“You know the lame old concierge has never been willing to admit that my brother could be guilty. Florentin was polite and kind to her during his stay with Caffie, and she is grateful. Very often she has said to me that she is certain the guilty one would be found, and that when it was announced I must tell her. Instead of my telling her the good news, she has written to me. You may be sure I hurried to the Rue Sainte-Anne, expecting to hear something favorable, but we have a proof. When I arrived, the old woman took both of my hands, and told me that she would conduct me immediately to a lady who saw Caffie’s assassin.”
“Saw him!” exclaimed Saniel, struck by a blow that shook him from head to foot.
“She saw him perfectly, as I tell you. She added that this lady was the proprietor of the house, and that she lived in the second wing of the building, on the second story on the court, just opposite to Caffie’s office. This lady, who is called Madame Dammauville, widow of a lawyer, is afflicted with paralysis, and I believe has not left her room for a year. The concierge explained this to me while crossing the court and mounting the stairs, but would say no more.”
If Phillis had been able to observe Saniel, she would have seen him pale to such a degree that his lips were as white as his cheeks; but she was completely absorbed in what she was saying.
“A servant conducted us to Madame Dammauville, whom I found in a small bed near a window, and the concierge told her who I was. She received me kindly, and after having made me sit down in front of her, she told me that hearing from her concierge that I was exerting myself in my brother’s behalf, she had something to tell me which would demonstrate that Caffie’s assassin was not the man whom the law had arrested and detained. The evening of the assassination she was in this same room, lying on this same bed, before this same window, and after having read all day, she reflected and dreamed about her book, while listlessly watching the coming of twilight in the court, that already obscured everything in its shadow. Mechanically she had fixed her eyes on the window of Caffie’s office opposite. Suddenly she saw a tall man, whom she took for an upholsterer, approach the window, and try to draw the curtains. Then Caffie rose, and taking the lamp, he came forward in such a way that the light fell full on the face of this upholsterer. You understand, do you not?”
“Yes,” murmured Saniel.
“She saw him then plainly enough to remember him, and not to confound him with another. Tall, with long hair, a curled blond beard, and dressed like a gentleman, not like a poor man. The curtains were drawn. It was fifteen or twenty minutes after five. And it was at this same moment that Caffie was butchered by this false upholsterer, who evidently had only drawn the curtains so that he might kill Caffie in security, and not imagining that some one should see him doing a deed that denounced him as the assassin as surely as if he had been surprised with the knife in his hand. On reading the description of Florentin in the newspapers when he was arrested, Madame Dammauville believed the criminal was found—a tall man, with long hair and curled beard. There are some points of resemblance, but in the portrait published in the illustrated paper that she received, she did not recognize the man who drew the curtains, and she is certain that the judge is deceived. You see that Florentin is saved!”