The Mysterious Mickey Finn (19 page)

‘I simply adore him when he talks like that,' Miriam said to the sergeant. Since the romance of Hydrangea and Frémont had been brought to light, Miriam had felt drawn to the gruff officer who was capable, in spite of the sordid nature of his occupation, of soaring to emotional heights and inter-racial ecstasies.

‘I'm sorry we can't give this pair life terms,' said the sergeant. ‘But who are the big shots?' he added nervously.

‘All in due time,' said Evans soothingly. ‘What we must guard against first is that Hugo Weiss's brief candle is not snuffed before it's time. I've already made a boner in the case of Gring. Someone blundered there, and gravely.' He looked hard at Heiss and Lourde, and his voice grew harsh, so suddenly that Miriam trembled and the sergeant made a grab for his gun. Pointing a scornful finger almost in their faces, Evans rooted them with terror to their seats.

‘On the evening of May 24th,' he said, ‘you sought out Ambrose Gring. What for?'

There was no sound but the quick intake of terrified breaths.

Abel was the first who dared speak. He cowered and said:

‘We want a lawyer. We're not saying a word.'

‘We didn't bump off that guy, and we can prove it,' Dodo said. ‘Jeese, we were sitting right here and the place was lousy with bulls.'

‘I didn't ask you who killed Ambrose Gring. I'm sure you don't know, if that's any comfort to you.'

‘Hell,' the sergeant said. ‘They'd have made such a fitting pair of culprits. Are you sure they didn't kill him? Could they not have administered a slow poison? That's it. Slow poison. I'm going to put the cuffs on 'em, and send for Doc Toudoux's report.'

‘They will talk more freely without handcuffs,' Evans said. ‘Again I ask you,' he said to Abel, ‘what you wanted with Ambrose Gring.'

‘He'd worked for us before,' Abel said.

‘What kind of work?'

‘Collecting information.'

‘You're a sucker to spill a thing,' Dodo said, and dodged the sergeant's ready heel.

A
MONG
the many men and women involved in the Weiss case, none took it harder than Officer Schlumberger, known as ‘the Sunday painter'. Being an Alsatian, he took practically everything hard. He suffered in his civic pride, as a member of the police force, because men of prominence could disappear without trace. He was sure his
commissaire,
and particularly the prefect, were making fools of themselves, that of all the witnesses and suspects held, none was guilty of the kidnapping. But most of all, Schlumberger was worried about the forty-nine paintings which had been sent to the Louvre. Were they, in fact, old masters in disguise? Was France being drained of precious art treasures through the machinations of clever Americans?

The good patrolman had had fairly rough sledding since the Weiss case had broken. His
commissaire
had insulted him publicly, he had come in for all sorts of extra duty. Against his better judgement the forty-nine mysterious canvases had been turned over to the experts of the national museum, who Schlumberger thought were boobs. Had they not spent huge sums for fake Watteaus? Had they not covered the walls of the Louvre with bogus Rembrandts? Schlumberger did not lose his head. Unlike his superiors, he did not go off his rocker at the least provocation. He was the phlegmatic type, so he left the musty
préfecture
on the pretext that he must get something to eat and as the hour of midnight was striking, and, unknown to Schlumberger, the dealers called Heiss and Lourde were sweating under Evans' merciless questioning, the officer leaned his elbows on the parapet of the bridge by Notre Dame and tried to ease his thoughts by watching the endless flow of the Seine. How miraculous, a river ! the good officer thought. He gazed at its brown rippling surface, inhaled its dampness and the odour of the ancient stone walls. On and on. To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow. Water from the fragrant slopes of northern France, trickling, accumulating, finding its grooves and channels; bearing commerce and pleasurecraft, the delight of gay children, a last refuge for the despairing. What secrets could not the Seine divulge? What horrors had it cloaked in its time?

Officer Schlumberger's hair began to rise and a prickly sensation crept upward from the base of his skull. The brown placid surface of the Seine was stirred by a floating object. The officer did not hesitate. He tore loose the huge stuffed life preserver from its case on the parapet, grasped the strong new rope firmly and hove. Only one detail, in his haste, he overlooked. He forgot to let go of the rope. Therefore, the weight of the life preserver jerked him clear over the low stone wall, and after a sickening descent he felt the cold smack of that same brown surface of the river he had admired but a moment since.

‘Glowb ... uggle ... Glowb' were the sounds that bubbled up as he sank. It was hard swimming in full uniform, weighted down with club, automatic, badge, handcuffs, etc., but Schlum-berger was not the man to drown without struggle. And neither did he forget in his plight the floating object that had lured him to his ducking. It was not a body, not even a bundle of clothes. His heart leaped when he saw that it was a canvas, without frame, an oil painting.

His yells attracted the attention of the river patrol, and within twenty-five minutes, during which he clung to the rough stones of the quay and cursed the service, two patrolmen launched an emergency boat and were trying to row it toward him, with indifferent success.

‘Pull yourselves along by the wall if you can't row, you saps,' Schlumberger shouted.

‘You ought to be thankful we don't let you drown,' a patrolman said.

A brisk dialogue continued until finally Schlumberger was able to crawl over the bow, without upsetting the craft. He glanced at the wet painting and let out an exultant yell: ‘Gonzo ! By Jove. It's the missing self-portrait. I'll be promoted. I'll be rewarded by the rich American.'

‘This guy is whacky,' No. 1 boatman said.

‘Let's get him out of here in time,' No. 2 said, bumping the quay awkwardly with the stern.

Once his feet were on dry land, Schlumberger wasted no time. He lit out for a telephone booth to learn the whereabouts of Sergeant Frémont. Schlumberger had no confidence in the prefect, and was sure that if such important evidence came to his attention first he would hash it up somehow. The officer was determined to place the precious Gonzo in the hands of the sergeant. A bored voice at the
préfecture
gave him the address of Heiss and Lourde and it was the work of a moment to hail a taxi. It was the work of several moments, however, to find a driver who would take him in, wet and dripping as he was, and muttering ejaculations of joy over a water-soaked picture.

In the upper room at Heiss and Lourde's, Evans had reached the point in his questioning at which he demanded to know why Abel and Dodo had wanted to confer with Gring on the night of May 24th. It was at that point that a lull occurred in the examination. For Heiss and Lourde refused point-blank to talk. Both Abel and Dodo closed up, not like clams which may easily be pried open, but more like the vaults of one of the banks in which they could not be trusted by their relatives. Miriam was urging both Evans and the sergeant not to be gentle on her account. If they wanted to give the pair a thorough going over, with or without the implements from the Carnavalet, it was jake with her, as she expressed it. She went so far as to offer to help, by holding instruments in readiness and passing them when needed. But Evans had scruples about torture, not because it was cruel but because it was crude.

‘Look here, you pair of weasels,' he said. ‘You are, as I have told the sergeant, men of small capacity. You are merely the tools of brainier thieves. But you have in your diminutive reptilian minds a few kernels of information which are necessary to me. I'm going to extract them, never fear. I'm going to leave you wrung out like dishrags. If you see fit to delay, so much the worse for both of you.'

Just then, however, they all were electrified by the sound of a taxi with defective brakes and Officer Schlumberger, soaked to the skin and muddy, dived through the doorway and up the stairs, flapping the portrait and shouting: ‘The Gonzo. I've got the missing Gonzo.'

Evans, although possessed of unusual composure and poise, was not above astonishment. He frankly gasped and practically gurgled as he seized his own masterpiece and held it to the light. Then dismay and pain crossed his countenance.

‘There's a hole in the forehead,' he said.

Miriam, all gentleness, was at his side. ‘Oh,' she said. ‘I'm so sorry.'

Sergeant Frémont was glaring at Schlumberger. ‘What do you mean, breaking in here like this, and bringing another painting? As if we didn't have enough paintings. Forty-nine in the Louvre, all tagged and labelled; about a thousand in this dump, and half of 'em fakes....'

‘Say sixty per cent,' Evans said, trying to cover his disappointment. Then he clutched the painting closer, stared at it and ‘By Jove', escaped his lips. ‘Sergeant, don't rag our friend, the officer. He's brought us exactly what we need, a message.'

‘Message? You've lost your mind,' the sergeant said. ‘There's nothing written on that thing except H. Jansen, and we've got his signature fifty times on paintings and twice on cheques. In what way does one more scrawl, “H. Jansen”, advance our interests?'

‘The hole in the forehead. Does that tell you nothing?' Evans asked. ‘And we may be sure, now, that the kidnappers went upstream.'

The sergeant grabbed the painting and after a moment grunted. ‘The hole was punched carefully. It wasn't accidental,' he said, already ashamed of his obtuseness.

‘Ah,' said Evans. ‘Nothing could be surer. The hole was punched with care. Therefore we may assume that it was placed with equal care. In the centre of the forehead. Does that mean anything, Sergeant?' Without waiting for an answer he turned to Bonnet. ‘Please bring me at once a large map of France. Don't lose a minute.'

It was surprising to Miriam to note the change that had come over Evans. Gone was all his indolence. He radiated energy and decisiveness.

‘Sergeant,' Evans said. ‘Have this pair of buzzards thrown into the dirtiest cell you have. Collect all the candlelight Grecos in the establishment. You'll find six, if I'm not mistaken. Lock these doors and have the premises guarded so that not even a cockroach (
Stylopyga orientalis
) could squirm in or out....'

‘They are not cockroaches. They're water bugs (
Phyllodromia germanica
)
'
said Dodo, defiantly. And he stuck out his tongue just in time to bite it when the sergeant stamped on his instep with his heavy heel.

‘And now,' Evans said, ‘there's not a moment to lose. Sergeant, I must insist on the release of Hjalmar Jansen. We've got a night's work to do, and Hjalmar must help us.'

‘But the prefect. He'll never stand for it.'

‘Damn the prefect. Get him for me on the phone.'

At this prospect of passing the buck, the sergeant fairly beamed. ‘Schlumberger, get the prefect on the phone,' he said, and the Alsatian made haste to do so. ‘Here he is,' he said, a few seconds later, and added, under his breath, ‘the louse'.

‘
M
.
le Préfet
,
'
said Evans in his incisive perfect French. ‘I am Homer Evans. . . . . Stop roaring and listen. I am also the duly appointed
agent plénipotentiaire
and representative of the American secret service detailed on the Weiss case. . . . Yes. You'll see the papers in due time, and you'll get a call from the minister of foreign affairs, and if you're obstructive and stubborn you'll get a sealed letter from the president of the republic. . . . Yes. You are serving a republic, you know. . . . You should understand the word.'

Frémont was simmering with happiness. He had been bawled out publicly and privately so many times by the prefect that to hear the latter addressed as Evans was addressing him added months and perhaps years to the sergeant's life. The prefect was a royalist, among other things, and hated the sound of the word republic.

At the phone, Evans' tone changed. ‘Ah, that's more reasonable,' he said. ‘I won't quibble. You may place the man you insist on calling Gonzo in custody of Sergeant Frémont who will be responsible for him. You can tell the press that the prisoner is to be taken to the scene of the crime. Anything you like. Now I shall expect Jansen here within ten minutes. Good night.'

G
ASTON
H
ONORÉ
C
RAYON DE
C
RAYON
, prefect of the Seine, sat nervously at his desk in his now empty office of the now nearly empty
préfecture.
There was still a trace of violet ink in his eyebrows and more than a trace of rancour toward Gonzo, alias Jansen. The prefect had disliked all the suspects and witnesses at sight, with the possible exception of Oklahoma Tom, but his rarest spleen was reserved for the big Norwegian who had smeared him with his own writing fluid, tossed several squads of his choicest officers around the room, and who was the rightful legal possessor of 250,000 francs, then in the prefect's vault. The prefect did not have exactly the same feeling about money as had the late Ambrose Gring, but believed that any large sums of it lying around properly belonged to the pretender to the throne of France and in any case should not be left in the hands of Americans.

In the laboratory of the famous Dr Hyacinthe Toudoux the body of Greeng, Ambrose, was stretched upon a slab, with certain important parts missing which were then being tested for arsenic, strychnine, henbane, hemlock, in fact all the well-known and little known poisons. Nothing was going well with the medical examiner. Litmus papers which should have turned pink when dipped in the fatal
crême de cacao
, came out green, and in extreme cases a bright heliotrope. Liquids which should have been clear foamed and fizzed and vice versa. Now and then the prefect opened the door, gazed at the grisly proceedings sarcastically, snorted and left the room, only to drop in at the salle Ste Anne for a quick look at Maggie, who persisted in denying that she was Miss Montana and shook her thin talons at Monsieur Crayon de Crayon, promising him that if and when the British found out what was happening to her he would be drummed and flogged through the fleet.