The Red Lottery Ticket

He drew out the little packet of tickets, some two dozen in number, and, stopping short behind a newspaper kiosk, he slowly unfolded them. As he glanced at the topmost ticket he could scarcely believe his eyes, for there was the number – the winning number printed in the centre of it. He read and re-read it, examined it again and again, and compared it, figure by figure, with the list in his other hand; but it was all quite true, he certainly had in his possession No. 115,815, which entitled its owner to the grand prize. He had nineteen francs in his pocket, nothing in his desk, and one hundred thousand francs between his fingers. The shock was so great and so unexpected, that, proof as he had always considered himself against emotion, he was obliged to lean against the newspaper kiosk for support. His brain reeled. But suddenly a fresh thought occurred to him. "Dash it! the ticket isn't mine! It belonged to Dargental. In fact, it is the only piece of property he left for his heirs, if he has any. I have no right to appropriate it. It would be a theft." Puymirol's face lengthened, but he quickly recovered himself. "A theft, no. I did not steal it; I found it, or rather it was thrown to me, which amounted to the same thing as giving it to me."

This sophistry did not deceive him, however. He had invented it to quiet his conscience; but he realised how shallow it was. Then he thought of consulting Caumont, but he felt a presentiment that George would advise him to give up the ticket; and he did not care for advice which he did not intend to follow. But where and how was this grand prize payable? Would it only be necessary to show this triumphant No. 115,815 at the lottery office to convert it into bank notes? One of these questions was answered on the back of the ticket. He there read that the office of the Lottery of the Society of Decorative Arts was at the Palais de l'Industrie, in the Champs Elysées, Door No. 4. Puymirol's position was too desperate for him to indulge in much reflection. He made a nervous gesture as if to say: "I must cross the Rubicon," and then he replaced the tickets in his pocket. However, before going to the lottery office, he must set his toilet right. Still, this was easily managed. There were some Turkish baths hard by, and after indulging in the wholesome luxury of Oriental ablutions, he proceeded in due course to a fashionable barber's, where he was shaved, cosmetiqued, and perfumed, so that he would have been presentable anywhere, although he had not changed his linen. These preparations occupied him until eleven o'clock, and then, after partaking of a light breakfast, which exhausted his remaining funds, he hastened to the Palais de l'Industrie. At door No. 4, which seemed to him very like the gate of Paradise, he found a liveried footman talking with two men whom he took for favourites of fortune, who, like himself, had come to receive their money. He explained why he wished to speak to the secretary, and the attendant having gazed at him with admiring envy, told him to walk upstairs. The two persons who had been waiting, followed in his wake, and they all three entered a large ante-room on the first floor. A clerk rose on seeing them, and Puymirol was about to repeat his statement when one of the other fellows hastily approached the clerk, took him aside, and said a few words to him in a low tone; thereupon the clerk immediately opened a side door, and the man passed out and disappeared.

Turning to Puymirol, the clerk then inquired what he wanted, and on learning that he had come to cash a winning ticket, he at once opened a door leading into the office proper, where Puymirol found two prepossessing-looking gentlemen. One of them sat in an arm-chair, while the other occupied a stool at the end of the same table, and had a large leather case, such as is employed for the conveyance of documents, before him. "To whom have I the honour of speaking?" inquired the gentleman in the arm-chair.

"I am the holder of ticket No. 115,815, which is mentioned as having won one hundred thousand francs at your last drawing."

"I congratulate you, sir. Will you take a seat?"

Puymirol accepted the invitation; but in spite of his gracious reception, he felt ill at ease in the presence of these two persons. When a man has not a clear conscience, he sees danger everywhere, and Puymirol almost fancied himself a culprit arraigned before an investigating magistrate and his secretary. It was necessary to exhibit the ticket, however, so he drew the whole packet from his pocket and handed it to the gentleman in the arm-chair, who unfolded it, and examined the tickets one after another. "Here are some that do not interest us," he remarked: "the Tunisian Lottery, the Amsterdam Lottery."

"Yes," replied Puymirol, "I take a chance or two in all of them, but so far I have never won anything."

The official continued his examination, and finally lighted upon No. 115,815. This he examined closely, first upon one side, and then upon the other, and finally passed it to the gentleman seated at the end of the table. "Excuse this close examination," he remarked to Puymirol. "It not infrequently happens that spurious tickets are presented to us; that is to say, tickets of which the numbers have been altered."

"That is not the case with mine, I suppose?"

"No, sir. It is a little soiled, but it has not been tampered with."

"Then I can draw the amount?"

"There are certain formalities which must be gone through first of all. Will you give me your name and address?"

Puymirol coloured slightly. "Is this indispensable?" he asked. "I don't care to have my name in the papers. If it became known that I had won this prize," he added, a little nervously, "I should be beset on every side by requests for money. All my impecunious friends would make demands upon my purse, and my hundred thousand francs wouldn't last long."

"Oh! you need have no fears, sir. We shall not publish your name. This isn't the first time that winners have requested us not to give their names, and we have always complied with such requests, although, by doing so, we miss an excellent advertisement for our lottery. You need not, therefore, object to giving us your name and address. They will be recorded upon our books, but no one will be allowed to see them."

"That is all I ask. My name is Adhémar de Puymirol. I am a medical student, and I reside at No. 14 Rue de Medicis."

"Very well, sir, we will make a note of it. I forgot to mention that you would be obliged to give this information, in any case, for no winner can draw a penny of his money without giving a receipt to which his address must be appended."

"I fancied that it would only be necessary to present the ticket at your office so as to obtain the money, but I am ready and willing to give a receipt for it."

The gentleman took no notice of this hint. He seemed to have become suddenly absorbed in the examination of some papers; however, the person whom Adhémar had taken for a secretary, looked up, and, with his eyes fixed searchingly on the applicant's face, he curtly asked: "How old are you?"

"What difference can my age possibly make? I have attained my majority, as you see, and that is all that is necessary to make my receipt perfectly valid."

"Where were you born?"

"What business is that of yours?" replied Adhémar, exasperated by these strange questions.

"You refuse to answer, then?"

"Yes, certainly. I came here to draw the money due to me. I don't intend to be cross examined like some criminal."

"Be careful, I am a commissary of police."

Puymirol turned pale. He realised, at last, that he had plunged blindly into a frightful abyss, and that his imprudence was about to cost him dear. He was resolved to defend himself to the last, however. "I was not aware that the managers of this popular lottery required the assistance of police officials in the performance of their duties," he retorted. "This precaution will hardly favour the sale of tickets, should it become known to the public, and I will take good care to inform people about it."

"You are speaking to a magistrate, remember. Tell me where, and when, you purchased this ticket?"

"At a tobacconist's, probably."

"What tobacconist's?"

"The deuce take me if I can remember. I purchased between twenty and thirty tickets, and in a dozen different places. They are all here on the table."

"Yes, I see you have brought them all. It is strange that the idea of detaching the winning ticket did not occur to you. One can not think of everything, however."

"I brought the package exactly as I took it from my pocket-book."

"Have you that pocket-book about you?"

"No," stammered Puymirol, disconcerted by this question, which he might have foreseen, however. "I left it at home."

"Of course, great as your audacity may be, you would hardly dare to produce that. It bears other initials than yours."

"Produce it if you can," retorted Puymirol, imprudently.

"I understand. You have no fear of its being produced; you have destroyed it."

This time the commissary had made a mistake, and a suspicion that had flashed across Puymirol's mind a few moments before, was effectually dispelled. He had fancied that his assailant of the previous night might have been set upon his track by the police, who had taken forcible possession of the pocket-book, by orders of his superiors. "I do not understand you, unfortunately," said Adhémar. "But let us put an end to this. What are you aiming at?"

"Well, a crime was committed in Paris about a fortnight ago. A well-known gentleman, a man of fashion, was murdered at mid-day, in his rooms. You must have heard of the affair?"

"Yes, through the papers."

"Well, the gentleman's valet was arrested; but, as there was no evidence against him, he has been released. The murderer has not only escaped detection so far, but the motive that prompted the crime has not yet been discovered. All that has been ascertained is that the victim always carried a pocket-book, of which a full description has been given, and that this pocket-book has disappeared."

"All this is very interesting," sneered Puymirol. "The pocket-book probably contained a large sum of money?"

"That is the general supposition, but one can not be sure. One thing, however, is certain; it contained several tickets of this lottery, and among this gentleman's private papers, a list of these tickets was found. It occurred to the investigating magistrate that he might utilise this information in the improbable event of one of these particular tickets winning a prize, and being presented for payment by the murderer. It was one chance in a million, and yet it has occurred. As soon as the investigating magistrate ascertained that one of these tickets had won the grand prize, he gave me orders to come here with two detectives. Now, you must understand the situation. What have you to say?"

"Nothing."

"Your silence is equivalent to a confession of guilt. You admit, then, that you purloined these tickets after killing the man who had them about his person?"

"I admit nothing of the kind."

"Oh! it is patent that you took them from the body of your victim; and you had the courage to open the pocket-book immediately after murdering that unfortunate man. Look at this ticket. The mark of your bloody fingers is still upon it."

As the commissary spoke he spread the ticket out upon the table and pointed to a couple of pale red stains upon the back of it and which Puymirol had not perceived when he had looked at the ticket on the boulevard. However he made no attempt to refute the commissary's arguments. He had decided to defend himself in a different way. "So you really accuse me of murder and robbery?" he asked.

"I have merely stated the facts and the conclusions one must naturally draw from them. It is for you to prove that my deductions are false. Now, do you still persist in declaring that you purchased the tickets in a cigar shop?"

"No," was Adhémar's reluctant response. "I found them in a cab a fortnight ago."

"And you kept them until now?"

"I attached very little importance to the occurrence. Lottery tickets are seldom of any value."

"Before the drawing, perhaps so; but afterwards when one of them has won a prize, it is very different."

"I admit that I yielded to the temptation of trying to profit by what seemed almost a godsend; I had no idea of doing so until this morning, however, when a list of the winning numbers happened to fall into my hands. I had the tickets in my pocket at the time, and impelled by a very natural curiosity to compare them with the list, I saw that the first prize had been won by No. 115,815. I yielded to the temptation which I regret, and I am certainly sufficiently punished."

"Why did you not inform Monsieur Robergeot of the finding of these tickets?" inquired the commissary, after a prolonged pause.

"Who is Monsieur Robergeot?"

"The investigating magistrate who sent for you on the day after the murder. I have his report here. You see I know everything."

"But I had no reason to suppose that this ticket had ever belonged to Dargental. The magistrate said nothing that would lead me to think so. He only asked me what I saw on entering the room in which the body was lying, and what I thought of the valet's connection with the affair."

"At that time the memorandum had not been found. But from what you say, the tickets were in your possession when you were first examined."

Puymirol bit his lip, but it was too late to retract this imprudent admission. "Yes," he replied at last. "They had been in my possession since the previous day, though at the time I forgot all about them."

"You picked them up in a cab you said. In that case, it is natural to suppose that the murderer dropped them there, or that he left them there intentionally. He certainly did not murder Monsieur Dargental to obtain possession of them. However, where did you take this cab?"

"At the cab-stand near my house outside the Luxembourg."

"And it took you where?"

"To the Lion d'Or restaurant where Dargental had asked me to meet him. He was giving a lunch that day to several friends."

"At what hour did you reach the restaurant?"

"About noon."

"And the crime must have been committed at about eleven o'clock. It is strange that the murderer should have driven back to the Odéon almost to your very door."

Puymirol made no reply. He felt that he was not capable of contending with the commissary. "Did you take the number of this cab?" added the official.

"No. I had no special reason for taking it."

"Excuse me: had you done so, you might have questioned the driver, and have ascertained where he had left the passenger who had dropped the lottery tickets. It is true that you were not anxious to find him, as you had already decided to keep them." Puymirol flushed, and hung his head. To clear himself of the charge of murder he had placed himself in such a position that he could not deny a fraudulent intention. "It is a great pity," continued the commissary. "The driver's testimony would be of great importance, for the magistrate is not obliged to take your word, and if you can produce no witness – Were you alone in the cab?"

This time Puymirol hesitated. It was too great a risk to mention George Caumont's name, for George, who was ignorant of the real situation of affairs, would simply tell the truth, and then the pocket-book, which Puymirol no longer possessed, would come into question; and besides, George would probably hand over the letters. Perhaps he would even tell the magistrate that one of the letters was written by the Countess de Lescombat, and one of the others probably by Blanche Pornic, in which case the least that could happen to Puymirol would be a conviction for perjury; so hoping to avert this new danger by a falsehood, he replied unblushingly: "I was alone."

"There is nothing left for us, then, but to try and find the driver," replied the commissary coldly, "and we may, perhaps, succeed in finding him. We have the exact date, as well as the point of departure, and the place of destination. We will make inquiries at the office of the cab company, and at all the livery stables. If the driver remembers the occurrence he can give us the clue we want."

Puymirol knew perfectly well that the driver would recollect the occurrence, as he had given the mysterious stranger who had purloined the pocket-book full information about it, so seeing that he was getting deeper and deeper into the mire, he decided to make a bold attempt to cut the interview short. "I reproach myself bitterly for having yielded to a temptation for which I blush," he said. "You must blame me very severely, but I hope you will not carry matters to extremes. I belong to a respectable family, and my past life is without a stain. I shall be at your disposal, of course, but I ask your permission to withdraw."

"My powers are more limited than you suppose," said the commissary gravely. "The magistrate will pay due attention to your explanation, but you must give it to him in person. He must now be at the Palais de Justice, and I will accompany you there."

"Nothing would please me better. I thought of calling at his office to-day, and as you are kind enough to accompany me – "

"It is my duty."

The commissary then rang. One of the detectives who had remained in the ante-room entered, and received orders to fetch a cab: then, taking up his case of documents, the commissary left the room in company with Puymirol, whose wonted assurance had nearly deserted him. They found the cab at the door, and entered it, one of the detectives climbing upon the box, and seating himself beside the driver. The journey was a silent one, and ended upon the Quai de l'Horloge, at the entrance to the court-yard of the Conciergerie. "Where are you taking me?" asked Puymirol. "Monsieur Robergeot's office is in the building facing the boulevard."

"You will soon be summoned there," replied the commissary. "But I must see him before you do, and in the meanwhile I must consign you to the dépôt of the Prefecture of Police."

VI

On the day following Puymirol's arrest – for Puymirol was really and truly arrested – George Caumont, who had passed a very restless and uncomfortable night, was awakened at an early hour by his prospective brother-in-law. "I have come to propose a morning ride, my dear fellow," said Albert. "It is generally a thankless task to arouse a friend from sleep, but when you hear my reasons I am sure that you will forgive me. You know my mare, Verdurette, that enabled me to win a prize at the show. Well, I have come here on her back and a friend of mine has lent me two other mounts, – a very gentle animal suited to a lady, and a hack which would do very well for you. But I must tell you that last night at dinner, my sister obtained my mother's permission to take a ride in the Bois de Boulogne this morning, escorted by her betrothed and by your humble servant. Fortunately Rochas wasn't there to interfere, and it was decided that all three of us should start at half-past nine this morning. So make haste, the three horses are already standing, saddled and bridled, in our court-yard, and Gabrielle is awaiting you on the balcony. However, if the proposal doesn't please you – "

"On the contrary, I should be delighted, only I intended to spend my morning in trying to ascertain what had become of my friend Puymirol."

"What! hasn't he made his appearance yet?" exclaimed Albert, gaily. "To spend two nights out is dissipation, indeed; but I see nothing alarming it. Besides, you can do nothing. Come with us to the Bois. We can spend a couple of hours there very pleasantly, and when you return you will probably find your friend here waiting for you."

George was not convinced, but he could not tell Albert that Puymirol had become involved in dangerous schemes which might have terminated in a catastrophe. "All right," said he, "I should never forgive myself if I disappointed Mademoiselle Verdon. I will dress at once. If you like to smoke a cigar, there are some good ones in that box on the mantel-shelf." And, thereupon, George hastily dressed, and was soon ready to depart.

The house where Madame Verdon resided was only a few steps from the Rue de Medicis, and on turning the corner of the Boulevard Saint-Michel the two friends perceived the mother and daughter on the balcony. The mother was arrayed in a showy morning dress, the daughter in a dark green habit. The three horses were waiting in the court-yard, and George recognised at a glance the animal intended for him, a tall chestnut, with a spirit of mischief in his eyes. Gabrielle hastened down, and soon stood beside the young men. Her eyes were shining, her cheeks rosy, and her lips smiling. She extended her gloved hand to her betrothed, who pressed a respectful kiss upon it, as she gaily said: "So here you are at last. I was becoming so impatient. I began to fear that we should be obliged to abandon our expedition, and I really believe I should have cried with disappointment and vexation."

"I am truly sorry to have kept you waiting, mademoiselle, and – "

"Come, come; there's no time to lose. Let me mount you, Gabrielle," said Albert, and in the twinkling of an eye his sister was in the saddle.

The gentlemen then duly mounted in turn, and having saluted Madame Verdon they rode out of the yard. To reach the Boulevard St. Germain, the best road to the Bois, they had to cross the Rue de Medicis, where George resided, and scarcely were they in sight of that thoroughfare than the lieutenant turned to Caumont, exclaiming: "Why, what a crowd there is about your door! Can the house be on fire?"

It was not a fire, but something unusual was certainly going on. There were now two cabs in front of the house, and a policeman was waving back an eager crowd of people. A presentiment that all this commotion was in some way connected with Puymirol flashed across George's mind. Had his friend been brought home, wounded, dead, perhaps? "Try to find out what the matter is!" urged Albert, whereupon George checked his horse and spoke to a man who was moving away, exasperated by not having seen anything.

"Oh! the fools make such a fuss about nothing!" replied the fellow, shrugging his shoulders. "The police are searching somebody's rooms, that is all."

George was struck dumb with astonishment. What could this mean? Whose apartments were they searching? And as he asked himself this question it suddenly occurred to him that this search might be for the famous letters. The magistrate might have learned that they had fallen into Puymirol's hands, and have decided to institute a search for them. This thought worried George, for these letters were in his rooms, and if he entered the house to make any further inquiries he would certainly be putting his head into the lion's mouth, for the doorkeeper would hardly fail to inform the police of his arrival. In that case, what should he say and do to assist his friend? George did not understand Puymirol's situation, but he realised that an imprudent answer might ruin him. By keeping out of sight he would at least incur no danger of contradicting Puymirol's statements. He, Caumont, was as yet in no way connected with the affair, and in his absence no one would venture to break into his rooms to search for the letters, whereas, if he showed himself, he might be plied with questions to which he could only give unsatisfactory replies, and he might even finally be obliged to let the officials search his apartments. Worst of all, if he should be detained, Gabrielle would learn that her betrothed was mixed up in a most unfortunate affair, and the excursion to the Bois would have to be relinquished, and perhaps the marriage as well. So it was best not to interfere, at least, for the present.

The brother and sister had remained in the middle of the street, watching the crowd with evident curiosity. "Well!" inquired the lieutenant, as soon as George resumed his place on Gabrielle's left, "what is going on?"

"Nothing that can interest you in the least. The police have made a raid upon the apartments of some one in the house, it seems."

"Indeed! Upon whose?"

"I do not know. The only person that I am acquainted with in the house is Puymirol."

"And it can not be his apartments they are searching."

"Nor mine, as I am not there," responded George.

"Where are your windows?" asked Gabrielle.