LITMIR.BIZ

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concierge did not seem disposed to reply.

      “Her name!” insisted the old man.

      The tone was so sharp, so imperative, that the concierge was upset.

      “Madame Juliette Chaffour,” he answered.

      “On what floor does she reside?”

      “On the second, the door opposite the stairs.”

      A minute later, the old man was waiting in Madame Juliette’s drawing-room. Madame was dressing, the maid informed him, and would be down directly.

      Tabaret was astonished at the luxury of the room. There was nothing flaring or coarse, or in bad taste. It was not at all like the apartment of a kept woman. The old fellow, who knew a good deal about such things, saw that everything was of great value. The ornaments on the mantelpiece alone must have cost, at the lowest estimate, twenty thousand francs.

      “Clergeot,” thought he, “didn’t exaggerate a bit.”

      Juliette’s entrance disturbed his reflections.

      She had taken off her dress, and had hastily thrown about her a loose black dressing-gown, trimmed with cherry-coloured satin. Her beautiful hair, slightly disordered after her drive, fell in cascades about her neck, and curled behind her delicate ears. She dazzled old Tabaret. He began to understand.

      “You wished, sir, to speak with me?” she inquired, bowing gracefully.

      “Madame,” replied M. Tabaret, “I am a friend of Noel Gerdy’s, I may say his best friend, and —”

      “Pray sit down, sir,” interrupted the young woman.

      She placed herself on a sofa, just showing the tips of her little feet encased in slippers matching her dressing-gown, while the old man sat down in a chair.

      “I come, madame,” he resumed, “on very serious business. Your presence at M. Gerdy’s —”

      “Ah,” cried Juliette, “he already knows of my visit? Then he must employ a detective.”

      “My dear child —” began Tabaret, paternally.

      “Oh! I know, sir, what your errand is. Noel has sent you here to scold me. He forbade my going to his house, but I couldn’t help it. It’s annoying to have a puzzle for a lover, a man whom one knows nothing whatever about, a riddle in a black coat and a white cravat, a sad and mysterious being —”

      “You have been imprudent.”

      “Why? Because he is going to get married? Why does he not admit it then?”

      “Suppose that it is not true.”

      “Oh, but it is! He told that old shark Clergeot so, who repeated it to me. Any way, he must be plotting something in that head of his; for the last month he has been so peculiar, he has changed so, that I hardly recognize him.”

      Old Tabaret was especially anxious to know whether Noel had prepared an alibi for the evening of the crime. For him that was the grand question. If he had, he was certainly guilty; if not, he might still be innocent. Madame Juliette, he had no doubt, could enlighten him on that point.

      Consequently he had presented himself with his lesson all prepared, his little trap all set.

      The young woman’s outburst disconcerted him a little; but trusting to the chances of conversation, he resumed.

      “Will you oppose Noel’s marriage, then?”

      “His marriage!” cried Juliette, bursting out into a laugh; “ah, the poor boy! If he meets no worse obstacle than myself, his path will be smooth. Let him marry by all means, the sooner the better, and let me hear no more of him.”

      “You don’t love him, then?” asked the old fellow, surprised at this amiable frankness.

      “Listen, sir. I have loved him a great deal, but everything has an end. For four years, I, who am so fond of pleasure, have passed an intolerable existence. If Noel doesn’t leave me, I shall be obliged to leave him. I am tired of having a lover who is ashamed of me and who despises me.”

      “If he despises you, my pretty lady, he scarcely shows it here,” replied old Tabaret, casting a significant glance about the room.

      “You mean,” said she rising, “that he spends a great deal of money on me. It’s true. He pretends that he has ruined himself on my account; it’s very possible. But what’s that to me! I am not a grabbing woman; and I would much have preferred less money and more regard. My extravagance has been inspired by anger and want of occupation. M. Gerdy treats me like a mercenary woman; and so I act like one. We are quits.”

      “You know very well that he worships you.”

      “He? I tell you he is ashamed of me. He hides me as though I were some horrible disease. You are the first of his friends to whom I have ever spoken. Ask him how often he takes me out. One would think that my presence dishonoured him. Why, no longer ago than last Tuesday, we went to the theatre! He hired an entire box. But do you think that he sat in it with me? Not at all. He slipped away and I saw no more of him the whole evening.”

      “How so? Were you obliged to return home alone?”

      “No. At the end of the play, towards midnight, he deigned to reappear. We had arranged to go to the masked ball at the Opera and then to have some supper. Ah, it was amusing! At the ball, he didn’t dare to let down his hood, or take off his mask. At supper, I had to treat him like a perfect stranger, because some of his friends were present.”

      This, then, was the alibi prepared in case of trouble. Juliette, had she been less carried away by her own feelings, would have noticed old Tabaret’s emotion, and would certainly have held her tongue. He was perfectly livid, and trembled like a leaf.

      “Well,” he said, making a great effort to utter the words, “the supper, I suppose, was none the less gay for that.”

      “Gay!” echoed the young woman, shrugging her shoulders; “you do not seem to know much of your friend. If you ever ask him to dinner, take good care not to give him anything to drink. Wine makes him as merry as a funeral procession. At the second bottle, he was more tipsy than a cork; so much so, that he lost nearly everything he had with him: his overcoat, purse, umbrella, cigar-case —”

      Old Tabaret couldn’t sit and listen any longer; he jumped to his feet like a raving madman.

      “Miserable wretch!” he cried, “infamous scoundrel! It is he; but I have him!”

      And he rushed out, leaving Juliette so terrified that she called her maid.

      “Child,” said she, “I have just made some awful blunder, have let some secret out. I am sure that something dreadful is going to happen; I feel it. That old rogue was no friend of Noel’s, he came to circumvent me, to lead me by the nose; and he succeeded. Without knowing it I must have spoken against Noel. What can I have said? I have thought carefully, and can remember nothing; but he must be warned though. I will write him a line, while you find a messenger to take it.”

      Old Tabaret was soon in his cab and hurrying towards the Prefecture of Police. Noel an assassin! His hate was without bounds, as formerly had been his confiding affection. He had been cruelly deceived, unworthily duped, by the vilest and the most criminal of men. He thirsted for vengeance; he asked himself what punishment would be great enough for the crime.

      “For he not only assassinated Claudine,” thought he, “but he so arranged the whole thing as to have an innocent man accused and condemned. And who can say that he did not kill his poor mother?”

      He regretted the abolition of torture, the refined cruelty of the middle ages: quartering, the stake, the wheel. The guillotine acts so quickly that the condemned man has scarcely time to feel the cold steel cutting through his muscles; it is nothing more than a fillip on the neck. Through trying so much to mitigate the pain of death, it has now become little more than a joke, and might be abolished altogether.

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