Hugger-Mugger in the Louvre (6 page)

Evans, touched, placed his hand on Dubonnet's shoulder.

“You may both remain at the prefecture, of course. It was thoughtless of me to suggest your freedom. And I think I may promise you the overtime, since by masking our real intentions you are serving your country. I did a favor once for M. des Murs, a trivial thing, but he's not the one to forget.”

“You are a man with a heart, monsieur,” said Dubonnet.

“My little son, poor soul, shall have a bicycle,” said Attendant Angorre. “The rest of the supplementary pay my old crowbait will insist on bunging into some bank. Like as not the bank will fail.”

“We're not making progress,” said Frémont nervously. “Sergeant Schlumberger!” he bellowed, and from the semi-darkness of the long corridor the Alsatian officer known as “The Sunday painter” strode into view.

“Why, good evening, Mr. Evans,” the sergeant said. “It's good to have you with us again. Only this time the case is not so grave. After all, as much as I like painting, a Watteau only 30 by 20 . . . That's a waste of genius, don't you think, Mr. Evans? Now I like Watteau when he spreads himself. That wonderful clown in white. Gilles. That's painting. Is it true, monsieur, that the master used a priest's face for that clown?”

“Sergeant Schlumberger,” interrupted Frémont with asperity. “If you must discuss the revolting details of the ruses adopted by these painters in oil, you had better do so when you are off duty, or at least at some time when the fate of the department is not in precarious balance. I must remind you that there is work to be done.”

“I am ready,” the Alsatian said.

“Then handcuff these suspects,” indicating Angorre and Dubonnet, “and take them as conspicuously as possible to the prefecture. Better use the main exit. Quite a crowd gathered outside the police lines there. Get their descriptions of the two well-dressed accomplices, have the stenographer strike out all conflicting items and if there's anything left have a clean copy made to be distributed to the press. Between you and me, these chaps won't stand on ceremony. They'll revise and trim their stories up a bit if you can make suggestions not too clumsily. Tell the reporters that we're hot on the trail of the thief and hint at clemency if the wretched little daub is kept in A-1 condition.”

Schlumberger smiled at Miriam, saluted and led the two attendants away.

“Now please clear the wing. Not a guard or attendant or even a pet cat. I shall trouble you to furnish Miss Leonard and me with belts and automatics, and you can imagine what would happen to one of the poorly paid museum employees if our gentle colleague from Montana caught a glimpse of something moving,” Evans said.

“You mean the culprit is actually in the Louvre?” gasped Frémont, reaching instinctively for his own Colt .45.

“I cannot impress on you too strongly that we must be prepared for anything,” said Evans, gravely.

As if to illustrate the truth of his words, there was a muffled roar from the crowd outside, the shrill whistles of policemen, the banging of a heavy metal door which echoed like artillery through the long corridors. This was followed by the sound of running footsteps, sharp cries and a shot.

Schlumberger, half way to the main entrance with his two suspects, let out a yell, and in a voice that carried above the general din shouted: “Don't shoot, you lunk-heads. There are priceless paintings on every wall. I forbid you to shoot.”

Evans, Miriam and Frémont were running toward the fracas in the order named, for although Miriam was wearing a moderately high heel in order to bring her head just above the level of Evans' broad shoulder, she had outstripped many a wild steer to a corral fence, and the chief of detectives, since the arrival of Hydrangea from Harlem, had softened up a bit.

To explain the racket and confusion just described it is necessary to leave for a moment the usually sedate confines of the national museum and go southward to Montparnasse. There, it will be remembered, two new arrivals from America, the former Colonel Lvov Kvek and Mr. K. Parker Seldon of the American Jar and Bottle Corporation, were being welcomed at the Dôme by Hjalmar Jansen, nicknamed Gonzo, and Tom Jackson, of the New York
Herald
staff. All of them were waiting, for various reasons, for the reappearance on the
terrasse
of Homer Evans. Jansen, the Norwegian-American painter, had hopes of violent action; Kvek was eager once again to thank Evans for having saved his life a year before; Seldon had been told by Hugo Weiss that Homer would surely put him up in his spacious apartment in the
rue
Campagne Premiere until bottle stock could be had for a song; and Tom Jackson was expecting Evans to tell him what a Grand Rapids furniture widow would be likely to tell the American Students and Artists about the Taj Mahal.

In their choice of drinks for the evening, the party was divided equally, for Kvek had already exhausted the Dôme's supply of vodka and had switched to double rye, which Hjalmar was drinking. Seldon and Jackson were sticking to double Scotch. Now the American business man had done quite a bit of drinking in his day, what with board meetings, lodge conventions and the like, but he was a shade below the class of such outstanding devotees of Bacchus as Jansen, Tom Jackson and Lvov Kvek. So at the end of a couple of hours he rose politely, brushed a bit of ashes from his sleeve, and said, as if he were addressing the members of his board, “I think, gentlemen, that it might be advisable for the chairman to take a short brisk walk around the block.”

None of his companions heard him, or noticed that he was on his feet, so he took their silence for consent and ambled toward the
rue
Delambre, gaining confidence as he proceeded. It is unnecessary to say that he was not aware he was being followed cautiously by Dr. Balthazar St.-J. Truc.

In describing himself to Tom Jackson as a man who never rested, Dr. Truc had not stretched the point very far. The doctor was a man of insatiable ambition, not for glory or the satisfaction of helping mankind. He wanted to be rich. As a boy he had been poor and before he was seven years old had been convinced that it was better to have wads of money. The prospect of wealth had stirred him to effort in his studies and had guided his every action since he had got his degree. He ran his sanitorium at a sizeable profit, soaked rich patients and avoided poor ones, wrote articles for newspapers and magazines, and in a small way speculated on the Bourse. Any ordinary man would have been satisfied with what he had acquired, but not Dr. Truc. He would not rest until he could buy and sell everyone he knew, and while he had earned money steadily in a dozen divers ways, the chances for big cleanups had eluded him, quite cruelly, it seemed to him. ‘‘American Jar and Bottle,” he kept murmuring to himself, as he followed the zigzag path of K. Parker Seldon. “It will dive, then rocket. Fortunes will be made. At last I have an iron in the fire.”

Meanwhile, on the Dôme
terrasse,
Hjalmar, Kvek and Jackson were debating as to whether they should set a sort of informal dragnet of their own for Chief of Detectives Frémont, in order to find out what, if anything, he had learned about the whereabouts of Evans. There was much to be said on both sides. Jackson, in accordance with his principles of
laissez faire,
was all for remaining where and as they were, until such time in the near or distant future when Evans might return. Kvek was for setting out in his personal taxi and crashing the gates of the Louvre. There he proposed, if Frémont was not in the museum, to find out why and have no nonsense about it. Hjalmar, for nearly the first time in his life, found himself on middle ground. That put him further in the dumps.

“I'm slipping,” he said dismally to himself. “Old Achilles was right. The whiskers in all my paintings look like putty.” And he was on the point of rushing to his studio and destroying the entire year's output when Kvek began to thump, to yodel and to bellow.

“Mr. Seldon,” he shouted with such vehemence that two school teachers from Iowa, in Europe for the first time, upset their cane-woven chairs, becoming entangled with them in such a picturesque way as to attract the favorable attention of a couple of Rumanian boxers who had previously decided to pass them up.

Seldon was nowhere in sight and a rather forceful inquiry among the neighboring clients of the Dôme brought forth no useful information. No one had noticed the bottle magnate's departure or, for that matter, his arrival or his former presence. M. Chalgrin, the proprietor, had been brooding about some new governmental method for saving France, which involved a new tax and a complicated system of daily returns, and would not have noticed what was happening if Aimee McPherson had put on a strip tease act in person.

“Did you look downstairs in the men's room?” Jackson asked, his reporter's instinct asserting itself at once.

Kvek and Hjalmar followed this suggestion, to the acute discomfort of several well-meaning customers who had wished to be alone. No small dapper American business men were among them.

The reporter would not give up so easily. He noticed that while the chair formerly occupied by Dr. Balthazar Truc was empty, the two men who had kept an appointment with the doctor were still in their places.

“I'm Jackson of the
Herald,”
he said, approaching their table.

The athletic man with Wedgwood eyes and a vacant tanned expression looked up irritably from the cricket news in the
Times.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, coldly.

“That's it. Jackson. Tom Jackson. I wonder if you gentlemen could tell me about an American my friends and I have lost.”

The slim dark man, with bright eyes like coals and heavy eyebrows, was not as distant in his manner as his British colleague.

“I should be glad to help you,” he said. “You're a friend of Dr. Truc. I saw you talking together as we came in.”

“Has Truc dusted?” Jackson asked.

“I say. What is the fellow talking about? Dusted?” the Englishman said.

Tom Jackson did not like Englishmen, and especially tanned ones. “I asked you a simple question,” he said, looking the blue-eyed chap severely in the eye. “Have you seen a business man leaving the cafe, and if so, in what direction was he headed?”

“Shall I paste him one?” asked Hjalmar, who had come up from the men's room and had overheard a little of the conversation. The former colonel began to cry and to beat his breast, and since he was still clutching his gold-headed cane, there were minor casualties among other innocent bystanders. A number of the police officers who were vainly searching for Evans quickly flocked to the spot, to be met by Hjalmar Jansen in one of his firmest moods.

“My friend's lost the guy he was in charge of,” Hjalmar said. “Let him alone. He'll be all right in a couple of minutes.”

Things might have gone better had not an officer new to the quarter put a hand on Hjalmar's shoulder. What followed is not clear in the minds even of the participants. Witnesses agreed that several policemen were seen to turn back handsprings; that an American with glasses started throwing siphons in the air, which exploded when and where they lit; that a large potted palm was uprooted and in its place was wedged a battered blue-eyed Englishman who gave his name as Basil Hamborough; that two Rumanian pugilists who were unwise enough to try to horn into the clash were blinded with perfume thrown into their eyes by a couple of patriotic North-American school teachers; and that, finally, when the affray became general a Citroen taxi was seen retreating down the
rue
Delambre in a manner to suggest that the driver had formerly been employed in Keystone comedies.

From his favorite spot beside a plane tree near the
terrasse
of the Coupole, the animated scene was watched somewhat jealously by M. Delbos, proprietor of that excellent but younger cafe. The interesting clients stuck faithfully to the Dôme, was his sad reflection.

Meanwhile, the taxi, with Kvek at the wheel and Hjalmar and Tom Jackson in the back seat, was streaking toward the Plaza Athenee, where Kvek and the missing Seldon had stopped five minutes to register and wash on the way from the boat train to the Dôme. There the Russian was met by the doorman, a former captain in his regiment, and while the two embraced, Kvek poured out his story. The doorman swore by the memory of the Little Father, and the most spotless of the White Russian Saints, that no medium-sized North American having no French had passed his portals since Kvek and Seldon had departed. Words to the same effect were extracted by Hjalmar from the clerk and the telephone girl, who promised in addition to brush up her memory and to come to Jansen's studio the next evening at eleven-thirty, on the chance that she might be able, somehow, to help him. Jackson was
on
the house phone, conversing with the genial press agent of the hotel, who not only was able to set him right about the Taj Mahal, which the reporter had up to that time believed was a person, but agreed to tap out a story and send it, in Jackson's name, to the
Herald.

From the Plaza Athènée, after a round of quick drinks in the well-appointed new bar, the trio set out for the Louvre and it was their arrival that occasioned the commotion which disturbed the earlier pages of this chapter. Kvek, because of his top hat and frock coat, had got through the police lines without question. Tom Jackson and Hjalmar had not had the same good fortune. The former, at first asserting that he had a newspaper pass, had been unable to find or produce it. And the sergeant in charge outside the museum had been one of the officers who, a year ago, had been in hospital six weeks on account of the row that followed when Hjalmar Jansen doused the prefect with violet ink. The sergeant took no chances this time. He pulled out his automatic, shoved it into Hjalmar's ribs and made no bones of saying that in case of resistance he would pull the trigger. Hjalmar, depressed as he was about the putty-like whiskers and the date he had inadvertently made with the telephone girl, said, “What the hell.” He felt sure he would see Chief of Detectives Frémont at the prefecture eventually, so he and Jackson let themselves be led away.