The Hollow Needle by Maurice Leblanc Read Free Book Online

Daval? Is the man alive? Where is he hiding?”
    “There is a misunderstanding between us, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, or, rather, you have misunderstood the facts from the beginning The murderer and the runaway are two distinct persons.”
    “What’s that?” exclaimed M. Filleul. “The man whom M. de Gesvres saw in the boudoir and struggled with, the man whom the young ladies saw in the drawing room and whom Mlle. de Saint-Veran shot at, the man who fell in the park and whom we are looking for: do you suggest that he is not the man who killed Jean Daval?”
    “I do.”
    “Have you discovered the traces of a third accomplice who disappeared before the arrival of the young ladies?”
    “I have not.”
    “In that case, I don’t understand.—Well, who is the murderer of Jean Daval?”
    “Jean Daval was killed by—”
    Beautrelet interrupted himself, thought for a moment and continued:
    “But I must first show you the road which I followed to arrive at the certainty and the very reasons of the murder—without which my accusation would seem monstrous to you.—And it is not—no, it is not monstrous at all.—There is one detail which has passed unobserved and which, nevertheless, is of the greatest importance; and that is that Jean Daval, at the moment when he was stabbed, had all his clothes on, including his walking boots, was dressed, in short, as a man is dressed in the middle of the day, with a waistcoat, collar, tie and braces. Now the crime was committed at four o’clock in the morning.”
    “I reflected on that strange fact,” said the magistrate, “and M. de Gesvres replied that Jean Daval spent a part of his nights in working.”
    “The servants say, on the contrary, that he went to bed regularly at a very early hour. But, admitting that he was up, why did he disarrange his bedclothes, to make believe that he had gone to bed? And, if he was in bed, why, when he heard a noise, did he take the trouble to dress himself from head to foot, instead of slipping on anything that came to hand? I went to his room on the first day, while you were at lunch: his slippers were at the foot of the bed. What prevented him from putting them on rather than his heavy nailed boots?”
    “So far, I do not see—”
    “So far, in fact, you cannot see anything, except anomalies. They appeared much more suspicious to me, however, when I learned that Charpenais the painter, the man who copied the Rubens pictures, had been introduced and recommended to the Comte de Gesvres by Jean Daval himself.”
    “Well?”
    “Well, from that to the conclusion that Jean Daval and Charpenais were accomplices required but a step. I took that step at the time of our conversation.”
    “A little quickly, I think.”
    “As a matter of fact, a material proof was wanted. Now I had discovered in Daval’s room, on one of the sheets of the blotting-pad on which he used to write, this address: ‘Monsieur A.L.N., Post-office 45, Paris.’ You will find it there still, traced the reverse way on the blotting-paper. The next day, it was discovered that the telegram sent by the sham flyman from Saint-Nicolas bore the same address: ‘A.L.N., Post-office 45.’ The material proof existed: Jean Daval was in correspondence with the gang which arranged the robbery of the pictures.”
    M. Filleul raised no objection.
    “Agreed. The complicity is established. And what conclusion do you draw?”
    “This, first of all, that it was not the runaway who killed Jean Daval, because Jean Daval was his accomplice.”
    “And after that?”
    “Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, I will ask you to remember the first sentence uttered by Monsieur le Comte when he recovered from fainting. The sentence forms part of Mlle. de Gesvres’ evidence and is in the official report: ‘I am not wounded.—Daval?—Is he alive?—The knife?’ And I will ask you to compare it with that part of his story, also in the report, in which Monsieur le Comte describes the