Hugger-Mugger in the Louvre (25 page)

“Forget Lazare for the moment. He's in no danger. My immediate problem has to do with The Singe.”

This was followed by another long silence, then he began to speak as if he were thinking aloud.

“Of all the people concerned in this case, The Singe is the most logical and able. His motives are clear. He wants to make large sums of money without work, as the term is generally understood, and at a minimum risk of being imprisoned or guillotined. His gang, you must remember, has been deprived of all its best talent. That makes it necessary for him to be all the more watchful and careful. Such a man kidnaps a well-known professor with intent to kill, then does his best to get rid of him.”

Miriam, trying to lend her best attention without intruding, barely nodded.

“What happened between the day de la Poussière was seized and the day I rescued him?”

Involuntarily Miriam let a few words escape. “The Marquis was murdered,” she said.

The effect on Evans was astonishing. It was almost as if he had had a paralytic shock. His body grew rigid, veins swelled on his forehead. Pale with fright, Miriam held her breath until he showed signs of relaxation.

“You've solved the problem,” he said, simply.

“The thought must have come from you,” she said. “I wasn't really thinking. The words slipped out.”

“By Jove,” said Evans, thoughtfully. Then he rose and placed his hand on Miriam's shoulder. “Darling,” he continued. “Try to place yourself in the same receptive attitude again. I'll sketch the outline of events, as I understand them, and perhaps you can fill in the blanks. Our minds must be in tune.”

Overcome with happiness, the girl tried to compose herself. For a while she could hear the beating of her heart, then a feeling of delicious languor stole over her as Homer began speaking.

“The murder of the Marquis caused The Singe to change his mind. Why?” He motioned her not to answer. “Because,” he continued, “the Marquis had hired him to kidnap Professor de la Poussière.”

“Ah,” she murmured.

“And why did the Marquis want the professor put out of the way? Because de la Poussière had discovered the identity of Tout-or-Nada. The Singe nabs the professor, but does not kill him outright. Why not? Much easier to hide a body than a living well-known scholar.”

Miriam's face showed almost childish disappointment. “I don't seem to have an answer for that,” she said.

He smiled reassuringly and stroked her hair lightly. “You're not at ease. Relax. I don't need any help to answer that simple question. Ah, it's lucky we have a rational man involved in this crime. The Singe does not work for pleasure, or to satisfy his vanity. He works for money, and not any kind of money. He wants cash. . . . By Jove,” Evans exclaimed, and made a dash for the telephone. He dialed a number and in a moment was talking with the night clerk of the archives at the prefecture.

“The
dossier
of the Marquis de la Rose d'Antan . . . You have it? Good . . . Glance over it and tell me what you can about his financial condition.”

After a moment, the receiver began to spout sounds and Evans showed signs, first of satisfaction, then of delight. “Thanks,” he said. “Good night. That's enough.”

“The Marquis was broke,” Homer said, turning to Miriam. “He had long ago run through his inherited fortune, and the large holdings of his wife are intact, the principal, that is. He can only spend the interest. He's borrowed from everybody, and especially . . .”

“Xerxes,” gasped Miriam.

“Xerxes?” repeated Homer, bewildered. Then he slapped his knee, and grabbed for the phone. The clerk, when asked if among the Marquis's creditors was Hagup Bogigian, the answer was “Yes.”

“Heavily in debt to Bogigian?”

“At least two hundred thousand francs,” the clerk said.

Miriam was game but frightened. That she had become an instrument accessory to Homer Evans' brilliant mind thrilled her and terrified her at the same time. Suppose she should blurt out the wrong answer, some day. There would be another day, of course. He thought he was going to retire, but other emergencies would arise.

“We must go back to The Singe,” Evans said. “Steady now. Unclasp your fingers and let them rest lightly on your knees. Wait for the heart to get back to its tempo. Now. The Singe works for cash, the Marquis had none. He couldn't borrow any more from Xerxes or anyone else he knew. Pampered and spoiled from his youth, the threat to his extravagance made him arrogant and desperate. The world not only owed him a living, but a sumptuous one, anything and everything he wanted.

“The Marquis learned that millionaires in America wanted Egyptian relics for their museums, and would pay fabulous prices. Perhaps Xerxes told him. But no one could sell an antique statue or a mummy without official authentication. That was where the Marquis came in, let us assume. A couple of mummies were made to order, and sold for fair prices, thanks to the Marquis's O.K. Then the No. 1 American client, Prosper Stables, wanted to enrich his Egyptian collection in the Manhattan Museum. There, where a staff of experts was employed, no makeshift would do. A real mummy which could pass muster meant a fortune. Therefore, the Marquis decided to peddle the unknown in the Louvre, and pass him off as Neferkesokar, about whom nothing whatever was known except his name.”

“Then the professor spilled the beans,” said Miriam, eagerly.

“That's right. Professor de la Poussière found the real Neferkesokar, consisting of a shin bone and a bit of skull, and identified the twin brother Tout-or-Nada, who was about to be sold into American captivity,” said Evans. “But let's not forget The Singe. He's our yardstick, our control. Why did he undertake such a dangerous job on credit? Evidently because the stakes were large and he had some hold on the Marquis. The Marquis could give him no security. He had no convertible assets. What could he have offered?”

“The Pansy”
gasped Miriam, turning white as chalk.

Evans was visibly shocked. He stood as if stunned, then gradually considered the suggestion.

“But, Homer,” the girl protested. “I didn't realize what I was saying. I'm afraid . . . Forgive me, darling.” And she hurried into the next room and threw herself on the bed, clenching her fists in an effort to hold back her sobs.

Evans scarcely paid attention to what she was doing.
“The Pansy”
he murmured. “How perfectly it fits! Of course! The three-million-dollar Watteau, that couldn't be sold. Why should it be sold? The Singe could dangle it like the sword of Damocles until he got his ducats. He kidnapped the professor, and probably let the Marquis believe he had killed him. Not only the painting, but the ghost of the professor was held in reserve. Sound fellow, The Singe. He must have been hard hit when he learned that his client, the Marquis, had been murdered.”

With an air of satisfaction, Evans strolled out to the kitchen and mixed two brandies and soda. “All right, dear. Call off the hysterics and have a drink,” he called.

“I'm not having hysterics,” said Miriam's faint voice. “You'd feel funny yourself if your voice started answering questions right off the bat, as if it didn't belong to you at all.” Nevertheless, she got up from the rumpled bed cover, washed her face with cool water, rearranged her hair, smoothed her skirt, looked at her automatic to make sure the safety was on, straightened her girdle and her stockings, recovered one shoe that had slipped off, and returned to the salon timidly.

“Try this cognac I just received from the Charente,” said Evans. “It's as good as is permissible to mix with water. In fact, in a pinch one could drink it straight.”

That meant that the case was to be forgotten until morning.

I
T IS
common knowledge that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. Even more impartial is the Goddess Aurora, whose rosy fingers, after touching softly the towers of Paris—Notre Dame, the Sainte Chapelle, the grotesque Tour St. Jacques, the domes of St. Paul, the Pantheon, Sacré Coeur, and the Institute—crept fragrantly down river, over dewy willows, cafés, cat-o'-nine-tails, red-tiled rooftops, haystacks, boats at anchor, wayside filling stations, and fields of grain and grasses, until she was in a position to gild the barred windows of the Sanitorium Sens Unique. And since Hjalmar Jansen, though on the payroll as a bouncer, had the blood of Norse sea kings in his veins, he stirred from force of long habit when the rays of the morning sun aroused a couple of house flies to action. Having subdued the flies with a folded copy of
L'Action Francaise
left behind by his predecessor, the husky painter might have gone to sleep again had not Kvek tapped on his door. The Russian, it seems, had been restless, not having had time to get accustomed to the moaning and wailing in the violent ward, and had scoured the institution in search of a bracer. Thus it was that when he entered Hjalmar's bedroom, which barely would contain two such sizeable men, the former Colonel was holding in his hand a beaker of medicinal alcohol he had filched from the laboratory of Dr. Balthazar St.-J. Truc. In the kitchen he had found a case of Coca Cola, six bottles of which were in his pockets.

“I'm nervous. Let's have a snifter and look around,” said Kvek. “Then we must have a talk with K. Parker Seldon.”

Because they had suspected they were being watched closely by the doctor and his bodyguard, Gus, they had postponed the visit scheduled for the previous evening.

“I never tried Coca Cola,” said Hjalmar doubtfully.

“They say straight alcohol will kill you, unless you dilute it,” counseled Kvek, pouring the alcohol and the Coca Cola into the large crockery water pitcher on Hjalmar's washstand.

It was a matter of a few brisk minutes for Hjalmar to dress and for the two men to dispose of the contents of the pitcher. The drink made them both hungry, so they started out to find the kitchen and ask the cook to fix them some eggs. The latter, a surly chap, had strict orders to give the help nothing but the regulation breakfast, thin coffee flavored with chicory and gray soggy bread. The alternative presented him, however, was that if he didn't produce an omelet and some ham, the two new guards would lug out the cookstove and heave it into the river.

Refreshed by the alcohol and the breakfast and cheered by the morning chorus of the birds, Kvek and Jansen were on the point of looking for Seldon among the patients when they saw, pacing anxiously on one of the gravel walks below the windows, Dr. Truc, their employer.

“Now, what the devil is he up to, at this hour of the morning?” Hjalmar said.

The doctor was not long in demonstrating. He stooped, not too easily, picked up a small pebble and shied it at one of the second-story windows. Hjalmar and Kvek immediately got themselves out of sight and watched. The long French windows opened inward and through a painted set of bars half obscured with ivy, the Marchioness de la Rose d'Antan looked out and waved her hand. A moment later she descended and, clad in her old-fashioned dress, with high collar and wide puff sleeves, her hat that looked like one of François I's tilted coyly on her head, she walked slowly by the doctor's side to the spacious grounds outside the gate leading from the patients' courtyards.

“I'll be damned,” said the painter.

Kvek was indignant that a blighter like Dr. Balthazar Truc should presume to be on familiar terms with a member of the nobility, whether she were crazy or not.

In his narrow cell off Courtyard Seven, K. Parker Seldon was lying tightly bound in a strait jacket, his legs in a sack, the prey of the keenest disappointment. He remembered with pleasure the trundling he had handed out to Dr. Truc, but that was blotted out because the black-haired nurse had failed to keep her promise to see him the previous afternoon. The day had been endless, the night even longer. When Aurora could spare a few rays for his small window, he squirmed himself into a reading position, opened
Ulysses
with the aid of the stubble on his determined chin, and tried to lose himself in the chapter in which some citizens and students stage an intellectual debauch in a lying-in hospital. It is a tribute to the author of that masterpiece to relate that the harassed business man was so deep in prose when his door softly opened that he asked, somewhat impatiently, without looking around:

“Say, what's this ‘agenbite of inwit' the guy talks so much about?”

That is what Seldon thought he had said. The sounds that reached the shapely ears of Sofia Alexandrovna were similar to those made by French plumbing about four o'clock of a winter morning.

“Why, you've lost your teeth, poor man,” said Sonia, after locking the door behind her. “That's why you can't talk.”

“Gubbubshunbishes pinchtum,” was the only comment he could make, but his face expressed his joy.

“You understand my faulty English?” asked Sonia, her cool hand on his forehead.

Seldon tried to make gestures with his head that would convey that he understood, and that her English was the most lyrical and musical he had heard since Sothern and Marlowe had played Des Moines in 1906.

“Then listen carefully,” she said. “Your friends, my darling childhood playmate and cousin, Lvov Kvek, and Hjalmar Jansen, are in the sanitorium.”

Seldon began to weep, assuming that his companions had been overtaken with the D.T's and were as helpless as he was.

“There! Quiet, little dove! You didn't understand,” said Sonia. “They're not patients. They're attendants. They're going to get you out of here.”

At that, Seldon began to laugh and wiggle like an eel. Deftly the nurse unstrapped his arms and handed him a pencil and her memorandum pad.

“Are you married?” he wrote, feverishly.

She smiled and shook her head.

“Engaged?” he scribbled.

She shook her head again. It is always difficult to record how such things happen, but K. Parker Seldon found himself enclosed in eager arms and practically overpowered. He had played around a bit in the Middle West, at Shriner's conventions, Chamber of Commerce get-togethers, etc., but nothing in his experience had prepared him for Slavic outbursts of affection. Nevertheless, he did the best he could, and was first to hear a tap on the door.