Part 13

“I did,” Barnett told her. “Frankly, the idea is superb. It’s the highest form of art—a manifestation of creative genius, wholly original in conception and execution. While the ordinary run of thieves and gun-men work with great secrecy, disguising themselves sometimes as plumbers or commercial travellers to gain entrance to a house, these people keep full in the limelight, and do the job without any attempt at concealment. The more observation they meet with, the better pleased they are. The method is for one of them quite openly to enter a house where he is already a frequent visitor, and his comings and goings are familiar to the residents. Then, on a chosen day, he goes out ... and comes in again ... and goes out once more ... and comes in yet again ... and then, while this man is in the house, another man comes in who is so like the first man in appearance that no one spots the difference! And there you have your accomplice introduced. The first man leaves the house again, quite openly, and his accomplice remains there concealed. Then, in the watches of the night, the first man returns to the house, and is admitted by the accomplice. Ingenious, isn’t it?”

Then, with a peculiar intensity in his tone, Barnett went on, now directly to Del Prego:

“It’s genius, Del Prego, absolute genius. Ordinary crooks, as I said, try to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible in their criminal pursuits. They wear nondescript, neutral clothing, and do their best to merge with their surroundings like creatures of the jungle. But the men I’m telling you about realized that the great thing in their scheme was to make a vivid and outstanding impression—to attract plenty of attention. A Russian wearing a fur cap, or a Turk in baggy trousers is a conspicuous and unusual figure. If such a man is habitually seen four times a day going up and downstairs in a house, no one will notice whether he comes in once oftener than he goes out. The point is, though, that the fifth time he comes in, it’s the accomplice! And no one suspects it. That’s how it’s done, and I take my hat off to the inventor. It stands to reason that a man must be a master criminal to evolve and apply such a method—the kind of arch-crook who only occurs once in a generation. To me it is obvious that Ben-Vali and Count Avernoff are the same person. From this, isn’t it only logical to conclude that this man has materialized a third time, in yet another guise, in the particular case which concerns us? He began by being a Russian, later on he appeared as a Turk, and this time—well, who comes here who, besides being a foreigner, dresses rather unusually?”

There was a dead silence. Olga put out a hand towards Barnett as if to stop him from she hardly knew what. She had only just tumbled to what he had been leading up to all this time, and the realization frightened her.

“No, no!” she cried. “I won’t have you accusing people!”

Del Prego smiled blandly.

“Come, come, Madame Olga, don’t get upset. Mr. Barnett will have his little joke.”

“That’s it, Del Prego,” said Barnett, “I will have my little joke. You’re perfectly right not to take my yarn of mystery and adventure seriously—that is, not until you know the finish. Of course, there’s the obvious fact that you’re a foreigner, and that your get-up is calculated to attract attention. White gloves ... white spats.... And, of course, too, you’ve got one of those mobile, india rubber faces, which could pretty easily turn you from a Russian into a Turk, and from a Turk into a shady adventurer, nationality unspecified! And, of course, you’re well known in this house, and business brings you here several times a day. But, after all, your reputation for honesty is unblemished, and you enjoy the patronage of no less a person than Olga Vaubant. So no one would dream of accusing you.

“But what was I to think? You see my difficulty, don’t you? You were the only possible suspect, and yet you were above suspicion. Isn’t that so, madame?” He turned to Olga for confirmation.

“Oh, yes,” she agreed, eyes feverishly bright. “Then who are we to suspect? How can we find out who did it?”

“Aha,” said Barnett, “that’s simple enough. I’ve set a trap for the mystery mouse!”

“A trap? How could you do that?”

“Tell me, madame,” said Barnett, “Baron de Laureins telephoned you on Saturday? I thought so. And yesterday he came to see you here?”

Olga nodded, full of wonder.

“And he brought you a chest full of silver, engraved with the Pompadour crest?”

“That’s it,” said Olga, “on the table. But——”

Barnett cut her short. In the manner of a fortune-teller he continued:

“Baron de Laureins, who is very hard up, is trying to sell the silver which is a family heirloom that has come down to him from the d’Etoiles, and he has left it in your care until to-morrow.”

“How ... how do you know all this?” Olga was quite scared.

“I,” said Barnett, “and the Baron—very new noblesse! Have you displayed the handsome silverware to your admiring friends?”

“Certainly.”

“And, on the other hand, I take it your mother has had a telegram from the country, summoning her to the bedside of your ailing aunt?”

“How on earth do you know that?”

“I sent the telegram. Oh, believe me, I’m the whole works! So your mother went off this morning, and the chest stays in this room till to-morrow. What a temptation for the unknown friend who so cleverly burgled your bedroom to get up to his tricks again and snaffle the chest of silver. Much easier than a suite of furniture!”

Olga, now thoroughly alarmed, demanded:

“Will the attempt be made to-night?”

“Of course it will,” Barnett assured her.

“Oh, how awful!” she wailed.

Del Prego, who had listened to all this in silence, now got up.

“What’s so awful, madame?” he asked, with a faint sneer. “Forewarned is forearmed. You have only to ring up the police. With your permission, I will do so at once.”

“Oh, dear me, no,” protested Barnett. “I shall need you, Del Prego.”

“I fail to see in what way you can require my services.”

“Why, in helping to arrest the accomplice, of course!”

“Plenty of time for that, if the attempt is to be made to-night.”

“Yes, but do bear in mind,” urged Barnett gently but firmly, “that the accomplice was, in each case, introduced beforehand!”

“You mean he’s already in the flat?” asked Del Prego.

“He’s been here for the last half-hour,” declared Barnett.

“Since I arrived, you mean?”

“Since you arrived the second time,” said Barnett quietly. “I saw him as plainly as I see you now.”

“Then he’s hiding in the flat?”

Barnett pointed to the door.

“In the hall there’s a clothes cupboard which hasn’t been opened all the afternoon. He’s in there.”

“But he couldn’t have got into the flat on his own!”

“Of course not.”

“Then who opened the door to him?”

“You, Del Prego.”

The brief statement was almost shockingly abrupt.

Even though from the beginning of the conversation Barnett’s remarks had been obviously aimed at the gym instructor, becoming increasingly plain in their import, yet this downright attack took Del Prego by surprise. Rage, fear, and the determination to act swiftly were easily discernible in his changed expression. Divining his adversary’s perplexity, Barnett took advantage of it to run out into the hall. He jerked a man out of the cupboard, and pushed him, struggling, before him into the studio.

“Oh,” cried Olga, utterly taken aback, “then it’s true!”

The man was the same height as Del Prego. Like Del Prego he wore a grey suit and white spats. He had much the same type of greasy, mobile countenance.

“Milord has forgotten his hat and gloves,” said Barnett, and clapped an ash-colored hat on the man’s head, at the same time handing him a pair of white gloves.

Struck dumb with amazement, Olga drew slowly from the scene of action, and, never shifting her gaze from the two men, proceeded to climb a rope-ladder backwards. It had now fully dawned on her what kind of man Del Prego was, and what frightful risks she had run during the time spent in his company.

“Funny, isn’t it?” Barnett said, laughing. “Not as like as twins, of course, but they’re the same height and have much the same sort of physiog., and what with that and their dressing in duplicate, they might be brothers!”

The two crooks were recovering from their confusion, and simultaneously began to realize that, after all, they were only up against one man, and that a poor-looking specimen, with apparently a wretched physique under his shabby frock-coat.

Del Prego spluttered some words in a foreign language which Barnett translated immediately.

“No use speaking Russian,” he observed, “to ask your friend if he’s got a gun handy!”

Del Prego shook with rage and spoke again in a different language.

“Unluckily for you,” Barnett told him, “I know Turkish inside out. Berlitz has nothing on me. Also, I think it only fair to tell you that Béchoux—you know, Olga’s policeman husband that was—is waiting on the stairs with two friends. If that gun goes off, they will break down the door!”

Del Prego and the other man exchanged glances. They saw they were cornered, but they were the sort that doesn’t give in without putting up a stiff fight.

Without seeming to move, they drew imperceptibly closer to Barnett.

“Fine!” the latter told them genially. “You propose to set upon me and finish me off at close quarters, do you? And when I’m done for, you’ll try to elude Béchoux. Now then, madame, keep your eyes open and you’ll see something! Tom Thumb and the two Giants! David and the twin Goliaths! Get a move on, Del Prego. Brace up, now! Try springing at my throat for a start!”

The distance between them had lessened again. The two men stood tense, ready to hurl themselves on Barnett.

But Barnett most unexpectedly forestalled them. In a flash he had dived to the floor, seized a leg of each and brought them crashing! Before they had time to counter, the head of each was being ground into the floor by an implacable, murderous hand. They gasped convulsively, choking in Barnett’s vise-like grip. Their countenances took on a purple tinge.

“Olga!” called Barnett with perfect calm, “be a good girl and open the door and call Béchoux, will you?”

Olga dropped, monkey-like, from her ladder, and tottered rather than ran out of the room, calling “Béchoux! Béchoux!”

A moment later she returned with the inspector, babbling excitedly to him:

“He did it! Bowled them both over single-handed! I’d never have believed it of him!”

“Behold,” said Barnett to Béchoux, “your two bright lads. Just slip the bracelets on them so that I can let ’em come up for breath! You needn’t worry about fixing them too tightly. They’ll come quietly, won’t you, Del Prego? All lamb-like and pretty!”

He rose from the floor, gallantly kissed Olga’s hand, while she regarded him in ever-growing wonder, and chortled gaily:

“How’s that for a haul, Béchoux? Two of the most cunning criminals in Paris snared at last. Really, Del Prego, you must allow me to congratulate you on your methods!”

He dug the professor playfully in the ribs, while the latter was powerless, handcuffed to Béchoux, and continued jubilantly:

“My good man, you’re a genius. Why, when Béchoux and I were on the watch downstairs, I, having tumbled to your trick, naturally saw that it was not you the third time, but Béchoux, who didn’t know, soon swallowed the bait and really thought the gentleman in white gloves, white spats, grey hat and grey suit was the same Del Prego that he had already seen pass several times. So Del Prego the Second was able to go quietly upstairs, sneak through the door—which you had left ajar for him—and hide in the hall cupboard. Exactly the same tactics as you employed on the night when the bedroom suite disappeared into space. You can’t deny it, Del Prego, you’re a genius!”

Barnett was by now bubbling over with sheer exuberance. With a flying leap, he was astride the trapeze; in a moment he was twirling like a top round and round an upright pole; he swung on to a rope, then to the rings, then up the ladder he went, swaying like a sailor in the rigging. The tails of his ancient frock-coat flapped stiffly, disapprovingly behind him, the venerable garment seeming to protest against these unseemly gambols.

Olga gave a little gasp as he unexpectedly landed at her feet, bowing low.

“Feel my heart, madame; beating quite normally. And I’m not the least bit out of breath. Don’t you wonder, Béchoux, how I keep in training?”

He snatched up the telephone and called a number.

“That the préfecture?... Extension two, please.... That you, Albert? Béchoux speaking.... It doesn’t sound like my voice?... Well, I can’t help that. Now then, listen. You can report that I have just arrested two murderers who are wanted for the Olga Vaubant robbery.”

He hung up, and held out a hand to Béchoux.

“The laurels are all yours, old chap. Madame, it’s time I took my leave. What’s up, Del Prego? You are not regarding me with that warm affection I could desire!”

Del Prego was muttering furiously:

“There’s only one man alive who could get the better of me ... only one....”

“Who’s that?”

“Arsène Lupin!”

Barnett laughed as though he would split.

“Bully for you, my boy. You ought to have been a Professor of Psychology. And then you would never have got yourself into this mix-up!”

He had another joyous spasm, bowed to Olga, and went off in a gale of merriment, humming that catchy little tune:

“Yes, you otta see my Jim!”

Next day Del Prego, overwhelmed by the case against him, revealed the whereabouts of the garage in the suburbs in which he had hidden Olga Vaubant’s bedroom suite. This was on the Tuesday. Barnett had fulfilled his promise.

Béchoux was sent out of Paris on a fresh case, and was away some days. When he got back he found a note from Barnett.

“You must own that I have played strictly fair. There hasn’t been a sou of profit for me in the whole business—none of the ‘pickings’ that have distressed your gentle soul in the past. It is satisfaction for me to know that I retain your friendship and respect!”

That afternoon Béchoux, who had made up his mind to part brass-rags once and for all with Barnett, went along to the office in the rue Laborde. The office was closed, and there was a notice on the door which read:

“Closed on account of a sudden attachment. Reopening after the honeymoon trip.”

“And what the hell may that mean?” muttered Béchoux, smitten with sudden vague anxiety. He rushed off to Olga’s flat. It was shut up. He rushed on to the Folies Bergère. There he was told that the star had paid a large forfeit to break her contract and had gone off on holiday.

“Nom d’un Nom d’un Nom!” spluttered Béchoux when he got out in the street. “Is it possible?... Instead of collaring some cash, can he have used his triumph to ... can he have dared to....”

The cloud of suspicion grew bigger and blacker. Béchoux became frantic. How was he to learn the truth? Or rather, what course could he take that would keep the truth from him, and save him from appalling certainty in place of his suspicion?

But Barnett was not the man to leave his victim in peace. At intervals the unlucky Béchoux was the recipient of highly colored post-cards, scrawled with even more lurid legends:

“Oh, Béchoux! One moonlight night in Rome!”

“Béchoux, next time you’re in love, bring her to Sicily!”

And from Venice: “If you were here, Béchoux, I should have to stop you jumping in a canal!”

“I will never forgive him this, never! He has outraged me past hope of pardon! Next time I will have my revenge!”

And, like a mocking echo, he seemed to hear Olga’s husky tones:

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

X

ARRESTING ARSÈNE LUPIN!

Suddenly, unexpectedly, the fight between Barnett and Béchoux, which had dragged on so long under cover, had reached the last round—in the open!

Inspector Béchoux sped through the arched gateway of the préfecture and across a couple of courtyards, took the stairs two at a time, and dashed, without pausing to knock, into the sanctum of his chief. Pale and breathless, he stammered:

“Arsène Lupin is mixed up in the Desroques case!”

The chief gave a startled exclamation.

“Surely not!”

“I saw him myself only a little while ago, outside Desroques’ flat, and recognized him at once.”

“Don’t try and be funny, Béchoux. Nobody ever recognizes Arsène Lupin.”

“I do!” declared Béchoux. “This time he’s disguised as a private detective and calls himself Jim Barnett—you remember, the chap I told you about before, who left Paris a little while ago.”

The chief gave a slight chuckle.

“Left with Olga Vaubant of the Folies Bergère, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” assented Béchoux wrathfully. “Olga Vaubant, the singing acrobat, and my ex-wife!”

“Well,” said the chief, “what did you do when you—recognized Lupin?”

“I shadowed him.”

“Without his knowing it?” The other was frankly incredulous.

Béchoux drew himself up stiffly. “When I shadow a man, chief, he never knows it,” he declared. “All the same,” he added thoughtfully, “although the beggar was pretending to be out for a stroll, he didn’t take any chances. First he walked round the Place de l’Etoile. Then he went along the Avenue Kléber and stopped on the east side of the Rond Point du Trocadéro. Sitting on a bench there was a gipsy girl. She was a pretty piece of goods, with her black head bare in the sunshine, and her colored shawl wrapped about her. Well I watched Lupin, alias Barnett, sit down beside her, and a minute later they were talking away together, but hardly moving their lips—an old prison trick that, chief. More than once I noticed them looking up at a house on the corner of the Place du Trocadéro and the Avenue Kléber. After a while, Lupin got up and took the Metro.”

“Did you keep on shadowing him?”

“Yes—or, rather, I tried to,” said Béchoux. “But he jumped aboard a train that was just moving while I was held up in the crowd. When I got back to the bench, the gipsy girl was gone.”

“And what about the house they were looking up at?”

“That’s where I’ve just come from,” said Béchoux. He took a deep breath, and launched forth: “On the fourth floor of that house is a furnished flat where for the last month old General Desroques, Jean Desroques’ father, has been living. You remember that he came up from Limoges to defend his son when the latter was arrested and charged”—Béchoux swelled with the majesty of the law—“with abduction, illegal detention, and wilful murder!”

This repetition of the roll of crimes seemingly impressed the chief, who nodded solemnly and asked his subordinate:

“Did you call on the general?”

“I did, and he opened the door to me himself. Then I described to him the little comedy that had just been played under his windows, leaving out all mention of Arsène Lupin, of course. He was not surprised, and told me that the day before a gipsy girl had come to see him. She offered to tell his fortune and reveal the outcome of the trial. She demanded three thousand francs and said she would await his answer next afternoon in the Place du Trocadéro between two and half-past two.”

“But why should the general pay her all that money?”

“She assured him that she could get hold of the mystery photograph and let him have it.”

“What?” the chief was genuinely surprised. “You mean that photograph we’ve all been searching for and can’t find anywhere?”

“That’s it,” said Béchoux. “The photograph that would save the general’s son—or finally establish his guilt!”

Both were silent for a while. At last the chief said:

“I expect you know, Béchoux, how anxious we are to get hold of that photograph ourselves?”

Béchoux nodded.

“It means even more than you realize, though. Listen, Béchoux, if you can lay hands on that photograph it must be turned over to me before the Parquet gets wind of it.” He added in a whisper: “The Department comes first, see?...”

And, with equal seriousness and set purpose, Béchoux replied, “Chief, you shall have it. I will get it for you, and, at the same time, I will get Jim Barnett, or rather Arsène Lupin!”

Just a month before this conversation at the préfecture, Jacques Veraldy had been kept waiting for his dinner. Jacques Veraldy, one of the foremost figures in Parisian society, a man of vast wealth, one of the unscrupulous spiders that spin political webs, had waited till long past the dinner hour for the return of his wife, Christiane. But she did not come home that night, and next morning the police were called in. They soon elicited the following facts:

On the afternoon of her disappearance, Christiane Veraldy had gone for a walk in the Bois de Boulogne, near her house. On this walk she had been stopped by a well-dressed man who, after a brief conversation, had led her to a closed car, with the blinds pulled down, which was waiting in a deserted alley. They both got into the car and drove off quickly in the direction of Saint-Cloud.

None of the witnesses who came forward to describe this meeting in the Bois had been able to see the man’s face. He seemed young, they said, and they were all agreed that he wore a very smart dark-blue overcoat and a black beret.

Two days passed, and still there was no news of the missing Christiane Veraldy. Then, suddenly, the tragedy happened.

About sunset, some peasants working in the fields on the main road from Paris to Chartres noticed a car being driven at a reckless speed. Even as they watched its onrush, the car door was pushed open, and a woman fell out on the road. They rushed to her assistance. At the same time the car raced up the steep bank at the side of the road, crashed into a tree and overturned. A man sprang from it, miraculously uninjured, and dashed to where the woman lay. She was dead. Her head had struck a heap of stones in her fall. They carried her body to the nearest village and told the gendarmes what had happened.

The man made no secret of his identity. He was Député Jean Desroques, a well-known political figure, and at that time leader of the Opposition.

The dead woman was Christiane Veraldy.

Immediately trouble began brewing. The bereaved husband, thirsting for revenge rather than overcome with grief, was determined to make his supplanter, as he considered Jean Desroques, pay the penalty of the law. The accused man, on the other hand, had powerful political supporters, who strenuously denied that the leader of their party could be guilty of such a crime. These in turn brought pressure to bear on the police.

Meanwhile, the peasants, one and all, swore that they had seen a man’s arm push the woman out of the car. Nor did there seem any possible doubt that the man who had been observed talking with Madame Veraldy in the Bois was indeed Desroques. At the time of the accident Jean Desroques was wearing a dark-blue greatcoat and a black beret.

In any case, Desroques did not attempt to advance an alibi. He admitted having abducted Madame Veraldy, and acknowledged that he had detained her illegally. On the other hand, he swore that he had done all in his power to prevent her committing—suicide! For that was his explanation of the tragic occurrence.

Desroques’ account of what had happened was that he had been struggling to hold Madame Veraldy down in her seat, that the door of the car had been forced open when she flung her weight against it, and she had fallen out.

But concerning what had led up to the struggle, where they had spent the days since their meeting in the Bois, what had happened during that time, or even when and how he had first made the acquaintance of Madame Veraldy, Jean Desroques was obstinately silent.