Maurice Leblanc - The Teeth of the Tiger

Perenna went up to him and pressed gently on the detective's outstretched arm.

"Prefect's orders?" he asked.

"Yes," muttered the sergeant, uncomfortably.

"Orders to keep me here until he comes?"

"Yes."

"And if I betrayed an intention of leaving, to prevent me?"

"Yes."

"By every means?"

"Yes."

"Even by putting a bullet through my skin?"

"Yes."

Perenna reflected; and then, in a serious voice:

"Would you have fired, Mazeroux?"

The sergeant lowered his head and said faintly:

"Yes, Chief."

Perenna looked at him without anger, with a glance of affectionate sympathy; and it was an absorbing sight for him to see his former companion dominated by such a sense of discipline and duty. Nothing was able to prevail against that sense, not even the fierce admiration, the almost animal attachment which Mazeroux retained for his master.

"I'm not angry, Mazeroux. In fact, I approve. Only you must tell me the reason why the Prefect of Police—"

The detective did not reply, but his eyes wore an expression of such sadness that Don Luis started, suddenly understanding.

"No," he cried, "no!… It's absurd … he can't have thought that!… And you, Mazeroux, do you believe me guilty?"

"Oh, I, Chief, am as sure of you as I am of myself!… You don't take life!… But, all the same, there are things … coincidences—"

"Things … coincidences …" repeated Don Luis slowly.

He remained pensive; and, in a low voice, he said:

"Yes, after all, there's truth in what you say…. Yes, it all fits in…. Why didn't I think of it?… My relations with Cosmo Mornington, my arrival in Paris in time for the reading of the will, my insisting on spending the night here, the fact that the death of the two Fauvilles undoubtedly gives me the millions…. And then … and then … why, he's absolutely right, your Prefect of Police!… All the more so as…. Well, there, I'm a goner!"

"Come, come, Chief!"

"A dead-goner, old chap; you just get that into your head. Not as Arsène Lupin, ex-burglar, ex-convict, ex-anything you please—I'm unattackable on that ground—but as Don Luis Perenna, respectable man, residuary legatee, and the rest of it. And it's too stupid! For, after all, who will find the murderers of Cosmo, Vérot, and the two Fauvilles, if they go clapping me into jail?"

"Come, come, Chief—"

"Shut up! … Listen!"

A motor car was stopping on the boulevard, followed by another. It was evidently the Prefect and the magistrates from the public prosecutor's office.

Don Luis took Mazeroux by the arm.

"There's only one way out of it, Alexandre! Don't say you went to sleep."

"I must, Chief."

"You silly ass!" growled Don Luis. "How is it possible to be such an ass!

It's enough to disgust one with honesty. What am I to do, then?"

"Discover the culprit, Chief."

"What! … What are you talking about?"

Mazeroux, in his turn, took him by the arm and, clutching him with a sort of despair, said, in a voice choked with tears:

"Discover the culprit, Chief. If not, you're done for … that's certain … the Prefect told me so. … The police want a culprit … they want him this evening…. One has got to be found…. It's up to you to find him."

"What you have, Alexandre, is a merry wit."

"It's child's play for you, Chief. You have only to set your mind to it."

"But there's not the least clue, you ass!"

"You'll find one … you must … I entreat you, hand them over somebody…. It would be more than I could bear if you were arrested. You, the chief, accused of murder! No, no…. I entreat you, discover the criminal and hand him over…. You have the whole day to do it in…and Lupin has done greater things than that!"

He was stammering, weeping, wringing his hands, grimacing with every feature of his comic face. And it was really touching, this grief, this dismay at the approach of the danger that threatened his master.

M. Desmalions's voice was heard in the hall, through the curtain that closed the passage. A third motor car stopped on the boulevard, and a fourth, both doubtless laden with policemen.

The house was surrounded, besieged.

Perenna was silent.

Beside him, anxious-faced, Mazeroux seemed to be imploring him.

A few seconds elapsed.

Then Perenna declared, deliberately:

"Looking at things all round, Alexandre, I admit that you have seen the position clearly and that your fears are fully justified. If I do not manage to hand over the murderer or murderers of Hippolyte Fauville and his son to the police in a few hours from now, it is I, Don Luis Perenna, who will be lodged in durance vile on the evening of this Thursday, the first of April."

It was about nine o'clock in the morning when the Prefect of Police entered the study in which the incomprehensible tragedy of that double murder had been enacted.

He did not even bow to Don Luis; and the magistrates who accompanied him might have thought that Don Luis was merely an assistant of Sergeant Mazeroux, if the chief detective had not made it his business to tell them, in a few words, the part played by the stranger.

M. Desmalions briefly examined the two corpses and received a rapid explanation from Mazeroux. Then, returning to the hall, he went up to a drawing-room on the first floor, where Mme. Fauville, who had been informed of his visit, joined him almost at once.

Perenna, who had not stirred from the passage, slipped into the hall himself. The servants of the house, who by this time had heard of the murder, were crossing it in every direction. He went down the few stairs leading to a ground-floor landing, on which the front door opened.

There were two men there, of whom one said:

"You can't pass."

"But—"

"You can't pass: those are our orders."

"Your orders? Who gave them?"

"The Prefect himself."

"No luck," said Perenna, laughing. "I have been up all night and I am starving. Is there no way of getting something to eat?"

The two policemen exchanged glances and one of them beckoned to Silvestre and spoke to him. Silvestre went toward the dining-room, and returned with a horseshoe roll.

"Good," thought Don Luis, after thanking him. "This settles it. I'm nabbed. That's what I wanted to know. But M. Desmalions is deficient in logic. For, if it's Arsène Lupin whom he means to detain here, all these worthy plain-clothesmen are hardly enough; and, if it's Don Luis Perenna, they are superfluous, because the flight of Master Perenna would deprive Master Perenna of every chance of seeing the colour of my poor Cosmo's shekels. Having said which, I will take a chair."

He resumed his seat in the passage and awaited events.

Through the open door of the study he saw the magistrates pursuing their investigations. The divisional surgeon made a first examination of the two bodies and at once recognized the same symptoms of poisoning which he himself had perceived, the evening before, on the corpse of Inspector Vérot.

Next, the detectives took up the bodies and carried them to the adjoining bedrooms which the father and son formerly occupied on the second floor of the house.

The Prefect of Police then came downstairs; and Don Luis heard him say to the magistrates:

"Poor woman! She refused to understand…. When at last she understood, she fell to the ground in a dead faint. Only think, her husband and her son at one blow!… Poor thing!"

From that moment Perenna heard and saw nothing. The door was shut. The Prefect must afterward have given some order through the outside, through the communication with the front door offered by the garden, for the two detectives came and took up their positions in the hall, at the entrance to the passage, on the right and left of the dividing curtain.