Hugger-Mugger in the Louvre (14 page)

“I assure you, sergeant,” Evans said. “There are no more modern corpses in the building. Each one of the mummies is wrapped in the best Egyptian linen of their epoch. I beg of you, put down those garden tools and do not destroy the work of glorious past ages.”

The sergeant muttered, and still held on to the shears.

Evans, to comfort him, elaborated his explanation. He took from his pocket the two pieces of linen and handed them to the sergeant, along with his magnifying glass. “See how fine the Egyptian cloth is woven?” he said. “Imagine. Four hundred and fifty threads to the inch. Who has the patience to weave like that today? Now look at the other. It's French, and modern. Not more than a hundred years old. That's what gave the show away.”

The Alsatian grunted and looked at the second sample through the reading glass. “Hmph!” he said. “My mother used to make sheets just like that. I'll bet this came from Alsace. See how the little warts on the threads make it rough and strong? I can see my mother, now, working hour after hour in the long winter evenings. Candlelight, we had then. A fire on the hearth, and apples roasting. I used to sit in the corner, monsieur, and try to draw her picture. She would smile and nod and never make fun of me, monsieur. This little piece of cloth brings back memories to me, and makes me wonder if, after all, I should have come to Paris and joined the police.”

The simple words of Sergeant Schlumberger were touching to Evans, whose human sympathies were always easily aroused, but in the midst of the recital his mind began to clutch at threads of thought and try to untangle them. “Are you sure the cloth was made in Alsace?” Homer asked. “If so, it might be traced.”

At those words, the sergeant forgot his misgivings about the remaining mummies and beamed. “I know just the man, an old auctioneer from Strasbourg, who sells antique furniture and fabrics all over the province.”

Quickly Homer gathered up a few yards of the wrappings that had covered de la Rose d'Antan and handed them to Schlumberger. “Do what you can,” he said. “And go the limit with the newspaper men. Explain about the differences in the linen, the genuine pharaoh and the false, without mentioning my name. After this, the press will eat out of your hand.”

Evans' next task, after the sergeant had departed, was to put Tout-or-Nada back in his mummy case and close the lid. The photographers, having taken not only the pictures necessary for the criminal records, but an assortment for the newspapers and agencies, packed up their apparatus and left the building, after promising not to snap Homer Evans unawares and receiving his promise, in turn, that when anything turned up for them he would let them know. Like all men who came in contact with Evans, even casually, the cynical cameramen trusted and respected him on sight and were willing to help him remain anonymous.

The odor of musty linen, natron, dried pharaohs and asphalt had irritated the parched throats of Hjalmar, Tom Jackson and Lvov Kvek to such a point that Evans led them all to the Café de l'Univers just across from the Hotel du Louvre, where after having ordered drinks for them, and before settling down to a bout of hard thinking, Homer telephoned the Minister of Justice to find out about their technical release. The minister, who liked Evans and was anxious to do what he could for him, was apologetic. His legal advisers, it seemed, were deadlocked 91 to 91 on the question and a final decision could not be reached before September.

Seated on the
terrasse
at the table with his three convivial friends, with near-by traffic swirling in all directions, and pedestrians scurrying to and fro, Evans was able to detach himself and to consider the problems he was called upon to solve. There were many of them, and all were urgent, but he decided that first of all he must devote himself to finding Frémont. Without the Chief the department was at sixes and sevens, and there was a staggering amount of purely routine work to be done.

Frémont had left the prefecture about two o'clock in the morning, and according to Hydrangea, had reached the Hotel Murphy et du Danube Bleu soon after half past two. According to Bridgette Murphy the chief of detectives had arrived again in a taxi, about half past five, much agitated, and had hurried upstairs, telling the taxi to wait. Nothing had been heard from him since.

Immediately Homer decided that the St. Julien Rollers were involved, although a year ago their leaders and most of their members had been sent to Devil's Island on evidence unearthed by Evans and presented in court by Frémont. There, amid the Corsicans, fevers, tarantulas, whips, dungeon cells and tropical vapors they had, according to the continual complaints received by the Minister of Justice from the guards and other convicts in French Guinea, made the world's toughest place immeasurably tougher. Had the remnants of the gang been reorganized and a new leader found? Most likely, Evans thought. The man who had shot at him from the tree in the
place
Dauphine had been stationed there, probably, to watch the doorway of Professor de la Poussière and report when the alarm was given about the professor's disappearance. It was significant, however, that the sentry, on seeing Evans crossing the
place
at a lonely hour of the night, had, on the spur of the moment, fired with intent to kill. No other gang had a grudge against Homer, or even knew of his existence. Therefore, a St. Julien Roller had been in the tree, and the gang had kidnapped Professor de la Poussière.

By logical steps of reasoning, Homer built up his theory. Professor de la Poussière, from all Evans had been able to learn of him, was in himself dangerous to no one. He was an inoffensive learned man wrapt up in Egyptology. Whoever wanted the professor removed was not afraid of the man, but of his knowledge, and certainly not of the knowledge he had possessed many years, but some important item recently acquired. That would have to do with the Pharaoh Tout-or-Nada, whose mummy had been mishandled in the Louvre and whose ornate casket had been used as a hiding place for the body of the Marquis de la Rose d'Antan. The St. Julien gang had the professor, of that Evans was convinced, but he knew they would not dare to kill Frémont, and much less would they risk kidnapping him.

Excusing himself, he left his friends at the table, cut across the street to the Hotel du Louvre and there put in a call for Hugo Weiss in New York. Within an hour he heard the voice of the genial millionaire and asked Weiss what Stables was buying. He had to hold the line a few minutes while Weiss made inquiries at the museum and then was disappointed to learn that Weiss's enemy had been offered the mummy, in perfect condition, of a pharaoh called Neferkesokar.

“You're sure it's not Tout-or-Nada?” Evans asked.

Another long wait ensued, and Weiss returned to the phone. ‘‘Sorry,” he said. “It's Neferkesokar. N for Nathaniel, E for Ethel, F for François . . . Neferkesokar. That was his hawk name, my young expert tells me. His given name was Sesochr. He reigned from 2933 to 2926
B.C
., and nothing else is known of the chap.”

Evans made rapid notes, again cursing his ignorance of Egyptology.

“How's my friend, Parker Seldon?” Weiss asked. “Enjoying his exile, no doubt.”

“He's bought a copy of
Ulysses,
that's all I can tell you just now,” Evans said. “He did that last night, then disappeared.”

“Clever chap,” said Weiss. “Well, so long.”

The distant receiver clicked and severed the connection.

“I'd better concentrate on Frémont,” said Homer, ruefully. “And save ancient Egypt for poor Lazare.” He had been thinking of Lazare from time to time, but assumed he was safe with Miriam.

Rapidly, Homer made his plans. First, to find out what he could about the St. Julien Rollers, as reorganized, and then to learn what had happened to Frémont. He recrossed the street from the Hotel du Louvre and found his friends contentedly chatting and singing on the
terrasse
of the Café de l'Univers.

“Come with me,” Homer said, and as they sprang to their feet eagerly he added: “And from now on, keep reasonably sober.” Hjalmar, somewhat piqued at the suggestion that he could not hold his liquor, walked the entire length of the
terrasse
on his hands, his legs in the air, without as much as knocking off a glass of beer from one of the tables. Kvek and Tom Jackson swore they would be careful, in the manner of their respective races and countries. To their surprise Evans led them across the
place,
through a tangle of traffic rushing helter-skelter to and from five directions, to the stage entrance of the Comédie Française. The wardrobe mistress was an old friend of Homer Evans. As a matter of fact, Homer had got her daughter a job at the American Embassy, where, although the girl had learned little English, she had been the cause of several other persons learning French. Old Madeleine received Evans cordially and shook hands with his companions, secretly envying them their glow, since the old woman liked a nip herself, on occasion.

With a minimum of words consistent with Gallic politeness, Evans explained what he wanted, namely, French gangsters' costumes for all four of them, and the services of a makeup artist. Hjalmar Jansen's broad face beamed. If they were going out dressed as Apaches, there would be rough stuff, and that was what he craved to round out a satisfactory day. Kvek seemed to have the same idea, for his aristocratic face also was eloquent with satisfaction. The
Herald
reporter, however, made a mild objection.

“You may as well save yourself the trouble of dressing me up,” he said. “Within two minutes I'll be spotted as an American. It's always the same, no matter what I do or where I go. No one listens to my French, and the whole neighborhood starts trying to speak English. I'll do whatever you say, but I'm warning you.”

The makeup man, who had just been led in by old Madeleine, after looking Jackson over, was inclined to agree.

“Father and son, the Merles have been making up all kinds of faces for four generations,” the man said. “But to make this man look like a Frenchman . . .” He spread his hands, narrowly missing Hjalmar's solar plexus with the handle of a paint brush.

It was finally decided that Jackson should be left as he was, except for a snappy new American hat and a pressed coat and trousers. And, on second thought, Homer obtained for Kvek a Volga boatman's outfit, so he could pose as a doorman from Montmartre who had picked up a promising tourist from the U.S.A. Hjalmar got into a
chantier
or coalman's outfit, with cap turned backward, a worn sweater and a soiled dark blue sash a foot wide around his middle. Old Madeleine, with her liking for Homer, saved the best for him, a gangster's costume that had just come in from a second-hand dealer who supplied old clothes to the theater from time to time. And for a proper understanding of what happened later, the recent history of the costume is indispensable.

The night watchman at the morgue was very poorly paid and had a wife who objected to getting out of bed and lighting up the charcoal stove in the middle of the night. Consequently, the family was all out of proportion to the watchman's regular income. Now according to the orthodox procedure, when a body was brought into the morgue and the police had got through with the clothes, they were wrapped in a bundle bearing the name, if any, of the deceased, and were held a reasonable time in a corner closet, to be placed at the disposition of the dead man's relatives, if any of them showed up. The gangster whom Miriam had shot from the tree in the
place
Dauphine had no identifying marks or papers and did not look, to the practiced eye of the watchman, like a chap who would be likely to have relatives who would advertise the fact. So the watchman, hard pressed for cash because his wife was about to give birth to their ninth offspring, stretched a point of procedure and rushed the corpse's clothes to the Flea Market before they were fairly cool. The dealer in the Flea Market had just been fined for obstructing a sidewalk with his pushcart, so he hurried the bundle, in turn, to the Comédie Française and sold it for eight francs, although protesting to heaven that it was worth at least ten. So it happened that Homer Evans, in starting out to stalk the St. Julien Rollers, chanced to be wearing the cap, wasplike coat and high-buttoned trousers of the man who had shot at him less than twelve hours previously. The cap was shaded by a particularly villainous visor and, had Evans ever seen it on its former owner, he undoubtedly might have recognized it. Had he failed to do that, he would have remembered the peculiar color of the scarf that took the place of collar and necktie, for it was of a plaid that combined the ideas of Drs. Toudoux and Truc as to what the color of an overstrained liver should be.

It was quickly agreed that while Evans should do a little scouting in the
rue
St. Severin, former hangout of the St. Julien gang, the others should test their disguises by entering a small café near the Hotel Murphy et du Danube Bleu in the
place
de la Contrescarpe, where Evans would call for them when they were needed. The appearance of an American tourist and a Volga boatman would not be incongruous in that neighborhood, since the Russian cabaret, the Coque d'Or, was near by in the
rue
Mouffetard.

S
ERGEANT
S
CHLUMBERGER
, in the gloomy prefecture, was sitting alone and signing, counter-signing and stamping basketfuls of documents in triplicate and quadruplicate, almost at random. For relief from his troubled thoughts, the honest Alsatian dropped in from time to time on Dr. Hyacinthe Toudoux, whose temper was rising by leaps and bounds.

“How in God's name can I be expected to find causes of death in a corpse from which practically everything of importance has been extracted and which, in the bargain, is stuffed to overflowing with asphalt?” the harassed doctor demanded. Then, seeing that the sergeant was in worse shape than he was, the doctor pulled himself together and, to distract the sergeant's mind, told him the story of the unfortunate school-day episode in the life of old Lazare.