CHAPTER III.
NOTHING in the ante-chamber indicated that a tragedy had taken placethere. There were pictures on the walls, pieces of faience, some arms ofrare kinds, Japanese swords and a Malay creese. Bernardet glanced atthem as he passed by.
"He is in the salon," said the concierge, in a low tone.
One of the folding doors stood open, and, stopping on the threshold, inorder to take in the entire aspect of the place, Bernardet saw in thecentre of the room, lying on the floor in a pool of blood, the body ofM. Rovere, clothed in a long, blue dressing gown, bound at the waistwith a heavy cord, which lay in coils on the floor, like a serpent. Thecorpse was extended between the two windows, which opened on theBoulevard de Clichy, and Bernardet's first thought was that it was amiracle that the victim could have met his death in such a horriblemanner, two steps from the passers-by on the street.
"Whoever struck the blow did it quickly," thought the police officer. Headvanced softly toward the body, casting his eye upon the inert mass andtaking in at a glance the smallest objects near it and the most minutedetails. He bent over and studied it thoroughly.
M. Rovere seemed living in his tragic pose. The pale face, with itspointed and well-trimmed gray beard, expressed in its fierce immobilitya sort of menacing anger. This man of about fifty years had evidentlydied cursing some one in his supreme agony. The frightful wound seemedlike a large red cravat, which harmonized strangely with thehalf-whitened beard, the end of which was wet with blood.
But what struck Bernardet above everything else, arrested his attention,and glued him to the spot, was the look, the extraordinary expression inthe eyes. The mouth was open, as if to cry out, the eyes seemed tomenace some one, and the lips about to speak.
They were frightful. Those tragic eyes were wide open, as if transfixedby fear or fury.
They seemed fathomless, staring, ready to start from their sockets. Theeyebrows above them were black and bristling. They seemed living eyes inthat dead face. They told of a final struggle, of some atrocious duel oflooks and of words. They appeared, in their ferocious immobility, aswhen they gazed upon the murderer, eye to eye, face to face.
Bernardet looked at the hands.
They were contracted and seemed, in some obstinate resistance, to haveclung to the neck or the clothing of the assassin.
"There ought to be blood under the nails, since he made a struggle,"said Bernardet, thinking aloud.
And Paul Rodier, the reporter, hurriedly wrote, "There was blood underthe nails."
Bernardet returned again and again to the eyes--those wide-open eyes,frightful, terrible eyes, which, in their fierce depths, retainedwithout doubt the image or phantom of some nightmare of death.
He touched the dead man's hand. The flesh had become cold and _rigormortis_ was beginning to set in.
The reporter saw the little man take from his pocket a sort of rustysilver ribbon and unroll it, and heard him ask Moniche to take hold ofone end of it; this ribbon or thread looked to Paul Rodier like brasswire. Bernardet prepared his kodak.
"Above everything else," murmured Bernardet, "let us preserve theexpression of those eyes."
"Close the shutters. The darkness will be more complete."
The reporter assisted Moniche in order to hasten the work. The shuttersclosed, the room was quite dark, and Bernardet began his task. Countingoff a few steps, he selected the best place from which to take thepicture.
"Be kind enough to light the end of the magnesium wire," he said to theconcierge. "Have you any matches?"
"No, M. Bernardet."
The police office indicated by a sign of the head, a match safe which hehad noticed on entering the room.
"There are some there."
Bernardet had with one sweeping glance of the eye taken in everything inthe room; the fauteuils, scarcely moved from their places; the pictureshanging on the walls; the mirrors; the bookcases; the cabinets, etc.
Moniche went to the mantelpiece and took a match from the box. It was M.Rovere himself who furnished the light by which a picture of his ownbody was taken.
"We could obtain no picture in this room without the magnesium wire,"said the agent, as calm while taking a photograph of the murdered man,as he had been a short time ago in his garden. "The light isinsufficient. When I say: 'Go!' Moniche you must light the wire, and Iwill take three or four negatives. Do you understand? Stand there to myleft. Now! Attention!"
Bernardet took his position and the porter stood ready, match and wirein hand, like a gunner who awaits the order to fire.
"Go!" said the agent.
A rapid, clear flame shot up; and suddenly lighted the room.The pale face seemed livid, the various objects in the roomtook on a fantastic appearance, in this sort of tempestuousapotheosis, and Paul Rodier hastily inscribed on his writing pad:"Picturesque--bizarre--marvelous--devilish--suggestive."
"Let us try it again," said M. Bernardet.
For the third time in this weird light the visage of the dead manappeared, whiter, more sinister, frightful; the wound deeper, the gashredder; and the eyes, those wide-open, fixed, tragic, menacing, speakingeyes--eyes filled with scorn, with hate, with terror, with the ferociousresistance of a last struggle for life; immovable, eloquent--seemedunder the fantastic light to glitter, to be alive, to menace some one.
"That is all," said Bernardet, very softly. "If with these threenegatives"----
He stopped to look around toward the door, which was closed. Someone wasraining ringing blows on the door, loud and imperative.
"It is the Commissary; open the door, Moniche."
The reporter was busy taking notes, describing the salon, sketching it,drawing a plan for his journal.
It was, in fact, the Commissary, who was followed by Mme. Moniche and anumber of curious persons who had forced their way in when the frontdoor was opened.
The Commissary, before entering, took a comprehensive survey of theroom, and said in a short tone: "Every one must go out. Madame, make allthese people go out. No one must enter."
There arose an uproar--each one tried to explain his right to be there.They were all possessed with an irresistible desire to assist at thissinister investigation.
"But we belong to the press!"
"The reporters may enter when they have showed their cards," theCommissary replied. "The others--no!" There was a murmur from the crowd.
"The others--no!" repeated the Commissary. He made a sign to twoofficers who accompanied him, and they demanded the reporters' cards ofidentification. The concourse of curious ones rebelled, protested,growled and declaimed against the representatives of the press, who tookprecedence everywhere.
"The Fourth Power!" shouted an old man from the foot of the staircase.He lived in the house and passed for a correspondent of the Institute.He shouted furiously: "When a crime is committed under my very roof, Iam not even allowed to write an account of it, and strangers, becausethey are reporters, can have the exclusive privilege of writing it up!"
The Commissary did not listen to him, but those who were hisfellow-sufferers applauded him to the echo. The Commissary shrugged hisshoulders at the hand-clappings.
"It is but right," he said to the reporter, "that the agents of thepress should be admitted in preference to any one else. Do you thinkthat it is easy to discover a criminal? I have been a journalist, too.Yes, at times. In the Quartier, occasionally. I have even written apiece for the theatre. But we will not talk of that. Enter! Enter, I begof you--and we shall see"--and elegant, amiable, polished, smiling, helooked toward M. Bernardet, and his eyes asked the question: "Where isit?"
"Here! M. le Commissaire."
Bernardet stood respectfully in front of his superior officer, as asoldier carrying arms, and the Commissary, in his turn, approached thebody, while the curious ones, quietly kept back by Moniche, formed ahalf circle around the pale and bloody corpse. The Commissary, likeBernardet, was struck by the haughty expression of that livid face.
"Poo
r man!" he said, shaking his head. "He is superb! superb! He remindsme of the dead Duke de Guise, in Paul Delaroche's picture. I have seenit also at Chantilly, in Gerome's celebrated picture of _Le Duel dePierrot_."
Possibly in speaking aloud his thoughts, the Commissary was talking sothat the reporters might hear him. They stood, notebooks in hand,taking notes, and Paul Rodier, catching the names, wrote rapidly in hisbook: "M. Desbriere, the learned Commissary, so artistic, so welldisposed toward the press, was at one time a journalist. He noticed thatthe victim's pale face, with its strong personal characteristics,resembled the dead Duke de Guise, in Gerome's celebrated picture, whichhangs in the galleries at Chantilly."