“What! Nothing? You have the corpse of the victim, the house in ruins, and the arm of the assassin! What are you doing with this latter? It ought to reveal something.”
“For the present it is in the frigorific apparatus,” growled M. Mayeur. “But neither corpse, nor house, nor arm gives me the slightest results. An evil genius seems to have passed over everything, carrying with it death and mutilation, and leaving nothing behind. It is enough to drive one mad!”
“Gently, Mayeur, keep a cool head, whatever happens. Persevere. You have been spoiled by success, but do not be discouraged; at any moment light may flash on the whole affair, and clear up everything.”
What caused M. Mayeur the greatest chagrin was that he was perfectly aware of the secret pleasure his want of success gave all his colleagues. A magistrate who had failed in so important an investigation; how could he expect to be nominated to the Assize Court, contrary to all normal promotion, if he had no longer his invariable good luck as his supreme justification? And, seated in his study, with his back to the light, looking vacantly into the fire, whilst his clerk ran the risk of dislocating his jaw with too much gaping, M. Mayeur, to satisfy his conscience, in mournful accents, questioned one of his agents, who had returned after a fruitless search.
“So there was no trace of the wounded man having passed through the cottage gardens, nor on the road to Paris?”
“No, sir. I have visited all the inns frequented by the quarrymen and gardeners of the district. No one could give me any definite information. One would imagine the murderer had been annihilated by the explosion itself.”
“Nothing of the kind! He was tracked to within three hundred paces from the Trémont property, and there a trail of blood, quite visible, which he had left all the way, suddenly disappeared. Did he, at that spot, find his accomplices waiting for him? Was he carried off? How and where? Nothing but darkness and obscurity!”
“Those who committed the crime are not professional thieves, although the General has been robbed of objects of value he carried on his person. Accordingly, they will not be found so easily. That is where the whole difficulty comes in.”
The magistrate gave a gesture of discontent, as though to signify that he knew all that. Stroking his beard, he said, with a sigh—
“You may go now. Send me Baudoin, the General’s servant, whom I have sent for afresh.”