Part 12

“Which would be a nation’s loss,” pronounced Barnett solemnly, gathering up hat and coat.

A few minutes later the two men came to one of the quietest, most deserted streets near the Luxembourg. Olga Vaubant lived on the top floor of an old-fashioned house whose bricks breathed respectability. The ground-floor windows were heavily barred.

“Before we go any further,” said Béchoux, “I am going to suggest that in this instance you refrain from playing your own hand and making a dishonorable private profit out of the case, as you have unhappily been known to do in the past.”

“My conscience ...” began Barnett, but Béchoux waved away the objection.

“Never mind your conscience,” he said. “Think of the way mine has pricked me whenever we’ve worked together!”

“You don’t think I’d rob your own ex-wife? Oh, Béchoux, how you wrong me!”

“I don’t want you to rob anyone,” said Béchoux.

“Not even those who deserve it?”

“Leave Justice to take its course. Heaven has not appointed you as an avenging angel.”

Barnett sighed.

“You are spoiling all my fun, Béchoux, but what you say goes.”

One policeman was on guard at the door, and another was with the concierges—husband and wife—who were badly upset by what had happened.

Béchoux learned that the district superintendent and two headquarters’ men had just left after making a preliminary investigation.

“Now’s our chance,” said Béchoux to Barnett. “Let’s get a move on while the coast is clear.”

As they went up the staircase he explained to his friend that the house was run on old-fashioned lines, and the street door was kept shut.

“No one has a key, and everyone has to ring for admittance. A priest lives on the first floor and a magistrate on the second. The concierge acts as housekeeper to both of them. Olga has the top floor flat and leads a most conventional existence, complete with her mother and two old maidservants who have always been in the family.”

They knocked at the door of Olga Vaubant’s flat, and one of the maids let them into the hall. Béchoux rapidly explained the position of the rooms to Barnett—the passage on the right led to Olga’s bedroom and boudoir, that on the left to her mother’s room and the servants’ quarters. Straight ahead was a studio fitted up as a gymnasium, with a horizontal bar, a trapeze, rings, ropes and ribstalls. Strewn about the place were Indian clubs, dumb-bells, foils, and so forth.

As the two men entered this vast room, something seemed to drop in a heap at their feet from the sky-light. The heap resolved itself into a slender, laughing boy, with a mop of untidy red hair framing the delicate features of a charming face. Wide green eyes, tip-tilted nose, slightly crooked mouth—all were unmistakable, and Barnett immediately recognized in the pajama-clad “boy” the one and only Olga Vaubant. She exclaimed at once in the Parisian drawl that has its parallel in the Londoner’s cockney:

“Maman’s all right, Béchoux. Sleeping like a top, bless her. Lucky, isn’t it?”

She made a sudden dive floorwards, stood on her hands and, with her feet waving in the air, began singing in a husky, thrilling contralto:

“I’m in luck, I gotta boy, Fills his momma’s heart with joy—

And believe me, Béchoux, you fill my heart with joy, too, old dear,” she added, standing up. “You’re a real sport to have got here so soon. Who’s the boy-friend?”

“Jim Barnett. He’s an old—acquaintance,” said Béchoux, vainly attempting to control his twitching countenance.

“Fine,” said Olga. “Well let’s hope between the pair of you you’ll solve the mystery and get back my bedroom suite. I leave it to you. Now it’s my turn to do a bit of introducing,” as a bulky form hove up from the far end of the studio. “May I present Del Prego, my gym instructor? He’s masseur, make-up expert, and beauty doctor, and he’s the darling of the chorus. Regular osteopath, he is, for dislocation and rejuvenation! Say pretty to the gentlemen, Del Prego!”

Del Prego bowed low. He was a broad-shouldered, copper-skinned fellow, genial of countenance and vaguely suggesting the clown in his appearance. He wore a grey suit, with white spats and gloves, and held a light-colored felt hat in his hands.

Immediately, gesticulating violently and speaking with a marked foreign accent, he began to discourse on his method of “progressive dislocation,” larding his outlandish French with phrases in Spanish, English, and Russian. Olga cut him short.

“We’ve no time to waste. What do you want me to tell you, Béchoux?”

“First,” said Béchoux, “will you show us your bedroom?”

“Right! Half a mo’.” She sprang up in the air, caught on to the trapeze, swung from that to the rings, and landed at a door in the wall on the right.

“Here you are,” she told them, kicking it open.

The room was absolutely empty. Bed, chairs, curtains, mirrors, rugs, dressing-table, ornaments, pictures—all gone. Furniture removers could not have made a better job of it. The place was stripped.

Olga began to giggle helplessly.

“See that? Thorough, weren’t they? They even pinched my ivory toilet set. Almost walked off with the floor-boards. Don’t you think it’s a shame, Mr. Barnett?” she went on, addressing Jim, her eyes wider than ever. “I’m a girl that’s real fond of good furniture. All pure Louis Quinze it was, that I’d collected bit by bit—and they all had a history, including a genuine Pompadour bed! Why, furnishing this room cost me nearly everything I made on my American tour.”

Abruptly she broke off to turn a somersault, then tossed the hair off her face and went on cheerfully:

“Oh, well, there’s plenty of good fish in the sea and I can replace all that lot. I needn’t worry so long as I have my india rubber muscles and my bee-yewtiful cracked voice.... What are you looking at me like that for, Béchoux? Going to faint at my feet? Give us a kiss, and let’s get on with any questions you want to ask before we have the rest of the police force back on the scene.”

“Tell me exactly what happened,” said Béchoux.

“Oh, there isn’t much to tell,” answered Olga. “Let’s see, last night, it had just gone half-past ten.... Oh, I should have told you, I left here at eight with Del Prego, who escorted me to the Folies Bergère in maman’s place.... Well, as I was saying, it had just gone the half-hour, and maman was in her room knitting, when suddenly she heard a faint sound like someone moving about in my room. She rushed along the passage, and found two men taking my bed apart by the light of a flash-lamp! The light was switched off at once, and one chap sprang at her and knocked her down while the other flung a tablecloth over her head. How’s that for assault and battery? Poor old maman! Then, if you please, these two blighters calmly proceeded to remove the furniture bit by bit, one of them carrying it downstairs, while the other stayed in the room. Maman kept quiet and managed not to scream. After a while she heard a big car starting up in the street outside, and then she was so overcome with the strain that she fainted right off.”

“So that when you got back from the show——?” prompted Béchoux.

“I found the street door open, the flat door open, and maman lying unconscious on the floor of my room. You could have knocked me down with a feather!”

“What had the concierges to say?”

“You know them, Béchoux. Two old dears who’ve been here for thirty years now. An earthquake wouldn’t rouse ’em. The only sound they ever hear is the door-bell. Well, they swear by all their gods that no one rang between ten o’clock, when they went to bed, and next morning.”

“Which means,” said Béchoux, “that they had no cause at any time during the night to pull the string that opens the door.”

“You’ve said it.”

“Did the other tenants hear nothing?”

“Nothing at all.”

“Then the conclusion is——”

“How do you mean, conclusion?”

“Well, what do you make of it?”

Olga’s expression was one of wrath.

“Don’t be an idiot! It’s not my business to make anything of it. That’s your job, Béchoux. In a moment you’ll have me thinking you as big a fool as those policemen we’ve had all over the flat.”

“But,” faltered Béchoux, “we’re only beginning.”

“Can’t you get action with what I’ve told you, you boob? If that pal of yours there isn’t any brighter than you, I can bid my Pompadour bed a fond farewell!”

The “pal” at this point stepped forward and asked:

“On what particular day would you like your bed back, madame?”

“What’s that?” said Olga, staring at this stranger to whom, up to now, she had paid but slight attention.

Barnett became glibly detailed.

“I should like to know the day and hour on which you desire to regain possession of your Pompadour bed and of your furniture, etcetera.”

“Is this your idea of a joke?”

“Let’s fix the day,” said the imperturbable Barnett.

“To-day is Tuesday. Will next Tuesday be satisfactory?”

Olga’s eyes widened, and widened yet again. She could not make Barnett out a bit. Suddenly she began to rock with mirth.

“You are a one, I must say! Where did you pick it up, Béchoux? Out of the asylum? I must say your friend’s got a nerve. In a week, he says, cool as you please. You might think the bed was in his pocket! You’ve got another thing coming if you fancy I’m going to waste my time with two mutts like you.” With a hand on the chest of each, she pushed them vigorously into the hall. “Out you go, my lads, and you can stay out! And don’t think I’m going to let myself be fooled by a couple of rotten jokers!”

The studio door slammed violently on the two “rotten jokers,” and Béchoux groaned aloud.

“And we’ve only been in the flat ten minutes!”

Barnett was calmly examining the hall. He then talked to one of the old servants. After that, he went downstairs to the concierges’ quarters and questioned the pair of them. He then hailed a passing taxi, giving the driver his address in the rue Laborde. Inspector Béchoux, deserted and aghast, stood forlornly on the pavement and watched the disappearing chariot of his friend.

However much Jim Barnett held Inspector Béchoux spellbound, the latter stood in even greater awe of the imperious Olga. He never dreamed of doubting her assertion that Barnett had turned the whole thing off by making a promise no one could take seriously.

This gloomy view of affairs was confirmed next day when he called at the office in the rue Laborde and found Barnett lolling back in an armchair, his feet upon his desk, smoking peacefully.

“Really, Barnett,” said Béchoux in exasperation, “if this is your idea of getting down to things, we may as well give up the case. Back at the house we’re all hopelessly at sea. We none of us know what to make of it. We are agreed on certain points, of course. The main thing is, that it’s a physical impossibility to enter the place, even using a skeleton key, unless the door is opened from the inside. Since none of the residents can be suspected of being concerned in the burglary, we are driven to two unavoidable conclusions: first, that one of the thieves had been in the house, concealed, since early in the evening, and this man let in a confederate; second, that he could not have got inside without being seen by one of the concierges, as the street door is never left open. But who can have been in the house ready to admit the other thief? That’s what floors us, and I don’t see how on earth we’re going to find it out. Have you any theory, Barnett?”

But Barnett was silent, absorbed in blowing smoke-rings. Béchoux’s words might have fallen on deaf ears, but he continued:

“We’ve made a list of people who called during that day—there weren’t many—and the concierges are positive that every single one of them left the house again. So you see we’re without a clue. We can easily reconstruct the modus operandi of the crime, but its authors elude us. What do you make of it all?”

Barnett gave a prodigious yawn, stretched his arms and legs till they cracked, and then drawled:

“A perfect peach!”

“Wh-what’s that? Who’re you calling a peach?”

“Your ex-wife,” Barnett told the astonished Béchoux. “She’s as much of a knock-out off the stage as she is on. So full of joie de vivre, so—so electric! A regular gamine. Wonderful taste, too. I just can’t get over the idea of her investing her earnings in that Pompadour bed! Béchoux, you’re a lucky dog!”

“I lost my luck pretty quickly—only kept it a month!”

“A whole month? Then what are you grumbling at?”

Next Saturday saw Béchoux back at the Barnett Agency, trying to rouse his torpid ally, but Barnett was wreathed in smoke and silence, and Béchoux got no satisfaction.

On Monday he came in again, thoroughly depressed.

“It’s a mug’s game,” he averred, “the men on the job are utter idiots, and all this time Olga’s bedroom suite is probably on its way to some port or other for shipment abroad. It’s maddening! And what do you suppose all this makes me look like to Olga—me, a police inspector, I ask you? Why, she thinks I’m the most colossal ass that ever stepped.”

He glared at the imperturbable Barnett, absorbed in his eternal smoke-rings, and let loose the full force of his fury.

“Here are we, up against an entirely new type of criminal—fighting men who must be adepts in their own line—and there you sit, you—you lotus-eater, and don’t lift a finger to help!”

“One quality in her,” said Barnett, musing aloud, “pleases me more than all.”

“What?” shouted Béchoux.

“Her naturalness—her superb spontaneity. She is absolutely devoid of anything theatrical, any pose. Olga says exactly what she means, follows her instincts and lives according to impulse. Béchoux, she’s a marvel!”

Béchoux brought his fist down on the desk with a bang.

“Would you like to know what she thinks of you? She thinks you’re a D-U-D, dud! She and Del Prego can’t mention your name without hooting. They speak of you as ‘That boob Barnett—that crazy bluffer’....”

Barnett heaved a sigh.

“Harsh words! How can I prove the cap doesn’t fit?”

“By ceasing to wear it,” suggested Béchoux grimly. “To-morrow is Tuesday, and you’ve promised to produce that Pompadour bed!”

“Good lord, so I have!” said Barnett, as if realizing it for the first time. “The trouble is, I haven’t the faintest idea where to look for it! Be a sportsman, Béchoux, and ladle out a word of advice.”

“If you can lay hold of the thieves, they’ll know where to find the bed.”

“It might be done,” said Barnett. “Got a warrant?”

Béchoux nodded.

“Right. Then telephone the préfecture to send two of their beefiest men to-day to the Odéon Arcades, near the Luxembourg.”

Béchoux looked both surprised and irresolute.

“No fooling?”

“Absolutely not. Do you think I relish being thought a boob by Olga Vaubant? And, anyway, don’t I always keep my promises?”

Béchoux thought hard for a moment. Something told him that Barnett meant what he said, and that during the last week, while he had lolled in his armchair, his brain had been alert and busy with the problem. He remembered Barnett’s dictum that there were times when meditation proved more profitable than investigation. Without further hesitation, Béchoux took up the telephone and called up one, Albert, who was the right-hand man of the chief. He arranged for two inspectors to be sent to the Odéon.

Barnett heaved himself out of his chair, and the clock struck three as the two men left the Agency.

“Are we going to Olga’s flat?” Béchoux asked.

“To that of the concierges,” Barnett told him.

When they arrived Barnett conversed in low tones with the concierges and asked them to say nothing of his and Béchoux’s presence in the house. They then stationed themselves in the rear of the concierges’ quarters, concealed behind a voluminous bed-curtain. By peering out at each side, they could see anyone leave the house, or enter it when the door was opened.

They saw the priest from the first floor pass. Then came one of Olga’s old servants, carrying a market-basket.

“Who on earth are we waiting for?” whispered Béchoux. “What’s your game?”

“To teach you your job! Now then, not another word!”

At half-past three Del Prego was admitted, resplendent in white gloves, white spats, grey suit and grey Stetson. He waved a greeting to the concierges and went up the stairs two at time. It was the hour for Olga’s gym lesson.

Three-quarters of an hour later he left the house, returning shortly with a packet of cigarettes he had gone out to buy. His white gloves and spats flickered up the stairs.

Three other people came and went. Suddenly Béchoux hissed in Barnett’s ear:

“Look, he’s coming in again for the third time. How on earth did he get out?”

“By the door, I suppose.”

“Oh, surely not,” said Béchoux, albeit less authoritatively. “That is, unless he caught us napping. Eh, Barnett?”

Barnett pushed back the curtain and answered:

“The time has come for action. Béchoux, go and pick up your beefy friends.”

“And bring them here?”

“That’s the stuff.”

“What about you?”

“I’m going up aloft. When you get back, I want all three of you to station yourselves on the landing of the second floor. You’ll get word when to move.”

“Then it’s zero at last?”

“It is, and pretty stiff odds. Now, off you go, and make it snappy.”

Béchoux was off like the wind, while Barnett mounted to the third floor and rang the flat bell. He was shown into the studio-gymnasium where Olga was finishing her exercises under Del Prego’s supervision.

“Fancy that now, here’s that bright boy Barnett!” called Olga from the top of a rope-ladder. “Our Mr. Barnett, the Man of Mystery!” She peered at him from between her shapely legs. “Well, Mr. Barnett, I hope you’ve got my Pompadour bed with you!”

“Almost, but not quite, madame. I hope I’m not in the way?”

“Not a bit.”

The incredible Olga continued her evolutions at Del Prego’s curt commands. Her instructor alternately praised and criticised, and occasionally gave a brief personal demonstration. He was himself a trained acrobat, but vigorous rather than supple. He seemed out to demonstrate his prodigious muscular strength.

The lesson came to an end, and, Del Prego put on his coat, fastened his snowy spats, and gathered up his white gloves and ash-colored hat.

“See you to-night at the theatre, Madame Olga,” he said.

“Oh, aren’t you going to wait for me to-day, Del Prego? You might have escorted me. You know maman is away.”

“Impossible, madame, I fear. Much as I regret, I fear I have another appointment before dinner.”

He made for the door, but before he got there he was brought up short by Jim Barnett, who stood in his way.

“A word with you, my friend,” said Barnett, “since chance has obligingly brought us together.”

“I’m sorry, but really....”

“Must I, then, introduce myself afresh? Jim Barnett, private detective, of the Barnett Agency—Inspector Béchoux’s friend.”

Del Prego took another step towards the door.

“A thousand apologies, Mr. Barnett, but I’m in rather a hurry.”

“Oh, I won’t keep you a moment. I only want to call to your remembrance——” He paused dramatically.

“What?” snapped Del Prego.

“A certain Turk.”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“A Turk called Ben-Vali.”

The professor’s face wore an expression of stony blankness.

“The name means nothing to me.”

“Then perhaps you may remember a certain Avernoff?”

“Never heard of him either. Who were they both, anyway?”

“Two—murderers.”

There was a brief, pregnant pause. Then Del Prego laughed noisily and said:

“Scarcely a class among which I care to cultivate my friendships.”

“And yet,” pursued Barnett, “rumor persists in urging that you knew both men well.”

Del Prego’s glance travelled like lightning up and down Barnett’s form. Then he snarled, with scarcely a trace of foreign accent:

“What are you getting at? Cut out the mystery stuff. I don’t go in for riddles.”

“Sit down, Signor Del Prego,” suggested Barnett. “We can chat more comfortably sitting down!”

Del Prego was fuming with impatience. Olga had come up to them, full of curiosity, looking like a bewitching boy in her gym kit.

“Do sit down, Del Prego,” she said, laying a hand on the professor’s arm. “After all, it’s about my Pompadour bed.”

“Just so,” said Barnett. “And I can assure Signor Del Prego that I am not asking a riddle. Only, on my very first visit here after the robbery, I was forcibly reminded of two cases that made rather a sensation some time ago. I should like his opinion on them. It’ll only take a few minutes.”

Barnett’s attitude had subtly changed from one of deference to one of authority. His tone was unmistakable in its note of command. Olga Vaubant found herself feeling impressed by this strange man. Del Prego, overborne, merely growled:

“Hurry up, then!”

Barnett began his story:

“Once upon a time—three years ago, to be precise—there lived in Paris a jeweller called Saurois. He and his father shared a big top-floor flat. This jeweller formed a business connection with a man named Ben-Vali. The latter went about in a turban and full Turkish costumes, baggy trousers and all, and traded in second-grade precious stones, such as oriental topazes, irregular pearls, amethysts, and so forth. Well, one evening, on a day when Ben-Vali had called several times at his flat, Saurois came back from the theatre and found his father stabbed to death, and all his jewels gone. The inquiry revealed that the crime had been committed not by Ben-Vali himself—he produced an unshakable alibi—but by someone he must have brought round in the afternoon. But they never managed to lay hands on the assassin, nor on the Turk. The case was shelved. Do you remember, now?”

“I’ve only been in Paris two years,” Del Prego parried swiftly. “And, anyway, I don’t see the point....”

Jim Barnett went on:

“Nearly a year before that a similar crime took place. The victim in this case was a collector of medals called Davoul. It was established that the man who killed him was brought to his place and hidden by a Count Avernoff, a Russian, who wore an astrakhan cap and a long overcoat.”

“Why, I remember that,” exclaimed Olga Vaubant, who had turned suddenly pale.

“I saw at once,” continued Barnett, “that between these two cases and the burglary of your bedroom there existed not, perhaps, a very close analogy, but a certain family resemblance. The robberies of Saurois the jeweller and of Davoul the medal collector were both the work of a pair of foreigners, and here again the method is identical. I mean, in each case there was the introduction of an accomplice who was responsible for the actual crime. The problem is—how were those accomplices introduced? I own that at first this completely baffled me. For the last few days I have been thrashing the solution out in silence and solitude. Working with the two given quantities, so to speak, of the Ben-Vali crime and the Avernoff crime, I set myself to reconstruct the general scheme—the ‘constant’—of a crime-system that had probably been applied in many other cases unknown to me.”

“And did you succeed?” asked Olga breathlessly.