A still life entitled "Despair."
25
The Commissioner of Police of the city of New Orleans was the average man of his own métier, no more, no less. Fifty-seven years of age, weight two hundred and one pounds, height five feet ten, silver-black hair, now growing bald, caracul-like beard, parted in two, a poor dresser, high principled, but not beyond the point of normalcy, a hard worker, married, obliged to use spectacles only when reading, and subject to a mild form of kidney trouble. Not brilliant, but not dull; the former certainly more of a disqualification in a public civil servant than the latter.
His office, in the Police Headquarters Building, was not particularly prepossessing, but since it was not for social usage but strictly for work, this doubtless was of no great moment. It had a certain fustian atmosphere which was perhaps inescapable in an administrative business office of its type. Ivory wallpaper rapidly turning brown with age (and unevenly so) adhered to the walls, with pockets and bulges where it had warped; it dated at least from the Van Buren administration. A green carpet, faded sickly yellow, covered the floor. A gaslight chandelier of four burners within reversed tulipshaped soapy-iridescent glass cups hung from the ceiling. The commissioner's desk, massed with papers, was placed so that he sat with his back to the window and those he interview&j had the disadvantage of the light in their faces.
His secretary opened the door, closed it at his back, and then announced: "There's a gentleman out here to see you, sir."
The commissioner looked up only briefly from a report he was considering. "About what? Have him state his business," he said in a rumbling deep-welled baritone.
The secretary retired, conferred, returned.
"It's a personal matter, for your ears alone, sir. I suggested he write, but he claims that cannot be done either. He begs you to give him just a moment of your time."
The commissioner sighed unwillingly. "All right. Interrupt us in five minutes, Harris. Make sure of that, now."
The secretary held the door back, motioned permission with two upraised fingers, and an old man entered. A haggard, dejected, beaten old man of thirty-seven.
The secretary withdrew to begin his five-minute count.
The commissioner put aside the report he had been consulting, nodded with impersonal civility. "Good day, sir. Will you be as brief as possible? I have a number of matters here--" He swept an arm rather vaguely past his own desk top.
"I'll try to, sir. I appreciate your giving me your time."
The commissioner liked that. He was favorably impressed so far.
"Will you have a chair, sir?"
He would give him at least his allotted five minutes, if not more. He looked as if he had suffered greatly; yet behind that there was certain surviving innate dignity visible, conducive to respect rather than mawkish pity.
The visitor sat down in a large black leather chair, lumpy with broken spring-coils.
"Now, sir," prodded the commissioner, to discourage any inclination toward dilatoriness.
"My name is Louis Durand. I was married on May the twentieth, last, to a woman who came from St. Louis and called herself Julia Russell. I had never seen her before. I have the certificate of marriage here with me. On the fifteenth of June last she withdrew fifty thousand dollars from my bank account and disappeared. I have not seen her since. I want a warrant issued for the arrest of this woman. I want her apprehended, brought to trial, and the money returned to me."
The commissioner said nothing for some time. It was obvious that this was not inattention or disinterest, but on the contrary a sudden excessive amount of both. It was equally obvious that he was rephrasing the story, to himself, in his own mind; marshalling it into his own thought-symbols, so to speak; familiarizing himself with it, the better to have it at his command.
"May I see the certificate ?" he said at last.
Durand produced, tendered it to him.
He read it carefully, but said nothing further in respect to it. In fact, he asked but two questions more, both widely spaced, but both highly pertinent.
One was: "You said you had never seen her before; how was that ?"
Durand explained the nature of the courtship, and added, moreover, that he believed her not to be the woman he had proposed to, but an impostor. He gave the reasons for that belief, but admitted he had no proof.
The commissioner's second and final question, spoken through steeple-joined fingers, was:
"Did she forge your name in order to withdraw the funds?"
Durand shook his head. "She signed her own. I had given her authorization with the bank to do so; given her access to the accounts."
The five minutes' grace had expired. The door opened and young Harris wedged head and one shoulder through, said: "Excuse me, Commissioner, but I have a report here for you to--"
Countermanding his former instructions, the commissioner silenced him with a sweep of his hand.
He addressed Durand with leisurely deliberation, showing that the interview was not being terminated on that account, but for reasons implicit in its own nature. "I would like to talk this matter over with my associates first," he admitted, "before I take any action. It's a curious sort of case, quite unlike anything that's come my way before. If you'll allow me to keep this marriage certificate for the time being, I'll see that it's returned to you. Suppose you come back tomorrow at this same time, Mr. Durand."
And turning, he enjoined his secretary with unmistakable emphasis: "Harris, I'm seeing Mr. Durand tomorrow morning at this same hour. Make sure my appointments allow for it."
"Thank you, Mr. Commissioner," Durand said, rising.
"Don't thank me for anything yet. Let us wait and see first."
26
"Have a chair, Mr. Durand," the commissioner said, after having offered his hand.
Durand did so, waited.
The commissioner collected his words, ranged them in mind, and at last delivered them. "I'm sorry. I find that there's nothing we can do for you. Nothing whatever. And by we, I mean the police department of this city."
"What?" Durand was stunned. His head went back against the spongy black leather of the chair-back. His hat fell from his grasp and his lap, and it was the commissioner who retrieved it for him. He could hardly speak for a moment. "You--you mean a strange woman, a stray, can come along, perpetrate a mock marriage with a man, abscond with fifty thousand dollars of his money--and--and you say you can do nothing about it--?"
"Just a moment," the commissioner said, speaking with patient kindliness. "I understand how you feel, but just a moment." He offered him the certificate of marriage which he had retained from the previous day.
Durand crushed it in his hand, swept it aside in a disgusted fling. "This--this valueless forgery--I"
"The first point which must be made clear before we go any further is this," the commissioner told him. "This is not a counterfeit. That marriage is not a mock one." He underscored his words. "That woman is legally your wife."
Durand's stupefaction this time was even worse than before. He was aghast. "She is not Julia Russell! That is not her name ! If I am married at all, I am married to Julia Russell, whoever and wherever she may be-- This is a marriage by proxy, if you will call it that-- But this woman was someone else!"
"There is where you are wrong." The commissioner told off each word with the heavy thump of a single fingerpad to the desk top. "I have consulted with the officials of the church where it was performed, and I have consulted as well with our own lay experts in jurisprudence. The woman who stood beside you in the church was married to you in person, and not by proxy for another. No matter what name she gave, false or true, no matter if she had said she was the daughter of the President of the United States, heaven forbid I--she is your lawfully wedded wife, in civil law and in religious canon; she and only she and she alone. And nothing can make her otherwise. You can have it annulled, of course, on the ground of misrepresentation, but that is another matter--"