Hugger-Mugger in the Louvre (4 page)

“Ah, my friend,” said Chief of Detectives Frémont. “How can I express my joy at having found you! I beg of you to listen. In the name of the happiness you yourself have made possible for me, do not refuse to help me. I am nonplussed. I am floundering. I stand on the brink of disgrace, of shame. I drown in a sea of ignorance . . .”

Miriam's heart stood still. She was burning with a sense of disloyalty and yet . . . Was there hope?

Now Homer Evans, safe on an obscure
terrasse
or fortified by the afterglow of that brandy called “The Opal,” was a different man from the Evans confronted with a friend in need. Frémont's distress was too profound, and Homer's heart was his vulnerable spot. He could not quite be gracious, but neither could he be brutal and turn down his thumbs.

“Have things come to such a pass that a man cannot attend a musical performance without being accosted and annoyed by the Paris police?” he grumbled.

“I knew you wouldn't refuse,” the chief of detectives said, and wrung Homer's hand. “Good evening, Mademoiselle Montana,” he said belatedly to Miriam. Like so many of his countrymen, the Chief was no great shakes at remembering names. He had told numerous acquaintances and had lectured his officers about Miriam's exploits in connection with the Charenton plot and the kidnapping gang at Frontville, but to him she would always remain Mademoiselle Montana, just as Hjalmar Jansen, the big painter who had done yeoman service in the cases mentioned above, would eternally be Gonzo. Actually, in Montparnasse, Miriam and Hjalmar had come to be known almost exclusively by the names the French police, in their consternation, had mistakenly applied to them.

“I knew you would give me your invaluable aid,” the delighted Frémont was saying, once again, and again was shaking Evans' hand. ‘‘There's something so absurd about having a painting taken right out of the Louvre, and nobody the wiser. The journalists will have a rare time baiting me, and of course, the new prefect has simply passed the buck, as you Americans say.”

“What about the Marquis de la Rose d'Antan, director of Beaux Arts? He'll have to take a hand. Pass the buck upward for a change. Let the Marquis take charge. The press can have more fun with him than with you,” Evans said. “I'm on my way out of town, to help round out Miss Leonard's education.”

“You wouldn't leave me in a fix like this,” the chief of detectives said anxiously. “You, yourself, are responsible for my being in my present exalted position. Your modesty, in refusing your large share of the credit in the Weiss case, has led the press and the public to believe that I am conversant with matters of art, and especially of that cursed branch of it known as oil painting. Should my ignorance be exposed now, I shall not only be made ridiculous but it will come to light that I stepped into office on another man's shoulders. In short, that I am a fraud. I shall lose my position and my monthly pay. The only profession I know will be closed to me. My dark jewel, Hydrangea, will starve, or worse, will go back to Harlem far across the sea ...”

“But the Marquis?” Evans asked, somewhat abruptly.

“The Marquis is away. On one of his frequent voyages, the direction of which he confides in no one. And M. des Murs, Director in Chief of the Louvre, if you please, has been confined to a chair with gout since Easter. No. I am the one who must shoulder the blame, and you know what a daub on a canvas means to me. Why, I've seen a dozen already in store windows that I couldn't distinguish from that pernicious
Pansy
on a bet.”

They had left the lobby of the Salle Gaveau and were approaching Frémont's official car, at the wheel of which, in smart plum-colored uniform, sat Melchisadek Knock-woode. The latter greeted Evans with awe.

“Glory be! Here's Mr. Evans himself. I told you, boss, not to worry yourself sick. Why, this case is as good as in the bag right this minute,” the Negro chauffeur said, in accents reminiscent of the A. E. F.

In spite of himself, Evans smiled and Miriam relaxed a little.

“All right,” he said. “You have me cornered. Let's go on to the Louvre and I'll try to shed a ray of light, if possible.”

“I shall never forget your kindness.” Frémont said.

*
The Mysterious Mickey Finn,
by Elliot Paul, Modern Age Books, Inc., 1939. (Dover reprint 24751-1.)

W
HILE
in the Salle Gaveau the competent performers of the
Société d'Instruments Anciens
had been drawing sweet sounds from reeds and strings, and in distant parts of France the homebound flocks of sheep had made the low hills seem to creep in the deepening twilight; while, in fact, the Paris police had been combing narrow streets and spacious tree-lined boulevards in search of Homer Evans, Montparnasse had been going its usual leisurely way and was beginning its evening crescendo.

The poets, such of them as were in funds, were at the Falstaff, the Dingo, Au Negre de Toulouse, and elsewhere, dealing with
brindades, ragouts, rotis, soufflés
or sopping up sauces with crisp fresh bread, and were in no position to take on the evening panorama of the Montparnasse sidewalks as a theme for versification. The leaves on the plane trees were softly illumined by the street lamps, in such a way that even the veins showed through. Sidewalk vendors clad in fezzes and burnooses and bearing gaily colored rugs or trays of nuts and sweet-meats strode to and fro in a dignified way and all too seldom made a sale. Still, the Arabs seemed to get along. The tourists and habitués who had dined early were coming back to the
terrasses
of the Dôme, the Select, the Coupole and the Rotonde, there to remain with the general idea of waiting to see what life had to offer, an attitude that made them receptive but not acquisitive. And, as if to celebrate the rising of the evening star, which perhaps unluckily in that season was Venus, a fire-eater sprayed gasolene from his mouth into the air and produced a shapely geyser of flame.

It was at that moment when Dr. Balthazar St.-J. Truc, the proprietor of a rural sanitorium known as the “Sens Unique,” came into view, portly and somewhat self-important, wearing as usual a black frock-coat in the buttonhole of which was a damask carnation, a vest across which was a watch-chain that had proved tempting to untold scores of his distraught patients, and striped gray trousers, and shoes with elastic in the sides and no laces. His hair and his beard were dyed a lustrous black. As the doctor walked, he chuckled and removed from his pocket from time to time a sheaf of notes he had scrawled with his gold-embossed fountain pen. In the middle of the Dôme
terrasse,
on the way to his seat near the rear, he paused to slap his thigh and let out a resounding guffaw.

“What's eating the big dude with the stained lilacs?'' asked Hjalmar Jansen, good-humoredly, of Tom Jackson. The pair were seated at the self-same table where Evans had left them some three hours before. They had intended to eat dinner but had failed to move when their companions had started out in search of food and were endeavoring to make up the loss by munching handfuls of potato chips, peanuts, hard-boiled eggs and other similar objects that they found close at hand. Their conversation, quite naturally, had had to do with the missing Watteau. One would have thought that had
The Pansy
been left in place, the whole city of Paris would have been tongue-tied that balmy June evening.

“There's something in the wind, when old Homer lights out like that,” Hjalmar said. “I hope it's another case and he lets us in on it.”

Jackson viewed the prospects of action with Evans in a gloomier light. The last time, only a short year ago, the reporter had not only lost his job temporarily but had been wounded with a fragment of a hand grenade, blown flat by an explosion of T. N. T., knocked cold by being dropped by a thug on a binnacle and had spent hours in the cell at the prefecture known as the Goldfish Bowl, sans belt, sans shoestrings, sans necktie, sans practically everything. And that same evening he had telephoned his editor the gist of what he had learned about the missing Watteau and had been told to drop the matter, since something might creep into print that would embarrass the French Government, and to spend the evening hearing a Grand Rapids widow (golden oak furniture) discourse on the Taj Mahal at the American Students' and Artists' Club.

“Jansen, tell me. Why in hell do men paint? You're supposed to be a painter, and you ought to know,” was Jackson's contribution.

Jansen, although a serious artist, was inarticulate on the subject. He hemmed, hawed and reached for his double whiskey.

“Quite a few of us can't help it,” he said, apologetically.

“I knew you wouldn't tell me,” murmured Jackson, sadly. “Nobody will.”

More than an hour before they had talked with Sergeant Frémont, who had driven to the Dôme at breakneck speed, siren shrieking, in the hope of finding Evans there. Since then police officers, singly and in pairs, some on foot, others with bicycles, motorcycles, horses, and automobiles had been scouring the quarter with no success whatever. The tension in the air had done things to Hjalmar Jansen. Feverishly he thought of last year's adventure and was wondering if, after all, the good old days were past and he was already on the skids, at the foot of which lay drabness and respectability.

The advent of Dr. Balthazar Truc served to distract the big Norwegian, for he was puzzled as to how a man who took himself as seriously as the doctor evidently did, and gave himself so much trouble in dressing for the street, could find anything to laugh at.

“That's Dr. Truc,” Tom Jackson said, and sighed as he fished in his pockets for copy paper. For Dr. Truc, not six months before, had fought a duel in the Bois de Boulogne against Dr. Hyacinthe Toudoux, the medical examiner, and Truc's sword, after describing an arc through the misty morning air, had landed point down on the toe of Jackson, who, because of his acquaintance with Toudoux in connection with the Dôme murder case, had been the only reporter advised of the meeting and permitted to witness the combat. Tom Jackson, much as appearances pointed against it, was working and drawing pay, however small. Reluctantly he got to his feet and made his way to the rear table where Dr. Truc had taken his place.

“Not often we see you here, doctor,” Tom began.

“Er . . . No . . . That is. Yes . . . Too much work. Need relaxation, you know,” the doctor said, surprised that anyone in Montparnasse should recognize him so promptly. At any other time, he might have been pleased and flattered, for he responded to free publicity as the nenuphars of the Nile drink in the rising sun. But as it was he smiled professionally and merely waited.

“Any news?” Jackson asked. He knew that the doctor, among his other activities, conducted a health column in the
En-Tout-Cas
which was syndicated to provincial papers throughout France.

At that the doctor brightened. He guffawed again, caused Jansen to turn his head uneasily, three tables forward, and handed Tom the sheaf of hand-written notes he had been carrying and scanning from time to time. Now Jackson's French was not half bad, not quite half at any rate, but he was unequal to deciphering script of the sort Dr. Truc had developed in years of practice in order to bewilder first- and second-class pharmacists and patients.

“Can't you explain, in a few words?” the reporter asked.

“Sit down,” said Dr. Truc. “I was expecting friends, or rather, a business appointment. Never rest, you know. But this is too good for you to miss. I've got that fat-head Toudoux where the hair is short. He was lucky, in that duel. Won on a fluke. But now he can't escape. I shall make him publicly ridiculous.”

Jackson sat down at the doctor's table and when the latter asked for a
Vichy fraise
Tom absent-mindedly said “The same.” To clear his mind he grabbed a coffee
noir
someone had left sitting around on a near-by table, and gulped it down. Truc's notes had to do with a paper Dr. Toudoux had read before the members of the Academie des Sciences six months before, in which he had described the effect of California wine on the human liver. Toudoux had distinctly said, and had not denied it when it was reported in the press, that an autopsy he had performed on a man who for years had been addicted to a beverage falsely labeled Medoc and bottled in Eureka, California, had shown that the victim's liver, much enlarged, had been streaked with mauve and heliotrope.

“The pink of condition. And why not?” asked Jackson. “I've no doubt yours and mine will be just like that, after drinking this diluted strawberry extract. You ought to try whiskey, if you want to know about American drinks. Bourbon, by preference. It's made of corn.” The reporter waved his arms to indicate corn fields and was about to order two double whiskies but the prudent doctor headed him off.

“I smelled a rat,” Dr. Truc said, cunningly. “Man and boy, I have seen many livers, and each one of them, if it was discolored at all, had a yellow tinge. Heliotrope, indeed.”

“But that Eureka wine, doc . . .”

“I tried it, after having gone to great expense and trouble, on fourteen guinea pigs, a pair of Belgian hares, an old donkey and a gibbon ape that was dying of asthma but otherwise was sound. In sixty-two per cent of the cases, the liver got smaller, not larger, and assumed a faint ochre tint between mustard and honeysuckle,” said Dr. Truc, triumphantly.

“What's the difference?”

“Between heliotrope and mustard?” The doctor's face expressed amazement.

“I mean. Who cares?” Jackson asked. The story, he thought, was not going to make the
Herald,
since the advertisers who sold wine would not like to have disturbing chromatic ideas put into customers' heads. It was hard enough, as matters stood, to induce American visitors to drink wine with their meals.

The interview might have continued longer had not two simultaneous occurrences conspired to bring it to an abrupt end. The first, and least important to Jackson, was the arrival of two men, one dark and one light, whom Dr. Truc had been impatiently expecting. The second and decisive event was a taxi that came careening down the boulevard Montparnasse, weaving to and fro among terror-stricken pedestrians and cursing drivers. Hjalmar Jansen rose to his feet and began to shout. Tom Jackson blinked and wiped off his glasses. For as the berserk machine drew near, anyone who had been involved in the Weiss kidnapping case could see that it was the Citroën formerly driven by Lvov Kvek, who had shared the famous millionaire's adventure and had gone with him to America to make his fortune. As the notorious Citroen came still nearer, both Hjalmar and Jackson saw in the driver's seat a tall, distinguished-looking man with a silk hat and a black frock coat, who was waving with his free hand a gold-headed cane. Police began to whistle and women to scream, but the runaway cab pulled up to the curb in front of the Dôme without mishap.