Part 12

“Here, take this to Mademoiselle d’Alescar. I feel sure she will appreciate Monsieur Cazévon’s generosity. Monsieur, I am at your service. I cannot tell you how happy you have made us both by furnishing such a satisfactory solution to the business.”

He swaggered off, followed by Béchoux. The latter, utterly astounded, waited till they were out of the park, and then demanded:

“What’s it all mean? Did he fire that shot? Has he made a statement to you?”

“None of your business, Béchoux,” said Barnett. “Let bygones be bygones. The case has been settled to everyone’s best advantage. All you have to do is to speed on your mission to Mademoiselle d’Alescar. Ask her to forgive and forget, and not to breathe a word to anyone. Then come and pick me up at the inn.”

In a short while Béchoux was back again. He brought the news that Mademoiselle d’Alescar had accepted the gift of the Mazurech estate and her solicitor would take the matter up at once, but the money she refused to take. In her indignation at being offered it she had torn up the check.

Barnett and Béchoux took their leave. The return journey was made in silence. The inspector was lost in unprofitable speculation. His mind was in a whirl of interrogation, but Barnett looked disinclined for confidential converse.

They got to Paris at close on to three o’clock. Barnett invited Béchoux to lunch with him near the Bourse, and Béchoux, incapable of resistance, went with him meekly.

“You do the ordering,” said Barnett, rising from the table a moment after they had entered the restaurant. “I’ve some business I must attend to. Won’t be a moment!”

Béchoux did not have long to wait. Barnett was back again almost immediately, and the two men ate a hearty meal. When they were drinking their coffee, Béchoux ventured a remark:

“I must send the torn bits of that check back to Monsieur Cazévon.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t bother to do that, Béchoux.”

“Why not?”

“The check was quite worthless.”

“But how?”

“Oh,” said Barnett airily, “I foresaw that Mademoiselle d’Alescar was certain to refuse to take it, so when I put the deed of gift into the envelope I slipped in with it an old cancelled check. Waste not, want not.”

“But what happened to the genuine check?” groaned Béchoux, “the one Monsieur Cazévon signed?”

“Oh, that! I’ve just been and cashed it at the bank!”

He opened his coat, displaying a wad of notes. Béchoux’s coffee cup slipped from his nerveless grasp. With an effort he controlled himself.

For a long while they sat smoking in silence, facing one another across the table. At last Barnett spoke:

“There’s no denying it, Béchoux, so far our collaboration has proved decidedly fruitful. We seem to ring the bell every time, and it’s all helped to enlarge my little nest-egg. But, honestly, I’m beginning to feel very troubled about you, old horse. Here we are, working side by side, and I always pocket the dibs. Look here, Béchoux, won’t you come into partnership with me? The Barnett and Béchoux Agency? It really sounds rather well!”

Béchoux gave him a look of hatred. The man goaded him beyond endurance. He rose, flung down a note to pay for the lunch, and mumbled as he took his leave:

“There are times when I think it must be Arsène Lupin after all!”

“I sometimes wonder, too,” said Barnett—and laughed.

IX

DOUBLE ENTRY

A serious breach in the Béchoux-Barnett friendship seemed to have been caused by the affair of the Old Dungeon at Mazurech, and the fleecing of Georges Cazévon, so that when a taxi came to a halt in the rue Laborde and Inspector Béchoux leapt from it and hurled himself into the office of his friend, Jim Barnett, no one was more surprised than the latter.

“This is indeed a pleasure,” he said, advancing with alacrity. “Our last parting was rather in silence and tears, and I was afraid you were feeling sore. And is there anything I can do for you in a small way this merry morning?”

“There is.”

Barnett shook the inspector warmly by the hand.

“Splendid! But what’s up? You look positively apoplectic. Please don’t burst in my office.”

“Kindly be serious, Barnett,” said poor Béchoux stiffly. “I’m working on a most complicated case from which I particularly want to emerge triumphant.”

“What’s it all about?”

“My wife,” said Béchoux, and there was anguish in his tone.

Barnett’s eyebrows shot up.

“Your wife?” he echoed. “Then you’re married?”

“Been divorced six years,” was the laconic answer.

“Incompatibility?”

“No. My wife found she had a vocation for the stage! The stage—I ask you! Married to an inspector of police and she wanted to go on——” Béchoux sneezed abruptly and violently, giving Barnett time to ask:

“Then she became an actress?”

“A singer.”

“At the Opéra?”

“No. The Folies Bergère. She’s Olga Vaubant.”

“What, not the lady who does the Acrobatic Arias? But she’s wonderful, Béchoux. Olga Vaubant is a superb artiste. She has created a new art form. Her latest number brings down the house. It’s sheer genius—absolutely. You know, she stands on her head and sings:

“‘I’m in luck, I gotta boy Fills his momma’s heart with joy— Yes, you otta see my Jim!’

And she’s your wife!”

“Was,” said Béchoux shortly. “Well, I’m glad you like the lady’s performance. I’ve just been honored with a note from her.”

He produced a sheet of rose-colored notepaper, with an embossed crimson O in one corner. Scrawled in pencil and dated that very morning was the following message:

“My bedroom suite has been stolen. Mother in a state of collapse. Come at once.—Olga.”

“The moment I got this,” said Béchoux, “I telephoned the préfecture. They had already been called in on the case, and I obtained permission to collaborate with the men who are handling it.”

“Then why are you all of a dither?” asked Barnett.

“It’s—it’s because this will mean meeting her again,” said Béchoux, ashamed and furious.

“Are you still in love with her?”

“Whenever I see her—it’s idiotic, but something comes over me—I can’t help myself. I feel myself blushing like a schoolboy. My mouth goes dry and I begin stammering. You must see, Barnett, that I can’t take charge of the case like that. I should make a perfect fool of myself.”

“Whereas, what you want to do is to impress madame with the cool dignity, the daring and resource that go to make Inspector Béchoux the Pride of Paris Police?”

“Er—yes.”

“And you look to me to help you. Béchoux, you can count on me. Now tell me, what sort of life does your ex-wife lead off the stage?”

Béchoux looked almost pained at the question.

“She is above suspicion and lives for her art alone. If it weren’t for her profession, Olga would still be Madame Béchoux.”

“Which would be a nation’s loss,” pronounced Barnett solemnly, gathering up hat and coat.

A few minutes later the two men came to one of the quietest, most deserted streets near the Luxembourg. Olga Vaubant lived on the top floor of an old-fashioned house whose bricks breathed respectability. The ground-floor windows were heavily barred.

“Before we go any further,” said Béchoux, “I am going to suggest that in this instance you refrain from playing your own hand and making a dishonorable private profit out of the case, as you have unhappily been known to do in the past.”

“My conscience ...” began Barnett, but Béchoux waved away the objection.

“Never mind your conscience,” he said. “Think of the way mine has pricked me whenever we’ve worked together!”

“You don’t think I’d rob your own ex-wife? Oh, Béchoux, how you wrong me!”

“I don’t want you to rob anyone,” said Béchoux.

“Not even those who deserve it?”

“Leave Justice to take its course. Heaven has not appointed you as an avenging angel.”

Barnett sighed.

“You are spoiling all my fun, Béchoux, but what you say goes.”

One policeman was on guard at the door, and another was with the concierges—husband and wife—who were badly upset by what had happened.

Béchoux learned that the district superintendent and two headquarters’ men had just left after making a preliminary investigation.

“Now’s our chance,” said Béchoux to Barnett. “Let’s get a move on while the coast is clear.”

As they went up the staircase he explained to his friend that the house was run on old-fashioned lines, and the street door was kept shut.

“No one has a key, and everyone has to ring for admittance. A priest lives on the first floor and a magistrate on the second. The concierge acts as housekeeper to both of them. Olga has the top floor flat and leads a most conventional existence, complete with her mother and two old maidservants who have always been in the family.”

They knocked at the door of Olga Vaubant’s flat, and one of the maids let them into the hall. Béchoux rapidly explained the position of the rooms to Barnett—the passage on the right led to Olga’s bedroom and boudoir, that on the left to her mother’s room and the servants’ quarters. Straight ahead was a studio fitted up as a gymnasium, with a horizontal bar, a trapeze, rings, ropes and ribstalls. Strewn about the place were Indian clubs, dumb-bells, foils, and so forth.

As the two men entered this vast room, something seemed to drop in a heap at their feet from the sky-light. The heap resolved itself into a slender, laughing boy, with a mop of untidy red hair framing the delicate features of a charming face. Wide green eyes, tip-tilted nose, slightly crooked mouth—all were unmistakable, and Barnett immediately recognized in the pajama-clad “boy” the one and only Olga Vaubant. She exclaimed at once in the Parisian drawl that has its parallel in the Londoner’s cockney:

“Maman’s all right, Béchoux. Sleeping like a top, bless her. Lucky, isn’t it?”

She made a sudden dive floorwards, stood on her hands and, with her feet waving in the air, began singing in a husky, thrilling contralto:

“I’m in luck, I gotta boy, Fills his momma’s heart with joy—

And believe me, Béchoux, you fill my heart with joy, too, old dear,” she added, standing up. “You’re a real sport to have got here so soon. Who’s the boy-friend?”

“Jim Barnett. He’s an old—acquaintance,” said Béchoux, vainly attempting to control his twitching countenance.

“Fine,” said Olga. “Well let’s hope between the pair of you you’ll solve the mystery and get back my bedroom suite. I leave it to you. Now it’s my turn to do a bit of introducing,” as a bulky form hove up from the far end of the studio. “May I present Del Prego, my gym instructor? He’s masseur, make-up expert, and beauty doctor, and he’s the darling of the chorus. Regular osteopath, he is, for dislocation and rejuvenation! Say pretty to the gentlemen, Del Prego!”

Del Prego bowed low. He was a broad-shouldered, copper-skinned fellow, genial of countenance and vaguely suggesting the clown in his appearance. He wore a grey suit, with white spats and gloves, and held a light-colored felt hat in his hands.

Immediately, gesticulating violently and speaking with a marked foreign accent, he began to discourse on his method of “progressive dislocation,” larding his outlandish French with phrases in Spanish, English, and Russian. Olga cut him short.

“We’ve no time to waste. What do you want me to tell you, Béchoux?”

“First,” said Béchoux, “will you show us your bedroom?”

“Right! Half a mo’.” She sprang up in the air, caught on to the trapeze, swung from that to the rings, and landed at a door in the wall on the right.

“Here you are,” she told them, kicking it open.

The room was absolutely empty. Bed, chairs, curtains, mirrors, rugs, dressing-table, ornaments, pictures—all gone. Furniture removers could not have made a better job of it. The place was stripped.

Olga began to giggle helplessly.

“See that? Thorough, weren’t they? They even pinched my ivory toilet set. Almost walked off with the floor-boards. Don’t you think it’s a shame, Mr. Barnett?” she went on, addressing Jim, her eyes wider than ever. “I’m a girl that’s real fond of good furniture. All pure Louis Quinze it was, that I’d collected bit by bit—and they all had a history, including a genuine Pompadour bed! Why, furnishing this room cost me nearly everything I made on my American tour.”

Abruptly she broke off to turn a somersault, then tossed the hair off her face and went on cheerfully:

“Oh, well, there’s plenty of good fish in the sea and I can replace all that lot. I needn’t worry so long as I have my india rubber muscles and my bee-yewtiful cracked voice.... What are you looking at me like that for, Béchoux? Going to faint at my feet? Give us a kiss, and let’s get on with any questions you want to ask before we have the rest of the police force back on the scene.”

“Tell me exactly what happened,” said Béchoux.

“Oh, there isn’t much to tell,” answered Olga. “Let’s see, last night, it had just gone half-past ten.... Oh, I should have told you, I left here at eight with Del Prego, who escorted me to the Folies Bergère in maman’s place.... Well, as I was saying, it had just gone the half-hour, and maman was in her room knitting, when suddenly she heard a faint sound like someone moving about in my room. She rushed along the passage, and found two men taking my bed apart by the light of a flash-lamp! The light was switched off at once, and one chap sprang at her and knocked her down while the other flung a tablecloth over her head. How’s that for assault and battery? Poor old maman! Then, if you please, these two blighters calmly proceeded to remove the furniture bit by bit, one of them carrying it downstairs, while the other stayed in the room. Maman kept quiet and managed not to scream. After a while she heard a big car starting up in the street outside, and then she was so overcome with the strain that she fainted right off.”

“So that when you got back from the show——?” prompted Béchoux.

“I found the street door open, the flat door open, and maman lying unconscious on the floor of my room. You could have knocked me down with a feather!”

“What had the concierges to say?”

“You know them, Béchoux. Two old dears who’ve been here for thirty years now. An earthquake wouldn’t rouse ’em. The only sound they ever hear is the door-bell. Well, they swear by all their gods that no one rang between ten o’clock, when they went to bed, and next morning.”

“Which means,” said Béchoux, “that they had no cause at any time during the night to pull the string that opens the door.”

“You’ve said it.”

“Did the other tenants hear nothing?”

“Nothing at all.”

“Then the conclusion is——”

“How do you mean, conclusion?”

“Well, what do you make of it?”

Olga’s expression was one of wrath.

“Don’t be an idiot! It’s not my business to make anything of it. That’s your job, Béchoux. In a moment you’ll have me thinking you as big a fool as those policemen we’ve had all over the flat.”

“But,” faltered Béchoux, “we’re only beginning.”

“Can’t you get action with what I’ve told you, you boob? If that pal of yours there isn’t any brighter than you, I can bid my Pompadour bed a fond farewell!”

The “pal” at this point stepped forward and asked:

“On what particular day would you like your bed back, madame?”

“What’s that?” said Olga, staring at this stranger to whom, up to now, she had paid but slight attention.

Barnett became glibly detailed.

“I should like to know the day and hour on which you desire to regain possession of your Pompadour bed and of your furniture, etcetera.”

“Is this your idea of a joke?”

“Let’s fix the day,” said the imperturbable Barnett.

“To-day is Tuesday. Will next Tuesday be satisfactory?”

Olga’s eyes widened, and widened yet again. She could not make Barnett out a bit. Suddenly she began to rock with mirth.

“You are a one, I must say! Where did you pick it up, Béchoux? Out of the asylum? I must say your friend’s got a nerve. In a week, he says, cool as you please. You might think the bed was in his pocket! You’ve got another thing coming if you fancy I’m going to waste my time with two mutts like you.” With a hand on the chest of each, she pushed them vigorously into the hall. “Out you go, my lads, and you can stay out! And don’t think I’m going to let myself be fooled by a couple of rotten jokers!”

The studio door slammed violently on the two “rotten jokers,” and Béchoux groaned aloud.

“And we’ve only been in the flat ten minutes!”

Barnett was calmly examining the hall. He then talked to one of the old servants. After that, he went downstairs to the concierges’ quarters and questioned the pair of them. He then hailed a passing taxi, giving the driver his address in the rue Laborde. Inspector Béchoux, deserted and aghast, stood forlornly on the pavement and watched the disappearing chariot of his friend.

However much Jim Barnett held Inspector Béchoux spellbound, the latter stood in even greater awe of the imperious Olga. He never dreamed of doubting her assertion that Barnett had turned the whole thing off by making a promise no one could take seriously.

This gloomy view of affairs was confirmed next day when he called at the office in the rue Laborde and found Barnett lolling back in an armchair, his feet upon his desk, smoking peacefully.

“Really, Barnett,” said Béchoux in exasperation, “if this is your idea of getting down to things, we may as well give up the case. Back at the house we’re all hopelessly at sea. We none of us know what to make of it. We are agreed on certain points, of course. The main thing is, that it’s a physical impossibility to enter the place, even using a skeleton key, unless the door is opened from the inside. Since none of the residents can be suspected of being concerned in the burglary, we are driven to two unavoidable conclusions: first, that one of the thieves had been in the house, concealed, since early in the evening, and this man let in a confederate; second, that he could not have got inside without being seen by one of the concierges, as the street door is never left open. But who can have been in the house ready to admit the other thief? That’s what floors us, and I don’t see how on earth we’re going to find it out. Have you any theory, Barnett?”

But Barnett was silent, absorbed in blowing smoke-rings. Béchoux’s words might have fallen on deaf ears, but he continued:

“We’ve made a list of people who called during that day—there weren’t many—and the concierges are positive that every single one of them left the house again. So you see we’re without a clue. We can easily reconstruct the modus operandi of the crime, but its authors elude us. What do you make of it all?”

Barnett gave a prodigious yawn, stretched his arms and legs till they cracked, and then drawled:

“A perfect peach!”

“Wh-what’s that? Who’re you calling a peach?”

“Your ex-wife,” Barnett told the astonished Béchoux. “She’s as much of a knock-out off the stage as she is on. So full of joie de vivre, so—so electric! A regular gamine. Wonderful taste, too. I just can’t get over the idea of her investing her earnings in that Pompadour bed! Béchoux, you’re a lucky dog!”

“I lost my luck pretty quickly—only kept it a month!”

“A whole month? Then what are you grumbling at?”

Next Saturday saw Béchoux back at the Barnett Agency, trying to rouse his torpid ally, but Barnett was wreathed in smoke and silence, and Béchoux got no satisfaction.

On Monday he came in again, thoroughly depressed.

“It’s a mug’s game,” he averred, “the men on the job are utter idiots, and all this time Olga’s bedroom suite is probably on its way to some port or other for shipment abroad. It’s maddening! And what do you suppose all this makes me look like to Olga—me, a police inspector, I ask you? Why, she thinks I’m the most colossal ass that ever stepped.”

He glared at the imperturbable Barnett, absorbed in his eternal smoke-rings, and let loose the full force of his fury.

“Here are we, up against an entirely new type of criminal—fighting men who must be adepts in their own line—and there you sit, you—you lotus-eater, and don’t lift a finger to help!”

“One quality in her,” said Barnett, musing aloud, “pleases me more than all.”

“What?” shouted Béchoux.

“Her naturalness—her superb spontaneity. She is absolutely devoid of anything theatrical, any pose. Olga says exactly what she means, follows her instincts and lives according to impulse. Béchoux, she’s a marvel!”

Béchoux brought his fist down on the desk with a bang.

“Would you like to know what she thinks of you? She thinks you’re a D-U-D, dud! She and Del Prego can’t mention your name without hooting. They speak of you as ‘That boob Barnett—that crazy bluffer’....”

Barnett heaved a sigh.

“Harsh words! How can I prove the cap doesn’t fit?”

“By ceasing to wear it,” suggested Béchoux grimly. “To-morrow is Tuesday, and you’ve promised to produce that Pompadour bed!”

“Good lord, so I have!” said Barnett, as if realizing it for the first time. “The trouble is, I haven’t the faintest idea where to look for it! Be a sportsman, Béchoux, and ladle out a word of advice.”

“If you can lay hold of the thieves, they’ll know where to find the bed.”

“It might be done,” said Barnett. “Got a warrant?”

Béchoux nodded.

“Right. Then telephone the préfecture to send two of their beefiest men to-day to the Odéon Arcades, near the Luxembourg.”

Béchoux looked both surprised and irresolute.

“No fooling?”

“Absolutely not. Do you think I relish being thought a boob by Olga Vaubant? And, anyway, don’t I always keep my promises?”

Béchoux thought hard for a moment. Something told him that Barnett meant what he said, and that during the last week, while he had lolled in his armchair, his brain had been alert and busy with the problem. He remembered Barnett’s dictum that there were times when meditation proved more profitable than investigation. Without further hesitation, Béchoux took up the telephone and called up one, Albert, who was the right-hand man of the chief. He arranged for two inspectors to be sent to the Odéon.

Barnett heaved himself out of his chair, and the clock struck three as the two men left the Agency.

“Are we going to Olga’s flat?” Béchoux asked.

“To that of the concierges,” Barnett told him.

When they arrived Barnett conversed in low tones with the concierges and asked them to say nothing of his and Béchoux’s presence in the house. They then stationed themselves in the rear of the concierges’ quarters, concealed behind a voluminous bed-curtain. By peering out at each side, they could see anyone leave the house, or enter it when the door was opened.

They saw the priest from the first floor pass. Then came one of Olga’s old servants, carrying a market-basket.

“Who on earth are we waiting for?” whispered Béchoux. “What’s your game?”

“To teach you your job! Now then, not another word!”