MOUZON. Three acquittals--and the Irissary murder. A deplorable record!

A pretty pickle we're in.

BUNERAT. You know, my dear Vagret, I'm a plain speaker. No shilly-shallying about me. When I hunt the boar I charge right down on him. I speak plainly--anyone can know what's in my mind. I'm the son of a peasant, I am, and I make no bones about it. Well, it seems to me that your Bar--I know, of course, that you lead it with distinguished integrity and honesty--but it seems to me--how shall I put it?--that it's getting weak. Mouzon, you will remember, said the same thing when he was consulting the statistics.

MOUZON. It really is a very bad year.

BUNERAT. You know it was a question of making ourselves an exception to the general rule--of getting our Court raised to a higher cla.s.s. Well, Mauleon won't be raised from the third cla.s.s to the second if the number of causes diminishes.

MOUZON. We should have to prove that we had been extremely busy.

BUNERAT. And many of the cases you settled by arrangement might well have been the subject of proceedings.

MOUZON. Just reflect that this year we have awarded a hundred and eighteen years less imprisonment than we did last year!

BUNERAT. And yet the Court has not been to blame. We safeguard the interests of society with the greatest vigilance.

MOUZON. But before we can punish you must give us prisoners.

VAGRET. I have recently issued the strictest orders respecting the repression of smuggling offences, which are so common in these parts.

BUNERAT. Well, that's something. You understand the point of view we take. It's a question of the safety of the public, my dear fellow.

MOUZON. We are falling behind other Courts of the same cla.s.s. See, I've worked out the figures. [_He takes a paper from his pocket-book and accidentally drops other papers, which La Bouzole picks up_] I see--

LA BOUZOLE. You are dropping your papers, Mouzon. Is this yours--this envelope? [_He reads_] "Monsieur Benoit, Officer of the Navy, Railway Hotel, Bordeaux." A nice scent--

MOUZON [_flurried, taking the letter from La Bouzole_] Yes--a letter belonging to a friend of mine.

LA BOUZOLE. And this? The Irissary murder?

MOUZON. Ah, yes--it's--I was going to explain--it's--oh, the Irissary murder, yes--it's the translation Bunerat gave me of the article which appeared in the _Eskual Herria_ to-day. It is extremely unpleasant. They say Mauleon is a sort of penal Court--something like a Biribi of the magistracy.

VAGRET. But, after all, I can't invent a murderer for you just because the fellow is so pig-headed that he won't allow himself to be taken!

Delorme has sent the description they gave us to the offices of all the magistrates.

MOUZON. Delorme! Shall I tell you what I think? Well, our colleague Delorme is making a mistake in sticking to the idea that the criminal is a tramp.

VAGRET. But there is a witness.

MOUZON. The witness is lying, or he's mistaken.

BUNERAT. A witness who saw gipsies leaving the victim's house that morning.

MOUZON. I repeat, the witness is lying, or he is mistaken.

VAGRET. Why so?

MOUZON. I'm certain of it.

BUNERAT. Why?

MOUZON. Because I'm certain the murderer wasn't a gipsy.

VAGRET. But explain--

MOUZON. It's of no use, my dear friend. I know my duty to my colleague Delorme too well to insist. I've said too much already.

VAGRET. Not at all.

BUNERAT. By no means.

MOUZON. It was with the greatest delicacy that I warned our colleague Delorme--he was good enough to consult me and show me day by day the information which he had elicited--I warned him that he was on a false scent. He would listen to nothing; he persisted in searching for his tramp. Well, let him search! There are fifty thousand tramps in France.

After all, I am probably wrong. Yet I should be surprised, for in the big towns in which I have served as magistrate, and in which I found myself confronted, not merely now and again, but every day, so to speak, with difficulties of this sort, I was able to acquire a certain practice in criminal cases and a certain degree of perspicacity.

VAGRET. Obviously. As for Delorme, it is the first time he has had to deal with such a big crime.

MOUZON. In the case of that pretty woman from Toulouse, at Bordeaux, a case which made a good deal of stir at the time, it was I who forced the accused to make the confession that led her to the guillotine.

BUNERAT [_admiringly_] Was it really?

VAGRET. My dear friend, I ask you most seriously--and if I am insistent, it is because I have reasons for being so--between ourselves, I beg you to tell us on what you base your opinion.

MOUZON. Well, I don't want to hide my light under a bushel--I'll tell you.

BUNERAT. We are listening.

MOUZON. Recall the facts. In a house isolated as are most of our Basque houses they find, one morning, an old man of eighty-seven murdered in his bed. Servants who slept in the adjacent building had heard nothing.

The dogs did not bark. There was robbery, it is true, but the criminal did not confine himself to stealing hard cash; he stole family papers as well. Remember that point. And I will call your attention to another detail. It had rained on the previous evening. In the garden footprints were discovered which were immediately attributed to the murderer, who was so badly shod that the big toe of his right foot protruded from his boot. Monsieur Delorme proceeds along the trail; he obtains a piece of evidence that encourages him, and he declares that the murderer is a vagrant. I say this is a mistake. The murderer is not a vagrant. Now the house in which the crime was committed is an isolated house, and we know that within a radius of six to ten miles there was no tramp begging before the crime. So this tramp, if there was one, would have eaten and drunk on the scene of the crime, either before or after striking the blow. Now no traces have been discovered which permit us to suppose that he did anything of the kind. So--here is a man who arrives in a state of exhaustion. He begs; he is refused. He then hides himself, and, when it is night, he robs and a.s.sa.s.sinates. There is wine and bread and other food at hand; but he goes his way without touching them. Is this probable? No. Don't tell me that he was disturbed and so ran off; it is not true; their own witness declares that he saw him in the morning, a few yards from the house, whereas the crime was committed before midnight. If Monsieur Delorme, in addition to his distinguished qualities, had a little experience of cases of this kind, he would realize that empty bottles, dirty gla.s.ses, and sc.r.a.ps of food left on the table const.i.tute, so to speak, the sign manual which the criminal vagrant leaves behind him on the scene of his crime.

BUNERAT. True; I was familiar with that detail.

LA BOUZOLE [_under his breath to Ardeuil_] That fellow would send a man to the scaffold for the sake of seeming to know something.

VAGRET. Go on--go on.

MOUZON. Monsieur Delorme ought to have known this also: in the life of the vagrant there is one necessity which comes next to hunger and thirst--it is the need of footwear. This is so true that they have sometimes been known to make this need a pretext for demanding an appeal, because the journey to the Court of Appeal is generally made on foot, so that the administration is obliged to furnish shoes, and, as these are scarcely worn during the period of detention, they are in good condition when the man leaves prison. Now the supposed vagrant has a foot very nearly the same size as that of his victim. He has--you yourself have told us--boots which are in a very bad condition. Well, gentlemen, this badly shod vagrant does not take the good strong boots which are in the house! I will add but one word more. If the crime had been committed by a pa.s.sing stranger--by a professional mendicant--will you tell me why this remarkable murderer follows the road which pa.s.ses in front of the victim's house--a road on which he would find no resources--a road on which houses are met with only at intervals of two or three miles--when there is, close at hand, another road which runs through various villages and pa.s.ses numbers of farmhouses, in which it is a tradition never to refuse hospitality to one of his kind? One word more. Why does this vagrant steal family papers which will betray him as the criminal the very first time he comes into contact with the police?

No, gentlemen, the criminal is not a vagrant. If you want to find him, you must not look for a man wandering along the highway; you must look for him among those relatives or debtors or friends, who had an interest in his death.

VAGRET. This is very true.

BUNERAT. I call that admirably logical and extremely lucid.

MOUZON. Believe me, the matter is quite simple. If I were intrusted with the examination, I guarantee that within three days the criminal would be under lock and key.

VAGRET. Well, my dear colleague, I have a piece of news for you.

Monsieur Delorme, who is very unwell, has returned me his brief this afternoon, and it will be intrusted to you. Henceforth the preliminary examination of the Irissary murder will be in your hands.

MOUZON. I have only to say that I accept. My duty is to obey. I withdraw nothing of what I have said; within three days the murderer will be arrested.