Monsieur Jonquelle (4 page)

“But a less distance than the truth,” replied the Frenchman. His manner was careless, debonair.

“Ah, my dear Count, you would elude me in the reserves of a becoming modesty, in the humilities of a noble nature. But I pursue you with
felicitations upon your conquest. Perhaps, though, Monsieur does not look upon this affair with so high a value. The Count de Choiseul is a great hunter. The conquest of a romantic woman, without any knowledge of the world and married to a man of twice her age, may not appear to Monsieur to be a triumph of the first order.”

The wounded man was pale with anger. But Monsieur Jonquelle went on with a light unconcern.

“The fact that Lord Landeau looked upon the Count de Choiseul as a gentleman, and permitted him the liberties of his friendship and the confidences of a man of honor doubtless, too, robbed the affair of a certain sporting element which Monsieur le Comte would have in his adventures.”

“Is there then no end to the insults that one must receive?” cried the wounded man, white to the lips. “Is it not enough to lay one under espionage like a common felon, to set a creature of the police about one in every servant's coat; but also the Prefect of Paris must be brought over to lecture one on morals!”

“Ah,” replied the Frenchman with an injured air, “the Count de Choiseul does not regard me as his friend! Is gratitude then a mere fancy of the poets? And it is I who have three times warned him from the pit—Monsieur will remember those three times. In Nice when the Count
was about to dispose of some antiques from the collection of—let us say—an adopted uncle. In Paris when the Count was arranging to insure beyond doubt the success of a favorite horse at Auteuil. True the Count had before him a precedent for this in holy legend. Did not Saint Hilarius, according to Saint Jerome, draw upon the instrumentalities of Heaven in order to beat the horses of the Duumvir of Gaza? But times have changed. The saints are not popular in France, and the agencies that Monsieur was about to use for his adventure were, I take it, unknown to the Father of the church.”

He paused and lifted his finger.

“And a third time in a villa in Baden, when the Count de Choiseul was banking a gentleman's game at roulette. True again, the Count could have urged a very pretty defense upon the point that the German law contemplated games of
chance
only, and that this roulette was a game from which Monsieur le Comte had very deftly removed every element of chance. But Monsieur instead of depending on that nice distinction—wisely, I shall always believe—preferred to act upon my friendly suggestion.

“Moreover”—and the Prefect of Police made a gracious gesture—“do I not always, in addressing Monsieur le Comte, accord to him the honors and distinctions of his title, a courtesy that the
editors of the
Almanack de Gotha
have denied him?”

The face of the Count de Choiseul became sullen and ugly. The glaze of culture seemed to slip off.

“What are you after, Monsieur?” he said through stiff jaws.

“
Ma foi
!” replied the Prefect; “does Monsieur le Comte ask me after this reminiscence? For what reason should I come here from Paris but out of my abiding interest in Monsieur's career? After my congratulations upon the approach of the ambitions of a life I would venture upon a fourth suggestion to the Count de Choiseul.”

He leaned forward and addressed the wounded man as though he were some envied darling of the gods.

“If this affair should, as the Americans say it, blow over, then the Count de Choiseul has won a way into the very lap of fortune. He will be able to wed a lady of noble birth and to enjoy all that this lady takes by will from Lord Landeau—this city house which Monsieur has so early occupied with so fine a courage; a deer forest in Argyle-shire; a yacht in the Mersey; a villa at Cannes, an apartment upon the Champs-Elysées, and the greatest landed estate in the English county of Dorset.”

Monsieur Jonquelle paused and elevated his eyebrows.

“I do not promise that the conservative Briton will permit the Count de Choiseul to occupy, with these benefits, the vacant seat of Lord Landeau in their House of Lords, but Monsieur should not set that loss at too high a value. We are told by the greatest English journalist now living that this noble body is composed of garrulous old gentlemen always obviously quite wrong.”

The Frenchman went on, returning to his serious note.

“These are substantial benefits. If the Count de Choiseul can win to them he has substituted the reality for every fiction that he has so long pretended.
J'en suis bien aise
! But in order to win them a certain thing remains to be accomplished. A very great deal has been done. By what agencies?
Diable
, such queries run into the riddle of the universe! Nevertheless a final thing remains. And unless this thing is accomplished, Monsieur le Comte cannot enter his kingdom.”

The Prefect spoke like one dealing firmly with the realities of life.

“
Tiens
! What would you have? Shall the Count de Choiseul hesitate then in the moment of victory? If chance has helped him mount up to the last step, shall he not take that step himself?
Or if design has carried him thus far, shall he not courageously go on?”

“Monsieur,” said the Count de Choiseul, “we shall get on better if you permit me to understand you.”

He sat back in his chair, the pillow under his arm, his eyes narrowed and his big jaw protruding like a plowshare.

“The Count de Choiseul shall precisely understand me,” replied the Prefect. “The suggestion that I come all the way from Paris to make to him is this—Monsieur must give some explanation of this tragic affair.

“Attend, Monsieur, if you please, and I will show you how pressing this necessity is. As this matter now stands it is a mystery—that is to say, a riddle, a problem. Now in France and among all Latin peoples a mystery, a riddle, a problem is forgotten like any other event if the answer is not found within the proverbial seven days of public notice. But to all Saxon races, to the Germans and to the English, a mystery is an eternal challenge. If a thing have an explanation it is immediately forgotten, but if it cannot be explained it will abide forever. Moreover the Saxon mind will never cease to consider it and will never give it up.”

He made a gesture with his hand, the fingers extended.

“Look, Monsieur, how the Germans and these English labor eternally to solve mysteries that every Latin knows are beyond the capacities of the human mind—the origin of life, the domicile of consciousness and the meaning of the universe. Do the Germans or the English ever abandon them? Read Haeckel, Monsieur, and Spencer, Monsieur. The English purchase a hundred thousand copies of the ponderous explanation of the professor at Jena, and sit down with that to solve the great riddle for themselves. And with every new year comes a new German or a new Englishman, to show that the answers of his predecessors are wrong and that he alone has the correct ones. Nevertheless though every explanation is shown to be false the mystery is never abandoned. Nor is any mystery ever abandoned by these English people.”

The face of the wounded man was inscrutable and the Prefect went on:

“Every man in these islands is fundamentally a solver of mysteries. Observe the puzzles on sale, and the devices of journals to increase their circulation by exhibiting a jar full of beans to be guessed at, or by hiding a hundred guineas on the Epsom Downs. And so, on account of this racial characteristic, the London police at once give some explanation of every mysterious crime. If they did not every man in this kingdom would
light his pipe and sit down to solve it for them, and he would never cease to work on it until an explanation was given to him. Literally, Monsieur, I do not exaggerate—for the peace of mind of the empire the police of these islands must find a solution for every mystery.”

The Count de Choiseul, his attitude still that of a guarded defense, was nevertheless listening with attention. The Prefect went on.

“For this reason,” he continued, “the London police, when profoundly puzzled, are often very glad to compromise with a mystery—that is to say, to accept any reasonable explanation of it.

“Now, Monsieur le Comte,” and he spoke lower, “this affair is a mystery that the police cannot solve, and therefore all England will presently undertake to solve it.” He spoke still lower. “I come then to suggest that if the Count de Choiseul will offer a reasonable explanation of this affair the police will accept it. All the London police want is an explanation not clearly inconsistent with the few evidential facts. And if Monsieur can offer such an explanation I undertake to promise that the police shall accept it.”

The Prefect put up his hand as though to prevent an interruption.

“Pardon, Monsieur, a further word. The Count de Choiseul must not fail to get my meaning. The one thing which the London police require
is some explanation of this mystery that does not leave them ridiculous. The true explanation? I do not care. The probable explanation? I do not care. But a rational explanation? Yes, it must be that.”

Again he prevented an interruption with a gesture.

“Think about it very carefully, Monsieur, if you please. I have just now with a sort of indirection laid before the Count de Choiseul the conclusions possible to be deduced from certain events in his life. He may have believed my words vitriolic. But, Monsieur, I have been gentle compared to the brutal directness with which this English nation will comment upon these events when it sets itself about the solving of this mystery. And if the Count de Choiseul has in fact any plans for the future they will become impossible.

“Believe me, Monsieur, my flippant and suggestive manner in the earlier moments of this interview were with the design of showing how the Count de Choiseul's life and conduct in this affair could be construed—if they were known. And let us not deceive ourselves—they cannot be concealed if this affair goes on.

“No, Monsieur, hear me a little further before you undertake to reply. There is in every mystery a psychological moment when an adequate explanation will wipe it out of public notice. But the
moment cannot be prolonged. It even now strikes in this affair. Observe, Monsieur. On Wednesday evening the wounded de Choiseul was removed at first to a hospital and then to this house. The police appeased the public by giving out that the Count would doubtless explain the tragedy just as soon as he was able to make a statement.

“Now if Monsieur issues such a statement the police will accept it, the public will be satisfied and the mystery will be cleared up. If he does not—”

Monsieur Jonquelle shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands with a suggestive gesture. Then he drew a little closer to the wounded man and continued in a voice so low that it was almost a whisper:

“Moreover so anxious are the London police to be rid of this mystery that they will accept the Count de Choiseul's explanation and abandon the one they believe to be true, and that is—pardon, Monsieur, if I appear
gauche
—that Lord Landeau was deliberately assassinated by the Count de Choiseul. But they believe that an unforeseen event interfered with the Count de Choiseul's plan and imposed upon him this ordeal of silence—namely, that as the Count de Choiseul was about to send a second bullet into his victim, Lord Landeau, either by striking the pistol with his arm in the convulsion of death or by making a momentary
attempt before death to grasp it, turned the second shot into the Count's own body precisely in the direction that the ball in fact took, by which the Count de Choiseul received a wound that rendered him unconscious.”

He paused and looked the wounded man earnestly in the face.

“Surely, the Count de Choiseul can offer some explanation to take the place of this one?”

The man had been listening, his jaws compressed, his eyes narrowed. He now passed his fingers over the lower part of his face with a sort of irresolution.

“Monsieur,” he said, “who is to decide whether this explanation which you seek is convincing and fits what you call ‘the evidential facts'?”

“Why, Monsieur le Comte,” replied the Prefect, “we shall decide that ourselves, you and I, here between us.”

The wounded man sat back in his chair. He put out his hand on the table beside him, and the extended fingers moved on the board as to a sort of tune.

“Well,” he said, “what is wrong with the theory that the two men in the cab were fired upon by a third?”

“Alas, Monsieur,” replied the Prefect, “such an explanation is merely to complicate the mystery. It is but to add to the mystery we have, a
mysterious assassin, a mysterious motive, a mysterious disappearance, and a further mysterious reason why some unknown person wished to murder both Lord Landeau and the Count de Choiseul. Such an explanation would not help the authorities. It would only set the whole English public hot-foot to work on the thing. Besides, Monsieur, there is the fact of the pistol found on the cab floor. How came it there? No murderer would deliberately leave behind him a weapon by which he might possibly be traced. And, too, Monsieur, in the event that this pistol should prove the property of Lord Landeau or of the Count de Choiseul, what then?”

The wounded man reflected. “Is it not possible,” he said, “that Lord Landeau fired these shots?”

“Let us look at that theory a moment,” replied Monsieur Jonquelle. “Jealousy would be a sufficient motive. But what of these evidential facts? The Count de Choiseul sat on the right, Lord Landeau on the left; the Count is broad-shouldered, the Englishman stout and short-armed. The direction of the ball that killed Lord Landeau makes it clear that the two men were sitting side by side when the shot was fired. Now to inflict this wound Lord Landeau must have reached entirely round the Count de Choiseul with his right arm, a thing impossible.

“Think, Monsieur!” And the Prefect looked at the Count de Choiseul with the greatest concern. “A final explanation must remain, exclusive of these, and exclusive of a design on the part of the Count de Choiseul deliberately to assassinate Lord Landeau.
Mon Dieu
! Monsieur is a man of resources! It cannot fail to occur to him!”