Jacques, the valet, was in reality a faithful servant of the family, employed from the first to take care of his young master. He had occupied the adjoining room with Pasquale from the date of his first arrival, but he kept himself very much in the background, as Pasquale was extremely sensitive lest his condition should become known; a fact which explained his, to me, unaccountable objection to receiving me in his rooms.
After the return from Paris, Jacques, as the reader is aware, took a more prominent part in his master’s daily life, for it was then that I saw him for the first time. This greater prominence was due to the fact that Jacques had reported to Mr. Amidio Pasquale, senior, that the attacks instead of becoming more feeble, were growing more marked month by month.
Jacques explained that the sudden alleged departure of his young master was due to the fact, that, feeling the approach of the mental disorder, he would without delay place himself in his valet’s hands. He was in nowise a prisoner, for from the first to the last there had not been, on the part either of his family or of his so-called valet, the faintest suspicion of a homicidal mania; the only objects of the secrecy being a general watchfulness in case of fresh developments, and to keep his infirmity from the knowledge of his friends.
There were days when Pasquale felt out of sorts and indisposed, and since it was the orders of his medical man that he should be soothed and not opposed at such periods, the valet made no intrusion on his privacy then.
It was undoubtedly at such periods that my friend’s most serious attacks had culminated in the atrocities already recorded, for of his connection with these, subsequent investigations removed every shadow of doubt.
As for the apparent difficulty in crossing the Channel to England, and committing a murder, without his absence being discovered by his friends that was readily explained. He had never while in Paris been under strict surveillance, and he was frequently absent for a few days at a time at a friend’s house.
It was evident that plans conceived during one period of lunacy were perfected during the next, or following periods. This was especially evident in connection with the dead man’s efforts to obtain specimens of the hand-writing of the men whom he had resolved to kill, and had afterwards killed.
In the closet where the disguise was found—in which I had seen my friend arrayed, in that awful midnight glance,—were discovered letters from six well-known justices of the peace, five of whom, including the chief of the police, had undoubtedly died by Pasquale’s hand. These letters were evidently in reply to cunningly worded inquiries, such as would be likely to induce the recipients to answer with their own hands. This had been done in every case but one (the sixth letter had been dictated); and the lengthy epistles which the unsuspecting justices had written afforded Pasquale, then in the fulness of his madness, ample opportunity of making himself acquainted with their handwritings, and so enabled him to forge the farewell letters by each supposed suicide, without fear of detection.
If further proof of my demented friend’s guilt had been wanted, it was readily forthcoming in the drafts of the letters to the justices found in his handwriting in the same recess.
The horrible feeling, akin to remorse, which I experienced on recognizing that it was my evidence as to the aged figure which I had seen at midnight in the adjoining room, that had resulted in my friend’s arrest and suicide, was somewhat mitigated when I learned that on the morning of the discovery the superintendent of police at Scotland Yard had received by the first post a communication from the expert employed by my dead friend to examine the letters left by the supposed suicides, to the effect that having detected a certain resemblance in the handwriting in Pasquale’s letter to that in the forgeries, he had made a crucial examination, with the result of satisfying himself that the two were identical.