"No more than before," he answered, with the same impassive face. He did
well not to flinch. What I had said might be only an attempt to wrest
his secret from him by feigning to know all. Nevertheless, the detail
concerning the place where he had appointed to meet his brother had made
him start. That was the spot to hit, and quickly.
"The cowardly assassin," I continued, "yes, the coward, because he dared
not commit the crime himself, had carefully calculated all the
circumstances of the murder; but he had reckoned without certain little
accidents, for instance, that his brother would keep the three letters
he had received, the first two at New York, the last at Liverpool, and
which contained instructions relating to the stages of this clandestine
journey. Neither had he taken into account that the son of his victim
would grow up, would become a man, would conceive certain suspicions of
the true cause of his father's death, and would succeed in procuring
overwhelming proof of the dark conspiracy. Come, then," I added
fiercely, "off with the mask! M. Jacques Termonde, it is you who had my
unhappy father killed by your brother Edmond. I have in my possession
the letters you wrote him in January, 1864, to induce him to come to
Europe, first under the false name of Rochester and afterwards under
that of Rochdale. It is not worth your while to play the indignant or
the astonished with me--the game is up."
He had turned frightfully pale; but his arms still remained crossed, and
his bold eyes did not droop. He made one last attempt to parry the
straight blow I had aimed at him, and he had the hardihood to say:
"How much did that wretch Edmond ask as the price of the forgery which
he fabricated in revenge for my refusal to give him money?"
"Be silent, you--" said I still more fiercely. "Is it to me that you
dare to speak thus--to me? Did I need those letters in order to learn
all? Have we not known for weeks past, I, that you had committed the
crime, and you, that I had divined your guilt? What I still needed was
the written, indisputable, undeniable proof, that which can be laid
before a magistrate. You refused him money? You were about to give him
money, only that you mistrusted him, and chose to wait until the day of
his departure. You did not suspect that I was upon your track. Shall I
tell you when it was you saw him for the last time? Yesterday, at ten
o'clock in the morning, you went out, you changed your cab first at the
Place de la Concorde, and a second time at the Palais Royal. You went to
the Grand Hotel, and you asked whether Mr. Stanbury was in his room. A
few hours later, I, I myself, was in that same room. Ah! how much did
Edmond Termonde ask from me for the letters? Why, I tore them from him,
pistol in hand, after a struggle in which I was nearly killed. You see
now that you can deceive me no more, and that it is no longer worth your
while to deny."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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