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"I want to begin with a stroke that will beat everything that Bibi-Lupin has ever done. I have spoken a few words to the brute who killed Lucien, and I live only for revenge! Thanks to our positions, he and I shall be equally strong, equally protected. It will take years to strike the blow, but the wretch shall have it straight in the heart."
The sovereigns who commit such crimes evidently never think of the retribution to be exacted by Providence. When Jacques Collin went up the vaulted stairs to the public prosecutor's room, Bibi-Lupin was just coming out of the little door in the wall. The chief of the "Safety" had come from the Conciergerie, and was also going up to Monsieur de Granville.
On entering the first-floor rooms, the magistrates, the gendarmes, and Bibi-Lupin found the widow Pigeau strangled in her bed and the woman strangled in hers, each by means of the bandana she wore as a nightcap. The three thousand francs were gone, with the silver-plate and the trinkets. The two bodies were decomposing, as were those of the little dog and of a large yard-dog.
Bibi-Lupin, who knew that he was out of favor with the upper ranks of judicial authorities, and suspected of having made a fortune at the expense of criminals and their victims, was not unwilling to show himself in Court with so notable a capture. "All right, we will go there," said he. "But as you surrender, allow me to fit you with bracelets. I am afraid of your claws."
"Idiot, if we promise to give the money back to the family, you will only be lagged for life. I would not give a piece for your nut if we keep the blunt, but at this moment you are worth seven hundred thousand francs, you flat." "Good for you, boss!" cried la Pouraille in great glee. "And then," said Jacques Collin, "besides casting all the murders on Ruffard Bibi-Lupin will be finely cold.
All the two chums wanted to say had, of course, to be incomprehensible to the pretended gendarme; and as Bibi-Lupin was left in charge of the prisoner, he could not leave his post. The man's fury was quite indescribable.
"I know that," said Bibi-Lupin with deference. "But I will bring witnesses. One of the boarders from the Maison Vauquer is here already," said he, with an eye on Collin. But the prisoner's set, calm face did not move a muscle. "Show the person in," said Camusot roughly, his dissatisfaction betraying itself in spite of his seeming indifference.
Ask your double-faced agent where he took me." "Where?" said the public prosecutor. "Close to the Court, in the vaulted passage," said Bibi-Lupin. "Take your irons off the man," said Monsieur de Granville sternly. "And remember that you are to leave him free till further orders. Go! You have a way of moving and acting as if you alone were law and police in one."
"Bibi-Lupin is right," said the turnkey to himself; "he is an old stager; he is Jacques Collin." At the moment when Trompe-la-Mort appeared in the sort of frame to his figure made by the door into the tower, the prisoners, having made their purchases at the stone table called after Saint-Louis, were scattered about the yard, always too small for their number.
All these impossibilities having been duly noted by Monsieur Popinot, by Bibi-Lupin, who stayed there a day to examine every detail, by the public prosecutor himself, and by the sergeant of the gendarmerie at Nanterre, this murder became an agitating mystery, in which the Law and the Police were nonplussed. This drama, published in the Gazette des Tribunaux, took place in the winter of 1828-29.
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