The Count protested; but Philippe--a man with a bald head and a smirched
face, looking like a working blacksmith--placed on the floor a leather
bag of tools, from which, having looked at the coffin, and picked with
his nail at the screw-heads, he selected a turnscrew and, with a few
deft twirls at each of the screws, they stood up like little rows of
mushrooms, and the lid was raised. I saw the light, of which I thought I
had seen my last, once more; but the axis of vision remained fixed. As I
was reduced to the cataleptic state in a position nearly perpendicular,
I continued looking straight before me, and thus my gaze was now fixed
upon the ceiling. I saw the face of Carmaignac leaning over me with a
curious frown. It seemed to me that there was no recognition in his
eyes. Oh, Heaven! that I could have uttered were it but one cry! I saw
the dark, mean mask of the little Count staring down at me from the
other side; the face of the pseudo-Marquis also peering at me, but not
so full in the line of vision; there were other faces also. "I see, I see," said Carmaignac, withdrawing. "Nothing of the kind
there." "You will be good enough to direct your man to re-adjust the lid of the
coffin, and to fix the screws," said the Count, taking courage;
"and--and--really the funeral must proceed. It is not fair to the
people, who have but moderate fees for night-work, to keep them hour
after hour beyond the time." "Count de St. Alyre, you shall go in a very few minutes. I will direct,
just now, all about the coffin." The Count looked toward the door, and there saw a _gendarme_; and
two or three more grave and stalwart specimens of the same force were
also in the room. The Count was very uncomfortably excited; it was
growing insupportable. "As this gentleman makes a difficulty about my attending the obsequies
of my kinsman, I will ask you, Planard, to accompany the funeral in my
stead." "In a few minutes;" answered the incorrigible Carmaignac. "I must first
trouble you for the key that opens that press." He pointed direct at the press in which the clothes had just been locked
up. "I--I have no objection," said the Count--"none, of course; only they
have not been used for an age. I'll direct someone to look for the key." "If you have not got it about you, it is quite unnecessary. Philippe,
try your skeleton-keys with that press. I want it opened. Whose clothes
are these?" inquired Carmaignac, when, the press having been opened, he
took out the suit that had been placed there scarcely two minutes since. "I can't say," answered the Count. "I know nothing of the contents of
that press. A roguish servant, named Lablais, whom I dismissed about a
year ago, had the key. I have not seen it open for ten years or more. The clothes are probably his." "Here are visiting cards, see, and here a marked
pocket-handkerchief--'R.B.' upon it. He must have stolen them from a
person named Beckett--R. Beckett. 'Mr. Beckett, Berkeley Square,' the
card says; and, my faith! here's a watch and a bunch of seals; one of
them with the initials 'R.B.' upon it. That servant, Lablais, must have
been a consummate rogue!" "So he was; you are right, Sir." "It strikes me that he possibly stole these clothes," continued
Carmaignac, "from the man in the coffin, who, in that case, would be
Monsieur Beckett, and not Monsieur de St. Amand. For wonderful to
relate, Monsieur, the watch is still going! The man in the coffin, I
believe, is not dead, but simply drugged. And for having robbed and
intended to murder him, I arrest you, Nicolas de la Marque, Count de St. Alyre." In another moment the old villain was a prisoner. I heard his discordant
voice break quaveringly into sudden vehemence and volubility; now
croaking--now shrieking as he oscillated between protests, threats, and
impious appeals to the God who will "judge the secrets of men!" And thus
lying and raving, he was removed from the room, and placed in the same
coach with his beautiful and abandoned accomplice, already arrested;
and, with two _gendarmes_ sitting beside them, they were immediate
driving at a rapid pace towards the Conciergerie. There were now added to the general chorus two voices, very different in
quality; one was that of the gasconading Colonel Gaillarde, who had with
difficulty been kept in the background up to this; the other was that of
my jolly friend Whistlewick, who had come to identify me. I shall tell you, just now, how this project against my property and
life, so ingenious and monstrous, was exploded. I must first say a word
about myself. I was placed in a hot bath, under the direction of
Planard, as consummate a villain as any of the gang, but now thoroughly
in the interests of the prosecution. Thence I was laid in a warm bed,
the window of the room being open. These simple measures restored me in
about three hours; I should otherwise, probably, have continued under
the spell for nearly seven. The practices of these nefarious conspirators had been carried on with
consummate skill and secrecy. Their dupes were led, as I was, to be
themselves auxiliary to the mystery which made their own destruction
both safe and certain. A search was, of course, instituted. Graves were opened in Pere la
Chaise. The bodies exhumed had lain there too long, and were too much
decomposed to be recognized. One only was identified. The notice for the
burial, in this particular case, had been signed, the order given, and
the fees paid, by Gabriel Gaillarde, who was known to the official
clerk, who had to transact with him this little funereal business. The
very trick that had been arranged for me, had been successfully
practiced in his case. The person for whom the grave had been ordered,
was purely fictitious; and Gabriel Gaillarde himself filled the coffin,
on the cover of which that false name was inscribed as well as upon a
tomb-stone over the grave. Possibly the same honor, under my pseudonym,
may have been intended for me. The identification was curious. This Gabriel Gaillarde had had a bad
fall from a runaway horse about five years before his mysterious
disappearance. He had lost an eye and some teeth in this accident,
beside sustaining a fracture of the right leg, immediately above the
ankle. He had kept the injuries to his face as profound a secret as he
could. The result was, that the glass eye which had done duty for the
one he had lost remained in the socket, slightly displaced, of course,
but recognizable by the "artist" who had supplied it. More pointedly recognizable were the teeth, peculiar in workmanship,
which one of the ablest dentists in Paris had himself adapted to the
chasms, the cast of which, owing to peculiarities in the accident, he
happened to have preserved. This cast precisely fitted the gold plate
found in the mouth of the skull. The mark, also, above the ankle, in the
bone, where it had reunited, corresponded exactly with the place where
the fracture had knit in the limb of Gabriel Gaillarde.