Jules Verne (37 page)

"I will die, then," said Joam, in a calm voice. "I will die protesting
against the decision which condemned me! The first time, a few hours
before the execution—I fled! Yes! I was then young. I had all my life
before me in which to struggle against man's injustice! But to save
myself now, to begin again the miserable existence of a felon hiding
under a false name, whose every effort is required to avoid the pursuit
of the police, again to live the life of anxiety which I have led for
twenty-three years, and oblige you to share it with me; to wait each
day for a denunciation which sooner or later must come, to wait for the
claim for extradition which would follow me to a foreign country! Am I
to live for that? No! Never!"

"Father," interrupted Benito, whose mind threatened to give way before
such obstinacy, "you shall fly! I will have it so!" And he caught hold
of Joam Dacosta, and tried by force to drag him toward the window.

"No! no!"

"You wish to drive me mad?"

"My son," exclaimed Joam Dacosta, "listen to me! Once already I
escaped from the prison at Villa Rica, and people believed I fled from
well-merited punishment. Yes, they had reason to think so. Well, for the
honor of the name which you bear I shall not do so again."

Benito had fallen on his knees before his father. He held up his hands
to him; he begged him:

"But this order, father," he repeated, "this order which is due
to-day—even now—it will contain your sentence of death."

"The order may come, but my determination will not change. No, my son!
Joam Dacosta, guilty, might fly! Joam Dacosta, innocent, will not fly!"

The scene which followed these words was heart-rending. Benito struggled
with his father. Manoel, distracted, kept near the window ready to carry
off the prisoner—when the door of the room opened.

On the threshold appeared the chief of the police, accompanied by the
head warder of the prison and a few soldiers. The chief of the police
understood at a glance that an attempt at escape was being made; but he
also understood from the prisoner's attitude that he it was who had
no wish to go! He said nothing. The sincerest pity was depicted on his
face. Doubtless he also, like Judge Jarriquez, would have liked Dacosta
to have escaped.

It was too late!

The chief of the police, who held a paper in his hand, advanced toward
the prisoner.

"Before all of you," said Joam Dacosta, "let me tell you, sir, that it
only rested with me to get away, and that I would not do so."

The chief of the police bowed his head, and then, in a voice which he
vainly tried to control:

"Joam Dacosta," he said, "the order has this moment arrived from the
chief justice at Rio Janeiro."

"Father!" exclaimed Manoel and Benito.

"This order," asked Joam Dacosta, who had crossed his arms, "this order
requires the execution of my sentence?"

"Yes!"

"And that will take place?"

"To-morrow."

Benito threw himself on his father. Again would he have dragged him
from his cell, but the soldiers came and drew away the prisoner from his
grasp.

At a sign from the chief of the police Benito and Manoel were taken
away. An end had to be put to this painful scene, which had already
lasted too long.

"Sir," said the doomed man, "before to-morrow, before the hour of my
execution, may I pass a few moments with Padre Passanha, whom I ask you
to tell?"

"It will be forbidden."

"May I see my family, and embrace for a last time my wife and children?"

"You shall see them."

"Thank you, sir," answered Joam; "and now keep guard over that window;
it will not do for them to take me out of here against my will."

And then the chief of the police, after a respectful bow, retired with
the warder and the soldiers.

The doomed man, who had now but a few hours to live, was left alone.

AND SO the order had come, and, as Judge Jarriquez had foreseen, it was
an order requiring the immediate execution of the sentence pronounced on
Joam Dacosta. No proof had been produced; justice must take its course.

It was the very day—the 31st of August, at nine o'clock in the morning
of which the condemned man was to perish on the gallows.

The death penalty in Brazil is generally commuted except in the case of
negroes, but this time it was to be suffered by a white man.

Such are the penal arrangements relative to crimes in the diamond
arrayal, for which, in the public interest, the law allows no appear to
mercy.

Nothing could now save Joam Dacosta. It was not only life, but honor
that he was about to lose.

But on the 31st of August a man was approaching Manaos with all the
speed his horse was capable of, and such had been the pace at which
he had come that half a mile from the town the gallant creature fell,
incapable of carrying him any further.

The rider did not even stop to raise his steed. Evidently he had asked
and obtained from it all that was possible, and, despite the state of
exhaustion in which he found himself, he rushed off in the direction of
the city.

The man came from the eastern provinces, and had followed the left bank
of the river. All his means had gone in the purchase of this horse,
which, swifter far than any pirogue on the Amazon, had brought him to
Manaos.

It was Fragoso!

Had, then, the brave fellow succeeded in the enterprise of which he had
spoken to nobody? Had he found the party to which Torres belonged? Had
he discovered some secret which would yet save Joam Dacosta?

He hardly knew. But in any case he was in great haste to acquaint Judge
Jarriquez with what he had ascertained during his short excursion.

And this is what had happened.

Fragoso had made no mistake when he recognized Torres as one of the
captains of the party which was employed in the river provinces of the
Madeira.

He set out, and on reaching the mouth of that tributary he learned that
the chief of these
capitaes da mato
was then in the neighborhood.

Without losing a minute, Fragoso started on the search, and, not without
difficulty, succeeded in meeting him.

To Fragoso's questions the chief of the party had no hesitation in
replying; he had no interest in keeping silence with regard to the few
simple matters on which he was interrogated. In fact, three questions
only of importance were asked him by Fragoso, and these were:

"Did not a captain of the woods named Torres belong to your party a few
months ago?"

"Yes."

"At that time had he not one intimate friend among his companions who
has recently died?"

"Just so!"

"And the name of that friend was?"

"Ortega."

This was all that Fragoso had learned. Was this information of a kind to
modify Dacosta's position? It was hardly likely.

Fragoso saw this, and pressed the chief of the band to tell him what
he knew of this Ortega, of the place where he came from, and of his
antecedents generally. Such information would have been of great
importance if Ortega, as Torres had declared, was the true author of
the crime of Tijuco. But unfortunately the chief could give him no
information whatever in the matter.

What was certain was that Ortega had been a member of the band for many
years, that an intimate friendship existed between him and Torres,
that they were always seen together, and that Torres had watched at his
bedside when he died.

This was all the chief of the band knew, and he could tell no more.
Fragoso, then, had to be contented with these insignificant details, and
departed immediately.

But if the devoted fellow had not brought back the proof that Ortega was
the author of the crime of Tijuco, he had gained one thing, and that was
the knowledge that Torres had told the truth when he affirmed that
one of his comrades in the band had died, and that he had been present
during his last moments.

The hypothesis that Ortega had given him the document in question had
now become admissible. Nothing was more probable than that this document
had reference to the crime of which Ortega was really the author,
and that it contained the confession of the culprit, accompanied by
circumstances which permitted of no doubt as to its truth.

And so, if the document could be read, if the key had been found, if the
cipher on which the system hung were known, no doubt of its truth could
be entertained.

But this cipher Fragoso did not know. A few more presumptions, a
half-certainty that the adventurer had invented nothing, certain
circumstances tending to prove that the secret of the matter was
contained in the document—and that was all that the gallant fellow
brought back from his visit to the chief of the gang of which Torres had
been a member.

Nevertheless, little as it was, he was in all haste to relate it to
Judge Jarriquez. He knew that he had not an hour to lose, and that was
why on this very morning, at about eight o'clock, he arrived, exhausted
with fatigue, within half a mile of Manaos. The distance between there
and the town he traversed in a few minutes. A kind of irresistible
presentiment urged him on, and he had almost come to believe that Joam
Dacosta's safety rested in his hands.

Suddenly Fragoso stopped as if his feet had become rooted in the ground.
He had reached the entrance to a small square, on which opened one of
the town gates.

There, in the midst of a dense crowd, arose the gallows, towering up
some twenty feet, and from it there hung the rope!

Fragoso felt his consciousness abandon him. He fell; his eyes
involuntarily closed. He did not wish to look, and these words escaped
his lips: "Too late! too late!" But by a superhuman effort he raised
himself up. No; it was
not
too late, the corpse of Joam Dacosta was
not
hanging at the end of the rope!

"Judge Jarriquez! Judge Jarriquez!" shouted Fragoso, and panting and
bewildered he rushed toward the city gate, dashed up the principal
street of Manaos, and fell half-dead on the threshold of the judge's
house. The door was shut. Fragoso had still strength enough left to
knock at it.

One of the magistrate's servants came to open it; his master would see
no one.

In spite of this denial, Fragoso pushed back the man who guarded the
entrance, and with a bound threw himself into the judge's study.

"I come from the province where Torres pursued his calling as captain of
the woods!" he gasped. "Mr. Judge, Torres told the truth. Stop—stop the
execution?"

"You found the gang?"

"Yes."

"And you have brought me the cipher of the document?"

Fragoso did not reply.

"Come, leave me alone! leave me alone!" shouted Jarriquez, and, a prey
to an outburst of rage, he grasped the document to tear it to atoms.

Fragoso seized his hands and stopped him. "The truth is there!" he said.

"I know," answered Jarriquez; "but it is a truth which will never see
the light!"

"It will appear—it must! it must!"

"Once more, have you the cipher?"

"No," replied Fragoso; "but, I repeat, Torres has not lied. One of his
companions, with whom he was very intimate, died a few months ago, and
there can be no doubt but that this man gave him the document he came to
sell to Joam Dacosta."

"No," answered Jarriquez—"no, there is no doubt about it—as far as
we are concerned; but that is not enough for those who dispose of the
doomed man's life. Leave me!"

Fragoso, repulsed, would not quit the spot. Again he threw himself at
the judge's feet. "Joam Dacosta is innocent!" he cried; "you will not
leave him to die? It was not he who committed the crime of Tijuco; it
was the comrade of Torres, the author of that document! It was Ortega!"

As he uttered the name the judge bounded backward. A kind of calm
swiftly succeeded to the tempest which raged within him. He dropped the
document from his clenched hand, smoothed it out on the table, sat down,
and, passing his hand over his eyes—"That name?" he said—"Ortega? Let
us see," and then he proceeded with the new name brought back by Fragoso
as he had done with the other names so vainly tried by himself.

After placing it above the first six letters of the paragraph he
obtained the following formula:

O r t e g a
P h y j s l

"Nothing!" he said. "That give us—nothing!"

And in fact the
h
placed under the
r
could not be expressed by a
cipher, for, in alphabetical order, this letter occupies an earlier
position to that of the
r.

The
p,
the
y,
the
j,
arranged beneath the letters
o, t, e,
disclosed the cipher 1, 4, 5, but as for the
s
and the
l
at the end
of the word, the interval which separated them from the
g
and the
a
was a dozen letters, and hence impossible to express by a single cipher,
so that they corresponded to neither
g
nor
a
.

And here appalling shouts arose in the streets; they were the cries of
despair.

Fragoso jumped to one of the windows, and opened it before the judge
could hinder him.

The people filled the road. The hour had come at which the doomed man
was to start from the prison, and the crowd was flowing back to the spot
where the gallows had been erected.

Judge Jarriquez, quite frightful to look upon, devoured the lines of the
document with a fixed stare.

"The last letters!" he muttered. "Let us try once more the last
letters!"

It was the last hope.

And then, with a hand whose agitation nearly prevented him from writing
at all, he placed the name of Ortega over the six last letters of the
paragraph, as he had done over the first.