Detective and mystery stories; Fantômas (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
"Gentlemen," he went on, "hitherto the police have remained impotent,
and justice has been disarmed, in presence of a number of serious cases
of crime, committed recently and still unsolved. Let me recall these
cases to your memory: they were the murder of the Marquise de Langrune
at her château of Beaulieu; the robberies from Mme. Van den Rosen and
the Princess Sonia Danidoff; the murder of Dollon, the former steward of
the Marquise de Langrune, when on his way from the neighbourhood of
Saint-Jaury to Paris in obedience to a summons sent him by M. Germain
Fuselier; and, lastly, the murder of Lord Beltham, prior to the cases
just enumerated, for which the prisoner in the dock is at this moment
standing his trial. Gentlemen, I have to say that all these cases, the
Beltham, Langrune and Dollon murders, and the Rosen-Danidoff burglaries,
are absolutely and indisputably to be attributed to one and the same
individual, to that man standing there--Gurn!"
Having made this extraordinary assertion, Juve again turned round
towards the prisoner. That mysterious person appeared to be keenly
interested in what the detective said, but it would have been difficult
to say whether he was merely surprised, or not rather perturbed and
excited as well. Juve hushed, with a wave of his hand, the murmur that
ran round the court, and resumed his address.
"My assertion that Gurn is the sole person responsible for all these
crimes has surprised you, gentlemen, but I have proofs which must, I
think, convince you. I will not go into the details of each of those
cases, for the newspapers have made you quite familiar with them, but I
will be as brief and as lucid as I can.
"My first point, gentlemen, is this: the murderer of the Marquise de
Langrune and the man who robbed Mme. Van den Rosen and Princess Sonia
Danidoff are one and the same person.
"That is shown beyond dispute by tests made in the two cases with a
Bertillon dynamometer, an instrument of the nicest exactitude, which
proved that the same individual operated in both cases; that is one
point made good. And next, the man who robbed Mme. Van den Rosen and
Princess Sonia is Gurn. That is proved to equal demonstration by the
fact that the burglar burned his hand while engaged upon his crime, and
that Gurn has a scar on his hand which betrays him as the criminal; the
scar is faint now perhaps, but I can testify that it was very obvious at
the time of a disturbance which occurred at a low café named the
Saint-Anthony's Pig, where, accompanied by detective Lemaroy, who is
still in hospital for treatment for injuries received on that occasion,
I attempted, and failed, to arrest this man Gurn.
"Thus, gentlemen, I prove that the Langrune and Danidoff cases are the
work of but one man, and that man, Gurn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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