Part 11

Cazévon smiled. “I really keep it handy for poachers. I should never shoot to kill, though. A broken leg would be all I should aim for!”

“And would you shoot from one of these windows?”

“Oh, poachers don’t come so close to the Château!”

“That almost seems a pity,” said Barnett thoughtfully, and opened a very narrow window—almost a loophole—which shed a ray of light into one corner of the hall.

“Fancy that now!” he exclaimed. “Looking through the trees, one can see a section of the Old Dungeon—right across the park. Isn’t that the portion of the ruin which overlooks the river, Monsieur Cazévon?”

“Just about, I should say.”

“Why, yes, it is!” cried Barnett excitedly. “I recognize that tuft of flowers growing between two stones. Isn’t the air wonderfully clear? Can you see that yellow flower, looking along the bore?”

He had raised the gun to his shoulder as he spoke, and without hesitating a moment, he fired. The yellow flower disappeared, while a puff of smoke hung in the still air.

Georges Cazévon made a gesture of annoyance. His displeasure was manifest. This “humble assistant” was an incredibly skilled marksman, and, anyway, it was cool cheek his letting off a gun like that in the house!

“I believe your servants are at the other end of the Château?” said Barnett. “Then they won’t have heard the noise I made. But I’m sorry I did that—it must have startled Mademoiselle d’Alescar, the sound being so painfully associated for her with the memory——” He broke off.

Georges Cazévon smiled sardonically.

“Then does Mademoiselle d’Alescar still believe there is some connection between the shot that was heard that morning and her brother’s death?”

Barnett nodded.

“I wonder where she got the idea?”

“Where I got it myself a minute ago. It’s a curiously vivid picture—the unknown watcher in ambush at this window, while Jean d’Alescar was hanging on half-way down the Dungeon wall!”

“But d’Alescar died of a fall!” protested Cazévon.

“Quite so,” said Barnett, with deadly calm, “of a fall. And the reason for his fall was, of course, the sudden crumbling of some projection or shelf to which he was clinging with both hands at the time!”

Cazévon scowled at the urbane Barnett.

“I didn’t know,” he said, “that Mademoiselle d’Alescar had been so—so definite in her statements to people. Why, this constitutes a direct accusation!”

“Yes, a—direct—accusation,” repeated Barnett slowly, so that the words seemed to hang in the air as the smoke from the gun had done a few moments before.

Cazévon stared at him. The calm self-assurance and decisive manner of this “humble assistant” rather astonished him. He even began to wonder if this detective might not have come to the Château in the rôle of aggressor. For the conversation, begun so casually and conventionally, was now rapidly turning into an attack on Cazévon himself!

He sat down rather heavily, and asked:

“Why, according to Mademoiselle d’Alescar, was her brother climbing that wall?”

“To recover the two hundred thousand francs which the old Comte d’Alescar hid in the place which is marked with a cross on the map you have been shown.”

“But I never for a moment believed in that yarn,” exclaimed Cazévon. “Even presuming that the Comte d’Alescar had managed to raise such a sum, why should he have concealed it instead of immediately handing it over to my father?”

“Quite a valid objection,” admitted Barnett. “Unless the hidden treasure happened not to be a sum of money at all!”

“But what else could it be?”

“That I don’t know. We shall have to use our imaginations a bit.”

Georges Cazévon made a movement of impatience.

“You can be quite sure that Elizabeth d’Alescar and her brother long ago exhausted the possible alternatives!”

“How do you know? They are not professionals like myself.”

“Even a hypersensitized intelligence,” sneered Cazévon, “cannot evolve something from nothing!”

“Yes, it can—sometimes! For example, do you know a man called Gréaume, who is the Guéret newsagent, and was at one time an accountant in your factory?”

“Certainly I know him. A very worthy fellow.”

“Well, Gréaume is prepared to swear that Jean d’Alescar’s father called on your own father the very next day after he had drawn his two hundred thousand francs from the bank.”

“Well?” snapped Cazévon.

“Isn’t it only logical to suppose that the money was handed over to your father on that occasion, and that it was the receipt which was temporarily concealed in some cranny of the Dungeon?”

Georges Cazévon gave a sudden start, then controlled himself.

“Mr.—uh—Barnett, do you realize what you are insinuating? It’s an insult to my father’s memory!”

“An insult! I don’t follow you!” said Barnett innocently.

“If my father had received that money he would most certainly have acknowledged the fact.”

“Why should he? He was under no obligation to tell his neighbors that some one had paid him back a private loan!”

Georges Cazévon’s fist came down with a bang on his desk.

“But if that money had been paid him, how do you explain that a fortnight later, just a few days after his former debtor’s death, he was taking possession of the Mazurech estate?”

“Yet that is exactly what he did!”

“You must be crazy! There’s absolutely no ground for suggesting such a thing. Even granting that my father was capable of demanding to be paid what he had already received, he would never have done it, because he would have known that the receipt could be produced!”

“Perhaps he knew,” suggested Barnett diffidently, “that its existence was a secret and that the heirs were in ignorance of both loan and repayment. And since he had set his heart on owning this place and had, so they tell me, sworn he would get it, he was tempted and fell.”

“But no one would hide a receipt away where it could never be found.”

“Remember that the old Comte died of cerebral congestion. During his last days he was very queer. His mind reasoned imperfectly. He was ashamed of having borrowed that money. He was ashamed of the receipt, yet dared not destroy it. So he evolved a tortuous manner of concealment, with an equally tortuous clew.”

Gradually Barnett was putting a completely different complexion on the whole case. Georges Cazévon’s father was now appearing in the light of a rogue and blackguard. Cazévon himself, pale and shaking, stood with clenched fists, impotent with fear and rage, glaring at the immovable Barnett. The audacity of this “underling” completely unnerved him.

“I protest!” he stammered. “You have no right to jump to these—these abominable conclusions!”

“Believe me,” said Barnett, “I never leap before I look. All my allegations are founded on fact.”

Georges Cazévon darted a hunted look over his shoulder. He felt as if some unseen enemy were closing in on him. In a high, unnatural voice he cried:

“Lies! all lies! You have no proof. To prove that my father ever did such a thing you would—why, you would have to go and look for evidence at the top of the Old Dungeon!”

“Well,” contested Barnett, “Jean d’Alescar managed to get there, didn’t he?”

“He didn’t! I tell you he didn’t! I tell you it’s impossible to scale a ninety-foot tower all in two hours. It’s beyond human power!”

“All the same, Jean d’Alescar accomplished this—impossibility,” pursued Barnett doggedly.

“But how?” asked Georges Cazévon, on a note of sheer exasperation. “Do you expect me to believe he went up on a witch’s broomstick?”

“Not that,” said Barnett gently. “He used a rope!”

Cazévon laughed long and loud, but quite unmirthfully.

“A rope? You’re crazy. Of course, I often saw the boy shooting his arrows in the vain hope that one day his rope would catch hold. Poor devil! Miracles like that never happen nowadays. And anyway, two hours! Oh, it’s out of the question. Besides, the rope would have been found hanging from the tower, or lying on the rocks of the Creuse after the tragedy. Whereas I am told it is at the Manor.”

With unshakable calm Barnett rejoined:

“Quite. But it wasn’t that rope he used, you see.”

“Then what rope did he use?” asked Cazévon, turning a gulp into a laugh. “You can’t expect me to take all this seriously, you know. The Comte Jean d’Alescar, carrying the magic rope, came out on to the terrace of his garden at daybreak. He muttered the one word ‘Abracadabra,’ and lo! his rope uncoiled and rose to the top of the tower, so that he might promptly ascend. The good old Indian rope-trick—retired colonels write to the papers every day and solemnly aver it’s a miracle!”

“And yet you, too, monsieur,” said Barnett, “are driven to conjure up a miracle;—just like Jean d’Alescar—and like myself. There is no other explanation, of course. But the miracle was the opposite of what you imagine—it did not work from bottom to top, as would seem more usual and probable, but from top to bottom!”

Cazévon made a feeble attempt to joke.

“A kind Providence, eh, throwing a life-line to help a struggling mortal?”

“Why call Providence into it?” asked Barnett. “No need for that. This miracle was merely one of those which Chance may perform at any time nowadays.”

“Chance?”

“Remember that Chance knows no impossibilities. Chance is the unknown factor—Chance the disturber, the malicious, capricious visitant, swooping to make fantastic moves on the chessboard of human existence, forever proving the old platitude that truth is stranger than fiction! Chance is to-day the great worker of miracles. And the miracle I have in mind is not so wonderful, really, in an age when meteors are not the only bolts from the blue, so to speak.”

“Do the skies rain ropes?” asked Cazévon sardonically.

“Certainly, ropes among other things. The ocean-bed is strewn with things dropped overboard by the ships that sail the seas!”

“There are no ships in the sky,” observed Cazévon.

“Oh, yes, there are,” Barnett contradicted him, “only we don’t think of them as that. We call them balloons, and aeroplanes, and—after all, airships! They ride the air as ships ride the ocean, and any number of things may fall or be thrown overboard from them! Suppose one of these things is a coil of rope, which slips over the battlements of the Old Dungeon, and there you have the solution of the mystery.”

“A nice, convenient explanation!”

“Pardon me, an extremely well-founded explanation. If you glance through the local papers for the past week, as I did yesterday, you will see that a balloon flew over this part of the country on the night preceding Jean d’Alescar’s death. It was travelling from north to south, and ballast was heaved overboard ten miles north of Guéret. The obvious inference is that a coil of rope was also thrown out, that one end got caught in a tree on the terrace, and to free it Jean d’Alescar had to break off a branch. He then went down to the terrace, tied the two ends of the rope together, and climbed up to the tower. Not an easy thing to do, but possible for a lad of his years.”

“And then?” came in a whisper from Cazévon, whose face had grown suddenly gray.

“Then,” Barnett continued, “someone who was standing here, at this window, and who was a remarkable shot, observed the boy hanging suspended in midair, took aim at the rope, and—severed it!”

Cazévon made a choking noise.

“That is your explanation of the—accident?”

Barnett took no notice of the interruption, but went on:

“Afterwards, this person hurried to the bank of the Creuse and searched the dead body to get the receipt. He took hold of the dangling rope, and hauled it down—then threw the highly compromising piece of evidence into a neighboring well—not a very safe hiding-place!”

The accusation had shifted to Georges Cazévon himself—a kind of guilty legacy from the man’s dead father. The past was being linked up with the present—the net was closing in.

With a convulsive effort, Cazévon shook himself, as if to rid himself of Barnett’s odious presence.

“I’ve had enough of your lies!” he shouted. “The whole thing’s ridiculous invention on your part—you’re simply making this up to terrorize me. I shall tell Monsieur Béchoux that I have had you thrown out as a common blackmailer. That’s what you are, a blackmailer! But you won’t get any change out of me!”

“If I had come here to blackmail you,” said Barnett blithely, “I should have started off by producing my proofs.”

Blind with rage, Cazévon screamed:

“Your proofs! What proofs have you got? Nothing but a cock-and-bull story. You haven’t a single proof of any kind—how could you have? Why, there’s only one proof that would be worth anything—only one. And if you can’t produce that, then your whole story collapses at once, and you’re a fool as well as a knave!”

“And what is that proof?” asked Barnett, still smiling.

“The receipt, of course! The receipt signed by my father!”

“Here it is,” said Barnett, holding out a sheet of stamped paper, frayed and yellow at the edges. “This is your father’s handwriting, isn’t it? Pretty explicit, this document: ‘I, the undersigned, Auguste Cazévon, hereby acknowledge the receipt from the Comte d’Alescar of the sum of two hundred thousand francs previously loaned to him by me, and I hereby declare that this repayment renders null and void any and every claim of mine to the Château and lands of Mazurech.’

“The date,” continued Barnett, “corresponds to that mentioned by Gréaume. The receipt is signed. Therefore it is indisputably genuine, and you, Cazévon, must have known about it from your father’s own lips or from the private papers he left when he died. The discovery of this document meant disgrace for your father and yourself, and the loss of the Château, for which you felt all your father’s attachment. That’s why you killed d’Alescar!”

“If I had killed him,” faltered Cazévon, “I should have removed the receipt from his body.”

“You had a good look for it,” said Barnett grimly, “but it wasn’t on him. Jean d’Alescar had prudently wrapped it round a stone and thrown it down from the top of the tower, meaning to pick it up when he got to the ground again. I found it near the river, some twenty yards away.”

Barnett only just stepped back in time to prevent Cazévon snatching the receipt from his hand. There was a moment’s pause, and then Barnett, breathing a trifle quicker, spoke again:

“That is tantamount to admitting your guilt! Looking at you now, I can well believe Mademoiselle d’Alescar’s statement that you are capable of almost anything. You are the slave of your own unreasoning impulse! Carried away by the passions of greed and hatred, you raised your gun and fired that morning. Steady, man!” as Cazévon seemed about to collapse, “control yourself. Someone’s ringing! It must be Béchoux. Perhaps you won’t want him to know all this!”

A full minute passed in silence. At last, Cazévon, his eyes still those of a maniac, whispered:

“How much? What must I pay you for the receipt?”

“It is not for sale.”

“What do you mean to do with it?”

“It will be handed over to you, on certain conditions, which I will outline in Inspector Béchoux’s presence.”

“And if I refuse to accept your terms?”

“Then it will be my painful duty to expose you!”

“No one will believe you!”

“Oh, won’t they?”

Cazévon’s head slumped in utter dejection. Barnett’s driving, implacable will-power had beaten him. At that moment Béchoux was shown in.

The inspector had not expected to find Barnett on the scene. He was unpleasantly surprised, and wondered what the two men could have been talking about; whether the incalculable Barnett had been busy digging pits for the luckless representative of the law to fall into.

Fearing something of the sort, he was quite aggressively positive in his assertions from the word “go.”

Shaking Cazévon warmly by the hand he declared:

“Monsieur, I promised to let you know the result of my investigations before I left, and to tell you what kind of report I should make. So far, my own views are in complete accord with the construction that has been put upon the case. There is absolutely nothing in what Mademoiselle d’Alescar has been saying against you.”

“Hear, hear,” said Barnett. “That’s just what I’ve been telling Monsieur Cazévon. Béchoux, my guide, philosopher and friend, is displaying his usual acumen. Nevertheless, the fact is that Monsieur Cazévon is bent on returning good for evil, and meeting calumny with generosity. He insists on restoring the domain of her ancestors to Mademoiselle d’Alescar!”

Béchoux looked thunderstruck.

“Wh—what? You mean to say——”

“Just that,” said Barnett. “The affair has not unnaturally filled Monsieur Cazévon with distaste for the district, and he has his eye on a château nearer his factories in Guéret. When I got here this afternoon Monsieur Cazévon was actually drafting the deed of gift. He also expressed his wish to add a bearer check for one hundred thousand francs to be handed to Mademoiselle d’Alescar as compensation. That’s so, isn’t it, Monsieur Cazévon?”

Without a second’s hesitation, Cazévon acted on Barnett’s promptings as if they had been the dictates of his heart’s desires. He seated himself at his desk, wrote out the deed of gift and signed the check.

“There you are,” he said. “For the rest, I will instruct my solicitor.”

Barnett took both check and document, slipped them into an envelope, and said to Béchoux:

“Here, take this to Mademoiselle d’Alescar. I feel sure she will appreciate Monsieur Cazévon’s generosity. Monsieur, I am at your service. I cannot tell you how happy you have made us both by furnishing such a satisfactory solution to the business.”

He swaggered off, followed by Béchoux. The latter, utterly astounded, waited till they were out of the park, and then demanded:

“What’s it all mean? Did he fire that shot? Has he made a statement to you?”

“None of your business, Béchoux,” said Barnett. “Let bygones be bygones. The case has been settled to everyone’s best advantage. All you have to do is to speed on your mission to Mademoiselle d’Alescar. Ask her to forgive and forget, and not to breathe a word to anyone. Then come and pick me up at the inn.”

In a short while Béchoux was back again. He brought the news that Mademoiselle d’Alescar had accepted the gift of the Mazurech estate and her solicitor would take the matter up at once, but the money she refused to take. In her indignation at being offered it she had torn up the check.

Barnett and Béchoux took their leave. The return journey was made in silence. The inspector was lost in unprofitable speculation. His mind was in a whirl of interrogation, but Barnett looked disinclined for confidential converse.

They got to Paris at close on to three o’clock. Barnett invited Béchoux to lunch with him near the Bourse, and Béchoux, incapable of resistance, went with him meekly.

“You do the ordering,” said Barnett, rising from the table a moment after they had entered the restaurant. “I’ve some business I must attend to. Won’t be a moment!”

Béchoux did not have long to wait. Barnett was back again almost immediately, and the two men ate a hearty meal. When they were drinking their coffee, Béchoux ventured a remark:

“I must send the torn bits of that check back to Monsieur Cazévon.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t bother to do that, Béchoux.”

“Why not?”

“The check was quite worthless.”

“But how?”

“Oh,” said Barnett airily, “I foresaw that Mademoiselle d’Alescar was certain to refuse to take it, so when I put the deed of gift into the envelope I slipped in with it an old cancelled check. Waste not, want not.”

“But what happened to the genuine check?” groaned Béchoux, “the one Monsieur Cazévon signed?”

“Oh, that! I’ve just been and cashed it at the bank!”

He opened his coat, displaying a wad of notes. Béchoux’s coffee cup slipped from his nerveless grasp. With an effort he controlled himself.

For a long while they sat smoking in silence, facing one another across the table. At last Barnett spoke:

“There’s no denying it, Béchoux, so far our collaboration has proved decidedly fruitful. We seem to ring the bell every time, and it’s all helped to enlarge my little nest-egg. But, honestly, I’m beginning to feel very troubled about you, old horse. Here we are, working side by side, and I always pocket the dibs. Look here, Béchoux, won’t you come into partnership with me? The Barnett and Béchoux Agency? It really sounds rather well!”

Béchoux gave him a look of hatred. The man goaded him beyond endurance. He rose, flung down a note to pay for the lunch, and mumbled as he took his leave:

“There are times when I think it must be Arsène Lupin after all!”

“I sometimes wonder, too,” said Barnett—and laughed.

IX

DOUBLE ENTRY

A serious breach in the Béchoux-Barnett friendship seemed to have been caused by the affair of the Old Dungeon at Mazurech, and the fleecing of Georges Cazévon, so that when a taxi came to a halt in the rue Laborde and Inspector Béchoux leapt from it and hurled himself into the office of his friend, Jim Barnett, no one was more surprised than the latter.

“This is indeed a pleasure,” he said, advancing with alacrity. “Our last parting was rather in silence and tears, and I was afraid you were feeling sore. And is there anything I can do for you in a small way this merry morning?”

“There is.”

Barnett shook the inspector warmly by the hand.

“Splendid! But what’s up? You look positively apoplectic. Please don’t burst in my office.”

“Kindly be serious, Barnett,” said poor Béchoux stiffly. “I’m working on a most complicated case from which I particularly want to emerge triumphant.”

“What’s it all about?”

“My wife,” said Béchoux, and there was anguish in his tone.

Barnett’s eyebrows shot up.

“Your wife?” he echoed. “Then you’re married?”

“Been divorced six years,” was the laconic answer.

“Incompatibility?”

“No. My wife found she had a vocation for the stage! The stage—I ask you! Married to an inspector of police and she wanted to go on——” Béchoux sneezed abruptly and violently, giving Barnett time to ask:

“Then she became an actress?”

“A singer.”

“At the Opéra?”

“No. The Folies Bergère. She’s Olga Vaubant.”

“What, not the lady who does the Acrobatic Arias? But she’s wonderful, Béchoux. Olga Vaubant is a superb artiste. She has created a new art form. Her latest number brings down the house. It’s sheer genius—absolutely. You know, she stands on her head and sings:

“‘I’m in luck, I gotta boy Fills his momma’s heart with joy— Yes, you otta see my Jim!’

And she’s your wife!”

“Was,” said Béchoux shortly. “Well, I’m glad you like the lady’s performance. I’ve just been honored with a note from her.”

He produced a sheet of rose-colored notepaper, with an embossed crimson O in one corner. Scrawled in pencil and dated that very morning was the following message:

“My bedroom suite has been stolen. Mother in a state of collapse. Come at once.—Olga.”

“The moment I got this,” said Béchoux, “I telephoned the préfecture. They had already been called in on the case, and I obtained permission to collaborate with the men who are handling it.”

“Then why are you all of a dither?” asked Barnett.

“It’s—it’s because this will mean meeting her again,” said Béchoux, ashamed and furious.

“Are you still in love with her?”

“Whenever I see her—it’s idiotic, but something comes over me—I can’t help myself. I feel myself blushing like a schoolboy. My mouth goes dry and I begin stammering. You must see, Barnett, that I can’t take charge of the case like that. I should make a perfect fool of myself.”

“Whereas, what you want to do is to impress madame with the cool dignity, the daring and resource that go to make Inspector Béchoux the Pride of Paris Police?”

“Er—yes.”

“And you look to me to help you. Béchoux, you can count on me. Now tell me, what sort of life does your ex-wife lead off the stage?”

Béchoux looked almost pained at the question.

“She is above suspicion and lives for her art alone. If it weren’t for her profession, Olga would still be Madame Béchoux.”