THE INN OF PONT DU GARD
Caderousse and his wife stood at the door of the inn, admiring the wonderful diamond.
'We must find out if it is a real diamond,' said Caderousse. 'There will be jewellers at the fair in Beaucaire. I'll show it to them. Take care of the house, wife. I'll be back soon.' He left the inn quickly.
The Inn of Pont du Gard stood in a lonely part of the country. Not many travellers came there. Because of this, it was used by smugglers. They would meet one another there and sometimes they came to seek shelter from the police or the customs officers.
On the outer wall of the inn there was a small shed, where the smugglers could creep in without being seen. There were little holes in the wall, so that they could look into the inn. If strangers were there, they stayed in the shed. When everything was safe, they would go into the inn, where Caderousse would greet them and make them welcome.
On the day that Caderousse was in Beaucaire, a smuggler named Bertuccio was running away from the police. He made his way towards the Inn of Pont du Gard.
It so happened that, just as Caderousse returned to the inn, Bertuccio was creeping unseen into the shed at the side. When he looked through the hole in the wall, he saw Caderousse and a jeweller from the fair at Beaucaire. Caderousse called to his wife.
'The priest has not deceived us; the diamond is real. This jeweller will give us fifty thousand francs for it, but he first wants to be sure that it really belongs to us. Will you please tell him how we got it, while I bring him some wine.'
The woman told the jeweller how the priest named Father Busoni had come to the inn with the diamond, saying that it was a present from her husband's old friend, Edmond Dante. When the jeweller found that the wife told the same story as her husband, he was satisfied. He bought the diamond for fifty thousand francs.
Bertuccio, looking through the hole in the wall, was amazed when he saw all this money changing hands. Caderousse locked the money away in a cupboard.
The jeweller put the diamond in a little bag, which he placed in a pocket inside his coat. Then he prepared to leave the inn. Just as he was about to go, there was a bright flash of lightning, then a tremendous peal of thunder. A storm was gathering.
'Oh dear,' said Caderousse, 'you must not go out in such weather.'
'No,' said the wife. 'Stay the night with us.'
She and Caderousse looked at one another. It seemed as though they both had the same horrible thought at the same time.
'Oh, I'll be all right,' replied the jeweller. 'I am not afraid of thunder.' He went out into the storm.
When he had gone, the wife said to her husband, 'Why did you let him go?'
'What do you mean, woman?' said Caderousse.
'I mean you should have kept him here. You should not have let the diamond go.'
'Do not think such thoughts,' said the innkeeper. 'You offend God.'
At that moment, there was an even louder peal of thunder and the wind could be heard howling around the inn. The smuggler, Bertuccio, was about to let Caderousse know he was there, when he heard a loud knocking on the door of the inn. So he kept quiet.
'Who's there?' cried Caderousse.
'It is I, the jeweller. I can't find my way in all this wind and rain,' said a voice outside.
Caderousse looked at his wife.
'You said I offend God,' she sneered. 'It's the good God who sends him back to us.'
She went to the door and opened it.
'Come in, good sir,' she said to the jeweller.
She made the jeweller welcome and set before him a good supper with plenty of wine. When he had eaten and drunk his fill, he went upstairs to bed.
Bertuccio, waiting in the shed at the side, was by this time so tired that he fell asleep. Later in the night he was awakened by a shot and sounds of a struggle in one of the rooms upstairs. There were groans and cries as though someone was being murdered. A kind of warm moisture was falling from above, dropping on his head. Then he heard someone coming downstairs. He got up and looked through the hole in the wall.
Caderousse was entering the room, carrying a lantern in one hand and, in the other, the little bag in which Bertuccio had seen the jeweller put the diamond. Now Caderousse went to the cupboard, took out the fifty thousand francs he had earlier locked away there and, rushing towards the door, he disappeared into the darkness of the night.
Bertuccio ran into the inn. Going up the stairs, he stumbled over the body of Caderousse's wife. She had been killed by a pistol shot. He went into a bedroom and there he saw the jeweller lying on the floor. Blood was gushing from four horrible wounds in his body. The handle of a large kitchen knife stuck from his chest, where it had been plunged into his heart.
Bertuccio rushed downstairs and, at that moment, the police officers who had been tracking him arrived at the door of the inn. They immediately seized Bertuccio. One of them pointed to his head and his clothes. Looking at himself, Bertuccio saw that he was covered with blood. He remembered the warm rain which had fallen on him when he was in the shed. He tried to explain that he had been outside when the murders happened. But the police thought he must have broken in from the outside and killed the two people in the inn.
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