And Lupin sent a copy of the document to the public prosecutor.
"I am Leon Massier," declared the prisoner, once again.
"You lie," replied Lupin. "You are Louis de Malreich, the last surviving
descendant of a small French noble who settled in Germany in the
eighteenth century. You had a brother who called himself Parbury,
Ribeira and Altenheim, by turns: you killed your brother. You had a
sister, Isilda de Malreich: you killed your sister."
"I am Leon Massier."
"You lie. You are Malreich. Here is your birth-certificate. Here are
your brother's and your sister's."
And Lupin sent the three certificates.
Apart from the question of his identity, Malreich, crushed, no doubt, by
the accumulation of proofs brought up against him, did not defend
himself. What could he say? They had forty notes written in his own
hand--a comparison of the handwritings established the fact--written in
his own hand to the gang of his accomplices, forty notes which he had
omitted to tear up after taking them back. And all these notes were
orders relating to the Kesselbach case, the capture of M. Lenormand and
Gourel, the pursuit of old Steinweg, the construction of the underground
passages at Garches and so on. What possibility was there of a denial?
One rather odd thing baffled the law officers. The seven scoundrels,
when confronted with their leader, all declared that they did not know
him, because they had never seen him. They received his instructions
either by telephone, or else in the dark, by means of those same little
notes which Malreich slipped into their hands without a word.
But, for the rest, was not the existence of the communication between
the villa in the Rue Delaizement and the Broker's shed an ample proof of
complicity? From that spot, Malreich saw and heard. From that spot, the
leader watched his men.
Discrepancies? Apparently irreconcilable facts? Lupin explained them all
away. In a celebrated article, published on the morning of the trial, he
took up the case from the start, revealed what lay beneath it,
unravelled its web, showed Malreich, unknown to all, living in the room
of his brother, the sham Major Parbury, passing unseen along the
passages of the Palace Hotel and murdering Mr. Kesselbach, murdering
Beudot the floor-waiter, murdering Chapman the secretary.
The trial lingers in the memory. It was both terrifying and gloomy:
terrifying because of the atmosphere of anguish that hung over the crowd
of onlookers and the recollection of crime and blood that obsessed
their minds: gloomy, heavy, darksome, stifling because of the tremendous
silence observed by the prisoner.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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