The Merry Men, and Other Tales and Fables

Sure enough, the green paint was in several places scratched and broken; and one of the panels preserved the print of a nailed shoe. The foot had slipped, however, and it was difficult to estimate the size of the shoe, and impossible to distinguish the pattern of the nails.

‘The whole robbery,’ concluded the Doctor, ‘step by step, has been reconstituted. Inductive science can no further go.’

‘It is wonderful,’ said his wife. ‘You should indeed have been a detective, Henri. I had no idea of your talents.’

‘My dear,’ replied Desprez, condescendingly, ‘a man of scientific imagination combines the lesser faculties; he is a detective just as he is a publicist or a general; these are but local applications of his special talent. But now,’ he continued, ‘would you have me go further? Would you have me lay my finger on the culprits – or rather, for I cannot promise quite so much, point out to you the very house where they consort? It may be a satisfaction, at least it is all we are likely to get, since we are denied the remedy of law. I reach the further stage in this way. In order to fill my outline of the robbery, I require a man likely to be in the forest idling, I require a man of education, I require a man superior to considerations of morality. The three requisites all centre in Tentaillon’s boarders. They are painters, therefore they are continually lounging in the forest. They are painters, therefore they are not unlikely to have some smattering of education. Lastly, because they are painters, they are probably immoral. And this I prove in two ways. First, painting is an art which merely addresses the eye; it does not in any particular exercise the moral sense. And second, painting, in common with all the other arts, implies the dangerous quality of imagination. A man of imagination is never moral; he outsoars literal demarcations and reviews life under too many shifting lights to rest content with the invidious distinctions of the law!’

‘But you always say – at least, so I understood you’ – said madame, ‘that these lads display no imagination whatever.’

‘My dear, they displayed imagination, and of a very fantastic order, too,’ returned the Doctor, ‘when they embraced their beggarly profession. Besides – and this is an argument exactly suited to your intellectual level – many of them are English and American. Where else should we expect to find a thief? – And now you had better get your coffee. Because we have lost a treasure, there is no reason for starving. For my part, I shall break my fast with white wine. I feel unaccountably heated and thirsty to-day. I can only attribute it to the shock of the discovery. And yet, you will bear me out, I supported the emotion nobly.’

The Doctor had now talked himself back into an admirable humour; and as he sat in the arbour and slowly imbibed a large allowance of white wine and picked a little bread and cheese with no very impetuous appetite, if a third of his meditations ran upon the missing treasure, the other two-thirds were more pleasingly busied in the retrospect of his detective skill.

About eleven Casimir arrived; he had caught an early train to Fontainebleau, and driven over to save time; and now his cab was stabled at Tentaillon’s, and he remarked, studying his watch, that he could spare an hour and a half. He was much the man of business, decisively spoken, given to frowning in an intellectual manner. Anastasie’s born brother, he did not waste much sentiment on the lady, gave her an English family kiss, and demanded a meal without delay.

‘You can tell me your story while we eat,’ he observed. ‘Anything good to-day, Stasie?’

He was promised something good. The trio sat down to table in the arbour, Jean-Marie waiting as well as eating, and the Doctor recounted what had happened in his richest narrative manner. Casimir heard it with explosions of laughter.

‘What a streak of luck for you, my good brother,’ he observed, when the tale was over. ‘If you had gone to Paris, you would have played dick-duck-drake with the whole consignment in three months. Your own would have followed; and you would have come to me in a procession like the last time. But I give you warning – Stasie may weep and Henri ratiocinate – it will not serve you twice. Your next collapse will be fatal. I thought I had told you so, Stasie? Hey? No sense?’

The Doctor winced and looked furtively at Jean-Marie; but the boy seemed apathetic.

‘And then again,’ broke out Casimir, ‘what children you are – vicious children, my faith! How could you tell the value of this trash? It might have been worth nothing, or next door.’

‘Pardon me,’ said the Doctor. ‘You have your usual flow of spirits, I perceive, but even less than your usual deliberation. I am not entirely ignorant of these matters.’

‘Not entirely ignorant of anything ever I heard of,’ interrupted Casimir, bowing, and raising his glass with a sort of pert politeness.

‘At least,’ resumed the Doctor, ‘I gave my mind to the subject – that you may be willing to believe – and I estimated that our capital would be doubled.’ And he described the nature of the find.

‘My word of honour!’ said Casimir, ‘I half believe you! But much would depend on the quality of the gold.’

‘The quality, my dear Casimir, was – ’ And the Doctor, in default of language, kissed his finger-tips.

‘I would not take your word for it, my good friend,’ retorted the man of business. ‘You are a man of very rosy views. But this robbery,’ he continued – ‘this robbery is an odd thing. Of course I pass over your nonsense about gangs and landscape-painters. For me, that is a dream. Who was in the house last night?’

‘None but ourselves,’ replied the Doctor.

‘And this young gentleman?’ asked Casimir, jerking a nod in the direction of Jean-Marie.

‘He too’ – the Doctor bowed.

‘Well; and if it is a fair question, who is he?’ pursued the brother-in-law.

‘Jean-Marie,’ answered the Doctor, ‘combines the functions of a son and stable-boy. He began as the latter, but he rose rapidly to the more honourable rank in our affections. He is, I may say, the greatest comfort in our lives.’

‘Ha!’ said Casimir. ‘And previous to becoming one of you?’

‘Jean-Marie has lived a remarkable existence; his experience his been eminently formative,’ replied Desprez. ‘If I had had to choose an education for my son, I should have chosen such another. Beginning life with mountebanks and thieves, passing onward to the society and friendship of philosophers, he may be said to have skimmed the volume of human life.’

‘Thieves?’ repeated the brother-in-law, with a meditative air.

The Doctor could have bitten his tongue out. He foresaw what was coming, and prepared his mind for a vigorous defence.

‘Did you ever steal yourself?’ asked Casimir, turning suddenly on Jean-Marie, and for the first time employing a single eyeglass which hung round his neck.

‘Yes, sir,’ replied the boy, with a deep blush.

Casimir turned to the others with pursed lips, and nodded to them meaningly. ‘Hey?’ said he; ‘how is that?’

‘Jean-Marie is a teller of the truth,’ returned the Doctor, throwing out his bust.

‘He has never told a lie,’ added madame. ‘He is the best of boys.’

‘Never told a lie, has he not?’ reflected Casimir. ‘Strange, very strange. Give me your attention, my young friend,’ he continued. ‘You knew about this treasure?’

‘He helped to bring it home,’ interposed the Doctor.

‘Desprez, I ask you nothing but to hold your tongue,’ returned Casimir. ‘I mean to question this stable-boy of yours; and if you are so certain of his innocence, you can afford to let him answer for himself. Now, sir,’ he resumed, pointing his eyeglass straight at Jean-Marie. ‘You knew it could be stolen with impunity? You knew you could not be prosecuted? Come! Did you, or did you not?’

‘I did,’ answered Jean-Marie, in a miserable whisper. He sat there changing colour like a revolving pharos, twisting his fingers hysterically, swallowing air, the picture of guilt.

‘You knew where it was put?’ resumed the inquisitor.

‘Yes,’ from Jean-Marie.

‘You say you have been a thief before,’ continued Casimir. ‘Now how am I to know that you are not one still? I suppose you could climb the green gate?’

‘Yes,’ still lower, from the culprit.

‘Well, then, it was you who stole these things. You know it, and you dare not deny it. Look me in the face! Raise your sneak’s eyes, and answer!’

But in place of anything of that sort Jean-Marie broke into a dismal howl and fled from the arbour. Anastasie, as she pursued to capture and reassure the victim, found time to send one Parthian arrow – ‘Casimir, you are a brute!’

‘My brother,’ said Desprez, with the greatest dignity, ‘you take upon yourself a licence – ’

‘Desprez,’ interrupted Casimir, ‘for Heaven’s sake be a man of the world. You telegraph me to leave my business and come down here on yours. I come, I ask the business, you say “Find me this thief!” Well, I find him; I say “There he is!” You need not like it, but you have no manner of right to take offence.’

‘Well,’ returned the Doctor, ‘I grant that; I will even thank you for your mistaken zeal. But your hypothesis was so extravagantly monstrous – ’

‘Look here,’ interrupted Casimir; ‘was it you or Stasie?’

‘Certainly not,’ answered the Doctor.

‘Very well; then it was the boy. Say no more about it,’ said the brother-in-law, and he produced his cigar-case.

‘I will say this much more,’ returned Desprez: ‘if that boy came and told me so himself, I should not believe him; and if I did believe him, so implicit is my trust, I should conclude that he had acted for the best.’