MRS3 The Velvet Hand (16 page)

The effect of this on Mrs. Ellis was startling. Her arms went up to her head in an utterly distracted gesture. "Oh, my God! ... Oh, my God!" she stuttered. "A swindle! It can't be so!"

"Was it M. Aristide Guimet in the Rue des Tournelles?" asked Mme Storey softly.

"I don't know what you're talking about!" cried Mrs. Ellis. "I never heard of that name or of that street!"

"We had you followed," said Mme Storey deprecatingly. "You were there yesterday and again to-day."

Mrs. Ellis, wild with terror, endeavoured to save her face by flying into a passion. "You had me followed!" she cried. "As if I were a criminal! How dare you! How dare you! My husband shall know of this! Have I not the right to go where I please?"

"Oh, assuredly," said Mme Storey. "I only wished to save you, you see. If I have failed to do so, I blame myself very much. But I had no idea it would happen so quickly."

"I have not the least idea what you are talking about," said Mrs. Ellis. "It sounds to me as if you were out of your mind."

"
Please
, Mrs. Ellis," said Mme Storey, with her most winning manner. "Let us talk this over reasonably. Suppose you have been fooled: that is no disgrace. It happens to all of us. If you have lost your money, don't you want me to get it back for you?"

"I don't know you," cried Mrs. Ellis. "How am I to know but that you are a swindler?"

Mme Storey smiled. "I have not asked you for anything but a little information," she said. "You can easily satisfy yourself about me by cabling to anyone you may know in New York, or, better, by sending a wireless to Sir Angus."

Mrs. Ellis abandoned that line. "I have lost no money," she said. "Where would I get any money to lose? Our funds are all in my husband's hands."

"Where are your jewels, Mrs. Ellis?"

The woman caught her breath sharply. A moment passed before she could command herself sufficiently to speak. "In my jewel case," she said tremulously. "Where else should they be?"

"What were you doing in the Rue de la Paix this morning?"

"Buying some new ones," she said with a laugh that was meant to be careless and offhand but only had a lunatic sound.

Mme Storey approached from another angle. "Sir Angus and I believe that this game has been going on for two years," she said. "Within that time many American women must have been deceived and robbed. And it appears to be such a devilishly clever game there's no reason why it should not go on indefinitely unless we break it up. Won't you help me to do that, Mrs. Ellis, for the sake of saving other women?"

An unnatural calmness descended on Mrs. Ellis. Her eyes were perfectly daft, but her voice was under fair control. "I would be glad to help you if I knew what you were talking about," she said. "But it sounds like rank melodrama to me."

"Prove your good faith by telling us why you went to see M. Guimet," challenged Mme Storey.

Mrs. Ellis hesitated blankly—then, evidently, a word of mine recurred to her. "I merely wanted to see a bit of old Paris," she said.

"Who told you about M. Guimet?"

"Somebody in America—I scarcely remember who. I am not in the least interested in M. Guimet but only in his old house. And now I hope I may be permitted to go. Unless I am being detained here by force."

"The door is unlocked," said Mme Storey. "But let me make a last appeal. Here we are, three American women in a foreign city. Surely we ought to stand together. There is evidently a devilish trap set for our women in this city. Won't you help me to destroy it?"

"Really, my dear lady, you are too dramatic!" said Mrs. Ellis. "You ought to go on the stage."

And with an affected laugh she passed out of the room with that corpselike face, and those eyes mad with pain or terror—or both. It was too dreadful to see. But we had to let her go, of course.

When the door closed behind her, Mme Storey sighed. "God save us from fools!" she said.

I said: "The woman must be criminally involved in some way, to be in such terror of having the facts known."

Mme Storey shook her head. "Most likely it is only folly," she said. "A woman would far rather be shown up as a crook than a fool."

"There was a threat you might have used," I suggested.

"I know," said Mme Storey, "to tell her husband if she didn't come across. I thought of it. But I was afraid of driving her to some desperate act. She is completely unbalanced."

The faithful Mlle Monge followed Mrs. Ellis out of the Crillon, and later she reported that Mrs. Ellis had returned to the Majestic, where she had later dined with her husband in at least apparent amity. We were somewhat reassured in mind by this news.

But early next morning Mr. Ellis went to the Préfecture de Police to report that his wife was missing. We were immediately informed of it by Mlle Monge, who was on duty at the Majestic at an early hour. Mr. Ellis told the police he feared his wife might have taken her own life. She had threatened to do so the day before. A neurotic and highly emotional woman, she had frequently threatened to kill herself, and he had not supposed that she meant it. She had retired for the night apparently in a better frame of mind. But sometime during the night she had arisen while he slept, and had stolen from the room.

A watchman in the Majestic reported that a guest who answered to the description of Mrs. Ellis had come downstairs fully dressed just as day was breaking. Upon his asking her how he could serve her (he spoke English), she had said that she wanted to go to the Orleans station to meet a friend who was arriving by a night train, and would he get her a taxicab. She departed in it. The driver testified that he had indeed taken her to the Orleans station, which as everybody knows is on the
quai
. She was not seen after that.

A few hours later the unfortunate woman's body was recovered from the river at St. Cloud, having evidently drifted to that point from one of the city bridges.

Mme Storey, Mlle Monge, and I immediately went to the Préfecture to tell what we knew of the case. This building was on the Île de la Cité, opposite the huge Palais de Justice where I had once been to see the Sainte Chappelle and Marie Antoinette's cell. The Préfecture was not an ancient building, but, like all French public buildings, very imposing with its statuary, paintings, etc. How different from 300 Mulberry Street, New York!

The officers were admirably sensible and businesslike. You will find the high officers of the police everywhere much the same, only the French are more formal and polite than others. M. le Préfet himself, to whom we were finally shown, was a perfect little Chesterfield of deportment, but with a face as cool and keen as polished steel. It would have been
infra dig.
for such a personage to have betrayed any astonishment at Mme Storey's account, but he was astonished. One could feel it.

"Should you not have conferred with me before?" he asked reproachfully.

"I intended to do so as soon as I had any evidence," said Mme Storey. "So far it has been only guesswork."

M. le Préfet wished to give orders to have the man Guimet taken into custody at once. Mme Storey earnestly remonstrated with him.

"If you do so, I fear that he will escape us. We have no evidence against him. The woman is dead, and there can be no witness to the act of his receiving money from her. He is, or I miss my guess, one of the most plausible rascals in Christendom, and you will be forced to let him go. He will disappear for a while, only to resume his game later on, or another game just as devilish. I beg of you to allow me to pursue my investigation in secret—in coöperation with you, of course—until we have him. I ask you even to keep the fact of Mrs. Ellis's suicide out of the papers, that he may not take alarm."

Up to this time Mme Storey had not mentioned her name, and his next question was the natural one: "Who are you, Madame?"

"Rosika Storey," she said.

He
knew. He leaped to his feet and made her a profound bow. Then he kissed her hand. Frenchmen can do that sort of thing without any sacrifice of dignity. Compliments flowed from him in a stream.

Mme Storey insisted on identifying herself by her passport. "We have never met," she said, "because it is my fancy to allow it to be supposed in Paris that I am merely a person of leisure. If you will be good enough to communicate with Captain Sir Angus McMaster of the
Gigantic
, he will confirm what I have told you about the events on shipboard."

M. le Préfet would not hear of such a thing, but I have no doubt he did communicate with Sir Angus.

The upshot was that he agreed to let Mme Storey proceed in her own way. He told us for our information that it had been established that Mrs. Ellis had disposed of the greater part of her jewels to various jewellers in the Rue de la Paix. The money she had received for them had disappeared, of course.

Mme Storey asked him to convey the substance of her communication to the bereaved husband in order to save her the painful task of telling Mr. Ellis herself. "He is sure to think I ought to have told him in the beginning," she said. "But I couldn't do that on a mere suspicion. It wouldn't have made any difference, anyway—except, perhaps, to hasten the poor woman's suicide by a day or two."

From that time forward we worked in close coöperation with the Paris police. They must have a tighter rein on the newspapers than we have; for no word of Mrs. Ellis's suicide appeared.

The three of us returned to the Crillon to confer. A certain jealousy developed between the excellent Mlle Monge and myself. Each of us was keen to obtain the assignment of calling upon M. Guimet.

"I know Paris and Paris ways," said Mlle Monge.

"But he looks for Americans," said I.

Mme Storey vetoed both suggestions. "Their whole business is conducted with absolute circumspection," she said. "They are not taking any chances. We may be certain that the Dartreys have some means of notifying M. Guimet whom to expect. The essence of a clever confidence game lies in that. An outsider would never gain admission to M. Guimet's apartment, and a false move on our part would ruin everything.... Let me think a moment."

The result was that she announced I must go to London.

I set off that same evening via the night boat between Le Havre and Southampton, armed with letters to Scotland Yard both from Mme Storey and from M. le Préfet. The journey was a great pleasure to me, but I do not mean to hold up my tale while I relate my first impressions of misty London, which has a beauty of its own, oh, so different from Paris! London did not amaze me so much, but was perhaps dearer, more like home.

In the great red brick building on the Embankment I presented my letters and was very courteously received. Steps were instantly taken to have the Dartreys placed under surveillance. What we were after was to discover how they communicated with M. Guimet and to intercept any messages they might send him.

There was nothing I could do to help in this, and I spent the next two days in seeing London. I was in frequent communication with Mme Storey by telegraph, but I may say that nothing of importance happened in Paris while I was away. The police were keeping a quiet watch on M. Guimet to make sure that he did not slip through our fingers.

On the morning of the third day I was summoned back to the office of the Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard. This was a burly sober Saxon, the exact antithesis of the dapper M. le Préfet, but in his own style no less keen. He said:

"I think I have what you want. As you may know, my men had instructions once before to watch Mr. and Mrs. Dartrey and were familiar with their habits. Now, as then, we found that everybody who visited them was above suspicion. Neither did it yield any results to listen in to their telephone conversations, or to examine the letters they received and sent. This time I put the cleverest female agent I have to watch Mrs. Dartrey, and she has laid bare the lady's simple and ingenious scheme for communicating with her principal in Paris.

"At nine o'clock last night Mrs. Dartrey (my agent close at her heels) dropped in at the Underground station at Sloane Square and used one of the public telephones there. My agent went into the adjoining booth to listen. But she had a difficult task to take down what she heard, for Mrs. Dartrey spoke a strange sort of gibberish unlike any known language. My agent was able to get it phonetically, chiefly because the person at the other end of Mrs. Dartrey's wire also had trouble, and Mrs. Dartrey was obliged to repeat a good deal.

"The number that Mrs. Dartrey called up proved to be a public house in the East End. A man was waiting there, evidently by prearrangement, to receive her call. He was not known in that public house. The name he gave was Thompson, but of course that signifies nothing. I will furnish you with a description of him. Long before we got there he had his message and was gone, of course; and the message is now undoubtedly on its way to Paris. I judge that he carried it himself, since these people have a wholesome distrust of the post office.

"Now for the message itself. When it was laid before me I judged that it was written in cryptogram, and I handed it over to an expert that we have in such matters. It gave him no great difficulty to decipher it. One of the simplest forms of a cryptogram, it was nevertheless very effective when spoken over the telephone, and none but a person of uncommonly acute hearing could have taken it down. I did not rouse you out of bed when we had succeeded in translating it, because, as you will see from the context, you have plenty of time in which to act.

"Here it is. Some of the words are missing, but the sense is clear. A very simple cryptogram, but there are several arbitrary rules to confuse you. Generally only the initial consonant is transposed, but, in long words, the consonant beginning the middle syllable will be changed also. The letter J is placed before all words beginning with a vowel. Th stands for Sh and vice-versa. Sometimes there are intentional mistakes in grammar. Sometimes, when the jargon was awkward, a word would be spoken straight. And so on.

"Just as a curiosity I will set down a few sentences of the original. When I spoke it over to myself I was astonished that anybody could have taken it down by ear.