Part 7

Gassire’s economy led him to do without a servant. Every morning at eight the concierge, a stout, cheerful, active woman, came up with his post and petit déjeuner—a cup of coffee and a croissant, which she laid on his desk—and then cleaned up the flat.

On the morning in question the concierge departed at half-past eight, and Monsieur Gassire, as was his custom, breakfasted in leisurely fashion, opened his letters and glanced through the morning paper while he awaited the arrival of his clerks.

Suddenly, just five minutes before nine, he thought he heard a noise in his bedroom. Remembering the bundle of securities which he had left in there, he jumped up, overturning his coffee-cup in his agitation. In a twinkling he was in the other room, but—the bundle of securities had vanished! At the very same moment he heard the hall-door on the landing slam violently.

Monsieur Gassire tried to open it, but it was a spring lock and he had left the key on his desk. He was afraid that if he went to get it the thief would escape without being seen.

He therefore opened the hall window, which gave on the street. It was physically impossible for any one to have had time to leave the building. In any case, the street was empty.

Mastering his excitement, Monsieur Nicolas Gassire refrained from crying “Thief!” But, a minute later, when he caught sight of his head clerk coming towards the house from the direction of the neighboring boulevard, he beckoned furiously to him.

“Hurry up, Sarlonat!” he cried, leaning out of the window. “Come in, lock the street door and don’t let any one out. I’ve been robbed!”

As soon as his commands had been obeyed, he hastened downstairs, panting and distraught.

“Tell me, Sarlonat, have you seen anybody?”

“Not a soul, monsieur.”

He hurried to the concierge’s little room, which was wedged between the foot of the stairs and a small, dark courtyard. She was sweeping the floor.

“Madame Alain, I’ve been robbed!” he cried. “Is any one hiding here?”

“Why, no, monsieur,” faltered the poor woman in utter bewilderment.

“Where do you keep the key to my flat?”

“I put it here, monsieur, behind the clock. Anyhow, no one could have taken it, for I’ve not stirred out of my room this last half-hour.”

“That means that instead of coming down the thief must have run upstairs. Oh, this is terrible, terrible!”

Nicolas Gassire went back to the street door. His other two clerks had just come on the scene. Hurriedly, in a few breathless words, he gave them their orders. They were to let no one enter or leave the house until he came back.

“You understand, Sarlonat? No one.”

He dashed upstairs and into his flat. In an instant he had grabbed hold of the telephone.

“Hello!” he bawled into the mouthpiece, “hello! Put me through to the Préfecture!... No, I don’t mean police headquarters, you fool, I mean the café de la Préfecture ... what number is it?... How should I know?... Hurry!... Give me information.... Oh, be quick, be quick, can’t you!”

Dancing with rage the little man at last succeeded in getting on to the proprietor of the café, and thundered:

“Is Inspector Béchoux there? Then call him to the telephone—at once. Hurry ... hurry! I want him on business. There’s no time to lose.... Hello!... Inspector Béchoux? This is Gassire speaking, Béchoux.... Yes, I’m all right ... at least, I’m not ... I’ve just been robbed of some securities—a whole bundle.... I’m waiting for you.... What’s that? Say it again!... You can’t come? You’re off on your holiday? Holiday be hanged, man! Béchoux, you must come, as quickly as possible! Your twelve African mining shares were in the bundle!”

Monsieur Gassire heard a volcanic monosyllable at the other end, which fully reassured him on the score of Inspector Béchoux’s purpose and promptitude. Indeed, it was barely a quarter of an hour before Inspector Béchoux arrived, running, his face a study in abject anxiety. He rushed up to the stockbroker.

“My Nigger Boys! My Twelve Little Nigger Boys! All my savings! What’s become of them?”

“Stolen, along with the bonds and shares of other clients ... and all my own securities.”

“Stolen?”

“Yes, from my bedroom, half an hour ago!”

“Damnation! But what were my Nigger Boys doing in your room?”

“I took the bundle out of the safe at the Crédit Lyonnais yesterday to deposit it at another bank, nearer here. And I made the mistake of——”

Béchoux’s hand descended heavily on the other’s shoulder.

“I shall hold you responsible, Gassire. You will have to make good my loss.”

“How can I? I’m ruined.”

“What do you mean? You have this house.”

“Mortgaged to the hilt!”

The two men faced each other, convulsed with rage and shouting unintelligibly.

The concierge and the three clerks had also lost their heads, and were barring the way to two girls from the top floor, who had just come down and were quite determined to be allowed out.

“Nobody shall leave this house!” roared Béchoux, beside himself with fury. “Nobody shall leave this house until my Twelve Little Nigger Boys are restored to me!”

“Perhaps we’d better call in help,” suggested Gassire. “There’s the butcher’s boy ... and the grocer ... they’re both dependable.”

“Not for me,” the inspector pronounced with decision. “If we need some one else we’ll telephone the Barnett Agency in the rue Laborde. Then we’ll notify the police. But for the moment that would be sheer waste of time. Action is what we want!”

He tried to control himself and to regain the pontifical calm that best befits a police inspector. But he was trembling from head to foot, and his quivering mouth betrayed his distress.

“Keep your head,” he told Gassire. “After all, we have the whip hand. Nobody has left the house. The thing is to retrieve my little Nigger Boys before any one can find a way of sneaking them out of the building. That’s all that really matters.”

He turned to the two girls and began to question them. He ascertained that one was a typist who copied reports and circulars at home. The other gave lessons in flute-playing, also at home. They were both anxious to get out and do their marketing before lunch, but Béchoux was adamant.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but this door stays closed for the morning. Monsieur Gassire, two of your clerks shall mount guard here. The third can run errands for the tenants. In the afternoon the latter will be allowed out, but with my permission only in each case, and all parcels, boxes, baskets or packages of any kind will be submitted to a rigorous search. You have your orders. Now, Monsieur Gassire, it is for us to get to work. The concierge will lead the way.”

The building was so planned as to make investigation easy. There were three upper stories, with a single flat on each floor. This made four flats in the house, counting that on the ground floor, which was temporarily unoccupied. Monsieur Gassire lived on the first floor. On the second dwelt Monsieur Touffémont, an ex-Cabinet Minister. The top floor was partitioned off into two flatlets, occupied by Mademoiselle Legoffier, the typist, and Mademoiselle Haveline, who taught the flute.

That morning Monsieur Touffémont had left at half-past eight for the Chambre des Députés, where he was president of a commission. Since his flat was cleaned by a woman who came in daily at lunch-time and had not yet arrived, they decided to await his return.

First, then, they explored the girls’ rooms thoroughly, and satisfied themselves that the missing securities were not there.

Next they searched every corner of the attic at the top of the house, getting up there by means of a ladder.

After this, choking with dust, they came downstairs again and searched the courtyard and Monsieur Gassire’s own flat.

Their efforts went unrewarded. In bitterness of spirit, Béchoux brooded over the unkind fate that had overtaken his Twelve Little Nigger Boys.

Towards noon Monsieur Touffémont came in. He proved to be an earnest parliamentarian, burdened with the type of portfolio proper to the use of an ex-Cabinet Minister. His industry commanded the respect of all parties in the house, and his rare but masterly interventions could make a Cabinet tremble apprehensively.

With measured tread he approached the concierge’s room and asked for his letters. Gassire came up to him and told him of the theft.

Touffémont gave him that grave attention he seemed to bestow even on the most flippant utterances. Then he promised his coöperation if Gassire decided to call in the police, and urged at the same time that they should search his flat.

“You never know,” he said. “Someone might have got in with a skeleton key.”

Accordingly they searched the flat, but here again they drew a blank. Béchoux and Gassire tried to keep one another’s courage up by voicing each in turn his meed of hope and comfort, but their words rang hollow and their faces grew drawn and pale.

At last they thought they would go in search of refreshment to a small café just opposite, so placed that they could keep an eye on the home all the time. But when they got there, Béchoux found he had no appetite. The Twelve Little Nigger Boys lay heavy on his stomach. Gassire said that he felt dizzy. No, he wouldn’t take anything, thank you. They both went over and over what had happened, trying to find some ray of reassurance in the prevailing gloom.

“It’s quite obvious,” said Béchoux. “Someone got into your flat and stole the securities. Well, as the thief can’t have escaped from the building, that means that he or she is still in the house.”

“Absolutely,” agreed Gassire.

“And if he or she is in the house, my Twelve Little Nigger Boys are there too. Hang it all, they can’t have flown out through the roof!”

“Not unless they were nigger angels,” suggested Gassire.

“So,” Béchoux went on, ignoring him, “we are forced to the conclusion that——”

He never finished the sentence. Suddenly a look of terror came into his eyes, and he stared speechless at someone who was jauntily approaching the house opposite.

“Barnett!” he whispered. “Barnett! How did he get to know of this?”

“You mentioned him, and the Barnett Agency in the rue Laborde,” Gassire confessed, not without hesitation, “and I thought that, in the appalling circumstances, it was just worth giving him a ring.”

“You fool!” spluttered Béchoux. “Who’s in charge of the case, anyhow? You or me? Barnett has nothing to do with this. We must be on our guard against him or there will be the devil to pay. Let Barnett in on this? Not much!”

Béchoux was quite sure in his own mind that Barnett’s assistance would prove the last straw. Jim Barnett in the house and on the case would only mean that, if the mystery were solved, a bundle of securities, including Twelve Little Nigger Boys of vital import to their owner, would surely vanish into thin air.

He tore across the street, and, as Barnett raised his hand to the bell, he seized his arm and said in trembling tones:

“Get out! Hop it! We don’t want your help. You were called in by mistake. Cut along now, and be quick about it.”

Barnett gave him an astonished stare full of reproach and childlike innocence.

“My dear Béchoux, what’s the matter? Tell your Uncle Barnett! You seem a trifle rattled, old lad. Still sore about the grandfather clocks of Baron de Gravières? And those gold teeth? Left, right!”

“Get out, I tell you!”

“Then they told me the truth just now on the telephone? Have you really been robbed of your savings? And don’t you want your Uncle Barnett to lend a helping hand?”

“My Uncle Barnett can go to hell!” declared Béchoux, furious. “I know all about your helping hand! It goes into other people’s pockets and helps itself.”

“Are you in a stew because of your Twelve Little Nigger Boys?”

“I shall be if you come poking your nose in!”

“Oh, all right. I leave you to it!”

“You’re off, then?” Béchoux’s frown cleared.

“Rather not! I’ve come here on business.”

He turned to Gassire, who had joined them and was holding the door ajar.

“Can you tell me if Mademoiselle Haveline lives here—Mademoiselle Haveline who teaches the flute? She took second prize at the Conservatoire.”

Béchoux grew wrathful.

“Huh, you’re asking for her because you’ve just seen her brass plate up there....”

“Well,” replied Barnett, “haven’t I a perfect right to learn the flute if I like? It’s a free country!”

“You can’t come here.”

“Sorry, but I am consumed with a passion for the flute.”

“I absolutely forbid it.”

For sole answer Barnett snapped his fingers in the other’s face and pushed past him into the house. No one dared bar his way. Béchoux, his heart full of misgivings, watched him ascend the first flight of stairs and vanish out of sight.

It must have taken Barnett only a little while to get started with his teacher, for in ten minutes’ time wobbly scales on the flute began floating down from the top floor. Mademoiselle Haveline’s pupil was on the job!

“The scoundrel!” cried Béchoux, his anxiety increasing every minute. “With him in the house, heaven help us!”

He set to work again madly. They ransacked the empty ground floor flat, also the concierge’s room, in case the bundle of securities had been thrown down somewhere. It was all fruitless. And the whole afternoon the sound of flute practice went on, like a mocking goblin under the eaves. Béchoux nearly collapsed beneath the strain.

At last, on the stroke of six, Barnett appeared, skipping down the stairs and humming a ribald tune. And, as he went, he swung to and fro a large cardboard box.

A cardboard box! Béchoux, with a strangled exclamation, seized it and snatched off the lid. Out tumbled some old hat-shapes and bits of moth-eaten fur.

“Since she is not allowed to leave the house,” Barnett explained solemnly, “Mademoiselle Haveline has asked me to throw this stuff away for her. I say, isn’t she a peach? And what a flautist! She thinks I am full of talent and says that if I keep on at it I shall soon be able to qualify for the post of blind man on the church steps. Ta, ta!” And he was gone.

All night long, Béchoux and Gassire mounted guard, one inside and the other outside the street door, in case the thief should try to throw a parcel out of a window to an accomplice waiting below. And next day they set to work again, but all in vain.

At three o’clock that afternoon Barnett was on the scene again, carrying the empty cardboard box. He went straight upstairs, nodding affably to poor Béchoux in the manner of one whose time is well and fully occupied.

The flute lesson began. Scales, followed by exercises. The critical listener would have detected plenty of wrong notes.

Suddenly all was quiet. The silence continued unbroken, until Béchoux was thoroughly puzzled.

“What on earth can he be up to now?” he wondered, as he pictured Barnett busy with those private researches which would assuredly culminate in some extraordinary discovery.

He ran upstairs and stood listening on the landing. No sound came from Mademoiselle Haveline’s room. But a man’s voice was distinctly audible in the next door flatlet of Mademoiselle Legoffier, the typist.

“Barnett’s voice,” thought Béchoux, his curiosity now at white-heat. Then, incapable of holding back any longer, he rang the bell.

“Come in!” called Barnett from within. “The key is in the lock outside.”

Béchoux entered the room. Mademoiselle Legoffier, an attractive brunette, was sitting at a table by her typewriter, taking shorthand at Barnett’s dictation.

“The hunt is up, is it?” said the latter. “Carry on, old man. Nothing up my sleeves”—he mimicked a conjurer—“and as for Mademoiselle Legoffier——” That damsel blushed discreetly; her arms were bare to the shoulder.

“Well,” Barnett continued, “I’m dictating my memoirs. You won’t mind if I go on?”

And, while Béchoux peered under the furniture, he proceeded:

“That afternoon Inspector Béchoux dropped in while I was dictating my memoirs to a charming young lady called Legoffier. She had been recommended to me by her friend, the flautist. Béchoux searched high and low for his Twelve Little Nigger Boys, who heartlessly persisted in eluding him. Under the couch he collected three grains of dust; under the wardrobe a shoe-heel and a hairpin. Inspector Béchoux never overlooks the slightest detail. What a life!”

Béchoux stood up and shook his fist in Barnett’s face, volleying abuse. The other went on dictating, and the detective departed in a fury.

A little later Barnett came down with his cardboard box. Béchoux, who was keeping watch, had a moment’s hesitation. But his fears conquered him and he opened the box, to find that it contained nothing but old papers and rags.

Life became unbearable for the unhappy Béchoux. Barnett’s continued presence, his quizzical attitude and freakish pranks threw the detective into fresh fits of rage. Every day Barnett came to the house, and after each flute lesson or shorthand séance, he would display his cardboard box.

Béchoux did not know what to do. He had no doubt that the whole thing was a farce and that Barnett was ragging him. All the same, there was always the chance that this time Barnett really was spiriting away the securities. Suppose he was kidnapping the Twelve Little Nigger Boys? Suppose he was smuggling his haul out of the house?

Béchoux was forced to rummage in the box, empty it and run his hands over its oddly assorted contents of torn clothing, rags, old feather dusters, broom handles, ashes and potato peelings. And this made Barnett roar with laughter.

“He’s found his shares! No, false alarm! He’s getting warm ... try that lettuce leaf! Ah, Béchoux, what a lot of quiet fun you manage to give me, bless you!”

This went on for a week. Béchoux lost the whole of his holiday over the wretched business, and made himself the laughing-stock of the neighborhood. For neither he nor Nicolas Gassire had been able to stop the tenants from attending to their own affairs, even while allowing their persons to be searched on exit and entrance. Gossip travelled apace. Gassire’s misfortune became known. His terrified clients flocked to the office and demanded the immediate return of their money.

As for Monsieur Touffémont, the ex-Cabinet Minister, who came under the amateur surveillance four times a day, to his great annoyance and the interruption of his customary routine, he was all for calling in the police officially, and urged Gassire to take this course without further delay. The situation could not be prolonged indefinitely.

At last things came to a head. Late one afternoon Gassire and Béchoux heard sounds of violent quarreling coming from the top of the house. Two high-pitched voices were raised in rival but continuous clamor, the uproar punctuated by stamps and screams. It sounded most alarming.

The two men hurried upstairs. On the top landing Mademoiselle Haveline and Mademoiselle Legoffier were doing battle. Standing over them like an umpire was Jim Barnett!

Although quite unable to restrain the combatants, Barnett wore an expression of genuine enjoyment. The girls continued to fly at each other, their hair like that of Furies, and their frocks getting torn to shreds. The air was thick with Parisienne invective!

After heroic efforts the pair was separated. The typist promptly went into hysterics, and Barnett carried her into her flat, while the flute teacher proceeded to expound her wrongs to Béchoux and Gassire on the landing.

“Caught them together, I did,” shrilled Mademoiselle Haveline. “Barnett was mine first, and then I caught him kissing her! I can tell you, he’s up to no good, that Barnett. He’s a queer sort and no mistake. Why don’t you ask him, Monsieur Béchoux, what his game’s been up here all this week, questioning the two of us and poking his nose everywhere? I’m going to give him away, though. He knows who the thief is. It’s the concierge, Madame Alain. But he made us swear we wouldn’t let on to you. Another thing, he knows where those securities are. Didn’t he tell us: ‘The securities are in the house, and yet not in it, and they’re out of it, and yet in it’? Those were his very words. You want to be careful of him, Monsieur Béchoux!”

Jim Barnett had finished with the typist and now came forth. Taking Mademoiselle Haveline by the shoulders, he pushed her firmly through her own front door.

“Come along, professor mine, and no idle gossip, if you please! You’re going right off the handle. Stop talking nonsense and stick to the flute. I don’t want you playing in my band!”

Béchoux did not stay any longer. Mademoiselle Haveline’s sudden revelation had shed a ray of light on the case. He now saw that the thief must be Madame Alain. He only marveled that he could ever have overlooked her guilt.

Spurred by his conviction, he rushed downstairs, followed by Nicolas Gassire, and burst in upon the concierge.

“My Africans! Where are they? It was you who stole them!”

Nicolas Gassire panted at his heels.

“My securities! Where have you put them, you thief?”

They each took hold of the poor woman, shaking her violently and overwhelming her with abuse and questions. She seemed quite dazed by it all, but stuck bravely to her protestations of innocence and ignorance.

When at last they let her be, she retired to bed and passed a sleepless night. Next morning the inquisition recommenced, and that day and its successor were long hours of unrelieved ordeal for the poor woman.

Béchoux would not for a minute admit that Jim Barnett could have made a mistake. Besides, in the light of this definite accusation, it was easy to put the right construction on the facts of the case. The concierge, while cleaning the flat, had doubtless noticed the unaccustomed bundle on the table by the bed. She was the only person who had the key to the flat. Knowing Monsieur Gassire’s regular habits, she might well have returned to the flat, seized the securities, run off with them, and taken refuge in the little room where Nicolas Gassire found her when he rushed downstairs.

Béchoux began to get discouraged.

“Yes,” he said, “it’s obvious that this woman is the guilty party. But still we’re no nearer a solution of the mystery. I don’t care if the criminal is the concierge or the man in the moon. It makes no odds as long as we are still without news of my Twelve Little Nigger Boys. I can see that she had them in her room, but by what miracle did they leave it between nine o’clock and the time we searched her belongings?”

All their threats, and the “third degree” cross-examination to which she was subjected failed to make the fat Madame Alain disclose any helpful information. She denied everything. She had seen nothing. She knew nothing. Even though there was now no doubt of her guilt she stood firm.

“We’ve simply got to settle this,” Gassire told Béchoux one morning. “You know that Touffémont overthrew the Cabinet last night. The reporters will be here any minute to interview him, and we can’t possibly go searching them, too.”

Béchoux agreed that they had come to an impasse.

“But keep smiling,” he urged, “for within three hours I shall know the truth.”

That afternoon he called at the Barnett Detective Agency.

“I was waiting for you to drop in, Béchoux,” said Barnett amicably. “What do you want?”