the mercy of the count, had been prepared to sacrifice her future happiness by marrying him in order to prevent the scandal being made public.
I compelled Lagors to disgorge the £12,000 he had stolen. As for the count, the sudden suspicion that he was in the toils drove him out of his senses and the walls of a mad-house, and not of a prison, shut him off from the world....
And Nina Gipsy—well, when I had made myself known to her, and showed her how superior I was in intelligence to my rival, she fell at my knees and begged my forgiveness. As I have said, even detectives are human, and I, Lecoq—I confess it—forgave her.
As published in Truth, Brisbane, 19 April 1908
IF you were to ask me, M. Lecoq, what crime on the calendar I hold most in abhorrence, I would reply without hesitation, "Blackmailing."
It is a crime which contains the essence of all the other crimes, for by it the blackmailer not only robs but murders, driving many an unfortunate wretch to seek death in order to escape his toils.
I have always accounted as the most striking success in my career when I destroyed and brought to justice one of the most infamous gangs of blackmailers that ever existed in France, or, indeed, elsewhere. Their enterprise extended to the whole range of Parisian society, and for years they throve, amassing vast wealth without anyone suspecting the nature of their business. Had it not been that the Duke of Marshfields employed me privately to discover the whereabouts of his son, it is highly probable that they would have ended their days in ease and luxury, in the employment of the proceeds of their infamous traffic.
That the reader may understand clearly all the complex ramifications of this case I must narrate briefly a portion of the private histories of the gentleman whom I have called the Duke of Marshfields, of his wife, the duchess, and of Lord and Lady Massey.
As a young man the Duke of Marshfields fell hopelessly in love with Lady Diana Lovegrove, whose father lived on a neighbouring estate. The ardour of his affections was not returned by Lady Diana. She liked him—that was all. But, being an ambitious woman, she was none the less anxious to become his wife, for the duke, with his title and his immense wealth, was one of the most important personages in the country. They met secretly, for the duke's father, who was then alive, was averse to the match, wishing his son to increase the family wealth by marrying Marie Lacheneur, the daughter of a self-made millionaire. These secret meetings were frequently observed by a young man called Louis, who acted as secretary to Lord Massey.
Lady Diana might have succeeded in her ambition, except for two accidents; she herself fell in love with Lord Massey, and the duke, bound by an oath given to his father on his deathbed, had to wed Marie Lacheneur. The same day that his engagement was announced the duke returned all the letters Lady Diana had written to him to the woman he still loved. Although loving Lord Massey, Lady Diana was furious at the duke's conduct. She considered herself to have been jilted, and determined to be revenged. With this object, she kept the letters, thinking, perhaps, that she might be able to use them as a weapon of offence when the opportunity occurred.
HER first step in the campaign of vengeance was to create suspicion in the mind of the duke regarding his wife. The duchess, it was well known, had before her marriage, been in love with Lord George Crossley. By a trick, Lady Diana persuaded the young lord to visit the duchess at night. The duke found them together and mistook the natural confusion of his wife for a proof of her guilt. He immediately demanded satisfaction, refusing to listen to the simple and truthful explanation of his conduct that Lord George proffered.
Weary of existence and still infatuated by his love for Lady Diana, the duke considered this a good opportunity for having done with life. The terms of the duel rested with him. He demanded that they should fight at the bottom of the garden, in the dark, and that whoever survived should bury the other. To these terms Lord George had perforce to consent. Together the two men dug the grave, which was destined to contain one of them.
Then they fought. By a mischance Lord George slipped in the darkness. and, running on the duke's sword, received a fatal wound. According to the terms of the duel, the duke buried him, covering up the traces of the grave with rubbish.
The duke imagined that the scene had been unobserved by anyone, but on returning to the house he was startled by the figure of one of the kitchen maids, a girl called Katherine, hiding among the bushes. It was clear from the hysterical confession that she made that she had seen all. To purchase her silence the duke made her an allowance of £200 a year and set her up in a house on the outskirts of Paris.
In society it was given out that Lord George Crossley, wearied of the frivolous life of Paris, had suddenly made up his mind to go on a long expedition.
But Lady Diana, who had now become Lady Massey, suspected the truth, and, that the duke might understand that the whole affair had been plotted by her to revenge herself for the slight he had put upon her, wrote him a letter, saying she knew all. He replied, admitting that he had killed Lord George. This letter Lady Massey put away in a secret drawer with the rest of his correspondence.
The duke firmly believed that his wife was guilty, and on their latest child being born his suspicions so worked upon his mind that he had the baby boy sent to a Foundling Hospital, substituting in his place the child of one of his tenants. In vain the duchess implored him to believe her innocence and to return her child. She wrote him pathetic letters—for, by the duke's orders, they occupied different wings in their mansion—exhorting him not to be guilty of this crime. But the duke remained adamant.
MEANWHILE, a tragedy has likewise taken place in the Massey family. Lord Massey was out shooting with his friend Viscount Catenac. Accompanying them was the young secretary Louis.
Lord Massey had occasionally reprimanded Louis about a flirtation he was carrying on with a girl in the neighbourhood. Louis, losing his temper, did not hesitate to retort with a reference to the meetings he had witnessed between Lady Massey and the Duke of Marshfields. Maddened by this insult to his wife, Lord Massey seized his gun and shot his secretary dead.
On the suggestion of Catenac, it was given out that Louis had met with a shooting accident. But the last words of the dead man sunk deep into the mind of Lord Massey and created a complete estrangement between him and his wife. Not even the birth of a daughter, who was christened Diana, could heal the breach. In the course of time Diana grew up into a sweet and beautiful woman.
One day there came to her father's house a young artist named André, who was employed upon some decorative work. They in love with one another; and in the several interviews which followed they dwelt fondly on the time when they hoped André would make sufficient money by his art to enable them to marry.
Lord and Lady Massey, ignorant of this romance, affianced their daughter to Lord Bruel, a wealthy young nobleman.
Though I narrate these facts now, at the time I knew nothing
of them. My first connection with the affair was when the Duke
of Marshfields came to me with the request that I should try
and find his son. The adopted child, I leaned subsequently,
had died. The Duke had become reconciled to his wife, and was
endeavouring to make amends for his conduct.
The only facts with which I was provided were that the little male baby had been taken to the Foundling Hospital and had on his arm a large scar or birthmark. Meagre enough details, in truth, but not too meagre for me, Lecoq, who had brought many a murderer to the guillotine with less to go upon.
I had not been engaged on the case for more than 24 hours when I discovered that other people were abroad on the same mission. My suspicions were aroused, and when I suspect I can never rest until I am satisfied.
It was in this manner that I learned of the doings of the blackmailing gang.
The head of the gang was a man called Mascarot, nominally an employment agent, in which capacity he did a large business in one of the main thoroughfares of Paris. His colleagues were a certain Dr. Horton, a well-known society doctor; and a M. Lavel, solicitor with a very considerable practice in the courts. Next door to the Employment Agency was the Mutual Loan Bank, run by a Mr. Martin, who lived on the premises with his daughter Flavia. There was a man also, I noticed, who was frequently running in and out of the employment agency and the bank—an old, poorly-dressed man, who went by the name of Father Tantaine.
THESE facts I noted at first, but what I confess, even I, Lecoq, did not discover till later, so clever were the rogues, was that Mascarot, the employment agent, Martin, the banker, and Father Tantaine were one and the same person!
In these three characters Mascarot conducted his business of blackmail. As an employment agent he obtained from the servants whom he recommended to situations all the scandals about their masters and mistresses, for few men and women are without some episode in their careers which they would willingly pay to keep secret...
As the banker, Martin, he was able to get hold of the dissolute sons of rich men, induce them to forge names to bills, and so hold them in his power against the time when they should inherit their fathers' wealth and be able to pay for his silence.
As Father Tantaine, the poor, harmless, innocent-looking old man, he could go anywhere, and, unsuspected, pick up secrets which might prove valuable.
His two partners, Dr. Horton and M. Lavel, exercised their respective professions of doctor and solicitor with the same object, obtaining from their patients and clients private secrets on which they levied blackmail. Mascarot, who was the brain and life of the whole gang, also employed several agents, who remained faithful to him, because they knew that at any time he could send them to the gallows.
Each of these agents brought him a thread which he, with skill which I must admire, twisted into a cord to bind his victims. The gang had been engaged on their nefarious work for some 20 years, and in the course of that time had enslaved hundreds of persons. At the time of which I write it was their intention to make one final tremendous coup, and then retire.
Through one of Lord Massey's servants, Mascarot learnt of the death of Louis, the secretary. He knew that Viscount Catenac had been a witness of the tragedy, and he knew, moreover—for what did the man not know of the lives of the upper classes?—that the viscount kept a diary. That diary he obtained, and there read a full and true account of how the secretary had been killed. In the prosecution of this affair he seized upon the letters of the Duke of Marshfields, which Lady Massey had so carefully preserved. Here he learnt of the death of Lord George Crossley, and received his first hint of the fate of the duke and duchess's child. The story of the duel was corroborated by the narrative of Katherine, the scullery-maid, whom Mascarot had no difficulty in getting hold of.
In these secrets the ordinary blackmailer would have seen little beyond a method of making money by the usual practice. But Mascarot was not an ordinary man. He saw in his discovery the greatest opportunity of his life. Among the number of titled persons completely in his power was Lord Henry Crossley, the brother of that Lord Crossley with whom the Duke of Marshfields had fought the fatal duel in the dark. He determined that this young dissolute lord should marry Diana Massey and thereby obtain in time all the Massey wealth, half of which Mascarot would demand for himself and his partners. In return for doing Lord Crossley this service (for so Mascarot politely called it), the blackmailers demanded some assistance from the prospective bridegroom. He was to help them in a little plan which had long been smouldering in the brain of the chief of the gang.
In the course of his criminal career Mascarot had always made a practice of not demanding too much from his victims, for fear of driving them to extremities. He had the names of some three hundred and fifty men upon his books who, though poor themselves, were married to wealthy wives. From time to time they had paid him money which they had obtained from their wives, but Mascarot knew human nature well enough to realise that it would be a fatal mistake to compel them to solicit money too frequently.
They could always, however, persuade their wives to invest a certain sum in a speculation, for women are mostly gamblers. It was this fact that gave Mascarot the clue for his great idea.
Lord Crossley was to start a company for the promotion of some bogus copper mine. The company was to be advertised, and 350 of Mascarot's slaves were to obtain £400 apiece from their wives with which to buy shares. As soon as the shares had all been subscribed for the company would be wound up. All strangers who might have bought the shares would be reimbursed.
To the 350 "slaves" whose secrets Mascarot held, a letter would be sent simply stating that the company had been a failure. The wives would not understand the business part of the arrangement, the reimbursement of the strangers would allay all public suspicion, and the blackmailers would get clear away with £140,000.
The use Mascarot proposed to make of the Duke of Marshfield's secret was dictated more by his heart than his head, and thereby resulted his undoing. His daughter Flavia had fallen violently in love with a penniless young teacher of music named Paul. Unable to deny his daughter anything, Mascarot felt himself compelled to comply with her request to be allowed to marry him.
The Duke's search for his son provided Mascarot with chance of giving Paul both wealth and position. Dr. Horton, by a surgical operation, traced a scar, representing the birth-mark of the missing heir, on his arm, and through the assistance or his poorer victims Mascarot built up an elaborate system of evidence proving that Paul must be the child left at the Foundling Hospital.
NOW all might have gone well with this gigantic scheme had it not been that Diana Massey loved André, the poor painter. Mascarot had found no difficulty compelling Lord and Lady Massey, by an adroit use of the secrets that he held, to cancel the proposed marriage with Lord Bruel, and to accept in his place Lord Henry Crossley. But at this point he ran up against André himself, who was determined to wed the girl he loved, and, what was a more dangerous opposition, Lecoq, the detective.
In the course of my inquiries on behalf of the Duke of Marshfields, I discovered convincing and overwhelming proof that the missing heir to the dukedom was no other person than the poor artist André. I kept this information back for the time being, simply going so far as to take André under my protection, for Mascarot, finding that he was one of the factors in the opposition he was encountering, did not hesitate to try and procure his death. I even allowed Mascarot to imagine that André was dying. And then I struck, just as the whole conspiracy had come to a head.
I had discovered the triple identity of the employment agent. I watched him destroy in turn two of his identities prior to retiring for good and all. First, Father Tantaine disappeared, then the employment agency was closed, and all that was left of Mascarot was Martin the banker.
I watched the Duke of Marshfields come to the banker's house. From next door I saw Paul, who had married Flavia, presented to him as his son, seemingly overwhelming proofs being offered at the same time as to his identity. Both Dr. Horton and M. Lavel were present with their chief at this pretty little farce. Then I entered.
My appearance has caused a sensation on several occasions, but never so much as then.
"Monsieur Lecoq!" the three staring, white-faced blackmailers exclaimed as I stood before them.
They knew at once that the freedom they had enjoyed for twenty years was at an end. Doctor Horton committed suicide—he had carried poison with him for years, with a fear of such a discovery in his mind. Lavel I sent to prison for the rest of his life. But Mascarot, separated from his daughter, whom he truly loved, and seeing her complete ruin, wedded as she was to a penniless do-no-good, went raving mad.
As for André, he became in time the Duke of Marshfields, and his marriage to Diana Massey was the great event of the season in Paris.
As published in Truth, Brisbane, 3 May 1908
SOME years ago there lived at Orcival—a little town on the banks of the Seine some miles from Paris—a gentleman named Sauvresy. Though a young man of great wealth, as the owner of the largest estate in the neighbourhood, he fell in love with and married the daughter of the local schoolmaster.
Bertha—such was the name of his wife—enjoyed to the full the almost magical change in her fortunes. She had only to express a desire to find it immediately gratified. It was her husband's delight to spend money like water on her every whim.
They had been married for three years when Sauvresy brought to his beautiful country house at Orcival his great friend Count Hector. Hector, who had led a very dissipated life in Paris, had just exhausted the considerable fortune he had inherited, and was seriously meditating suicide as an alternative to the debtors' prison when Sauvresy intervened.
He begged the count to make Orcival his home, and, on his invitation being accepted, busied himself in trying to retrieve some of his friend's more serious losses. His solicitude for the count's interests led him to arrange a match between his friend and Laura Courtois, the heiress of the Mayor of Orcival. M. Courtois. The proposed marriage never came to anything, for at the end of 15 months Sauvresy was taken ill and, feeling that be was about to die, begged the count to marry Bertha as soon as he should have passed away.
The count fulfilled the dying request of his friend, and Bertha and he became man and wife. They had been married scarcely a year when the terrible catastrophe happened which resulted in my being called upon to investigate one of the most mysterious and intricate problems with which I have ever been faced.
On Wednesday, July 5, the count received a considerable sum of money from his bankers. The same evening the servants, with the permission of their master, attended the marriage of one of their number in Paris, and in consequence, the count and countess were left alone, in the house.
The following morning, at about three o'clock two poachers found the horribly mutilated body of the unfortunate countess near the river bank. They immediately summoned the mayor and the nearest justice of the peace, M. Plantat, who arrived with all speed to examine the scene of the crime.
The unfortunate woman was clad in evening dress, and in her left hand she gripped a strip of common cloth. All around the spot where her body was found, the sand and grass had been trampled upon as if in the course some violent struggle.
The discovery of the count's slippers in the grounds of the house appeared to point to a double tragedy.
When the representatives of the law arrived at the house they were met by the party of servants returning from Paris, all unconscious of the terrible tragedy that had taken place in their absence. The only member of the party missing was the gardener, Gespin, who, it appeared, had left his companions at the railway station the previous evening.
Shortly afterwards Gespin put in an appearance, and being unable to give a proper account of himself, and being found to have a considerable sum of money in his possession, was promptly arrested on suspicion. The subsequent inquiries seemed to confirm these suspicions.
A blood-stained vest was found in the grounds, with a piece torn from it corresponding in size to the strip of material gripped in the dead woman's hand. The vest was shown to be Gespin's. Prompt inquiries in Paris by telegraph disclosed the fact that the man had gone to an ironmonger's in the city soon after his arrival in Paris, and there purchased with a £20 note a parcel of tools, one of them a large sheath-knife or dagger.
Meanwhile a telegram had summoned me to the scene. When I arrived I found that the mayor and the examining magistrate had quite made up their minds that Gespin was the murderer. On the other hand, It was obvious, from the manner of M. Plantat, that he opposed this theory. I, Lecoq, as usual, preserved an open mind.
Inside the house the evidences of the crime were appalling, and seemed to lend support to the contention of the mayor and the examining magistrate that the brutal deed had been the work of a gang of miscreants led by Gespin.
In the entrance hall there was a pool of blood, and all the way up the staircase the woodwork was stained and crimsoned. On the door of the countess's boudoir was the imprint of a blood-stained hand. In the boudoir itself nothing unusual was to be noticed, but in the bedroom beyond, the scene of disorder was frightful. It was as if a furious maniac had smashed and trampled upon every article of furniture. A small tea-table in the middle of the floor lay broken, surrounded by lumps of sugar and fragments of porcelain cups. The lamps with which the room was lit had been hurled to the ground, and nearby lay the clock, which, in falling, had stopped at 20 minutes past three. Even the curtains had been torn from the bed, which was all tumbled and disordered.
In the rooms on the upper floor the same scene of devastation presented itself. Even the coverings of chairs had been cut away, and the stuffing within scattered about the floor. Every book had been taken from its place on the shelves, and all the chests of drawers were lying open.
In the middle of the floor of one of these rooms I found a hatchet. Downstairs in the dining-room in appeared that the assassins had coolly partaken of supper, for the table was loaded with a quantity of food and empty bottles. Five wine-glasses seemed to indicate the number of the miscreants.
In the mind of the examining magistrate Gespin's guilt was so clearly established, that he wished to send me back to Paris there and then, considering further enquiry unnecessary. But, fortunately for me, just at this moment there arrived an express messenger from the mayor's wife. It announced the terrible news that their daughter Laura, who was staying with an aunt in Paris, had written a letter, the last letter she ever intended to write, declaring she found life insupportable and was determined to commit suicide.
Faced with this domestic tragedy, M. Courtois forgot his public character, and hurried away grief-stricken, leaving me to make what investigations I liked. I began to make them carefully and skilfully, attended only by M. Plantat, who seemed curiously interested and excited as I announced my deductions one by one.
I TURNED my attention first to the debris of the tea-table to the bedroom. Kneeling down I felt the carpet where it was strewn with the broken porcelain. It was very damp. The tea, therefore, had not all been drunk when the cups were broken, and hence the count or countess must have been taking tea when the murder occurred. But the clock had stopped at 20 minutes past three. Was it likely that the countess, fully dressed, would be taking tea at such an hour? It was not at all likely, I told myself.
Filled with an inspiration, I opened the clock face and moved the long hand to the figure of half-past three. The clock promptly struck eleven. Clearly the assassins had tried to cover their traces by giving a false idea of the time. They had pushed the hands on, but had forgotten to put the striking part of the mechanism in harmony. The clock fell when the murder took place, and then stopped. Hence the crime must have been committed between half-past 10 and 11. At such an hour the count and countess were not likely to be in bed. The fact that the countess was dressed was proof at least that she had not retired.
How, then, to account for the disorder of the bed? I examined it carefully. The sheets had been drawn back, and the pillows bad been tumbled, but the bolster and the undersheets were not rumpled at all, which they must have been had somebody lain in the bed. Therefore, somebody had purposely disarranged the bed-clothes; and therefore, the count and countess had not gone to bed; and, therefore, the murder must, in all human probability, have taken place between half-past 10 and 11.
A towel lying on the floor caught my eye. Examining it closely, I discovered that somebody had wiped a razor on it after shaving himself. In a drawer hard by there was a case of razors, one of which had been recently used.
Turning my attention to the hatchet in the upper room, I detected at once from marks on the carpet that this weapon had been hurled to the floor with great violence. This violence betrayed great anger on the part of the assassin. But why was be angry? Clearly, I argued, all the damage done to the furniture could only be explained by the person responsible for it being anxious to discover something. Probably failing to find what be sought, he hurled the hatchet to the floor in a fit of anger.
In the dining-room I next examined the five glasses, and by holding them up to the light, one by one, I saw that nobody had drunk from any of them. Smelling them, I detected, to my surprise, that vinegar, and not wine, had been poured into them. The bottles on the table were all empty, except one, which contained vinegar. From the count's valet I learnt that the other bottles were merely empties and had never contained wine. Hence the elaborately prepared supper-table was simply another ruse of the assassin to deceive the trackers—a ruse so clumsily planned that, in trying to show that a band of five persons had been responsible for the murder by leaving five half-filled glasses on the table, he had actually poured into them vinegar, instead of wine.
After what I had learned of the crime in the house I was not surprised at the facts I was able to read into traces and footprints in the garden. I found that the countess's body had been dragged from the house across the lawn, and that in all probability she was already dead at the time. The seeming evidence of a struggle near the spot where the body was found had, I discovered, been made by the assassin.
These deductions of mine were corroborated by the medical evidence, the doctor informing me that the blow which had killed the countess had been delivered from behind, and that the other wounds on the body had been made some hours after she was dead.
Returning to the house I summoned the count's valet and asked to see if a pair of his master's boots were missing. To complete my investigations I asked to see a portrait of the count. One was shown me, and I saw that Count Hector had always worn a full beard. There was no necessity to make any more inquiries.
In the grounds they were still searching for the count's body, but I knew they would never find it, for the very simple reason, so I told myself, that it was the count who had murdered his wife and then fled.
All the time I had been making my investigations I had been struck with the excitement and interest evinced by M. Plantat. He asked me to dinner, and as we sat at the table I felt convinced that he knew more about the tragedy than he cared to say. Unable to make him speak, I determined to give him my confidence by reciting my own theory of the crime, in the hope that by doing so I might encourage a like frankness on his part.
The countess, I said, relating my deductions, possessed some document that compromised the count. She refused to give it up to her husband and the count, determined at all costs to obtain possession of it, carefully and deliberately planned the murder of his wife.
So that the crime he meditated might appear to be the work of thieves, he let it be generally known that a large sum of money, sent from his bank, was in the house. When he got rid of his servants by sending them away for the night to Paris, and to avert all suspicion from himself, gave his gardener, Gespin, a 20-pound note with instructions to buy a knife and return the change.
Left alone in the great country house with his victim, the count stabbed her from behind as she was sitting at the tea-table. Then he set about searching the house thoroughly for the compromising papers. His quest proving fruitless, his anger got the better of him and he hurled the hatchet with which he had been breaking open cupboards and drawers, violently to the floor.
Terror next seized him, and he began to think of hiding the evidences of his guilt. First shaving off the full beard that he wore in order to disguise himself, he dragged the body of his wife down to the riverside. There he stabbed the corpse several times and carefully trampled down the sand as if to show there had been a struggle.
Obtaining one of Gespin's vests, he had torn a piece out and placed it in the dead woman's hand. The rest of the garment, soaked in blood, he left where it could easily be found. His own shoes he also left in the garden to give the idea that he also had been murdered. But he forgot, in the excitement of his terror, that the fact that a pair of his boots were missing would prove that he could not have been wearing slippers; and that therefore the ruse was not only futile, but actually strengthened the proofs of his guilt.
When I had finished, M. Plantat, with obvious signs of emotion, rose from his seat and took from a secret drawer in his writing table a packet of papers.
"I have determined to tell you everything," he said, turning to me, "and to place myself entirely in your hands. I would not have spoken had not your wonderful genius for investigation enabled you to read this tragedy aright. Count Hector is the murderer. Listen!"
He began to read from the papers, and for an hour I listened to one of the most dramatic stories I ever recollect hearing.
While Sauvresy was still alive with his wife, Bertha had
fallen in love with the count, and the count had not hesitated
to betray the friend to whom he owed so much. By chance
Sauvresy discovered their guilty secret, and by chance also,
Bertha learnt that he knew the truth.
Maddened by her love for the count, she determined to make away with her husband. From a quack doctor in Orcival she obtained, for the sum of £1,500, some aconite, a poison the effects of which were little known in those days. Sauvresy was taken suddenly ill. After being confined to his bed for a fortnight he began to suspect the truth, and, watching his wife carefully, at last. detected her doctoring his medicine with the poison. He managed to obtain one of the battles containing the aconite, and, though dying, planned a horrible revenge.
Summoning up all his strength, he wrote out a full account of the true facts of his case, and sealing this up with the bottle of poison, entrusted it to the hands of M. Plantat. He knew that Bertha loved the count, but that the count, on his part, loved Laura Courtois to distraction. Sauvresy realised that the greatest punishment he could inflict upon his guilty wife and his false friend was to force them to marry when he was dead. Summoning them to his bedside, he told them that unless they married M. Plantat had instructions to forward the packet of papers to the police—a step which would certainly lead both of them to the scaffold. Should they marry, however, the truth would never be disclosed, and the papers would be given into Bertha's hands on the day of the marriage. Sauvresy realised that Bertha would always seek to keep these papers from the count, knowing that he loved Laura Courtois, and that if she was deprived of this hold over him he would leave her.
According to his instructions, M Plantat delivered the sealed packet into the hands of the countess on the day of her marriage. She immediately secreted it, and the count, mad with rage, in vain attempted to find its hiding place. At last the countess, fearful lest her husband should take from her the one thing that kept him faithful to her, returned the documents to the keeping of M. Plantat.
All might have gone well with the guilty couple had not M. Plantat himself been deeply in love with Laura. One night, the old justice of the peace saw the count and the girl he loved alone together. Mad with jealousy, he broke the trust that had been reposed in him and read the contents of the sealed package, which he half suspected reflected upon the count.
Appalled though he was by what he read of his rival's crime, he dared not use his knowledge. He had to stand quietly by and see Laura deluded and betrayed the count.
"And now Laura is dead," M. Plantat said in a trembling voice,
as he brought his narrative to a conclusion; "and I care no
more for life."
But I, Lecoq, guessed the truth. The letter to her parents, stating that she was going to commit suicide, I felt certain had been dictated by the count, with whom Laura had fled. Within 24 hours I discovered the place of their retreat. The murderer was already in my grasp. I had to put out my hand and the scaffold, would have claimed him.
But I held back.
My heart had been moved by M. Plantat's story. I knew that he suffered from the thought that the girl he still loved would be associated with such a vile murderer in all the glare of a public trial, I allowed the count time to commit suicide, and having sent him to the Highest Tribunal of all, interfered to prevent Laura, now cured of her mad infatuation, from following her betrayer.
To all this tragedy and mystery there was happy ending. I need not relate it. It is enough to say that M. Lecoq, the detective, nowhere receives a warmer welcome than at the quiet country house at Orcival where live M. and Mme. Plantat.