Monsieur Jonquelle (15 page)

She turned again toward the Frenchman.

“Is it not so, Monsieur?”

The American had a strange, sullen, puzzled expression. But Monsieur Jonquelle laughed.

“Alas!” he said, “it is the disasters of my acquaintances with which I seem always to be concerned, and, unhappily, their affairs are usually known to me.”

He bowed slightly to the American.

“If Monsieur will permit,” he said, “I shall be charmed to verify Madame's prediction. Monsieur has followed to inquire why the house in the Faubourg St. Germain, in the old quarter of Paris, happened to burn down.”

The American moved, as in anger, abruptly in his chair.

“Yes,” he said, “that is just precisely what I wanted to know.”

Monsieur Jonquelle rose. He took a cigarette case from his pocket. It was of platinum exquisitely traced with a complicated arabesque. He opened it and presented it to the woman in the chair. She declined.

“It is denied me,” she said, “as all things are now denied me.”

The American also refused, and Monsieur Jonquelle returned with his cigarette to his chair on the border of the terrace.

“I, also,” he said, speaking as he went about the lighting of the cigarette, “as what Madame has so courteously called ‘an old acquaintance,' am interested to know why this house at the corner of the Rue de St. Père on the Faubourg St. Germain has burned to the ground. It will be necessary to make some explanation to the authorities of Paris. They will be curious about it. And as this old acquaintance of Madame it has seemed to me that I ought to obtain and take some measures to present an explanation to the authorities in Paris.”

He continued to speak, in the slow business of igniting the cigarette.

“There is no question of insurance, nor the right of any property owner in the matter. Monsieur Martin Dillard owned this house by purchase some months ago, He carried no insurance on it. It was stored only with his own property and used only by himself with the charming assistance of Madame. There was not even a servant about. The doors entering the house were all fitted with a special lock, a complicated American lock with two keys only, one for Monsieur and the duplicate for Madame. The windows were securely closed with heavy shutters. The house was
wholly inaccessible to any but these two persons, and it was the exclusive property of Monsieur. If it had not burned, we should not have been concerned about it. Mysterious romances of the heart do not provoke an inquiry in Paris. It is the only capital of pleasure where the heart is free; but the city authorities are concerned with fires. When the flame emerges from the heart, Paris is disturbed, and when it reduces to ashes an ancient house on the Faubourg St. Germain, some explanation must be given.”

He paused again. He had now gotten the cigarette lighted. And he sat down.

“Madame has correctly expressed it. I am an old acquaintance, and I am more than that; I am an old acquaintance who is very much interested to get Madame's explanation before the authorities in Paris as early as I can manage it. Her flight after the fire seemed to be unwise. Even I had very considerable difficulty to find her.”

The American spoke abruptly.

“You seem very much interested in ‘Casque d'Or.'”

Jonquelle's voice was in a sort of drawl.

“‘Casque d'Or,'” he said. “The expression is supremely happy. Madame's golden head used to be the wonder of Paris when she came up with it like a Minerva through the fluid floor of Paris. Ah! yes, I am very interested—I have been always
interested, as an old, a very old, acquaintance. And I am interested again, more, perhaps, than Monsieur can imagine.”

The American spoke again abruptly.

“You seem to know all about ‘Casque d'Or.'”

Again Monsieur Jonquelle drawled his answer.

“Ah! yes,” he said, “from her golden head to the blue pigeon delicately outlined on her hand between the thumb and the forefinger—every detail of Madame has been of interest to me—has been, I may say, of anxiety to me. And now I am concerned about the explanation for this fire.”

The American broke in. His voice was no longer restrained.

“I don't see what you've got to do with it,” he said.

Monsieur Jonquelle did not at once reply. He looked at his cigarette as though it were somehow unsatisfactory; puffed it a moment until the tip glowed; then he tossed it over the edge of the terrace into the bushes.

Almost immediately the bushes parted and two persons came up on to the terrace. They were footmen in a rather conspicuous foreign livery. They paid no attention to either Monsieur Jonquelle or the American. They addressed themselves with apologetic diffidence to the woman in the chair. They explained that a parrot belonging to the Princess Kitzenzof, who occupied the great
villa above, had escaped and was concealed somewhere in the thick shrubbery of Madame's garden. Would they be permitted to search for it? The woman in the chair moved her head slowly in assent. Then she dismissed them with a gesture. They went down off the terrace and toward the rear of the villa in their search, and the woman in the chair addressed the American.

“You must believe,” she said, “that Monsieur Jonquelle is an old acquaintance and that this explanation is not to be denied him. Neither are you to be denied it. You came here for it precisely as he has come for it. You have followed me here, trailing out my flight, as he has followed. The two of you arrived nearly on the moment, and I shall be pleased to include the two of you in my explanation. You were demanding it as Monsieur Jonquelle arrived—with some heat, if I correctly remember.”

The American replied in his abrupt manner.

“I don't understand this thing,” he said. “But I do want to know how this house happened to burn while I was absent. You are the only person who had a key to it, and you must have burned it or you would not have run away and hid yourself—now, what's the story?”

The woman had a bit of delicate lace in her fingers. She put it up a moment to her lips. Then she spoke, addressing her two guests. Her voice
was slow, serene, and detached, like one who speaks without interest, without emotion, and without any concern for effect. It was like a voice from a mechanical appliance, having intelligence, but no will to feel.

“I have been attached to Monsieur Dillard,” she said. “There was a fortune before us, an immense, incredible fortune. The anticipation of it bound me to him, and so the burning of this house must have been an accident. The lure of a fortune is the only influence that does not loosen as one advances into life, in a world where presently every emotion fails. Therefore Monsieur Dillard had a right to feel that he could trust me, since my interest in this fortune was identical with his own.”

She paused, and seemed to address Monsieur Jonquelle directly.

“You will be concerned, Monsieur, about the mystery of this fortune. It was no dream, and depended upon no uncertain hazard of chance. Monsieur Dillard is an artist—an artist with a genius for turning art to a practical use. There have been greater artists than Monsieur Dillard in production, but not in methods by which art can be made to serve a practical purpose; that is to say, can be made to produce a fortune. It is the life-work of Monsieur Dillard not to produce art, but to bring the artistic skill of the masters
of art to his practical purposes. And, in this department, he has no superior in any country. The house in the Faubourg St. Germain was in fact a storeroom. It was, at the time of its destruction by fire, literally packed with masterpieces—beautiful works of art of an incredible value.”

She did not move the position of her body in the chair. But she again vaguely touched her lips with the handkerchief in her fingers, a bit of filmy lace.

“Monsieur,” she said, “there have been in the world three men who are supreme in what is perhaps the highest of all artistic production. I shall name them to you: Monsieur Whistler, the American; Monsieur Helleu of Paris, and Wagenheim of Munich.”

She moved a trifle in her chair. Then she went on.

“The misfortune of producing a masterpiece in oil or in water-color is that one copy only of this masterpiece exists, and if by any misfortune it is destroyed, every adequate evidence of its beauty has disappeared forever. This is the unfortunate feature attached to the work of all the great masters. But it is a misfortune that does not attend the etchings of Monsieur Whistler, Monsieur Helleu, and Herr Wagenheim. The beautiful faces of the lovely Americans preserved by the etchings of Monsieur Helleu can be
reproduced in any number. That beauty does not depend upon the jeopardy of a single picture.”

Her voice seemed to advance, but not with the stimulus of any emotion.

“It is not commonly known,” she said, “that an extreme skill is required to obtain in the prints all the beauties of these etchings. The prints are commonly made by persons having only the usual workman's skill. But it was always realized by the masters of this art that the extreme and delicate beauties of their etchings could only be produced by an adequate skill, by a skill almost equal to their own, in the printing of the picture. This skill constitutes the peculiar genius of Monsieur Dillard—a skill which he has striven to perfect, and which he has finally brought to the highest excellence.

“He labored in the house in the Faubourg St. Germain for a long time and with an incredible patience, until he became the superior of any man living, and the house, as I have said, was literally packed with the most beautiful and the most valuable reproductions of this character in the world. This accumulated treasure represented the incredible fortune which was before Monsieur Dillard and myself.

“It was on the night that he had gone to Bordeaux in order to make some arrangement for the removal of the treasure that the unfortunate fire
occurred that wiped out our fortune in an hour, leaving Monsieur penniless and myself with but the ruin of another illusion. And it happened, Monsieur, in the simplest fashion.”

There was absolute silence on the terrace before the villa. The vaguely blue sea seemed to underlie a world of amethyst. Heavy odors were in the air. A little beyond the terrace the leaves of a flowering vine moved where the footmen of the Princess Kitzenzof searched as noiselessly as ghosts for the lost parrot. The shadowy figures of the two footmen were outlined to the woman in the chair, and, perhaps, to Monsieur Jonquelle, but they were not visible to the American.

He sat like a tense figure in some organic medium, grim, rigid; always in that immobility which seemed to await the next word before it flashed into violent life; as though Madame's words were the delicate implement of a vivisectionist moving about a nerve which it never touched, but which it constantly menaced.

“It was the simplest accident,” the woman repeated in her placid voice. “The original etchings of an immortal like one of the three which I have named are priceless—they cannot be replaced.

“Out of the fear that the house might be entered, after the reproductions had been made, these originals were placed under some rubbish in the basement of the house. This basement had
not been entered for a long time, and when these originals were concealed there, care was taken not to disturb the appearance which this room presented of not having been opened for an incredible age.

“It was low, with an earth floor. The ceiling was of wooden beams dried out and beginning to decay and as inflammable as tinder. The whole of this ceiling was hung with cobwebs, laced over them, hanging like veils in shreds.

“On the night of the disaster, before leaving the house, I went into this basement to make sure that the originals stored there remained as we had placed them. It was late, and I took a candle. This was a fatal indiscretion. When I arose from an examination of the place where the etchings were concealed, the flame of the candle came in contact with the hanging spider-webs, and immediately the whole ceiling flashed into flame. In an instant it seemed to me the entire ceiling of the room was on fire. I had barely time to escape before the room was a furnace.

“In terror, I let myself out of the house. As the basement of this house was without windows, the fire was not discovered until I had gotten entirely out of the neighborhood of the Faubourg St. Germain.

“I was so overcome, so numbed by this incredible disaster that I did not stop to consider any
result. I wished to escape from Paris—to conceal myself somewhere. I thought of this villa, but I did not dare to take the train from the Gare de Lyon. I traveled in a motor, winding southward from France, not directly, in order to confuse any one who might endeavor to follow.”

Again she touched her mouth with the lace handkerchief. There was a faint red stain on it. She looked at the stain, but without emotion, and presently added:

“But I did not succeed. Monsieur Dillard and Monsieur Jonquelle have been able to trail me here with an equal facility, it seems, and within almost the same period of time. I cannot have managed my travel with discretion.”

She stopped abruptly. For a moment there was silence. The two men beside her did not move, but their aspect changed. The American seemed to relax; his tense energy to ebb. The menace in him changed to an aspect of disaster; on the contrary, there came into the posture of Monsieur Jonquelle a certain tenseness. He spoke, addressing the American.

“Monsieur,” he said, “is it true that the basement room of this house was thus hung with cobwebs?”

The man replied as though his jaws were stiff.

“Yes,” he said, “the whole rotten ceiling was hung with them. I always went in with an electric
flash—a candle—good God! What an accident!”

Monsieur Jonquelle arose.

“Monsieur,” he said, “this was no accident. I will show you.”

The villa had long been closed. Insects had had their will with it. He went over to a shutter, unhooked it, swung it a little open, removed an immense cobweb, and came back to the border of the terrace.