Hugger-Mugger in the Louvre (18 page)

He decided (a) that he must get the door unlocked, (b) that he must arouse Dr. Truc, (c) that he must go to a dentist and be fitted out with teeth. Then he could get money, if he could get to a phone, telegraph or cable office. After that he could buy some clothes, apply for a new passport, report the loss of his travelers' checks, get a drink of water, some champagne and a good square meal. There would still remain the task of locating Kvek and his hotel, in which his baggage was reposing. At that point he remembered the headstone, or whatever it was, that he must deliver to a professor so-and-so at a certain address. All in all, it was a longer list of problems than had ever been presented to the directors of his corporation in a calendar year.

His pillow was thin and hard and, turning it over, he found
Ulysses,
somewhat battered but still legible. The volume had flown open at a point where a Corporal in the British Army was announcing, in Dublin, what he would do to any b– – –, f– – –, b– – – who said a word against the b– – –, f– – –king. From there on the narrative was so compelling that Seldon's aching eyes were riveted to the page, and he decided that if ever he got back to America he would plunk his precocious daughter into a Baptist finishing school and have a heart to heart talk with the mistress about reading lists. It was one thing to let the younger generation in on a few of the facts of life, but quite another to allow drunken soldiers to talk naturally in print. The thick blue book, however, served to take the bottle tycoon's mind away from his immediate plight and gradually worked him into better shape to be overjoyed when he heard a key inserted in the lock and his door swung open about ten inches. Through the opening sidled a huge square-headed blond man with expressionless blue eyes and sandy hair and freckles all over his bare arms and his chest. The giant pointed toward himself and said: “Gus.” That was all he attempted in the way of self-introduction.

Seldon began to gibber and gesticulate, to which Gus paid small attention. From a bucket he poured a brown warm liquid into a paper cup, broke off a chunk from a loaf of coarse gray bread, turned around, left the room and locked the door behind him.

The first locking of the door K. Parker Seldon had been willing to assume was accidental. The second was intentional beyond a doubt. During about three-quarters of an hour the bottle magnate danced with rage, tried to shout for help, and pounded on the heavy panels. After that he tried the coffee, howled and yammered indignantly and spewed it all over the floor.

The flap of the peephole winked, the latch turned, and Gus stepped in again. With a jerk of his head he indicated that Seldon was to precede him into the hallway, which sent a wave of joy over the harassed business man. His elation did not last more than a minute. He was led into a courtyard, with walls six meters high and unscalable. The door clanked behind him. In the yard were a dozen men in all sorts of nondescript attire. The nearest one was on his hands and knees, with an ear flat to the ground. It turned out that he was listening for worms.

Another chap, more than six feet tall and wearing faded pink pajamas several sizes too small, made a furtive sign to Seldon and led him to a corner of the yard, away from the others. The American felt a faint temblor of hope until the man started speaking.

“They think I'm crazy but I'm not,” he said.

The truth dawned on K. Parker Seldon like thunder across any number of bays. He was in a lunatic asylum. The eruption of what he intended to be speech, resulting from his discovery, caused his fellow-inmates to conclude that Seldon was no man to offer confidences. The man with the high-water pajamas backed hastily away, with pity written all over his cadaverous face. Seldon, nettled, pursued him, baying, burbling and waving his arms. He was determined to get his points across, namely: that he had been robbed and victimized; that he was an American citizen and, by God, someone would have something to answer for; and furthermore that when he found Dr. Balthazar Truc he was going to reach down his throat and turn him inside out. To escape what he thought would be physical violence, the man in pink pajamas climbed the only tree. Other inmates, alarmed, began to yawp and to howl, bumping each other as they ran pointlessly to and fro.

A large black-haired woman in white, one of the nurses, saw the commotion from an upper window and reached for the house telephone.

“Tell Gus there's trouble in Courtyard Seven,” she cooed and went on with her work.

By that time K. Parker Seldon was so determined to make someone understand, that he tried, by jumping a foot or so off the ground, to catch hold of the pajamas of the man in the tree. He had just succeeded when Gus, very bored, came on the scene. His coming had a quieting effect on everyone except Seldon who, waving the torn fragment of pink cloth he had in his hand, walked straight up to the big gorilla and socked him in the nose.

A howl of approval rose from every quarter, including the window where the black-haired nurse was standing, arms akimbo. Gus, who had a hopeless yen for the big handsome woman, was chagrined at showing up so badly.

“Naughty,” he said, in some kind of Scandinavian French.

The irate jar magnate took a healthy swing and hit Gus again.

The smooth voice of Dr. Truc was heard, just behind the freckled attendant. The doctor had a way of appearing and disappearing unexpectedly.

“I should have warned you, Gus. The new patient is dangerous,” the doctor said.

Seldon thought no more about Gus, except to dive between his legs to get at Dr. Truc. Gus, at best a slow thinker, had not been prepared for that maneuver. The doctor abandoned his bedside manner and his professional dignity and started to run, only to be tackled from behind. Before Gus could interfere, his boss was flat on his face in the dust with the new patient sitting on him and pounding the back of his head with both fists. The other patients, whose life contained so little cheer, were being repaid for months of hardship but none of them enjoyed the incident as did the black-haired nurse. Above the din her hearty laugh rang out, and she shouted encouragement to the game little business man in German, French, Hungarian and her native Russian, which seemed to have an edge on the other languages for booming mirth above the noise of crowds.

Of course, Courtyard Seven was between Courtyards Six and Eight and the racket spread all over the large institution until old ladies were clawing at bric-a-brac, young girls tearing off their clothes, old men prancing like stallions and nurses, guards and attendants running every which way.

Gus's arrival at the doctor's side would, in ordinary circumstances, have put an end to the conflict, but in falling, Dr. Truc had spilled Seldon's express checks from his pocket. Those Seldon had recognized in time to slip from Gus's grasp and start giving Dr. Truc the boots. Of course, the American's efforts were accompanied by lisps, gurgles and squeaks that would have caused the occupants of the Tower of Babel to jump from high windows and perish.

Having reduced the proprietor of the Sens Unique to a pulp, Seldon eluded Gus's ham-like hands again and grabbed up the checks, which in the scuffle had been loosened from their binding. Waving them in his hand, and pointing to himself and then upward toward God, he raced wildly around the yard and a general alarm was sounded. Gongs clanged, attendants in duck and bruisers in white jerseys poured in from doorways and windows. The hilarious nurse upstairs started rooting in English.

“Throw them over the wall,” she yelled.

Seldon, harassed as he was, heard the encouraging words and glanced upward at their source.

“Throw them, little dove! Little wild duck of the north!”

The bottle king caught on. He drew back his arm and without a windup sent the wad of checks and his card case flying over the high barrier, and the breeze from the near-by river scattered calling cards, telephone numbers, contraceptive devices, Life Savers, a Chinese laundry check, and a letter of introduction to Professor Zacharie de la Poussière, in all directions.

“I adore you,” shouted the nurse. “I throw you a hundred kisses.”

Dr. Balthazar Truc was still on the ground, too woozy to attempt to rise. Gus was no match for the American patient, as a sprinter, and several of the other patients were joining in the game and forming a sort of interference for Seldon as he charged back and forth. Finally, the Russian nurse decided it was time to take a hand. She hurried down into Courtyard Seven.

“You've done enough for today,” she said, smiling, to Seldon. “It's time for your shower.”

He ran to her side, she took his arm and led him away. “This afternoon,” she whispered, as he was being locked in his room.

W
HEN
it is taken into consideration that at the time Miriam was born there was scarcely a fence in all Montana, and that her father, from whom she had inherited her sometimes hasty temper, had considered moving his ranch to a secluded spot because in a single week in 1903 two covered wagons had passed westward along the trail, it can be better understood how the Western girl reacted when she found herself between four stained and moldy walls, a dank low ceiling and a rough concrete floor not more than ten feet by twelve. Moreover, her recollections of the tang of the sage brush with which the great open spaces are generously carpeted did not make it easier to endure the fumes which arose from a certain corner of her cell.

To be sure, she was in quod voluntarily and the door was not locked, but the struggle between her inherited claustrophobia and her determination to stick with the suspect, Lazare, was closely contested and did not tend to make her more amenable to Sergeant Schlumberger's well-meant suggestions. In fact, she went so far as to infer, in a talk with him, that there is something in kraut, which if indulged in to excess, dulls the wits and renders the eater unfit for human society, and particularly for holding public office or employment. That was a sore point with the Alsatian, whose mother had always stored away a barrel or two of sauerkraut in case of sickness, and who had been ridiculed before on the same score by members of the force who hailed from the Midi or the Western provinces of France.

By the time the sergeant sent for Lazare to be brought to the office for preliminary grilling, such friction had developed that Miriam dashed through two hundred yards of offices in order to protest to Dr. Hyacinthe Toudoux, and on her way upset approximately four cubic yards of wire baskets filled with documents, six swivel chairs and two villainous-looking old women who tried to stab her with rusty ink-crushed pens as she passed.

Dr. Toudoux responded with alacrity, as soon as he had scrubbed some of the asphalt from beneath his worn finger-nails. The corpse or mummy of the late Marquis de la Rose d'Antan was still stretched on his laboratory table and the doctor was, if possible, further than ever from arriving at the cause or hour of death. In the prefect's office, where Schlumberger had confronted the demoralized taxidermist, Toudoux really let himself go.

“This man, your prisoner, is on the verge of a nervous collapse,” the doctor said, glaring at the Alsatian. “If you persist in questioning him now I shall prefer charges against you, personally, and your negligent superiors who, in this case, are showing the ineptitude for police work that they habitually display in the field of science.”

“But it's not my fault that I find myself in charge of this hornet's nest of related cases,” protested Schlumberger.

“Why not resign?” the doctor asked.

“I must eat,” said the Alsatian with dignity.

“Not necessarily,” the medical examiner said. “In any event, this unfortunate man, who is as innocent of wrongdoing as I am, should be sent to a comfortable hospital for rest and observation, and must not be disturbed again until he has recovered from the shock of his false arrest.”

The doctor slammed the door and left the room, and restrained himself just in time from kicking the two old women who claimed they had been injured when Miriam upset them and demanded certificates for accident compensation and leave. “Was ever a man of science subjected to such outrageous interruptions?” he said, when once he had reached his laboratory again. But his previous outburst was nothing compared with what followed when he picked up the
En-Tout-Cas
from the chest of the defunct marquis, where the messenger had laid it, and read the health column signed by Dr. Balthazar St.-J. Truc. Tearing off his white apron and white linen coat, he got into his street clothes, nearly ripping them to pieces in the process, snatched two sharp pointed foils from the wall and caromed down the stairs to the sidewalk where he hailed a taxicab.

“So I'm an impostor! I'm color blind, eh? Livers do not show streaks of heliotrope, as any experienced dissector knows! And wine of California does not swell them, but shrinks them! We shall settle these points in the Bois,” were some of the exclamations overheard by the chauffeur as the taxi careened toward the Café du Dôme. The wild look on the face of the doctor, the way he laid about him with the foils, and the cryptic nature of his soliloquies, made the driver so nervous that he sideswiped an empty hearse which was speeding back from a second-class funeral and was so delayed by the resultant formalities that Toudoux, handing him distractedly a hundred-franc note, continued his journey on foot and, because of his manner and his weapons, was given a wide berth by the sidewalk crowd.

Miriam, as soon as the doctor had left the prefect's office, led Lazare back to his cell and tried to comfort him, but she was alarmed to notice that, while the unfortunate taxidermist had lost his attitude of fear, he was beginning to take less and less interest in what was going on around him. He had been deprived of his belt, his string tie, his spectacles and his shoestrings but the searchers had overlooked a small piece of carpenter's chalk in one of his pockets, so, after Miriam had assured him that she would see him through and that once Evans found out about his arrest, he would promptly be released, the old man sat cross-legged on the concrete floor and started scribbling hieroglyphics on the wall. A guard whose attention had been attracted by the strange scrawls and the behavior of the prisoner, generally, tossed into the cell through the bars a copy of one of the newspapers.