However, whether reality or fancy, there they were, and I could not remain in ignorance or in doubt.At the end of all my various arguments for and against the probability of my new explanation of the mystery, I arrived at a positive fact: rightly or wrongly I had conceived the possibility of a plot in which Edmond Termonde had served as the instrument of murder in his brother's hand.Were there only one single chance, one against a thousand, that my father had been killed in this way, I was bound to follow up the clew to the end, on pain of having to despise myself as the veriest coward that lived.The time of sorrowful dreaming was over; it was now necessary to act, and to act was to know.
Morning dawned upon these thoughts of mine.I opened my window, Isaw the faces of the lofty houses livid in the first light of day, and I swore solemnly to myself, in the presence of re-awakening life, that this day should see me begin to do what I ought, and the morrow should see me continue, and the following days should see the same, until I could say to myself: "I am certain."I resolutely repressed the wild feelings which had taken hold of me during the night, and I fixed my mind upon the problem: "Does there exist any means of making sure whether Edmond Termonde is, or is not, identical with the man who in 1864 called himself Rochdale?"For the answer to this question I had only myself, the resources of my own intelligence, and my personal will to rely upon.I must do myself the justice to state that not for one minute, during all those cruel hours, was I tempted to rid myself once for all of the difficulties of my tragic task by appealing to justice, as I should have done had I not taken my mother's sufferings into account.Ihad resolved that the terrible blow of learning that for fifteen years she had been the wife of an assassin should never be dealt to her by me.In order that she might always remain in ignorance of this story of crime, it was necessary for the struggle to be strictly confined to my stepfather and myself.
And yet, I thought, what if I find that he is guilty?
At this idea, no longer vague and distant, but liable today, to-morrow, at any time, to become an indisputable truth, a terrible project presented itself to my mind.But I would not look in that direction, I made answer to myself: "I will think of this later on," and I forced myself to concentrate all my reflections upon the actual day and its problem: How to verify the identity of Edmond Termonde with the false Rochdale?
To tear the secret from my stepfather was impossible.I had vainly endeavored for months to find the flaw in his armor of dissimulation; I had but broken not one dagger, but twenty against the plates of that cuirass.If I had had all the tormentors of the Middle Ages at my service, I could not have forced his fast-shut lips to open, or extorted an admission from his woebegone and yet impenetrable face.
There remained the other; but in order to attack him, I must first discover under what name he was hiding in Paris, and where.No great effort of imagination was required to hit upon a certain means of discovering these particulars.I had only to recall the circumstances under which I had learned the fact of Edmond Termonde's arrival in Paris.For some reason or other--remembrance of a guilty complicity or fear of a scandal--my stepfather trembled with fear at the mere idea of his brother's return.His brother had returned, and my stepfather would undoubtedly make every effort to induce him to go away again.He would see him, but not at the house on the Boulevard de Latour-Maubourg, on account of my mother and the servants.I had, therefore, a sure means of finding out where Edmond Termonde was living; I would have his brother followed.
There were two alternatives: either he would arrange a meeting in some lonely place, or he would go himself to Edmond Termonde's abode.In the latter case, I should have the information I wanted at once; in the former, it would be sufficient to give the description of Edmond Termonde just as I had received it from my mother, and to have him also followed on his return from the place of meeting.The spy-system has always seemed to me to be infamous, and even at that moment I felt all the ignominy of setting this trap for my stepfather; but when one is fighting, one must use the weapons that will avail.To attain my end, I would have trodden everything under foot except my mother's grief.
And then? Supposing myself in possession of the false name of Edmond Termonde and his address, WHAT WAS I TO DO? I could not, in imitation of the police, lay my hand upon him and his papers, and get off with profuse excuses for the action when the search was finished.I remember to have turned over twenty plans in my mind, all more or less ingenious, and rejected them all in succession, concluding by again fixing my mind on the bare facts.
