Hugger-Mugger in the Louvre (29 page)

In the loft of Lewson-Phipps & Xerxes, Sergeant Bonnet was seated precariously on a case of warming pans with intricately carved handles, from northern Sweden, with his feet on a porcelain dragon of the Sui dynasty, early seventh century. He was concealed from the doorway by a huge packing case containing a state carriage, embossed in gold, of Philip II of Spain. Through a rift between boxes, he could see the somewhat bored expression on the face of the mounted chimpanzee and the sergeant was beginning to share the monkey's ennui. Nothing whatever had happened since Bonnet had been stationed in the warehouse. As the streaming of employees from near-by mercantile establishments indicated the hour of noon, however, the sergeant was startled by the opening of the metal doors. Crouching in his hiding place, he saw Monsieur “X,” which was as far as the police force could get with Xerxes or Hagup Bogigian, enter the warehouse, after looking carefully around him. The Armenian paused a moment, then tiptoed to the other end of the spacious room, making his way skillfully between the multitude of hazards in the shape of packing cases, rolls of carpets, etc. Approaching the chimpanzee, Xerxes paused again, to look and listen. Then he reached for the keys, and hastily tucked them into his pocket.

When the Armenian left the warehouse, Bonnet was not half a block behind him. But long experience in the devious paths of Egypt and Morocco, and a rather candid tendency toward self-analysis, had taught the importer that if he was not being followed, he deserved to be. Consequently, Bonnet was so hard put to keep his man in sight that he had not a moment to give the high sign to a fellow officer, although he passed within hailing distance of any number of them. The quarry headed down the
rue
Montmartre, a sartorial symphony in brown which blended with the sides of beef and stained aprons in front of the meat and poultry shops. He cut closely around the huge market shed, hugged the circular wall of the Bourse, darted across the
rue
du Louvre, through the
rue
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, mingled with the crowd under the archway near the Café du Rohan and leaned over the subway entrance stairway.

Had not Bonnet been watching Xerxes so closely he would not have seen him drop the keys into the crowd that was descending the stairs. As it was, the sergeant let out a yell, involuntarily, that caused Xerxes to make a quick about-face, like a cat. Seeing Bonnet approaching at high speed, the Armenian ran down the subway station stairs and delivered brief but fervent thanks to God when he heard the rumble of an approaching train. He squeezed through just as the automatic doors were closing, leaving Bonnet panting and swearing outside, and in less than thirty seconds was being transported at high speed toward the Tuileries.

The disgruntled Bonnet reached the prefecture just in time to hear Schlumberger, his rival for the next promotion, recount with satisfaction how he had trapped Professor de la Poussière into betraying his colleague, Lazare.

“Insane, my eye,” said Schlumberger. “He performed a mental feat, on the day he stuffed the poor Marquis, that only six men in France could accomplish.”

“Enough,” said Frémont, who was not only on the horns of a dilemma but felt himself being punctured in a tender spot by both of them. Hydrangea, piqued because he would not take her croaker fishing, had laid down the law in no uncertain terms. When Mr. Evans said a man was innocent, he was blameless and white as snow, was the Blackbird's dictum. Yet Schlumberger was piling up the most imposing evidence to the contrary. As so many men before him, the Chief was trying to choose between domestic peace and professional integrity. To divert his mind, he turned to Bonnet, who had been watching the stuffed monkey.

“Well?” the Chief began. “Don't tell me your man showed up and got away.”

“That's about the size of it,” said Bonnet, disconsolately.

Tom Jackson, whose reporter's instinct was ever uppermost, asked: “Who was he?”

“The dark one, Monsieur ‘X' etc. . . .” said Bonnet. “He came in, nervous as a woodchuck, tiptoed up to the monkey and took the keys and cord from around his neck. Then he beat it. I trailed him to the Metro Palais Royal where he chucked the keys into the crowd. Then he spotted me. I must have yelled or something . . .”

“You should carry a bugle, to make it easier . . .” the Chief began.

“Well, I didn't know what to do. Whether to follow Monsieur ‘X' or look for the keys.”

“Of course, you couldn't be expected to remember that the keys were phony, and the gent was real. That would have required quick thinking, putting two and two together,” was Frémont's peevish rejoinder.

Schlumberger tried not to look superior, but the going was very hard. He had been bawled out unmercifully for pinching Lazare, and he needed a raise in pay. Bonnet had given him the laugh when, just recently, he had shadowed the wrong clergyman in a Rosary set-up and dragged into the prefecture a young nephew of the Archbishop of York. The resulting protest by the British Embassy had brought an even sixteen tall hats into the prefect's office. Bonnet, however, knew the Alsatian was secretly enjoying the performance.

“I'll find the man, don't worry,” he said.

“Pray do,” said the Chief. “Preferably, before you come back into the prefecture again, even on payday.”

Tom Jackson, who always had a twinge of feeling for the underdog and who was still hoping to catch up with the Englishman again, overtook Bonnet in the avenue and suggested that they call at Lewson-Phipps & Xerxes, as representatives of the New York
Herald,
and offer to give the firm some free advertising on condition that photographs of both partners be furnished. After lunch time the English partner went in for some form of stiff exercise, so he would be feeling fit when tea came along. Xerxes, as the reader knows, was just then in the subway. The clerk, a hold-over from the days of Lewson-Phipps himself, looked at the reporter and his plain-clothes escort disdainfully. Old Lewson-Phipps had never held with publicity.

“I have just left Mr. Xerxes,” Jackson said, feeling sure that the Armenian would not break in on them. “He said for you to give me a picture.”

Exuding disapproval, the clerk complied, and Jackson agreed to take the photograph back to the prefecture to have it rephotographed so that several prints could be made. Bonnet, on his mettle, refused to enter, and waited at the Café au Marché des Fleurs, so indignant that he piled one Pernod right on top of another and was muttering when the reporter returned.

Had the sergeant noticed the satisfaction written on Jackson's face, he would have known in advance that his luck had changed. As it was, he had to wait for Jackson's drink to come and go before the latter told him what had happened.

Since the day of their arrest, the suspects Angorre and Dubonnet had been receiving their pay on the basis of an eight-hour day, with time and a half for overtime. When no outsiders were around, the Chief had given them the run of the prefecture, so they chanced to be in the office playing parchesi when Jackson came in with the picture. Homer Evans had been there, also the Chief and Sergeant Schlumberger. Of those present, only Evans had noticed that when the photograph of Xerxes was produced, Dubonnet, the junior guard from the Hall of Pills, turned greenish white, like the inside of a fallen pear-blossom, and, slamming down the dice box, left the room and re-entered his cell, where he sat morosely with his back to the door. Evans, after waiting a moment tactfully, joined him and little by little drew forth the admission that on an occasion all too recent Dubonnet, having found a letter addressed to his wife, Mathilde, and signed “X,” had in a rage ransacked their lodgings and come upon a photograph, affectionately inscribed, from “X” and corresponding to the one brought in by reporter Jackson.

“I do not wish to know who the man is, monsieur. Spare me that, I beg of you. But if he has been given the designation ‘X' by Mathilde, does that not presuppose a series of lovers A, B, C, D, etc., all through the alphabet? A man as poor as I am, who marries a girl with Mathilde's face and figure, cannot expect to go through life unscathed. But ‘X,' after all. There are such things as restraint and moderation.”

I
N
M
ONTPARNASSE
, and elsewhere in the same chronometrical zone, the
aperitif
hour was approaching. Five more liners loaded with Americans had landed at Cherbourg and Le Havre and the boat trains had brought the visitors to the Gare St. Lazare, from which they had scattered to various hotels. Of those who chose the Right Bank of the Seine, it is better not to speak, but the thousand-odd who preferred the Left were seated in the four principal cafés, the Dôme, the Coupole, the Rotonde and the Select, enjoying the play of sunlight among the leaves of the plane trees, the easy tread of Algerian and Moroccan rug peddlers and the drinks with which they were working up a thirst for the appetizer proper. The afternoon was several degrees balmier than that on which the
terrasses
had been animated by the news that
The Pansy
had been stolen.

Miriam, as she turned from the
rue
Vavin into the boulevard Montparnasse, was agreeably surprised as she noticed that the colorful crowd had been augmented by another influx of her compatriots. She liked Americans, especially in large numbers. The fact is that in the Montparnasse quarter spiritual solitude is more easily obtained when the district is filled with people. In the dreary winter months, those quarterites who do not have the price of a trip southward stand out like brick outhouses in a fog and are easily spotted by the possessors of glittering eyes.

Having tired of herself in dark blue, Miriam had changed to a becoming beige ensemble, embroidered in the same color and showing off to excellent advantage her clear complexion and expressive eyes. Throughout several changes of mode, since the Hugo Weiss case had brought her into association with Homer Evans, she had stuck to the normal waistline, in spite of the pleas of
couturiers
with other styles to sell. She couldn't explain to the dress designers, quite naturally, that it would be awkward to have a holstered automatic dragging down around her knees, like the clapper of a churchbell, and again there were aesthetic reasons why she did not want to wear her gun too high. The dressmakers concluded she was merely obstinate, but could not withhold their admiration when they saw her in street attire. In choosing the beige, notwithstanding its high visibility, she had remembered that Homer had liked it especially, and although she had involved him in the Louvre murder case in order to provide distraction for his mind she did not want him to lapse into the habit of intellectual pursuits, to the exclusion of other piquant phases of life. Her stockings were of flesh-colored silk, her shoes of beige canvas, garnished lightly with brown leather. The hand-bag provided a note of color, echoed by the topaz brooch Evans himself had selected.

It was understood between them that at five o'clock or thereabout they should meet, when it was convenient, for a drink at the Dôme, but, knowing how much routine Evans had had before him when they parted at lunch time, she hardly dared hope to find him in his place just left of the center and well toward the rear. When finally she saw that he was there waiting for her, in one of his best moods, which combined physical relaxation with humorous mental activity, she hurried her pace until she was almost on a trot.

“I was afraid you'd be late,” she said, settling comfortably beside him.

“I had plenty of time to spare,” he said, his sensitive fingers touching lightly the cool frosted glass. “In fact, I walked over from the prefecture and spent half an hour in the Delacroix museum. Strange chap, Delacroix. Couldn't draw very well, was as full of absurd and romantic ideas as our chimpanzee is full of Lazare's homemade stuffing, but what gusto when he got a paint brush in his hand! Ah, paint. How pale and lifeless on a pallette, how deeply imbued with verve and spirit when applied to a canvas by a master, be he a wise man or a magnificent fool . . . Ah, yes. I had another few moments that were by no means dull. I found a laundry, over near the old morgue, for men with only one shirt. They sit there, naked to the waist, and chat while their shirt is washed and ironed, fee 1 franc. You wouldn't believe how varied the conversation was . . .”

“Homer, you didn't . . .” She was looking hard at his shirt, which was freshly laundered.

“But why not?” he asked.

“Excuse me, dear,” she said. “I should know, by this time, that no door is closed to you. But, Homer . . . I know I shouldn't talk shop at this hour . . . Still . . .” She looked at him anxiously.

“You're troubled about Lazare,” he said kindly. Then his eyes lighted and he smiled his most tolerant smile. “All of my associates seem to have some pet obsession. Frémont can't sleep nights because of
The Pansy;
Schlumberger loses weight before one's eyes, trying to figure out what Maitre Francois Ronron will use as a defense; Madame de la Poussière's peace of mind is tied up with the freedom of her friend, the Marchioness; Bonnet's future happiness depends on finding the wily Armenian, Xerxes; the Prefect of Police, M. de la Chemise Farcie, dotes on mountain trout; Seldon wants to nobble the arch-crook Stables, and add lists of figures to those already in his bankbooks; Hjalmar and Kvek crave violent exercise and entertainment in the Roman style; lastly, you, my darling, are inviting wrinkles and gray hairs on behalf of a captive taxidermist. Of all my acquaintances, I seem to be the only one who needs nothing at all.”

The gasp that came from Miriam and the agonized look that crossed her face caused him hastily to add “That is to say, nothing more than I have.” As he reached for her hand, the color returned to her cheeks, and her lips. “Forgive me, I'm long-winded,” Homer continued. “You shall have your heart's desire this very night. So, within certain limits, shall the rest of our merry throng. We shall have dinner ... let me see . . . One has to select one's menu with care when the meal is to be followed by an active adventure. Certain foods induce contemplation, but the contemplation's all over in this case. I must find something that stimulates energy, tunes up the nerves and the circulation. As a matter of fact, shellfish and a tinge of saffron seem to be indicated. An
arroz marinero
in the Basque restaurant near the gare de l'Est. Achuri is the name. A cousin of the proprietor was very decent to me when I was in Madrid. Taught me the secret of
chipirones.”