Well, Voibo got along very well in the merry jostling crowd until two policemen who had been eying him suddenly stopped him and demanded to know what was in his very heavy packages.
Deep in the Seine
The little tailor must have had an iron nerve, for, although he was shaking with fright, he said:
“I am carrying home my purchases, messieurs, as I could not get a cab near the market and now I am halfway, so I might as well go on.”
“Well, what were your purchases?” they demanded.
“This parcel contains two large hams, gentlemen — you can feel them,” said Voibo, coolly offering the package containing the thighs of the old man. The policemen poked at them and were satisfied. Voibo had chosen his simile well!
“And what’s in that hamper — a big one?” demanded the other policeman.
“A hamper from home,” said Voibo, offering it for inspection, “it just arrived for me by express.”
In the street light the date on the tag was obscure and the policemen were quite satisfied with the explanation, borne out so well by the hamper, so they said that that was all right and let monsieur get along, for it was true that his packages were heavy.
They had stopped Voibo only because there had been several robberies of houses in the neighborhood and they were investigating all men who carried heavy packages.
The “purchases” were dropped in the Seine.
The tailor was afraid to try another expedition with any kind of bundle after this, and so he decided to drop the legs down the well of an apartment house near by, to which he could have access at night without being observed. This well was not used for drinking water. Afterward, he said that his conscience would not have allowed him to drop them in the well if he had not known that the water was used only for washing clothes!
The Day of the Wedding
In and between all this Voibo had been seeing his sweetheart and telling her father that his wealthy, but eccentric, friend Bodasse would give him his ten thousand, and the family were all pleased. They wanted Bodasse to be invited to come and visit them, and Voibo said that he would gladly convey the invitation, but that he doubted that it would be accepted.
It had been years, said he, since Bodasse had been out socially and now it seemed that he never would go again, which, of course, was true in a sense that was other than it seemed to the grateful family of the bride.
He now went at night to the rooms of Bodasse, to which he had long had a key and there did what he knew the old man was accustomed to do. Walked up and down the room for an hour or two, coughed and wheezed occasionally and forged the writing of the dead man in a note which he left for the concierge. He found and took all the gold that Bodasse had so long hoarded in his rooms and all the securities.
As he left, silently and in stockinged feet, in the dead of night, he lighted a big candle, which burned near the window until long after dawn and made the neighbors say that the old man must be on one of his secret sprees again, for when he was he often allowed candles to burn out after the day had come.
Voibo invented a very good disguise, too, in which he looked very much like the old man. As he always went and came at night, and as Bodasse had frequently passed the concierge without speaking or looking, his chin buried in his collar and his hat pulled down over his eyes, it was possible for Voibo to actually pass the concierge without a thought entering the head of the latter that it was not his lodger who shuffled by in the usual somewhat shabby, but clean, garments.
On several occasions Voibo sent a note to the restaurant that the food and drink which was the custom should be sent him and then went there at night and took it in and ate it.
The ten thousand francs were turned over to the girl’s parents.
“Père Bodasse may be persuaded to attend the wedding,” Voibo told his sweetheart, “and, anyway, I am sure that he will give us a nice present.”
However, he regretfully announced on the day of the wedding that Bodasse had an attack of his strange shyness and has run off to the mysterious retreat in the country, and so they were married and went away on a trip. The bride then and thereafter adored her husband, whom she considered a model man and who made her very happy so long as the storm did not break.
Mace Studies Lege
That the storm was brewing Voibo found out in 1870. He had had the decency not to take his young wife to the murder apartment and what with her money and all they were getting along very well.
But through his connection with the secret police the tailor found out that a pair of legs, well wrapped, had been found in a well of an apartment house on the Rue Princesse. A young detective named Mace, whom Voibo knew quite well, was on the case.
Voibo made it a point to meet Mace shortly afterward, and Mace, unsuspecting, told Voibo, whom he knew to have an official connection with the police, about the new case that he had.
Mace believed that the legs belonged to an old woman, since they had long stockings on them and that her name began with a “B,” since this letter was sewed into the top of one. But Dr. Tardieu, a well known physician, who examined them, believed that they were the legs of an old man.
After a few days Mace confided to Voibo that he believed the cloth in which the legs were wrapped and the string with which they were tied were such as tailors use in sending home suits of clothes, although he was not sure: and he subjected those objects to the professional scrutiny of Voibo!
The Stocking Maker
The tailor did not flinch, but handled the objects with which he must have had such associations, and finally gave it as his opinion that they were the same kind of paper and string that tailors sometimes use, but that butchers used them, too, for the wrapping of large parcels of meat.
Mace thought, he said, that he would try to look up the matter of the tailor first. Voibo agreed that he might as well, and then excused himself, for he had to go home to his wife, who was not very well. Although there had been some little inducement of money in the marriage, the husband had been impeccable in the care of his wife and her relations were loud in their praise.
It was their testimony afterward that he never showed the slightest uneasiness, or the slightest ill nature or moodiness during all this time while Mace was slowly digging down in the case.
Slowly, patiently, as is the immemorial custom of the Paris secret police, Mace worked his way along the Rue Princesse until he came to the house. There, by patient questioning, he found out that Voibo had had a room there and that while it was nominally the room of a seamstress named Dard, Voibo alone had occupied it finally. The name of Bodasse was mentioned, too, since the friendship between the dapper young man and the eccentric old one had occasioned some little, remark.
Mace looked up the residence of the old miser, but on inquiring for him was told that Bodasse was even then at home, but that he was in one of his usual incommunicado sessions. Repeated knockings at the door brought footsteps from within and a senile mumble.