Hugger-Mugger in the Louvre (19 page)

“There. Read the news. You'll feel better having something to read,” the guard said. “Here's one for you, too, mademoiselle,” he added to Miriam, and smiled.

A glance at the headlines brought about a change for the worse in old Lazare. The long-buried incident of the hot-seat in the Comédie Française had been revived, and even enlarged upon. Beside flashlight pictures of the taxidermist, wild-eyed and with bars in the foreground, were tintypes of the old Marquis, and Lazare as a student, in court. The Marquis, whose murder and mutilation covered half the page, was shown at the Jockey Club, in Louis XIV costume, and half-wrapped in bandages, quite obviously dead.

Columns followed about Lazare's arrest: how he was taken in the apartment of a Montparnasse demimondaine called Mireille Montana. And there was a touching paragraph about the way in which the handsome young adventuress was sticking by her sexagenarian Lothario, who was in a state of collapse. The newspaper men, having been starved for news since
The Pansy
had been stolen, had let themselves go.

But it was not the plight of Lazare, nor the unflattering snapshots of herself that chilled Miriam's heart and drove all else from her mind. It was the realization that Homer Evans had not read the papers. Otherwise he would have rescued the taxidermist long ago. Something must have happened to him to put him out of touch with events. Her heart stood still as she paced the floor in agony. It took her a full hour to get a grip on herself.

“I must have confidence, and carry out his instructions,” she said. Then she had an inspiration. The suspects she had heard about had always refused to talk, if they knew what was good for them, until a lawyer had been found to represent them. With that she began to rattle the bars.

“Don't get excited,” said the amiable guard, who had been staying fairly close to her cell in the hope of catching her eye.

“Call the sergeant at once,” she said. “I've a right to have a lawyer. So has Monsieur Lazare.”

The taxidermist only shuddered.

Reluctantly the guard complied, and the sergeant, gray from worry, walked down the corridor and said, “Well?”

“I want a lawyer. I insist . . .” Miriam began.

“You won't find any lawyer in his office until after lunch,” Schlumberger said. “They take things very easy, the lawyers do.”

“Then I shall phone one at home.”

“In a case like this, the telephone is unsatisfactory,” the sergeant said. “It's much better to see a lawyer face to face.”

“You want to get rid of me, but I'll be back,” she said, and with a few comforting words which Lazare scarcely heard, she left the prefecture, hurried to her hotel for a bath and change of clothes, then drew all her money from the bank and took a taxi to the boulevard St. Germain. She thought she remembered having seen lawyers' shingles there, and she was right. In the first block eastward from the Deux Magots she saw a sign: Me. François Ronron, Avocat. She dismissed her taxi, found the entrance with some difficulty, since it was wedged in between a window full of dusty trusses and a shop where clerical vestments and articles of piety were on display. She mounted a narrow stairway and, after lighting a match, tried to read the doorplates, in the few instances in which the doors were not blank.

The concierge, who had been eyeing her from the ground-floor entry, upbraided her in a shrill cracked voice. “No smoking on the stairways, mademoiselle.”

“I'm not smoking. I'm looking for a lawyer,” Miriam replied.

“Which one? I have three. How should I know which lawyer you want? What's your business with a lawyer, anyway? If it's divorce or any kind of blackmail, you'll have to go down to No. 217,” the concierge said.

“I want Maitre Ronron,” said Miriam.

“Third floor left, and no more matches,” snapped the concierge. There was something in the atmosphere that made Miriam fear that a lawyer wouldn't help her much, after all. Gritting her teeth and setting her shoulders, she climbed to the third, which in France is the fourth and sometimes the fifth, and there, by the light that filtered through a fly-specked skylight she read: Me. François Ronron, Avocat.

Vigorously she pushed the bell button and thought for a moment she had set off a burglar alarm. However, nothing happened, so she touched the button again, that time with a staccato attack from the wrist with fingers relaxed, as she had learned from the Seek and Ye Shall Find Correspondence School and the Paris Conservatoire. It was one of the few points on which their teachings had coincided. She paused and listened and was rewarded by the shuffling of a pair of slippered feet. The door opened slowly and she was faced with a crotchety old man with heavy eyebrows and a bulging forehead.

“What do you want?” asked the old man, peering into the darkness. “Oh, a woman,” he added, crossly. Women almost invariably called on Maitre Ronron much later in the afternoon. So did men, if they wanted to get the best run for their money.

“I want to see Maitre Ronron right away,” Miriam said and nearly upset the clerk as she stepped brusquely into what proved to be a narrow waiting room.

“He's not in the office, and won't be for an hour,” the clerk said. He was holding in his hand a wet stub pen with a feather for a handle. At his desk a huge volume that looked like a scrapbook was open, and on a near-by wall were shelves of similar books.

“Where is the Maitre?” Miriam asked.

“In his apartment. Did you have an appointment?”

“No.”

“Who sent you to Maitre Ronron?”

“I saw the sign on the door below.”

“You mean to say that you came here without references? You have made an error, Madame. Maitre Ronron's practice is an old established one. He hasn't taken on a new client in several years. Would it not be as well . . .”

“Where is the Maitre's apartment?”

The old man began to stammer. He didn't like the glint in Miriam's eye. He tried to stall but she caught him firmly by the shoulder and gave an admonitory shake. Reluctantly the clerk told her that the lawyer lived in the rooms directly behind his office, and before he could stop her, Miriam had brushed him aside, strode through the office and banged on the door that chanced to open into Maitre Ronron's bedroom. The building in question had been built just after the Franco-Prussian War, which had used up the best workmen. It was none too solid. The latch of the door gave way and so did the lock.

Maitre François Ronron sat up in bed, blinking, and saw before him an angry young woman, unquestionably chic and attractive, who was waving his faithful clerk, Hector Camphre, as if he were a flag. But the Maitre, although conservative to the hilt in the matter of decor and clientele, was rather open-minded and had seen enough of life, as reflected in courts and law books, to be able to retain a certain poise in all kinds of situations. He smiled, reached for his toupée, adjusted his pillows and asked Camphre if he would mind opening the window shades.

Miriam, relieved to find someone at last who didn't treat her as if she were about to steal the law books, was the first to speak.

“Forgive me, Maitre, for bursting in on you like this, but the case I want you to take is one of great emergency. An innocent Frenchman's reason and his life are at stake. Your Government is on the verge of committing a terrible mistake . . .”

“That's where governments are teetering continually, mademoiselle,” he said. “But if you'll wait in the office until I am dressed, I'll hear what you have to say. Monsieur Camphre, if you please. Give our client something to read, and dust off a comfortable chair.”

The clerk, muttering, handed Miriam a copy of
L'Illustration
dated March, 1909, after dusting off the chair with it. He was so much like a ruffled bantam rooster that Miriam, with difficulty, refrained from tickling him under the chin. In about three-quarters of an hour Maitre Ronron came in, pommaded, groomed and corseted, and started rubbing his hands. As he rubbed, Miriam told him what had happened.

“We must establish an alibi,” the Maitre said.

“I thought of that, and questioned M. Lazare,” said Miriam. “It's not going to be easy, because on the day of the crime he was in his shop all day, alone. Not a single customer came in.”

“It's those radicals in the Chamber. They're to blame for our slump in trade. Only last week they authorized the use of typewriters in the Department of Justice. Typewriters, mind you, those soulless instruments responsible for half the sloppy writing and thinking of today. The wise Chinese use chopsticks, Mademoiselle Montana, not because such a resourceful people could not invent a small shovel for cramming food into their mouths. Indeed, not! Chopsticks require slow eating and that means good digestion, health, economy, and above all a mind clear as crystal. A typewriter, mademoiselle, slays the identity, confuses the ears with clattering noises, frustrates the flow of reason by mechanical defects. Do you see in this office a single one of those bothersome machines? Why, I would discharge after thirty years of service my good clerk, M. Camphre, if I even caught him using a fountain pen. Our forefathers wrote immortal prose and reached profound decisions without mechanical claptrap to addle their brains. A quill, mademoiselle. That's the ideal writing instrument. A balm to the intellect.”

“You are eloquent, Maitre,” murmured Miriam. “I agree that whenever possible, one should go about things slowly. But in this case, sir, there is need for haste.” Before the lawyer could interrupt her, she continued with the story, and only when she repeated Dr. Toudoux's words about sending Lazare to a quiet place for observation did the Maitre perk up a bit.

“Ah! Excellent! Of course . . . And not a public institution where the flunkies of our reckless government will maul him and shove him from pillar to post. Were it not for the expense . . .” the Maitre paused tactfully.

“Don't give a thought to that. I'll cable Hugo Weiss.”

“Ah! Weiss! That will be splendid,” said the lawyer, fumbling in dusty pigeonholes until he found a cable blank which he handed to Miriam suavely. Maitre Ronron had heard of Weiss and his millions. “In that case, some reputable private institution where my client will have the best of care. That will be good for him, and, I'm frank to tell you, mademoiselle, it will give us a breathing space to see what can be done about the alibi. Often one can be proven, if tact is used with reluctant witnesses, persons who perhaps have denied any knowledge of the case or have neglected to come forward because of the fear of notoriety. You'll readily admit, mademoiselle, that it would be hard to remember the exact day on which one had bought a stuffed weasel or a pigeon-hawk.”

Miriam nodded.

The Maitre summoned the clerk, who was buried deep in his enormous scrapbook, and soon M. Camphre had deposited on his employer's already over-loaded desk another huge volume in which the Maitre began exploring, with “Ah's” and refined exclamations from time to time.

“I had another case in which my client went daffy . . .”

“Lazare's not daffy.”

“Let us say, then, in need of a tranquil regime. Let me see. It was the year just after the War. And we sent the fellow . . . Camphre, can't you remember?”

“February, 1920,” snapped the clerk, still ruffled, “People vs. Passepartout.”

“Exactly. Joseph Passepartout. And where did the inventor go?”

“To the Sanitorium Sens Unique, Dr. Balthazar Truc, Luneville-sur-Seine,” was the prompt answer.

“That's just the place for Monsieur Lazare. For observation and rest. Just send your cable, my dear, and leave the rest to me. I've seldom, in the course of more decades of practice than I care to admit, had a more charming or intelligent client. Good day.”

So it was, that after much deft maneuvering on the part of Maitre Ronron, with the aid of the minister of justice, who, while politically of another camp, was at one with the maitre on the subject of dominoes, a well-cushioned limousine drove up to the prefecture. Lazare, comparatively calm because Miriam was at his side, was led from his cell and started out, at a rate of speed appropriate for strained nerves, for Luneville-sur-Seine. Maitre Ronron, who had seen the answer to Miriam's cable to Hugo Weiss, the philanthropist, which cordial message had ended with the words “Spare no expense,” rode with them as far as the gates of Paris, humming gaily an old French tune:

                
Oh! Le bon siècle, mes fréres,

                
Que le siècle on nous vivons!

                
On ne craint plus les carriers

                
Pour quelques opinions.
*

    
As the limousine rolled out of sight, beyond the Porte de Neuilly, Maitre Ronron repeated “Spare no expense,” and added: “A beautiful and expressive phrase for such a harsh language as English. I have never had similar instructions from a client in fifty years at the bar. But then . . . Americans.”

                
*
Oh, what a good century, my brothers,

                
Is the one in which we live.

                
No longer we dread the rock pile

                
On account of a few opinions.

T
HE
crew of the
Deuxieme Pays,
when the launch pulled up near the Pont Royal, was more than mildly astonished to see waiting for them a tall husky man with huge hands, in coalheaver's garb, a gaily colored Volga boatman humming Russian songs, and a prosperous-looking American with rimless glasses who surveyed the boat, the river and the whole scene doubtfully. Hjalmar, the coalheaver, had thought it best not to change to their ordinary clothes, considering that violent action was afoot, but had suggested to his companions that they roll their duds into a bundle which could be stowed away in the cabin for future use if necessary.