Hugger-Mugger in the Louvre (16 page)

The proprietor, who was tact personified, smiled at the orchestra and the musicians plunged into “Tipperary,” which
in
many parts of France is believed to be the English and American anthem. Kvek winked broadly across the bar and said, “Champagne.” That was enough, and when the Russian added, “For the house,” the effect was electrical. The regular customers, even the reluctant young man who had been deprived of Nicole, rallied around to swell the proprietor's profits. Kvek led the way to a table across the dance floor from where Hjalmar was chatting with Nicole, who, because she was afraid to go back to her former partner, stayed as close as she could to Jansen's broad shoulder. Champagne was served all around, with a bottle for the band, and when the music started up again, Hjalmar found himself on the horns of a dilemma. Evans had told him to drowse, but if he drowsed, Nicole's boy friend, whose name he had learned was Godasse, or Godo the Whack, would beat up the girl. With the aid of a fresh cognac to spike the sweet champagne, the painter reasoned it out this way. The drowsiness he had been instructed to feign was to indicate that he was paying no attention to the others. If he danced with Nicole, in a nonchalant way, the same result would be attained.

“Come on, kid,” he said, and she snuggled up to him in a fatalistic way he could not help admiring. He had got in deeper than at first he had intended, still there was no deserting a frail young girl in such an emergency.

The entrance of Homer Evans just then shifted the focus of attention and had an effect way beyond anything Homer had planned or expected. The men who were dancing, except for Hjalmar, and Kvek, who had annexed a supple blonde called Nadia, stopped dead in their tracks. Trouvaille, the proprietor, ducked behind the bar. And Tom Jackson, to relieve the situation, let out another “Whoopee” that fell entirely flat.

“What's wrong?” asked Hjalmar, keeping step with the music and bending down until the girl's lips were close to his ear.

Nicole was trembling violently, looking first at Evans' low-slung cap and mustard-colored scarf streaked with heliotrope, then at the doorway of the back room, in which was standing Godo the Whack, his malevolent eyes protruding from their sockets.

“He's got on Sancho's clothes,” the girl whispered.

“Sancho? Who's he?” asked Hjalmar.

“The guy who got killed last night,” Nicole said.

“Dance with him, and put him wise. He's a friend of mine,” Hjalmar said.

Nicole, right then and there, had to make a decision. Either she had to go back to Godo the Whack and take her medicine or she had to string along with Hjalmar. The latter course she chose. In dancing, Hjalmar maneuvered the girl near the table Homer had chosen and said, in English, under his breath, “Dance the next one with this baby. She's got news for you.” And with that, the big Norwegian began to choke and splutter. Hastily he glided away, taking such long steps that Nicole was dragged along with only the tips of her toes on the floor. In front of the bar, Hjalmar burst into such hearty laughter that the disgruntled Apaches came scurrying to the doorway and glared in from the back room and Lvov Kvek burst into a Russian song about crows and the beautiful month of May. Jackson got up and did a tap dance, the beat of which the orchestra caught promptly.

Surprised as he was by his reception, Evans did not think for a moment that Hjalmar would have disregarded his instructions without purpose, so when Jackson had subsided and called for more champagne, Homer crossed the floor and asked the Norwegian curtly, in gas-house French, if he might dance with his girl.

Hjalmar nodded, but in order to keep up pretenses, also scowled so savagely that Nicole, for a moment, was in doubt as to what she should do.

“Get some others on the floor,” Homer muttered, for he knew that if he and Nicole were performing alone they would have little chance to talk. Hjalmar lumbered over to Jackson's table and grabbed Nadia. The reporter objected, and was pushed back into his chair. Kvek began to bellow and received a kick on the shins underneath the table. Four or five girls, all having been deserted by their men, were huddled around the bar. Tom and the Russian approached them, took the first two handy, and began dancing around. As the reporter passed the half-open doorway of the back room he noticed that it was empty. All the Apaches had disappeared.

Coincidently Homer was receiving and digesting information, and to say that he was dismayed would be putting it mildly. He was sure, however, that the regulars who had quit the Bal des Vêtements Brulés were members of the reorganized St. Julien Rollers. Instead of handing Nicole back to Hjalmar, when the dance was over, he sat at the table with them. The Norwegian had stopped laughing, but his face was decidedly gay.

“Will those birds be back?” he asked.

“If not, they'll be shadowed,” Homer said. He had taken the precaution to get four plainclothes men from the prefecture and station them in near-by doorways.

“I hope they come back,” the painter said, and his wish was fulfilled on the instant. The swinging doors parted and Godo the Whack came in like an eel through the entrance of a trap. He was followed by his six pals who had left him by way of the back door, and two more gangsters they had picked up outside. Homer stared calmly at their faces, to see if he could recognize any of them and to be sure he would know them when he met them again. Hjalmar, prompted by his experience on the waterfronts of the world, began his inspection at the other end and noticed at once that each of the gangsters was wearing only one sock, and had a bulge in his right coat pocket. There flashed into his mind simultaneously the memory of a large sandpile just up the hill from the entrance of the hall. At the same time, Kvek chanced to look behind him, since he had seated himself carelessly in front of a window, and on the sill he saw a sock stuffed with sand.

“I shall remember this date. It's one of my lucky days, my friend,” the Russian said to Jackson. Tom was thinking quite the opposite. Eight thugs were standing purposefully between him and the swinging doors; still he had the presence of mind to order more champagne, reflecting that a full bottle was better than an empty one if it had to be used as a weapon. That was the only use that came readily to mind for the champagne Trouvaille served to stray Americans.

The atmosphere was so tense that Nicole's large dark eyes glowed with apprehension and something violent would surely have happened had not the swinging doors opened slowly, once more, causing the gangsters who had their backs to them to jump like cats and land on the balls of their feet. A sleek little man with a bronze complexion, black hair and shapely black eyebrows came in, smiling experimentally. He was dressed all in brown, hat, tie, socks, gloves and everything to match. Behind him, in correct tweed, was an athletic blue-eyed Englishman who looked around him with unconcealed distaste. His discomfiture increased when he saw Tom Jackson, in rather loud clothes, his arm around the blonde called Nadia and with four champagne bottles in front of him, three being empty and the fourth in a bucket of ice. The Englishman pretended so pointedly that he hadn't recognized the reporter that the latter took the matter to heart.

“If there's any place in town you don't patronize,” Jackson said, “I'd like the address, so I can go there myself.”

“It's the press johnny,” said the Englishman to his dark companion. “Can you make out what the fellow says?”

That was enough for Tom Jackson. Unmindful that Evans was trying to attract his attention and signal “As you were,” the reporter untangled himself from the blonde, took off his glasses, and socked the Englishman in the jaw.

“Well struck,” roared Hjalmar, clapping the tips of his fingers gently together. The gangsters, however, who had been set to go over the top, were precipitated into action. In a body, they started toward Homer. Kvek, with a Cossack yell, picked up his table and, using it as a shield, charged into the Rollers from the left. Hjalmar, following suit, drove into them with his table from the right until the gangsters were squeezed together like steers in a loading corral. Jackson and the Englishman were having a strictly private fight in the corner by the bar. Trouvaille, the proprietor, was yelling for order and expecting the police, the loss of his license, and other calamities. Along the right hand wall, Nicole was sitting wide-eyed and pale in her chair, the table having been jerked from in front of her. It was thus that she attracted the attention of Godo the Whack, who squirmed out of the solid mass of his pals and started in her direction.

Evans, who had been about to finish off the Rollers with a frontal attack, paused a moment to take a swing at Godo, who was within a foot of the terrified Nicole. The Whack was knocked flat on his face and passed out, and Homer tossed his limp body on top of the seven thugs wedged in between Kvek and Hjalmar, who were increasing the pressure gleefully.

“Don't let 'em get out the back way,” Homer said, and his lieutenants nodded. “Chase 'em out through the swinging doors.”

“Hold my table a minute,” Hjalmar said, and Evans took it from his hands. The big Norwegian grabbed the hindmost gangster and heaved him like a sack of meal in the direction of the main exit. The Roller hit the swinging doors head first and passed through them as they flapped outward. As the doors were swinging inward, the second thug was stunned by them but managed to pull himself together and start down the hill. The remaining five who were conscious, and as anxious to get out before the cops arrived as Evans seemed to be to get rid of them, charged out of the Bal, propelled by the boots of Hjalmar and Kvek. Godo the Whack still was unconscious but he began to twitch and mutter, so Hjalmar tossed him over behind the bar with such accuracy that practically no glassware was broken.

Doggedly in the corner Tom Jackson and the Englishmen with blue eyes were pummeling and trundling one another, with strict adherence to the Marquis of Queensberry rules. The contest seemed to be horse and horse. The reporter could hit his opponent but could not knock him out. The Englishman, who boxed formally and stiffly, like an old engraving of prizefighters of yore, had a punch but couldn't land it. Had not the dark partner of the Englishman seen fit to interfere, the fight would have been allowed to progress uninterruptedly until one or both contestants got tired. As it was, the black-haired stranger tried to trip Tom from behind and Kvek felt justified in evening up the odds. He paid no attention to the slim dark man, who was obviously inexperienced in free-for-alls. Instead, the Russian caught hold of the Englishman's suspenders and, after jerking the buttons out by the roots, he ripped open the fly and the trousers were soon down around the Englishman's well-tanned knees.

That gave Homer the opportunity he had been waiting for. The mysterious pair, of whose appearance at the Dôme he had already been told, intrigued his interest. Swiftly he went to the exit, opened the doors and beckoned a patrolman he had previously instructed to stay out of the fray. Trouvaille groaned and began to protest innocence. Nicole and the other girls huddled together in a corner. Jackson and the Englishman stopped fighting.

“What's this?” the policeman inquired.

“Take their names and addresses,” Evans whispered.

The dark-haired partner, who was more presentable than his confrere whose pants were down, produced a card which read:

69
RUE
R
EAUMUR
, P
ARIS

“Your papers,” the
agent
demanded.

The dark man, of Armenian origin, had an Egyptian passport with a name the officer did not attempt to read but which Evans quickly memorized for future reference: Hagup Bogigian. The Englishman, holding up his buttonless trousers with one hand, fished in his coat pockets with the other and produced a British passport which gave his name as Basil Hamborough. They were the members of the importing and exporting firm. The dark one explained to the bewildered policeman that he had taken the names of Xerxes because foreigners could remember it, even if they couldn't say it. Basil Hamborough, it developed, had an uncle named Lewson-Phipps who had given him his share in the business with the understanding that Hamborough should not come to England more than twice a year, and never stay more than forty-eight hours.

“What were you doing here? Why did you come, and in business hours? Surely not to dance,” the officer said.

The Englishman gave a contemptuous look at the frightened girls in the corner. “Most certainly not,” he said.

Tom Jackson, annoyed by the man's assumption of social superiority, made another pass at him, and was restrained by Homer.

“I like to dance,” the dark one said. “My friend and partner came with me, simply to watch.”

“Oh, I say,” the Englishman said.

Evans winked at the officer to let it pass, and the latter, after warning the proprietor against further outbreaks of violence, went back to his post near the summit of the hill. The members of the firm of Lewson-Phipps & Xerxes left hastily in the other direction, the Anglo-Saxon partner spluttering indignantly as he trekked downhill with both hands gripping his neatly-tailored trousers. Nicole, with true French thrift, was on her hands and knees retrieving the buttons which had been scattered from one end of the dance hall to the other. When she saw that Evans, Hjalmar and Jackson were about to go, however, she abandoned her minor economy and stood up, chilled with fright.

“We'll have to take the kid along,” Hjalmar said. “If we don't, those scissorbills will murder her.”

Evans, who wanted to talk with Nicole on his own account, nodded his agreement and Nicole, snatching her hat from a peg in the back room, picked up her worn handbag and stood obediently at Jansen's side. The big Norwegian had misgivings, but he also had a heart. It was one thing to acquire women, and quite another to get loose from them, he knew from bitter experience. Nevertheless, the girl was with them when they entered the Hotel Murphy et du Danube Bleu. Bridgette Murphy eyed her somewhat coldly until Evans asked her to take care of the girl and not to let any pimps come near her.