THE MAN WITH THE BLACK FEATHER (Illustrated). Gaston Leroux
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the prosaic reality of the scene as if he could not have enough of it. He was above all pleased by the nurses wheeling along their babies in perambulators and by the shouting of the children romping about the Square.
His thought was of a great unity and a great simplicity. It was entirely contained in the phrase: "The World has not changed."
No: the world had not changed. There were the babies in the perambulators; and as the clock struck two the Signora Petito, wife of the Professor of Italian who occupied the flat above his, began to play The Carnival of Venice.
No: nothing in the world had changed; yet when he turned round, he could see on his desk, among the models of rubber stamps, a scrap of paper.
Did that scrap of paper really exist? He had passed a feverish night, almost a night of delirium; and at the end of it he had decided that his strange adventure must have been a bad dream. But in the morning he had found the scrap of paper in a drawer of his desk...
Even now he kept saying to himself, "I shall turn round presently; and the scrap of paper won't be there." He turned round; and the scrap of paper was there—in his own handwriting.
He passed his hand over his perspiring brow and heaved the sigh of a grieved child. Then he seemed to come to a definite resolve and carefully put the scrap of paper into his pocket-book. He had just remembered that Signor Petito had a great reputation as an expert in handwriting. His friend Adolphe was also an expert in handwriting, but from the Spiritualistic point of view. He told the character by it. Theophrastus had no intention of calling Adolphe into counsel. There was already too much mystery in the affair to entrust it to the overflowing imagination of a medium who boasted himself a pupil of a Papus.
He went slowly upstairs and was ushered into Signor Petito's study.
He found himself in the presence of a man of middle age, whose chief characteristics were a mass of crinkly black hair, a piercing glance, and enormous ears. After they had exchanged greetings, Theophrastus broached the subject of the scrap of paper. He drew it from his pocket-book and an unsigned letter which he had written a few days previously.
"Signor Petito," he said, "I understand that you are a first-class expert in handwriting. I should be much obliged if you would examine this letter and this document, and inform me of the result of your examination. I assert myself that there is no connection—"
He stopped short, as red as a peony, for he was not in the habit of lying. But Signor Petito had already scanned the letter and the scrap of paper with the eye of an expert; and with a smile which showed all his exceedingly white teeth, he said:
"I won't keep you waiting for my answer, M. Longuet. The document is in a very bad state; but the scraps of handwriting one can read are in every respect the same as the handwriting of the letter. Before the Courts, M. Longuet, before God and before men, these two handwritings were traced by the same hand!" He laid his hand on his heart with a great air.
He entered into particulars: a child, he declared, could not make a mistake about it. He became oracular.
"The handwriting in both is equally angular," he said in a very pompous tone. "By angular, M. Longuet, we describe a handwriting in which the thin strokes which join the strokes of the letters and the letters to one another are at an acute angle. You understand? Look at this hook, and this one, and this thin stroke, and all these letters which increase progressively in equal proportions. But what an acute handwriting, M. Longuet! I have never seen handwriting so acute: it's as sharp as the blade of a knife!"
At these last words Theophrastus turned so pale that Signor Petito thought that he was going to faint. None the less he took the letter and the document, thanked Signor Petito, and went out of the flat.
He walked straight out of the house and wandered about the streets for a long while. At last he found himself in Saint-Andrew-des-Arts Place; then he took his way to Suger Street, and opened the latch of an old-fashioned door. He found himself in a dark and dirty passage. A man came down it to meet him, and recognising him, greeted him.
"How are you, Theophrastus? What good wind blows you here?" he said in affectionate tones.
"How are you, Ambrose?" said Theophrastus gloomily.
Since they had not met for two years, they had a hundred inquiries to make of one another. Ambrose was an engraver of visiting-cards by profession. He had been a printer in the Provinces; but having put all his capital into a new invention in printing, it had not been long before he found himself a bankrupt. He was a cousin of Marceline; and Theophrastus, who was a good soul, had come to his aid in the hour of his gravest trouble.
Theophrastus sat down on a straw-seated chair in a little room which served as workshop, and was lighted by a large, dusty skylight in the ceiling.
"You 're a scientific man, Ambrose," he said, still gloomily.
"Nothing of the kind!" said Ambrose quickly.
"Yes; you are. No one could teach you anything in the matter of paper."
"Oh, yes: that's true enough. I do know paper."
"You know all papers," said Theophrastus.
"All," said Ambrose with modest pride.
"If one showed you a piece of paper you could tell the age of it?"
"Yes; I have published a monograph on the water-marks of the papers used in France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Academy crowned it."
"I know it. And I have the fullest confidence in your knowledge of papers," said Theophrastus with unrelieved gloom.
"It's well-founded; but really it's a very simple matter. The oldest papers presented at first, when they were new, a smooth, glossy surface. But soon wire-marks appeared in them, crossed at regular intervals by perpendicular lines, both reproducing the impression of the metal trellis on which the paste was spread. In the fourteenth century they had the idea of utilising this reproduction by making it a mark of the source or mill which the paper came from. With this object in view, they embroidered in brass wire on the trellis mould, initials, words, and all kinds of emblems: these are the water-marks. Every water-marked sheet of paper carries in itself its birth-certificate; but the difficulty is to decipher it. It requires a little practice: the pot, the eagle, the bell..."
Theophrastus opened his pocket-book and held out his scrap of paper with trembling fingers.
"Could you tell me the exact age of this document?" he said.
Ambrose put on his spectacles and held the paper up to the light.
"There's a date," he said. "172... The last figure is missing. It would be a paper of the eighteenth century then. Given the date within ten years, our task becomes very simple."
"Oh, I saw the date," said Theophrastus quickly. "But is this really an eighteenth-century paper? Isn't the date false? That's what I want to know."
Ambrose pointed to the middle of the scrap.
"Look," he said.
Theophrastus looked; but he saw nothing. Then Ambrose lighted a little lamp and threw its light on the document. In holding the scrap of paper between one's eyes and the lamp one distinguished in the middle of it a kind of crown.
"This paper's extremely rare, Theophrastus!" cried Ambrose in considerable excitement. "This water-mark is almost unknown, for very little of it was manufactured. The water-mark is called 'The Crown of Thorns.' This paper, my dear Theophrastus, is exactly of the year 1721."
"You are sure of it?"
"Absolutely. But how comes it that this document, which is dated 1721, is, in every part of it which is visible, in your handwriting?" cried Ambrose in a tone of amazement.
Theophrastus rose, put the document back into his pocket-book, and went out on stumbling feet, without answering.
I reproduce from the medley of documents of which his memoirs are composed the following passage:
"So now," writes