Part 7

Not without regret she slipped the necklace from her shoulders and held it out to her husband, who examined it with admiration, as though he did not know it. Then, having placed it back in its red leather case bearing the Cardinal's arms, he passed into an adjoining closet, rather an alcove, which had been completely isolated from the bedroom, and whose only entrance was at the foot of their bed. As on previous occasions, he hid it on a rather high shelf, among hatboxes and piles of linen. He closed the door and undressed.

In the morning he rose about nine o'clock, intending to go to the Crédit Lyonnais before breakfast. He dressed, drank a cup of coffee, and went down to the stables. There he gave orders. One of the horses worried him. He had it walk and trot before him in the courtyard. Then he returned to his wife.

She had not left the room and was having her hair done, helped by her maid. She said to him:

"You are going out!"

"Yes... on that errand..."

"Ah! indeed... it is more prudent..."

He went into the closet. But after a few seconds he asked, without the least surprise, moreover:

"You took it, my dear?"

She replied:

"What? why no, I took nothing."

"You disturbed it."

"Not at all... I did not even open that door."

He appeared, his face distorted, and stammered, his voice barely intelligible:

"You did not?... It was not you?... Then..."

She ran to him, and they searched feverishly, throwing the hatboxes to the floor and knocking over the piles of linen. And the count kept repeating:

"Useless... all we do is useless... It is here, there, on this shelf, that I put it."

"You may have been mistaken."

"It is here, there, on this shelf, and not on another."

They lit a candle, for the room was rather dark, and they removed all the linen and all the objects that cluttered it. And when there was nothing left in the closet, they had to admit with despair that the famous necklace, "the Queen's Slavery Necklace," had disappeared.

Of a resolute nature, the countess, without wasting time in vain lamentations, had the commissioner, Mr. Valorbe, informed, whose keen mind and clear-sightedness they had already had occasion to appreciate. He was told the details, and at once he asked:

"Are you quite sure, Count, that no one could have crossed your bedroom during the night?"

"Absolutely sure. I am a very light sleeper. Better still: the door of that room was bolted. I had to draw the bolt this morning when my wife rang for the maid."

"And there is no other passage by which one might enter the closet?"

"None."

"No window?"

"Yes, but it is walled up."

"I should like to see for myself..."

They lit candles, and at once Mr. Valorbe pointed out that the window was only walled up to half its height, by a sideboard, which moreover did not fit exactly against the casement.

"It fits closely enough," replied Mr. de Dreux, "for it to be impossible to move it without making a great deal of noise."

"And what does this window look out on?"

"On an inner courtyard."

"And do you have another floor above this one?"

"Two, but at the level of the servants' quarters, the courtyard is protected by a fine-meshed grating. That is why we have so little daylight."

Besides, when the sideboard was moved aside, it was found that the window was shut, which would not have been the case if someone had entered from outside.

"Unless," observed the count, "that someone went out through our bedroom."

"In which case, you would not have found the bolt of that room shot."

The commissioner reflected for a moment, then turning to the countess:

"Did those around you know, Madame, that you were to wear this necklace last evening?"

"Certainly, I did not hide it. But no one knew that we locked it in this closet."

"No one?"

"No one... Unless..."

"If you please, Madame, be precise. This is a most important point."

She said to her husband:

"I was thinking of Henriette."

"Henriette? She is ignorant of that detail like the others."

"Are you certain?"

"Who is this lady?" asked Mr. Valorbe.

"A convent friend, who quarreled with her family to marry a sort of workman. On her husband's death, I took her in with her son, and furnished an apartment for them in this house."

And she added with embarrassment:

"She does me some services. She is very deft with her hands."

"On what floor does she live?"

"On ours, not far from here... at the end of this corridor... And indeed, now I think of it... the window of her kitchen..."

"Opens on that courtyard, does it not?"

"Yes, just opposite ours."

A brief silence followed this statement.

Then Mr. Valorbe asked to be taken to Henriette.

They found her sewing, while her son Raoul, a child of six or seven, read beside her. Rather surprised to see the wretched apartment that had been furnished for her, which consisted altogether of a room without a fireplace and a cubbyhole serving as a kitchen, the commissioner questioned her. She seemed overwhelmed on learning of the theft. The previous evening she had herself dressed the countess and fastened the necklace around her neck.

"Good Lord!" she cried, "who would ever have told me?"

"And you have no idea? not the slightest suspicion? It is possible, however, that the culprit passed through your room."

She laughed heartily, without even imagining that she could be touched by a suspicion:

"But I did not leave my room, my room! I never go out, I. And then, have you not seen?"

She opened the window of the cubbyhole.

"Look, there are a good three meters to the opposite ledge."

"Who told you that we were considering the hypothesis of a theft committed that way?"

"But... was not the necklace in the closet?"

"How do you know that?"

"Why! I have always known it was put there at night... it was spoken of before me..."

Her face, still young but withered by sorrow, showed great gentleness and resignation. Suddenly, however, in the silence, she wore an expression of anguish, as if a danger threatened her. She drew her son to her. The child took her hand and kissed it tenderly.

"I do not suppose," said Mr. de Dreux to the commissioner, when they were alone, "I do not suppose that you suspect her? I vouch for her. She is honesty itself."

"Oh! I am quite of your opinion," affirmed Mr. Valorbe. "It is at most that I had thought of an unconscious complicity. But I recognize that this explanation must be abandoned... all the more since it in no way resolves the problem we are up against."

The commissioner did not pursue this inquiry further, which the examining magistrate took up and completed in the following days. The servants were questioned, the state of the bolt verified, experiments made on the closing and opening of the closet window, the courtyard explored from top to bottom... All was useless. The bolt was intact. The window could not be opened or closed from outside.

More specifically, the investigations targeted Henriette, for, despite everything, they always came back to that quarter. Her life was minutely searched, and it was established that, for three years, she had left the house only four times, and the four times for errands that could be determined. In reality, she served as lady's maid and seamstress to Madame de Dreux, who showed toward her a severity of which all the servants testified in confidence.

"Besides," said the examining magistrate, who, at the end of a week, reached the same conclusions as the commissioner, "admitting that we knew the culprit, and we are not there yet, we should know no more as to how the theft was committed. We are barred on the right and on the left by two obstacles: a door and a window both closed. The mystery is twofold! How could one have got in, and how, what was much more difficult, could one have got out leaving behind a door bolted and a window shut?"

At the end of four months of investigation, the secret idea of the magistrate was this: Mr. and Mrs. de Dreux, pressed by money needs, which were in fact considerable, had sold the Queen's Necklace. He closed the case.

The theft of the precious jewel dealt the Dreux-Soubise a blow whose mark they long retained. Their credit no longer being upheld by the sort of reserve constituted by such a treasure, they found themselves facing more demanding creditors and less favorable lenders. They had to cut to the quick, dispose of property, mortgage. In short, it would have been ruin if two large inheritances from distant relatives had not saved them.

They also suffered in their pride, as if they had lost a quarter of nobility. And, a strange thing, it was against her former school friend that the countess turned. She felt a real resentment toward her and openly accused her. She was first relegated to the servants' floor, then dismissed overnight.

And life flowed on, without notable events. They traveled a great deal.

Only one fact should be noted during this period. A few months after Henriette's departure, the countess received a letter from her that filled her with astonishment:

"Madame,

"I do not know how to thank you. For it is surely you, is it not, who sent me this? It can only be you. No other knows my retreat at the end of this little village. If I am mistaken, forgive me, and retain at least the expression of my gratitude for your past kindnesses..."

What did she mean? The present or past kindnesses of the countess toward her amounted to much injustice. What did these thanks signify?

Summoned to explain, she replied that she had received by post, in an unregistered and unpaid parcel, two one-thousand-franc notes. The envelope, which she enclosed with her reply, was postmarked Paris and bore only her address, traced in a visibly disguised hand.

Where did these two thousand francs come from? Who had sent them? Justice inquired. But what trail could be followed amid such shadows?

And the same fact recurred twelve months later. And a third time; and a fourth time; and every year for six years, with this difference, that the fifth and sixth year, the sum doubled, which allowed Henriette, suddenly fallen ill, to be cared for as was proper.

Another difference: the postal administration having seized one of the letters on the pretext that it was not paid, the last two letters were sent according to regulation, the first dated Saint-Germain, the other Suresnes. The sender signed first Anquety, then Péchard. The addresses he gave were false.

At the end of six years, Henriette died. The enigma remained entire.

* * *

All these events are known to the public. The affair was one of those that stirred opinion, and it is a strange destiny that of this necklace, which, after having overturned France at the end of the eighteenth century, still raised so much emotion a century later. But what I am about to say is unknown to all, save the principal parties concerned and a few persons to whom the count asked absolute secrecy. As it is probable that sooner or later they will fail their promise, I, for my part, have no scruple in tearing the veil, and one will thus have, at the same time as the key to the enigma, the explanation of the letter published by the newspapers of the morning before last, an extraordinary letter which added still, if possible, a little shadow and mystery to the obscurities of this drama.

It was five days ago. Among the guests lunching at Mr. de Dreux-Soubise's were his two nieces and his cousin, and, as men, President d'Essaville, Deputy Bochas, Chevalier Floriani whom the count had known in Sicily, and General Marquis de Rouzières, an old club comrade.

After the meal, the ladies served coffee, and the gentlemen were permitted a cigarette, on condition of not deserting the salon. They chatted. One of the young girls amused herself by telling fortunes with cards. Then they came to speak of celebrated crimes. And it is on this subject that Mr. de Rouzières, who never missed the chance to tease the count, recalled the adventure of the necklace, a subject of conversation that Mr. de Dreux held in horror.

At once everyone gave their opinion. Everyone recommenced the inquiry in their own way. And, naturally, all the hypotheses contradicted each other, all equally inadmissible.

"And you, Sir," the countess asked Chevalier Floriani, "what is your opinion?"

"Oh! I have no opinion, Madame."

They protested. Precisely the chevalier had just very brilliantly related various adventures in which he had been involved with his father, a magistrate at Palermo, and which had affirmed his judgment and his taste for such matters.

"I admit," he said, "that it has happened to me to succeed where more skillful men had given up. But from that to considering myself a Sherlock Holmes... And then, I scarcely know what it is about."

They turned toward the master of the house. Reluctantly, he had to summarize the facts. The chevalier listened, reflected, posed a few questions, and murmured:

"It is funny... at first glance it does not seem to me that the thing is so difficult to guess."

The count shrugged his shoulders. But the others pressed around the chevalier, and he resumed in a somewhat dogmatic tone:

"In general, to trace back to the author of a crime or theft, one must determine how that crime or theft was committed, or at least could have been committed. In the present case, nothing simpler according to me, for we find ourselves facing, not several hypotheses, but a certainty, a single, rigorous certainty, and which states thus: the individual could only enter by the bedroom door or by the closet window. Now, one does not open, from the outside, a bolted door. Therefore he entered by the window."

"It was shut and it was found shut," declared Mr. de Dreux flatly.

"For that," continued Floriani without noting the interruption, "he needed only to establish a bridge, plank or ladder, between the kitchen balcony and the window ledge, and as soon as the case..."

"But I repeat to you that the window was shut!" cried the count impatiently.

This time Floriani had to answer. He did so with the greatest calm, like a man untroubled by so insignificant an objection.

"I am willing to believe it was, but is there not a transom?"

"How do you know?"

"First, it is almost a rule in hotels of that period. And secondly it must be so, since otherwise the theft is inexplicable."

"Indeed, there is one, but it was closed, like the window. One did not even pay attention to it."

"That is a mistake. For if one had paid attention, one would obviously have seen that it had been opened."

"And how?"

"I suppose that, like all the others, it opens by means of a braided wire, fitted with a ring at its lower end?"

"Yes."

"And this ring hung between the casement and the sideboard?"

"Yes, but I do not understand..."

"Here is how. Through a slit made in the pane, one could, by means of some instrument, say an iron rod fitted with a hook, catch the ring, pull, and open."

The count sneered:

"Perfect! perfect! you arrange all that with an ease! only you forget one thing, dear Sir, which is that there was no slit made in the pane."

"There was a slit."

"Come now! one would have seen it."

"To see one must look, and one did not look. The slit exists, it is materially impossible that it does not exist, along the pane, against the putty... in the vertical sense, of course..."

The count rose. He seemed very excited. He paced the salon two or three times with a nervous step, and, approaching Floriani:

"Nothing has changed up there since that day... no one has set foot in that closet."

"In that case, Sir, you are free to assure yourself that my explanation agrees with reality."

"It agrees with none of the facts that justice established. You have seen nothing, you know nothing, and you go against all that we have seen and all that we know."

Floriani did not seem to notice the count's irritation, and he said smiling:

"My God, Sir, I try to see clearly, that is all. If I am mistaken, prove my error to me."

"Without delay... I confess that in the long run your assurance..."

Mr. de Dreux mumbled a few more words, then, suddenly, headed for the door and went out.

Not a word was spoken. They waited anxiously, as if, truly, a particle of truth were about to appear. And the silence had an extreme gravity.

At last, the count appeared in the doorway. He was pale and singularly agitated. He said to his friends in a trembling voice:

"I beg your pardon... the revelations of this gentleman are so unforeseen... I would never have thought..."

His wife questioned him avidly:

"Speak... I beseech you... what is it?"

He stammered:

"The slit exists... at the very spot indicated... along the pane..."

He abruptly seized the chevalier's arm and said to him in an imperious tone:

"And now, Sir, continue... I recognize that you are right thus far, but now... It is not finished... answer... what happened according to you?"

Floriani gently disengaged himself and after a moment pronounced:

"Well, according to me, here is what happened. The individual, knowing that Mme de Dreux was going to the ball with the necklace, threw his bridge during your absence. Through the window he watched you and saw you hide the jewel. As soon as you left, he cut the glass and pulled the ring."

"Granted, but the distance is too great for him to have been able, through the transom, to reach the window handle."

"If he could not open it, it is because he entered through the transom itself."

"Impossible; there is no man slim enough to get in through there."

"Then it is not a man."

"What!"

"Certainly. If the passage is too narrow for a man, it must be that it was a child."

"A child!"

"Did you not tell me that your friend Henriette had a son!"

"Indeed... a son named Raoul."

"It is infinitely probable that it is this Raoul who committed the theft."

"What proof have you of it?"

"What proof!... proofs are not lacking... Thus for example..."

He fell silent and reflected a few seconds. Then he resumed:

"Thus, for example, this bridge, it is not to be believed that the child brought it from outside and took it back without anyone noticing. He must have used what was at his disposal. In the cubbyhole where Henriette cooked, there were, were there not, shelves hung on the wall where one put the pots?"

"Two shelves, as far as I remember."

"It would be necessary to verify whether these planks are really fixed to the wooden cleats that support them. In the contrary case we would be authorized to think that the child unnailed them, then tied them one to the other. Perhaps also, since there was a stove, one would find the stove hook he must have used to open the transom."

Without a word the count went out, and this time the listeners did not even feel the slight anxiety of the unknown that they had felt the first time. They knew, they knew in an absolute way, that Floriani's predictions were correct. There emanated from this man an impression of such rigorous certainty that one listened to him not as if he were deducing facts from one another, but as if he were relating events whose authenticity one could easily verify as he went along.

And no one was astonished when, on his return, the count declared:

"It is indeed the child, it is indeed he, everything attests to it."

"You saw the planks... the hook?"

"I saw... the planks had been unnailed... the hook is still there."

But Mme de Dreux-Soubise cried:

"It is he... You mean rather that it is his mother. Henriette is the only guilty one. She must have forced her son..."

"No," affirmed the chevalier, "the mother had no part in it."

"Come now! they lived in the same room, the child could not have acted without Henriette's knowledge."

"They lived in the same room, but all took place in the next room, at night, while the mother slept."

"And the necklace?" said the count, "it would have been found among the child's things."

"Pardon! he went out, he. The very morning you surprised him at his worktable, he had just come from school, and perhaps justice, instead of exhausting its resources against the innocent mother, would have been better inspired by searching there, in the child's desk, among his schoolbooks."

"Be it so, but those two thousand francs that Henriette received each year, is that not the best sign of her complicity?"

"An accomplice, would she have thanked you for that money? And then, was she not watched? Whereas the child is free, he, he has every facility for running to the neighboring town, for meeting some fence and selling him a diamond, two diamonds, as the case may be... on the sole condition that the sending of money be effected from Paris, whereby one would begin again the following year."

An indefinable uneasiness oppressed the Dreux-Soubise and their guests. Truly there was in the tone, in the attitude of Floriani, something other than that certainty which, from the first, had so greatly irritated the count. There was something like irony, and an irony that seemed rather hostile than sympathetic and friendly as would have been fitting.

The count affected to laugh.

"All this is so ingenious that it delights me, my compliments. What a brilliant imagination!"

"But no, but no," cried Floriani with greater gravity, "I do not imagine, I evoke circumstances that were inevitably such as I show them."

"How do you know?"

"What you yourself have told me of it. I picture the life of the mother and child, there, deep in the province, the mother who falls ill, the ruses and inventions of the little one to sell the stones and save his mother or at least soften her last moments. Illness prevails. She dies. Years pass. The child grows, becomes a man. And then—and this time, I am willing to admit that my imagination gives itself free rein—suppose that this man feels the need to return to the places where he lived his childhood, that he sees them again, that he finds those who suspected, accused his mother... do you think of the poignant interest of such a meeting in the old house where the episodes of the drama unfolded?"

His words rang out a few seconds in the anxious silence, and on the face of Mr. and Mme de Dreux was read a desperate effort to understand, together with the fear, the anguish of understanding. The count murmured:

"Who are you then, Sir?"

"I? why, the Chevalier Floriani whom you met at Palermo, and whom you were good enough to invite to your home already several times."

"Then what does this story signify?"

"Oh! but nothing at all! It is a simple game on my part. I try to picture the joy that the son of Henriette, if he still exists, would have in telling you that he was the only guilty one, and that he was so because his mother was unhappy, on the point of losing the place of... domestic that she lived on, and because the child suffered to see his mother unhappy."

He spoke with contained emotion, half risen and leaning toward the countess. No doubt could remain. The Chevalier Floriani was none other than the son of Henriette. Everything, in his attitude, in his words, proclaimed it. Besides, was it not his evident intention, his very will to be recognized as such?

“Stories of the world, in your language.”