Hugger-Mugger in the Louvre (35 page)

“Then I shall be free? I can go where I will, do what I like?” asked the Marchioness, moved but still in remarkable control of herself.

“I can promise that, Madame,” said Maitre Ronron, and wild joy pervaded the room.

Dr. Balthazar Truc, being careful to keep his distance from Dr. Hyacinthe Toudoux, came forward, rubbing his hands. “I assure you, gentlemen, I shall do all in my power . . .”

“You will sit down at your desk and write an order, to the effect that Madame de la Rose d'Antan may be safely left in my care, and I shall take her away from here tonight,” the lawyer said. “I will see to it that a physician is in constant attendance until the formalities of her release have been attended to. Then, if I were you, I should either leave France by the first plane or commit suicide, preferably both. None of us here intends that you shall continue your chicanery, even though you have dishonored the law of your country by perverting its intent.”

“Don't be too severe,” Evans said, and when Miriam looked at him in astonishment she was sure that he had winked at her. “But let us be thorough. Suppose, Chief, you take a look around the premises to make sure there is no evidence on which an arrest can be made?” And when Frémont passed near him, he added, in a whisper: “Begin with the bedroom.”

The Chief, accompanied by Bonnet and Schlumberger, started off, side by side, and a moment later the others heard an exultant yell. Frémont came running out of the bedroom, handcuffs in hand, and threw himself on Dr. Truc. After the latter's wrists had been locked together, the Chief began burbling and pointing.

Maitre Ronron, followed by Hjalmar, Tom Jackson, Kvek, Hydrangea and Miriam, burst into the bedroom and there, hanging on the wall near the canopied four-posted bed was
The Pansy.

In a jiffy, Sergeant Schlumberger had whipped out a silk handkerchief, and carefully took down the famous Watteau. Bonnet stared at the frame through a reading glass. “Not a fingerprint. Wiped clean,” he said. “We've got him dead to rights, just the same.”

Dr. Balthazar Truc was so dumbfounded that he could not even attempt an explanation. If ever a man appeared guilty, that man was the proprietor of the Sens Unique. The frame in which
The Pansy
was reposing was not unlike the frames of the Boucher and Fragonards that also graced the walls of the bed-chamber. Truc could offer no alibi. He had previously admitted having been in Paris on the day of the theft and, in his demoralized condition, could not account for his movements or his time. He was hustled into the Chiefs limousine and after the names of a dozen willing witnesses had been inscribed in Frémont's notebook, the Chief, his prisoner and the chastened Sergeant Schlumberger were driven along the moonlit road leading toward the capital.

The second car in the east-bound cavalcade contained the Marchioness de la Rose d'Antan and Hélène de la Poussière, who was to be her hostess until her sanity could be technically established. And to be on hand in case their joy proved too much for them, Dr. Toudoux, his foils having been chucked into the baggage rack, rode with them. Kvek, Hjalmar and Tom Jackson escorted K. Parker Seldon to the Plaza Athènée where the business man got into possession of his clothes again and they all settled down to an appropriate carouse. At the end of two unforgettable weeks, however, Seldon still carried under his arm the battered copy of
Ulysses.

It will not be necessary to say how Lazare felt when he received from Hugo Weiss a request that he spend two years in Egypt, which the taxidermist had never seen, to act as the genial millionaire's Egyptian representative, with instructions to explore and report at will. His enthusiasm was in no way dampened by the fact that his pocket was picked on his first night in Cairo. Madame de la Poussière, accompanied by the professor, made her coveted voyage to New York, where her husband was given a touching reception by American scholars and she was welcomed in the best society. In fact, the professor began to take an interest in the modern world and she, observing how her husband was respected abroad, started reading his books and was fascinated with the lore of ancient Egypt. That brought them closer together and resulted in an ideal companionship.

The idyllic existence of K. Parker Seldon, of the American Jar and Bottle Corporation, with the second Mrs. Seldon, née Dargomyzshkov, is the awe of Des Moines and the boys there complain that when a tall handsome Russian blows into town, as he often does, their dates with Isabel, Seldon's daughter, are automatically called off.

The romance between the former Marchioness de la Rose d'Antan and Dr. Hyacinthe Toudoux, the medical examiner, was given brief mention in the Paris papers at the request of the principals, themselves. It was nonetheless touching on that account. The Marchioness, after her release, could not dismiss from her mind the recollection of Toudoux, sword in hand, with Dr. Balthazar St.-J. Truc stuck on the end of it, as he had entered the ballroom on that historic night in Luneville. The medical examiner, on the other hand, had been overwhelmed by the Marchioness' poise and bravery and in his dreams repeatedly heard her speak those fateful words, “I am ready.” Consequently his proposal took a rather rare form, for he simply asked her: “Are you ready?” and she said, “Why, yes, Hyacinthe, I am.”

Xerxes got two years for embalming without a license and his partner, Basil Hamborough, got the affairs of Lewson-Phipps & Xerxes into such a hash within a month after Xerxes went to jail that old Phipps himself, the doodlesack collector, had to come to Paris and run the business. The authorities, appreciating the old man's predicament, were very lenient about giving him passes to the Santé prison, so that he could ask the Armenian's advice.

American visitors at the Bal Tabarin have often remarked that the little girl with curly hair, fourth from the left, has a bit on her show-mates in the matter of dancing and popularity. Had they scanned the front row, they might have seen there Maitre François Ronron, who, having met Nicole in Hjalmar's studio, took a fancy to the girl. Having no children of his own, he became solicitous for her welfare and formed the habit of watching her rather closely to be sure that she did not fall into bad company, as some of the show girls unfortunately did. Nicole, however much she appreciated the lawyer's kind attentions, never lost a violent jealousy directed toward Mathilde Dubonnet, the painting of whom by Jansen won first prize at the Salon d'Automne. Whenever there was in the audience a blonde woman resembling Mathilde, Nicole could not give her best performance.

A short time after the Louvre murder case had disappeared from the press, Homer and Miriam were enjoying their long-delayed excursion to the old walled town of Langres, in the Haute Marne. They did not read the papers, and consequently missed the story of the trial of Dr. Balthazar Truc for the theft of
The Pansy.
Dr. Truc, it was said, made a poor impression on the jury. He had been so accustomed to defending himself on account of acts he had really performed that when it came to denying a theft he had not committed the alienist was completely at sea. What helped break down his morale, and caused him such despondency that in the end he confessed, was the upward progress of American Jar and Bottle stock as listed in the New York
Herald
(Paris edition). During the trial it jumped from 32 to 174, until bottle and jar news crowded crime and politics from the front pages. Also, Dr. Truc concluded bitterly, when reading of the nuptials of the Marchioness and Dr. Hyacinthe Toudoux, that Eugénie had not been fond of him, as she had implied, but merely had been using him as a means to an end while he had been trusting her. And, of course, when it was mentioned by Dr. Toudoux, before the Academy of Science, that Truc had, in his studies of the human liver, ignored the difference between herbivores and carnivores, that august body burst into hilarious laughter, for the first time since Michel Servet had announced, nearly a century before, that blood went round and round in the veins.

The day after Truc's conviction and sentence to ten years on Devil's Island, a cryptic note, forwarded from the apartment in the
rue
Campagne Première, was received by Homer Evans, who read it, smiled and handed it to Miriam. The text was as follows:

The note was signed: “THE SINGE.”

The next Homer Evans story, entitled
M
AYHEM IN
B-F
LAT
,
gets off to a breathtaking start when a dog nearly bites a Guarnarius. Then Leffingwell Baxter of Boston, after complaining bitterly that a French chef has put nutmeg on Yorkshire pudding, breathes his last over a game of checkers with a phantom opponent.

That The Singe, ruthless gang leader of the St. Julien Rollers, and Homer Evans have a common ancestor in the person of the Baron de Vans, pal of William the Conqueror, lends spice to the clashes between those forceful personalities. And Hjalmar Jansen, in order to entertain Anton Diluvio, harassed virtuoso, takes him for a ride on the
Presque Sans Souci.

Do not worry, reader, because there is a fiddle and a recital involved. Anyone, even if he cannot tap out
Bei Mir Bist du Schoen
with one finger, can understand the story, and the worse one feels about music, the better one can enjoy seeing musicians get theirs.

To be published April 1.

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