To this place Charcot was followed by Danevitch and three French police officers, all heavily armed; and while Charcot and old Pierre were conferring together, the Russian and his companions entered, to the utter amazement of the two rascals, who were made prisoners before they could recover from their surprise. To both of them this coup must have been like a thunderbolt, but perhaps more particularly so to Charcot, who only the night before seemed to think he was in little or no danger. In a cellar or vault, below the level of the putrid stream, a man was discovered in a state of idiocy. He was lying on a low truckle bed, close to the damp, slimy wall, to which he was fastened by a chain and staple, and a broad leather belt round his waist. The vault was fœtid, and inconceivably horrible with filth and noisomeness, and the wretched man’s feet and hands had been partly gnawed by rats. That man was Count Dashkoff, the once brilliant and handsome attaché, but now a pitiable and unrecognisable wreck. His hair was matted with slime and dirt, his beard unkempt, his eyes sunken, his face awful in its corpse-like appearance. His body was so emaciated that he was simply an animated skeleton, while the few rags that clung to his vermin-covered body scarcely sufficed to hide his nakedness.
As soon as possible, the poor fellow was removed in an ambulance to a hospital, the imbecile old woman was conveyed to an asylum, while Charcot and Pierre were hurried to prison. An hour later Eugène Peon and Madame Charcot were arrested, and before the day was out—thanks to certain letters found in Madame Charcot’s possession—another man was being searched for. His name was Buhler, and he had recently acted as secretary to the Count, replacing a young man who had died. Buhler was a Russian, but had long resided in Paris. He was recommended to the Count by Eugène Peon. As was subsequently proved, Buhler had once before fulfilled the position of a secretary, but been dismissed for dishonesty. Since then he had got his living as a waiter, until he became a creature of Peon’s. The strangest part of the tale has now to be told.
As most people know, the mode of procedure in France in connection with criminal cases is very different to that adopted in England. In a certain sense it partakes somewhat of the nature of the Inquisition. A functionary, who is known as a Judge of Instruction (Juge d’Instruction), with his assistants and clerks, subjects a suspected person to an ordeal of examination which few can pass through unscathed, unless they be absolutely innocent. The Judge is a legal man of wide experience, and generally with a very intimate knowledge of human nature. He is an adept in the art of cross-examination, and the ‘suspect’ must be clever indeed if he can outwit this examining Judge. Where several persons are under suspicion of complicity, they are confronted with each other, and very rarely do they fail to condemn themselves, and betray their guilt, if they are guilty, under the pitiless fire of questioning to which they are subjected. In this way the truth is brought to light, and piece by piece a story is built up. The story that was partly wrung from the prisoners in this case, and partly learnt from other sources, was as follows:
Years before the events already narrated, an Austrian named Schumacher took up his residence in Paris, with his wife and two daughters, named respectively Rosine and Anna, and a son, Fritz. The girls were at that time quite children. Schumacher, who was a cabinet-maker by trade, and his family ultimately became naturalized French subjects. As the girls grew up, they developed remarkable beauty; but this was allied to vulgar tastes and loose habits, well calculated to bring them to trouble sooner or later. At quite an early age they showed talent for the stage, and began life at a café-chantant. In the course of time Anna married a theatrical and music-hall agent named Charcot; and Rosine, who seems to have had numerous lovers, joined a theatrical company, and travelled for some time, but ultimately secured a permanent engagement at a Paris theatre. Soon after that, when she was only one-and-twenty years of age, and noted for her good looks, she made the acquaintance of Count Dashkoff. The Count was young, impressionable, foolish; the girl artful, cunning, clever. And there is no doubt she resolved to play her cards with a view to gaining a powerful influence over the Count. In this matter she was aided and abetted by her brother Fritz, though that gentleman was no longer known as Fritz.
At quite an early age Fritz had come under the notice of an old and rather eccentric lady, who sent him to school, fostered in him expensive tastes, luxurious habits, and led him to dream of future greatness. He received a good education, and spent four years—from sixteen to twenty—at the Lyceum. Unfortunately for him, his patroness died. It was then found that, though she had made a will leaving a million and a half francs to the young man, she was not worth a million sous. She had simply enjoyed a life interest in a property which produced her a handsome income, though she expended it to the last sou every year. Fritz had also taken her name of Peon, and had substituted Eugène for that of Fritz.
To find himself penniless was a great blow to his hopes and pride. His natural talents and the education he had received should have enabled him to have done well, but he hated work; he lacked energy, and so he set himself to live by his wits. He was a fascinating young fellow, with the power of attracting both men and women. When he made the acquaintance of the Count, the Count at once took to him, and Peon was far too clever to lose such an opportunity of benefiting himself; for clever as the Count was, he was rash and weak-minded in many respects, and no match for an unscrupulous adventurer like Peon, who arranged with his sister Rosine that they were to keep their relationship secret, and use every endeavour to trap the Count into a marriage. Rosine was quite equal to playing her part in this nefarious little scheme. Her fascinations proved too much for the Count, and when he found that she was deaf to all his entreaties, and proof against his costly presents, he came to the conclusion that she was a model woman, a paragon of virtue, a credit to her sex, and in an evil hour he married her. After that it did not take him long to discover what a terrible error he had made. The wife’s rapacity for money, jewellery, dress, was insatiable, and her brother Eugène took good care to share her purse.
For a considerable time the Count yielded to the bleeding process tamely; and his secretary, Buhler, working in connection with Peon and Rosine, succeeded in drawing from him large sums of money. Of course, all this time the unhappy Count believed that his friend Eugène Peon was true and reliable, that Buhler was the most faithful of secretaries, and he began to yearn for some means of breaking the matrimonial bond with which he had bound himself. He found that Rosine had developed a taste for drink; he encouraged this in every possible way, and induced her particularly to consume large quantities of absinthe. The result was, she soon became a confirmed dipsomaniac; and one night, to the horror of the band of conspirators, she either threw herself into the Seine or fell in accidentally; at any rate, she was drowned. That was at a little village about twenty miles from Paris, where the Count had installed her, and where, under an arrangement with him, she lived as a single woman.
Peon, Buhler, and Anna Charcot and her husband managed to keep the news of his wife’s death from the Count, and he was given to understand that she had taken herself off somewhere. A few months passed, and the conspirators felt the loss of their supplies severely. Then, in their desperation, they concocted a scheme which, for daring and wickedness, had not been surpassed for a long time. The scheme was nothing more nor less than the abduction of the Count, who was to be kept a prisoner until he secured his release by the payment of a large ransom.
The night of the ball was chosen as a fitting opportunity to put the plan into execution. Buhler wrote a letter closely imitating Rosine’s handwriting. The letter stated that she had been away from Paris, but had come back seriously ill, and was then unable to leave her bed. She craved him to go and see her immediately, and promised that, if he would give her a sum of money down, she would go away and he should never hear of her again. If not, she would proclaim the following morning to all Paris that she was his lawful wife, and would also send an intimation to that effect to the Embassy. The note wound up by saying that a carriage would be in waiting not far from his house to convey him to her lodgings, and that he could easily get back again in an hour or an hour and a half.
This letter was delivered to the Count in the way that we have seen, and, unhappily for himself, he was influenced by it. He found the carriage at the spot indicated, and was driven out to the barrier to Pierre’s house. Two powerful ruffians, who were to be well paid for their part of the work, had ridden on the box beside the coachman. When the destination was reached, the Count alighted, and then the lonely spot seems to have caused him to suspect that he had been brought there for some villainous purpose. He at once stepped into the carriage again, and ordered the coachman to drive him back to Paris. The two ruffians, however, seized him and dragged him out on to the road, where a desperate struggle took place. To put an end to it, one of the rascals struck the unhappy Count a violent blow over the head with a heavy stick, rendering him unconscious. He was then carried into Pierre’s den.