"But, Monsieur Fandor, if you wish to interview one of the puisne judges, it would be ten times quicker for you to go and see him at his own home: here, at the Palais, it"s almost certain he will refuse to answer you...."
"Don"t bother about that, Madame Marguerite! Just tell me where these worthy guardians of order, defenders of right and justice, divest themselves of their red robes?"
Madame Marguerite was too much accustomed to our young journalist"s ridiculous questions and absurd requests and remarks to argue with him any longer.
"The robing-room of these gentlemen," said she, "is in one of the outer offices of the court, near the Council Chamber."
"There is an a.s.sistant in that room, isn"t there?"
"Yes, Monsieur Fandor."
"Ah! That is just what I wanted to know! Many thanks, madame," and Fandor, grinning with satisfaction, made off in the direction of the Court of a.s.sizes. He ran up the steps leading to the Council Chamber, and spying the messenger asked:
"Can President Guechand see me, do you think?"
"Monsieur le President has gone."
Fandor seemed to be reflecting. He gazed searchingly round the room. As a matter of fact, he was verifying the correctness of Madame Marguerite"s information. All round the room Fandor saw the little presses where the men of law kept their red robes. Yes, it was the robing and unrobing room of the puisne judges, the magistrates, right enough!
"So the President has gone? Ah, well ..." Fandor hesitated: he must think of some other name. He noticed the visiting cards nailed to each press, indicating the owner. He read one of the names and repeated it:
"Well, then, could Justice Hubert see me--could he possibly? Will you ask him to let me see him for five minutes?"
"What name shall I say?"
"My name will not tell him anything. Please say it is with reference to the--er--Peyru case--and I come from Maitre Tissot."
"I will go and see," said the messenger, moving off.
Whilst he was in sight Fandor walked up and down in the regulation way, murmuring:
"Maitre Tissot!... The Peyru case!... Go ahead, my good fellow! You will have a nice kind of reception down below there--with those made-up names."
Some minutes later, the messenger returned to his post, prepared to inform the importunate young man that he could not possibly be received by Justice Hubert. He stopped short on the threshold: not a soul was to be seen!
"Wherever has that young man got to? Taken himself off, most likely!...
I expect he was one of those lawyer"s clerks--confound them! A nice fool I should have looked if his Honour, Justice Hubert, had said he would receive him!"
With this reflection the messenger went back to his newspaper, not without having ascertained that it was four o"clock, and therefore he had still an hour to wait before he could have his coffee and cigar at the "Men of the Robe."
Through the great windows of the Court of a.s.sizes, carefully closed as they were, not a ray of moonlight filtered into the court room. And this obscurity lent an added terror to a silence as profound as the grave, a silence which, with the falling shades of night, a.s.sumed possession of the vast hall, where so many criminals had listened to the fatal sentence--the sentence of death.
When the Court had risen, the a.s.sistants had, as usual, proceeded to put the place in order; then the police sergeant had made his rounds, and had gone away, double locking the doors behind him. After this the chamber had gradually sunk into complete repose: a repose which would be broken the following morning when the bustling routine of the legal day commenced once more.
Little by little, too, the many and varied noises, which had echoed and re-echoed the whole day through in the galleries of the Palais de Justice, had died down, and sunk into silence.
The custodians had made their last round; the barristers had quitted the robing-room; the poor wretches who had slunk in to warm themselves at the heating apparatus in the halls had shuffled back to the cold street, and the whistling blasts of the north wind. The immense pile was entirely deserted.
A clock began to strike.
Then, hardly had the last stroke of eleven sounded, awakening the echoes of the empty galleries, than in the Court of a.s.sizes itself, under the monumental desk, before which the justices sat in state by day, a noise made itself heard, long, strident, nerve-racking--the noise of an alarum clock!
Just as the alarum ceased its raucous call, a loud yawn resounded through the empty s.p.a.ces of the chamber. The sleeper, who had selected this spot that he might indulge, all undisturbed, in a revivifying sleep, evidently took no pains to smother the sound of his voice, for, after yawning enough to dislocate his jaws, he uttered a loud: "Ah!" He accompanied his yawns with exclamations:
"It"s a fact, the Republic doesn"t do things up to the scratch! The rugs here are of poor quality!... I"m aching all over!... The floor is strewn with peach kernels--surely?... At any rate, it"s a quiet hotel, and one is not disturbed--a truly delectable refuge to have a jolly good snore in!"
The sleeper sat up:
"What"s the time exactly? Let us have a light on it!" A match was struck, and a tiny flare of light shone from under the desk of the presiding judge:
"Ten past eleven! I"ve still five minutes to be lazy in--and I shall need all of it, for I"ve a rough night before me! I can rest awhile, and think things over!"
The speaker calmly lay down again, trying to find a comfortable position on what he christened mentally: "The administrative peach kernels":
"Let me see, now!" he went on aloud. "At five in the afternoon it was known that Jacques Dollon had committed suicide; was probably innocent, and that his corpse had disappeared. Yesterday, at half-past five, _La Capitale_ announced that he had a very pretty sister.... To-night at ten past eleven behold me, shut up quite alone in the Palais de Justice, free to proceed to the little investigation I think of making.... Jerome Fandor, my dear friend, I congratulate you! You have not managed badly!...
"Yes," went on our journalist, "what a joke it is! Here have I got myself shut up in the Palais without the slightest difficulty! It is true, that if the a.s.sistant had been obliged to open, and verify, the contents of all the robing-rooms of all the judges, he would never have finished. As for me, in my cupboard, I followed all the good fellow"s movements, and he never suspected my presence. If I am to be congratulated, he cannot be blamed for it! There I was, there I remained, and now I must be off!"
Fandor drew a small wax taper from his pocket and lighted it with a match.
"What"s to be done with the alarum?" he went on. "To leave it will be to betray my having pa.s.sed this way--what of it?... In any case, even if this reporting job fails, I shall make a story out of it ... and how can they accuse me of stealing if I leave my cloak as a gift for his judgeship!"
Laughing, Fandor piled up the law books lying on the desk, and placed the alarum on the top; that done, he went to the princ.i.p.al entrance, the only one with double doors. He seized the heavy iron bar placed across the door and worked it loose. He drew the two leaves of the door towards him; and, although it had been locked as usual, he effected his escape, after a considerable trial of strength.
Out on the stairs, lighted taper in hand, the laughing Fandor closed the two leaves of the door with the utmost care, and went forward whistling a marching tune. His objective was a certain little staircase leading to the top story of the Palais, and this he mounted with vigorous determination. There was no likelihood of chance encounters, for there was not a soul in the vast building: the police were making their rounds outside it. Our adventurous journalist did not make his way upwards with stealthy tread--there was no need for that. Having gained the top floor, he went straight to a corner where an ebony ladder was ensconced, a ladder which had long been the joy and pride of the grand master of this part of the Palais, the amiable Monsieur Peter.
"Pretty heavy!" grumbled Fandor, as he carried it upwards. Under the roof he caught sight of a skylight, rested his ebony ladder against it, and climbed briskly on to the roof.
From thence Fandor had a view that was fairy-like. Spread out in the distance were the sparkling lights of Paris. He was divided from them by the vast ma.s.s of roofs about him, by a gulf of empty s.p.a.ce, and beyond, by a dark blur--the two arms of the Seine flowing on either side of the Palais de Justice.... The mysterious darkness! The fascination of the sparkling points of light!... Fandor gave himself a mental shake....
This was no moment for dreaming under the stars!
From his pocket he took a tiny, folding dark lantern; from his pocket-book he drew a paper, which he spread out and proceeded to study.
As he bent over it, he murmured:
"A bit of good luck that I was able to get hold of a complete and detailed plan of the Palais de Justice! Without it I never could have found my way among these roofs!"
He examined the plan for some minutes; made a note of various landmarks; then refolding it, he gained one of the sloping roofs facing the quay of the Leather Dressers:
"Now," thought Fandor, "I must be just above the Depot! And now to find out how Jacques Dollon, dead or living, has got out of the Depot! No use thinking of a window, for the cell has not got one! Fuselier has reason on his side when he declares that you do not get out of the cells of the Depot, nor out of the Palais!... Well, now--to carry off Dollon, dead or living, by way of the Palais Square, or by the boulevard, is out of the question: there are too many people about!... To carry him off by one of the exits, on to either of the quays, is equally out of the question: there are the sentries, in the first place, and then comes the Seine--then Jacques Dollon has left the Depot, or he has not, or, at any rate, he is still somewhere in the Palais--unless ..."
Fandor interrupted his cogitations to light a cigarette: smoking helped him to think things out:
"It is equally certain that if Dollon is still in the Palais, he cannot be in the Depot, for the Depot has been rigorously searched since his disappearance, and he would most certainly have been found, had he been anywhere about the Depot. It is also certain that he is not inside the Palais, because the only means of communication between the Depot and the Palais is a single staircase, and it is certain that a corpse could not have been taken that way unperceived.... Then it follows that Jacques Dollon must have got out by the only ways which are in communication with the Depot: that is to say, the drains and the chimneys!"
"How could he have got out, or been got out by the drains? As far as I know, there is no system of pipes large enough to allow of the pa.s.sage of a man through the pipes which join the main sewers; but, as a set-off to that, there is a chimney--the ancient chimney of Marie Antoinette--which communicates with the Depot, and the roof I am now on: it must have been by this chimney that the escape was made! Let us see whether this is so or not!"