She could still recognize her father; she got out of bed and fell on her knees at the old man’s side as he sank into a chair.
“Forgive me, papa,” said she in a tone that pierced Peyrade’s heart, and at the same moment he was conscious of what felt like a tremendous blow on his head.
“I am dying! — the villains!” were his last words.
Corentin tried to help his friend, and received his latest breath.
“Dead! Poisoned!” said he to himself. “Ah! here is the doctor!” he exclaimed, hearing the sound of wheels.
Contenson, who came with his mulatto disguise removed, stood like a bronze statue as he heard Lydie say:
“Then you do not forgive me, father?
— But it was not my fault!” She did not understand that her father was dead. “Oh, how he stares at me!” cried the poor crazy girl.
“We must close his eyes,” said Contenson, lifting Peyrade on to the bed.
“We are doing a stupid thing,” said Corentin. “Let us carry him into his own room. His daughter is half demented, and she will go quite mad when she sees that he is dead; she will fancy that she has killed him.”
Lydie, seeing them carry away her father, looked quite stupefied.
“There lies my only friend!” said Corentin, seeming much moved when Peyrade was laid out on the bed in his own room. “In all his life he never had but one impulse of cupidity, and that was for his daughter! — Let him be an example to you, Contenson.
Every line of life has its code of honor.
Peyrade did wrong when he mixed himself up with private concerns; we have no business to meddle with any but public cases.
“But come what may, I swear,” said he with a voice, an emphasis, a look that struck horror into Contenson, “to avenge my poor Peyrade!
I will discover the men who are guilty of his death and of his daughter’s ruin.
And as sure as I am myself, as I have yet a few days to live, which I will risk to accomplish that vengeance, every man of them shall die at four o’clock, in good health, by a clean shave on the Place de Greve.”
“And I will help you,” said Contenson with feeling.
Nothing, in fact, is more heart-stirring than the spectacle of passion in a cold, self-contained, and methodical man, in whom, for twenty years, no one has ever detected the smallest impulse of sentiment.
It is like a molten bar of iron which melts everything it touches.
And Contenson was moved to his depths.
“Poor old Canquoelle!” said he, looking at Corentin. “He has treated me many a time. — And, I tell you, only your bad sort know how to do such things — but often has he given me ten francs to go and gamble with . . . ”
After this funeral oration, Peyrade’s two avengers went back to Lydie’s room, hearing Katt and the medical officer from the Mairie on the stairs.
“Go and fetch the Chief of Police,” said Corentin. “The public prosecutor will not find grounds for a prosecution in the case; still, we will report it to the Prefecture; it may, perhaps, be of some use.
“Monsieur,” he went on to the medical officer, “in this room you will see a dead man.
I do not believe that he died from natural causes; you will be good enough to make a post-mortem in the presence of the Chief of the Police, who will come at my request.
Try to discover some traces of poison. You will, in a few minutes, have the opinion of Monsieur Desplein and Monsieur Bianchon, for whom I have sent to examine the daughter of my best friend; she is in a worse plight than he, though he is dead.”
“I have no need of those gentlemen’s assistance in the exercise of my duty,” said the medical officer.
“Well, well,” thought Corentin.
“Let us have no clashing, monsieur,” he said. “In a few words I give you my opinion — Those who have just murdered the father have also ruined the daughter.”
By daylight Lydie had yielded to fatigue; when the great surgeon and the young physician arrived she was asleep.
The doctor, whose duty it was to sign the death certificate, had now opened Peyrade’s body, and was seeking the cause of death.
“While waiting for your patient to awake,” said Corentin to the two famous doctors, “would you join one of your professional brethren in an examination which cannot fail to interest you, and your opinion will be valuable in case of an inquiry.”
“Your relations died of apoplexy,” said the official. “There are all the symptoms of violent congestion of the brain.”
“Examine him, gentlemen, and see if there is no poison capable of producing similar symptoms.”
“The stomach is, in fact, full of food substances; but short of chemical analysis, I find no evidence of poison.
“If the characters of cerebral congestion are well ascertained, we have here, considering the patient’s age, a sufficient cause of death,” observed Desplein, looking at the enormous mass of material.
“Did he sup here?” asked Bianchon.
“No,” said Corentin; “he came here in great haste from the Boulevard, and found his daughter ruined ——”
“That was the poison if he loved his daughter,” said Bianchon.
“What known poison could produce a similar effect?” asked Corentin, clinging to his idea.
“There is but one,” said Desplein, after a careful examination. “It is a poison found in the Malayan Archipelago, and derived from trees, as yet but little known, of the strychnos family; it is used to poison that dangerous weapon, the Malay kris. — At least, so it is reported.”
The Police Commissioner presently arrived; Corentin told him his suspicions, and begged him to draw up a report, telling him where and with whom Peyrade had supped, and the causes of the state in which he found Lydie.
Corentin then went to Lydie’s rooms; Desplein and Bianchon had been examining the poor child. He met them at the door.
“Well, gentlemen?” asked Corentin.
“Place the girl under medical care; unless she recovers her wits when her child is born — if indeed she should have a child — she will end her days melancholy-mad.
There is no hope of a cure but in the maternal instinct, if it can be aroused.”
Corentin paid each of the physicians forty francs in gold, and then turned to the Police Commissioner, who had pulled him by the sleeve.
“The medical officer insists on it that death was natural,” said this functionary, “and I can hardly report the case, especially as the dead man was old Canquoelle; he had his finger in too many pies, and we should not be sure whom we might run foul of. Men like that die to order very often ——”
“And my name is Corentin,” said Corentin in the man’s ear.