The Teeth of the Tiger

He continued his detailed explanations:

"So the whole set of letters was placed here, at the bottom. A clever piece of machinery, controlled by clockwork, took them one by one at the appointed time, pushed them to the edge of the groove concealed between the lamps and the pendants, and projected them into space."

None of those standing around Don Luis spoke, and all of them seemed perhaps a little disappointed. The whole thing was certainly very clever; but they had expected something better than a trick of springs and wheels, however surprising.

"Have patience, gentlemen," said Don Luis. "I promised you something ghastly; and you shall have it."

"Well, I agree," said the Prefect of Police, "that this is where the letters started from. But a good many points remain obscure; and, apart from this, there is one fact in particular which it seems impossible to understand. How were the criminals able to adapt the chandelier in this way? And, in a house guarded by the police, in a room watched night and day, how were they able to carry out such a piece of work without being seen or heard?"

"The answer is quite easy, Monsieur le Préfet: the work was done before the house was guarded by the police."

"Before the murder was committed, therefore?"

"Before the murder was committed."

"And what is to prove to me that that is so?"

"You have said so yourself, Monsieur le Préfet: because it could not have been otherwise."

"But do explain yourself, Monsieur!" cried M. Desmalions, with a gesture of irritation. "If you have important things to tell us, why delay?"

"It is better, Monsieur le Préfet, that you should arrive at the truth in the same way as I did. When you know the secret of the letters, the truth is much nearer than you think; and you would have already named the criminal if the horror of his crime had not been so great as to divert all suspicion from him."

M. Desmalions looked at him attentively. He felt the importance of Perenna's every word and he was really anxious.

"Then, according to you," he said, "those letters accusing Madame Fauville and Gaston Sauverand were placed there with the sole object of ruining both of them?"

"Yes, Monsieur le Préfet."

"And, as they were placed there before the crime, the plot must have been schemed before the murder?"

"Yes, Monsieur le Préfet, before the murder. From the moment that we admit the innocence of Mme. Fauville and Gaston Sauverand, we are obliged to conclude that, as everything accuses them, this is due to a series of deliberate acts. Mme. Fauville was out on the night of the murder: a plot! She was unable to say how she spent her time while the murder was being committed: a plot! Her inexplicable drive in the direction of La Muette and her cousin Sauverand's walk in the neighbourhood of the house: plots! The marks left in the apple by those teeth, by Mme. Fauville's own teeth: a plot and the most infernal of all!

"I tell you, everything is plotted beforehand, everything is, so to speak, prepared, measured out, labelled, and numbered. Everything takes place at the appointed time. Nothing is left to chance. It is a work very nicely pieced together, worthy of the most skilful artisan, so solidly constructed that outside happenings have not been able to throw it out of gear; and that the scheme works exactly, precisely, imperturbably, like the clockwork in this box, which is a perfect symbol of the whole business and, at the same time, gives a most accurate explanation of it, because the letters denouncing the murderers were duly posted before the crime and delivered after the crime on the dates and at the hours foreseen."

M. Desmalions remained thinking for a time and then objected:

"Still, in the letters which he wrote, M. Fauville accuses his wife."

"He does."

"We must therefore admit either that he was right in accusing her or that the letters are forged?"

"They are not forged. All the experts have recognized M. Fauville's handwriting."

"Then?"

"Then—"

Don Luis did not finish his sentence; and M. Desmalions felt the breath of the truth fluttering still nearer round him.

The others, one and all as anxious as himself, were silent. He muttered:

"I do not understand—"

"Yes, Monsieur le Préfet, you do. You understand that, if the sending of those letters forms an integrate part of the plot hatched against Mme. Fauville and Gaston Sauverand, it is because their contents were prepared in such a way as to be the undoing of the victims."

"What! What! What are you saying?"

"I am saying what I said before. Once they are innocent, everything that tells against them is part of the plot."

Again there was a long silence. The Prefect of Police did not conceal his agitation. Speaking very slowly, with his eyes fixed on Don Luis's eyes, he said:

"Whoever the culprit may be, I know nothing more terrible than this work of hatred."

"It is an even more improbable work than you can imagine, Monsieur le Préfet," said Perenna, with growing animation, "and it is a hatred of which you, who do not know Sauverand's confession, cannot yet estimate the violence. I understood it completely as I listened to the man; and, since then, all my thoughts have been overpowered by the dominant idea of that hatred. Who could hate like that? To whose loathing had Marie Fauville and Sauverand been sacrificed? Who was the inconceivable person whose perverted genius had surrounded his two victims with chains so powerfully forged?

"And another idea came to my mind, an earlier idea which had already struck me several times and to which I have already referred in Sergeant Mazeroux's presence: I mean the really mathematical character of the appearance of the letters. I said to myself that such grave documents could not be introduced into the case at fixed dates unless some primary reason demanded that those dates should absolutely be fixed. What reason? If a human agency had been at work each time, there would surely have been some irregularity dependent on this especially after the police had become cognizant of the matter and were present at the delivery of the letters.

"Well," Perenna continued, "in spite of every obstacle, the letters continued to come, as though they could not help it. And thus the reason of their coming gradually dawned upon me: they came mechanically, by some invisible process set going once and for all and working with the blind certainty of a physical law. This was a case not of a conscious intelligence and will, but just of material necessity…. It was the clash of these two ideas—the idea of the hatred pursuing the innocent and the idea of that machinery serving the schemes of the 'hater'—it was their clash that gave birth to the little spark of light. When brought into contact, the two ideas combined in my mind and suggested the recollection that Hippolyte Fauville was an engineer by profession!"

The others listened to him with a sort of uneasy oppression. What was gradually being revealed of the tragedy, instead of relieving the anxiety, increased it until it became absolutely painful.

M. Desmalions objected:

"Granting that the letters arrived on the dates named, you will nevertheless have noted that the hour varied on each occasion.

"That is to say, it varied according as we watched in the dark or not, and that is just the detail which supplied me with the key to the riddle. If the letters—and this was an indispensable precaution, which we are now able to understand—were delivered only under cover of the darkness, it must be because a contrivance of some kind prevented them from appearing when the electric light was on, and because that contrivance was controlled by a switch inside the room. There is no other explanation possible.

"We have to do with an automatic distributor that delivers the incriminating letters which it contains by clockwork, releasing them only between this hour and that on such and such a night fixed in advance and only at times when the electric light is off. You have the apparatus before you. No doubt the experts will admire its ingenuity and confirm my assertions. But, given the fact that it was found in the ceiling of this room, given the fact that it contained letters written by M. Fauville, am I not entitled to say that it was constructed by M. Fauville, the electrical engineer?"

Once more the name of M. Fauville returned, like an obsession; and each time the name stood more clearly defined. It was first M. Fauville; then M. Fauville, the engineer; then M. Fauville, the electrical engineer. And thus the picture of the "hater," as Don Luis said, appeared in its accurate outlines, giving those men, used though they were to the strangest criminal monstrosities, a thrill of terror. The truth was now no longer prowling around them. They were already fighting with it, as you fight with an adversary whom you do not see but who clutches you by the throat and brings you to the ground.

And the Prefect of Police, summing up all his impressions, said, in a strained voice:

"So M. Fauville wrote those letters in order to ruin his wife and the man who was in love with her?"

"Yes."

"In that case—"

"What?"

"Knowing, at the same time, that he was threatened with death, he wished, if ever the threat was realized, that his death should be laid to the charge of his wife and her friend?"

"Yes."

"And, in order to avenge himself on their love for each other and to gratify his hatred of them both, he wanted the whole set of facts to point to them as guilty of the murder of which he would be the victim?"

"Yes."

"So that—so that M. Fauville, in one part of his accursed work, was—what shall I say?—the accomplice of his own murder. He dreaded death. He struggled against it. But he arranged that his hatred should gain by it. That's it, isn't it? That's how it is?"

"Almost, Monsieur le Préfet. You are following the same stages by which I travelled and, like myself, you are hesitating before the last truth, before the truth which gives the tragedy its sinister character and deprives it of all human proportions."

The Prefect struck the table with his two fists and, in a sudden fit of revolt, cried:

"It's ridiculous! It's a perfectly preposterous theory! M. Fauville threatened with death and contriving his wife's ruin with that Machiavellian perseverance? Absurd! The man who came to my office, the man whom you saw, was thinking of only one thing: how to escape dying! He was obsessed by one dread alone, the dread of death.

"It is not at such moments," the Prefect emphasized, "that a man fits up clockwork and lays traps, especially when those traps cannot take effect unless he dies by foul play. Can you see M. Fauville working at his automatic machine, putting in with his own hands letters which he has taken the pains to write to a friend three months before and intercept, arranging events so that his wife shall appear guilty and saying, 'There! If I die murdered, I'm easy in my mind: the person to be arrested will be Marie!'

"No, you must confess, men don't take these gruesome precautions. Or, if they do—if they do, it means that they're sure of being murdered. It means that they agree to be murdered. It means that they are at one with the murderer, so to speak, and meet him halfway. In short, it means—"

He interrupted himself, as if the sentences which he had spoken had surprised him. And the others seemed equally disconcerted. And all of them unconsciously drew from those sentences the conclusions which they implied, and which they themselves did not yet fully perceive.

Don Luis did not remove his eyes from the Prefect, and awaited the inevitable words.

M. Desmalions muttered:

"Come, come, you are not going to suggest that he had agreed—"

"I suggest nothing, Monsieur le Préfet," said Don Luis. "So far, you have followed the logical and natural trend of your thoughts; and that brings you to your present position."

"Yes, yes, I know, but I am showing you the absurdity of your theory. It can't be correct, and we can't believe in Marie Fauville's innocence unless we are prepared to suppose an unheard-of thing, that M. Fauville took part in his own murder. Why, it's laughable!"

And he gave a laugh; but it was a forced laugh and did not ring true.

"For, after all," he added, "you can't deny that that is where we stand."

"I don't deny it."

"Well?"

"Well, M. Fauville, as you say, took part in his own murder."

This was said in the quietest possible fashion, but with an air of such certainty that no one dreamed of protesting. After the work of deduction and supposition which Don Luis had compelled his hearers to undertake, they found themselves in a corner which it was impossible for them to leave without stumbling against unanswerable objections.

There was no longer any doubt about M. Fauville's share in his own death. But of what did that share consist? What part had he played in the tragedy of hatred and murder? Had he played that part, which ended in the sacrifice of his life, voluntarily or under compulsion? Who, when all was said and done, had served as his accomplice or his executioner?

All these questions came crowding upon the minds of M. Desmalions and the others. They thought of nothing but of how to solve them, and Don Luis could feel certain that his solution was accepted beforehand. From that moment he had but to tell his story of what had happened without fear of contradiction. He did so briefly, after the manner of a succinct report limited to essentials:

"Three months before the crime, M. Fauville wrote a series of letters to one of his friends, M. Langernault, who, as Sergeant Mazeroux will have told you, Monsieur le Préfet, had been dead for several years, a fact of which M. Fauville cannot have been ignorant. These letters were posted, but were intercepted by some means which it is not necessary that we should know for the moment. M. Fauville erased the postmarks and the addresses and inserted the letters in a machine constructed for the purpose, of which he regulated the works so that the first letter should be delivered a fortnight after his death and the others at intervals of ten days.

"At this moment it is certain that his plan was concerted down to the smallest detail. Knowing that Sauverand was in love with his wife, watching Sauverand's movements, he must obviously have noticed that his detested rival used to pass under the windows of the house every Wednesday and that Marie Fauville would go to her window.

"This is a fact of the first importance, one which was exceedingly valuable to me; and it will impress you as being equal to a material proof. Every Wednesday evening, I repeat, Sauverand used to wander round the house. Now note this: first, the crime prepared by M. Fauville was committed on a Wednesday evening; secondly, it was at her husband's express request that Mme. Fauville went out that evening to go to the opera and to Mme. d'Ersinger's."

Don Luis stopped for a few seconds and then continued:

"Consequently, on the morning of that Wednesday, everything was ready, the fatal clock was wound up, the incriminating machinery was working to perfection, and the proofs to come would confirm the immediate proofs which M. Fauville held in reserve. Better still, Monsieur le Préfet, you had received from him a letter in which he told you of the plot hatched against him, and he implored your assistance for the morning of the next day—that is to say, after his death!

"Everything, in short, led him to think that things would go according to the 'hater's' wishes, when something occurred that nearly upset his schemes: the appearance of Inspector Vérot, who had been sent by you, Monsieur le Préfet, to collect particulars about the Mornington heirs. What happened between the two men? Probably no one will ever know. Both are dead; and their secret will not come to life again. But we can at least say for certain that Inspector Vérot was here and took away with him the cake of chocolate on which the teeth of the tiger were seen for the first time, and also that Inspector Vérot succeeded, thanks to circumstances with which we are unacquainted, in discovering M. Fauville's projects."

"This we know," explained Don Luis, "because Inspector Vérot said so in his own agonizing words; because it was through him that we learned that the crime was to take place on the following night; and because he had set down his discoveries in a letter which was stolen from him.

"And Fauville knew it also, because, to get rid of the formidable enemy who was thwarting his designs, he poisoned him; because, when the poison was slow in acting, he had the audacity, under a disguise which made him look like Sauverand and which was one day to turn suspicion against Sauverand, he had the audacity and the presence of mind to follow Inspector Vérot to the Café du Pont-Neuf, to purloin the letter of explanation which Inspector Vérot wrote you, to substitute a blank sheet of paper for it, and then to ask a passer-by, who might become a witness against Sauverand, the way to the nearest underground station for Neuilly, where Sauverand lived! There's your man, Monsieur le Préfet."

Don Luis spoke with increasing force, with the ardour that springs from conviction; and his logical and closely argued speech seemed to conjure up the actual truth,

"There's your man, Monsieur le Préfet," he repeated. "There's your scoundrel. And the situation in which he found himself was such, the fear inspired by Inspector Vérot's possible revelations was such, that, before putting into execution the horrible deed which he had planned, he came to the police office to make sure that his victim was no longer alive and had not been able to denounce him.

"You remember the scene, Monsieur le Préfet, the fellow's agitation and fright: 'To-morrow evening,' he said. Yes, it was for the morrow that he asked for your help, because he knew that everything would be over that same evening and that next day the police would be confronted with a murder, with the two culprits against whom he himself had heaped up the charges, with Marie Fauville, whom he had, so to speak, accused in advance….

"That was why Sergeant Mazeroux's visit and mine to his house, at nine o'clock in the evening, embarrassed him so obviously. Who were those intruders? Would they not succeed in shattering his plan? Reflection reassured him, even as we, by our insistence, compelled him to give way."

"After all, what he did care?" asked Perenna.

"His measures were so well taken that no amount of watching could destroy them or even make the watchers aware of them. What was to happen would happen in our presence and unknown to us. Death, summoned by him, would do its work…. And the comedy, the tragedy, rather, ran its course. Mme. Fauville, whom he was sending to the opera, came to say good-night. Then his servant brought him something to eat, including a dish of apples. Then followed a fit of rage, the agony of the man who is about to die and who fears death and a whole scene of deceit, in which he showed us his safe and the drab-cloth diary which was supposed to contain the story of the plot. … That ended matters.

"Mazeroux and I retired to the hall passage, closing the door after us; and M. Fauville remained alone and free to act. Nothing now could prevent the fulfilment of his wishes. At eleven o'clock in the evening, Mme. Fauville—to whom no doubt, in the course of the day, imitating Sauverand's handwriting, he had sent a letter—one of those letters which are always torn up at once, in which Sauverand entreated the poor woman to grant him an interview at the Ranelagh—Mme. Fauville would leave the opera and, before going to Mme. d'Ersinger's party, would spend an hour not far from the house.

"On the other hand, Sauverand would be performing his usual Wednesday pilgrimage less than half a mile away, in the opposite direction. During this time the crime would be committed.

"Both of them would come under the notice of the police, either by M. Fauville's allusions or by the incident at the Cafe du Pont-Neuf; both of them, moreover, would be incapable either of providing an alibi or of explaining their presence so near the house: were not both of them bound to be accused and convicted of the crime? … In the most unlikely event that some chance should protect them, there was an undeniable proof lying ready to hand in the shape of the apple containing the very marks of Marie Fauville's teeth! And then, a few weeks later, the last and decisive trick, the mysterious arrival at intervals of ten days, of the letters denouncing the pair. So everything was settled.

"The smallest details were foreseen with infernal clearness. You remember, Monsieur le Préfet, that turquoise which dropped out of my ring and was found in the safe? There were only four persons who could have seen it and picked it up. M. Fauville was one of them. Well, he was just the one, whom we all excepted; and yet it was he who, to cast suspicion upon me and to forestall an interference which he felt would be dangerous, seized the opportunity and placed the turquoise in the safe! …

"This time the work was completed. Fate was about to be fulfilled. Between the 'hater' and his victims there was but the distance of one act. The act was performed. M. Fauville died."

Don Luis ceased. His words were followed by a long silence; and he felt certain that the extraordinary story which he had just finished telling met with the absolute approval of his hearers. They did not discuss, they believed. And yet it was the most incredible truth that he was asking them to believe.

M. Desmalions asked one last question.

"You were in that passage with Sergeant Mazeroux. There were detectives outside the house. Admitting that M. Fauville knew that he was to be killed that night and at that very hour of the night, who can have killed him and who can have killed his son? There was no one within these four walls."

"There was M. Fauville."

A sudden clamour of protests arose. The veil was promptly torn; and the spectacle revealed by Don Luis provoked, in addition to horror, an unforeseen outburst of incredulity and a sort of revolt against the too kindly attention which had been accorded to those explanations. The Prefect of Police expressed the general feeling by exclaiming:

"Enough of words! Enough of theories! However logical they may seem, they lead to absurd conclusions."

"Absurd in appearance, Monsieur le Préfet; but how do we know that M. Fauville's unheard-of conduct is not explained by very natural reasons? Of course, no one dies with a light heart for the mere pleasure of revenge. But how do we know that M. Fauville, whose extreme emaciation and pallor you must have noted as I did, was not stricken by some mortal illness and that, knowing himself doomed—"

"I repeat, enough of words!" cried the Prefect. "You go only by suppositions. What I want is proofs, a proof, only one. And we are still waiting for it."

"Here it is, Monsieur le Préfet."

"Eh? What's that you say?"

"Monsieur le Préfet, when I removed the chandelier from the plaster that supported it, I found, outside the upper surface of the metal box, a sealed envelope. As the chandelier was placed under the attic occupied by M. Fauville's son, it is evident that M. Fauville was able, by lifting the boards of the floor in his son's room, to reach the top of the machine which he had contrived. This was how, during that last night, he placed this sealed envelope in position, after writing on it the date of the murder, '31 March, 11 P.M.,' and his signature, 'Hippolyte Fauville.'"

M. Desmalions opened the envelope with an eager hand. His first glance at the pages of writing which it contained made him give a start.

"Oh, the villain, the villain!" he said. "How was it possible for such a monster to exist? What a loathsome brute!"

In a jerky voice, which became almost inaudible at times owing to his amazement, he read:

"The end is reached. My hour is striking. Put to sleep by me, Edmond is dead without having been roused from his unconsciousness by the fire of the poison. My own death-agony is beginning. I am suffering all the tortures of hell. My hand can hardly write these last lines. I suffer, how I suffer! And yet my happiness is unspeakable.

"This happiness dates back to my visit to London, with Edmond, four months ago. Until then, I was dragging on the most hideous existence, hiding my hatred of the woman who detested me and who loved another, broken down in health, feeling myself already eaten up with an unrelenting disease, and seeing my son grow daily more weak and languid.