ON THE SCENT OF A MYSTERY
The name of the young man who had shadowed Matheson was Arthur Dean, and
his position in life was that of a clerk in the Leadenhall Street office
of Lars Larssen. The latter had brought him over to Paris as temporary
secretary because the confidential secretary had happened to be ill and
away from business at the moment when Matheson's letter arrived.
Young Dean bitterly repented his cowardice before he was five minutes
distant from the narrow lane on the heights of Montmartre.
Not only had he left a fellow-countryman to possible violence and
robbery, but his action would inevitably recoil on himself. To be even a
temporary secretary to the great shipowner was a chance, an opportunity
that most young business men of twenty-four would eagerly grasp at. He
was throwing away his chance by this cowardly disobedience to
orders--Lars Larssen was not the man to forgive an offence of that kind.
Dean turned on his tracks and again crossed the Place Pigalle. The lane
behind was deserted. He mounted it and searched eagerly. His search was
fruitless. Matheson was nowhere visible--nor the two _apaches_. To what
had happened in that interval of ten minutes there was no clue.
The young fellow did not dare to go back to the Grand Hotel and report
his failure. He wandered about aimlessly and miserably, until a
flaunting poster outside an all-night _café chantant_ caught his eye and
decided him to enter and kill time until some plan for retrieving his
failure might occur to him.
As he entered the swinging doors a cheery hand was laid on his
shoulders. "Hullo, old man! Hail and thrice hail!"
"Jimmy!" There was a note of pleasure in the young man's voice.
"The same," confirmed Jimmy Martin. He was a tubby, clean-shaven,
rosy-faced little fellow of thirty odd, with an inexhaustible fund of
good spirits. Everyone called him "Jimmy." Dean had known him as a
reporter on a London daily paper and a fellow-member of a local dramatic
society in Streatham.
"Why are you here?" asked Dean.
"Strictly on business, my gay young spark. My present owners, the
_Europe Chronicle_, bless their dear hearts, want to know if La Belle
Ariola"--he waved his hand towards a poster which showed chiefly a
toreador hat, a pair of flashing eyes, and a whirl of white
draperies--"is engaged or no to the Prince of Sardinia. I find the
maiden coy, not to say secretive----"
"I wish you could help me," interrupted Dean eagerly.
"If four francs seventy will do it--my worldly possessions until next
pay-day----"
"No, no, this is quite different." He drew Martin outside into the
street and whispered. "To-night, as I happen to know, an Englishman
walking along a back street by the Place Pigalle was followed by two
_apaches_."
"A week-end tripper, or somebody with a flourish at each end of his
name?"
"Somebody worth while. Now I want to know particularly if anything
happened."
Martin nodded in full understanding. "Come along to the office about ten
to-morrow morning, and I'll tell you if anything's been fired in from
the _gendarmeries_ or the hospitals. What did you say the man's name
was?"
Dean shook his head.
"Imitaciong oyster?" commented Martin cheerfully. "Very well, see you
to-morrow. Meanwhile, be good. Flee the giddy lure. Go home to your
little bed and sleep sweet." There was seriousness under his
good-natured banter. "Come along and I'll see you as far as the
bullyvards."
Arthur Dean went with him, but did not return to the Grand Hotel. He
found a small hotel for the night, and next morning at ten o'clock he
was at the office of the _Europe Chronicle_, an important daily paper
published simultaneously in Paris, Frankfort, and Florence.
Martin came out from the news room into the adjoining ante-room with a
slip of "flimsy" in his hand.
"Was your man hefty with the shillelagh?" he asked.
"He carried a big, gold-mounted stick."
"Then here's your bird." He read out from the slip of paper: "Last
night, shortly after twelve, a certain Gaspard P---- was brought to the
Hôpital Malesherbes suffering from a fractured skull. This morning, on
recovering consciousness, he states that he was attacked without cause
by a drunken Englishman, and struck over the head with a heavy stick.
His state is grave."
Dean felt a warm wave of relief. He thanked the journalist cordially and
was about to leave, when the telephone bell rang sharply in the
adjoining news room. The sub-editor in charge took up the receiver.
"_Ullo, ullo! C'est ici le Chronicle_," said the sub-editor, and after
listening for a moment signed imperatively to Martin to come in and shut
the door.
Presently Martin came out from the news room bustling with energy and
took Dean by the arm. "You specified two _apaches_, didn't you?" he
asked, and hurried on without waiting for an answer. "One was probably
the injured innocence now at the Malesherbes and cursing those _sacrés
Angliches_, but the other lies low and says nuffink. That's the one that
interests me. Come along in my taxi and watch me chase a story."
Stopping only to borrow fifty francs for expenses from the cashier's
wicket, Martin hurried his friend into a taximeter cab and gave the
brief direction: "Pont de Neuilly."
Three-quarters of an hour later they had reached the bridge at the end
of the long avenue of the suburb of Neuilly and had dismissed the cab.
"Now for our imitaciong Sherlock Holmes," said Martin. "The 'phone
message was that a man had found a fur coat and a gold-mounted stick
under some bushes by the left bank of the Seine four hundred metres down
stream. He was apparently some sort of workman, and explained that he
had no wish to be mixed up with the police. On the other hand, he felt
he had to do his duty by the civilization that provides him with a blue
blouse, bread, and bock, so he 'phoned the news to us.... Wish everyone
was as sensible," he added, viewing the matter from a professional
standpoint.
Three hundred yards down, they began to look very carefully amongst the
bushes that line the water's edge. It was not long before they came to
the object of their search. Under an alder-bush they found it--a heavy
fur-lined coat sodden with the river water, and a gold-mounted stick.
The maker's name had been cut out of the overcoat; its pockets were
empty.
Martin held it up. "Did this belong to your man?" he asked, as though
sure of the answer.
"No," answered Dean decisively.
The journalist whisked around in complete surprise and looked at him
keenly. "_Sure?_"
"Positive. There was astrakhan on the collar and cuffs of the coat my
man was wearing."
"And this stick?"
"It looks much the same kind, but then there are thousands of sticks
like this in use."
The stout little journalist looked pathetically disappointed. For the
moment he had no thought beyond the professional aspect of the
matter--the unearthing of a "good story"--and the human significance of
what he had found was entirely out of mind. He turned over the coat and
stick in obvious perplexity, as though they ought somehow to contain the
key to the puzzle if only he could see it. Then he examined the traces
of footsteps on the damp earth by the water-side. There was another set
of footprints beside their own--no doubt the footprints of the man who
had first found the objects and 'phoned to the _Chronicle_.
"What are you going to do next?" asked the young clerk.
"Take them to the police?"
Martin looked up and down the river bank. That part of the Seine is
usually deserted except for nursemaids and children and an occasional
workman. At the moment there was apparently no one in sight.
"You don't know the Paris police--that's evident," returned the
journalist. "They would throw fits on the floor if I were so much as to
carry off a coat-button. No, we must hide the coat and stick in the
bushes again, and tell them to-morrow."
"Why to-morrow?"
"Twenty-four hours' start is due to my owners, bless their sensational
little hearts. If nothing further comes to light, then the press steps
aside and allows the law to take its course. Meanwhile to the Morgue
and the Malesherbes. We'll pick up a cab on the Avenue de Neuilly.
Newspaper life, my young friend, is one dam taxi after another."
The Morgue is, of course, no longer the public peep-show that it used to
be, but Martin's card procured him instant admission. On the inclined
marble slabs, down which ice water gently trickles, were two ghastly
white figures of women which had been waiting identification for some
days. The object of their search was not at the Morgue.
They proceeded across Paris to the Hôpital Malesherbes, but at the Place
de l'Opera Dean asked to be put down. The journalist promised to 'phone
to the Grand Hotel if anything of interest came to light, and Arthur
Dean went to make his report to Lars Larssen. It was already past
mid-day, and without doubt the shipowner would be impatient to hear
news.
Only stopping at a telephone call office for a few minutes, Dean hurried
to his employer's suite of rooms.
"Well?" asked Lars Larssen.
"To begin at the beginning, sir, I waited last night in the Rue Laffitte
until Mr Matheson came out of his office. It was not long before he
appeared, and then----"
The shipowner interrupted curtly. "I want the heart of the matter."
Dean gulped and answered: "I believe Mr Matheson has been murdered."
"Believe! Do you _know_?"
"Of course I don't know for certain, sir; but this morning I assisted
at the finding of his coat and stick on the banks of the Seine."
"Sure they were his?"
"Yes, quite sure. I was with a journalist friend of mine, but I didn't
let him know that I recognized the coat and stick. I thought perhaps you
would like me to tell you before the matter was made public."
"Good! Now give me the full story."
Arthur Dean summoned up his nerve to tell the connected tale he had
thought out during the long cab rides that morning. It was essential
that he should disguise his cowardice and his failure to carry out
orders of the night before. With that exception, his account was a
truthful and detailed story of all that had happened. He concluded
with:--
"I 'phoned up Mr Matheson's office--without telling my name--and asked
if he was in or had been to the office this morning. They said no. I got
his hotel address from them and 'phoned the hotel. They also could tell
me nothing about Mr Matheson."
Lars Larssen paced the room in silence for some time. Finally he shot
out a question.
"Your salary is?"
"£100 a year, sir."
"Engaged, or likely to be?"
The young man blushed deeply as he replied: "I hope to be shortly."
"You can't marry on two pound a week."
"I am hoping to get promotion in the office, and then----"
"Do you understand how to get promotion?"
"Of course, sir. I intend to work hard and study the details of the
business outside my own department, and learn Spanish as well as
French----"
Lars Larssen flicked thumb and finger together contemptuously. "The men
I pay real money to are not that kind of men."
Arthur Dean looked in surprise.
"Now see here," pursued the shipowner, fixing his eyes deep into the
young man's, "why did you lie to me just now?"
Dean went deathly white, and began to falter a denial.
"Don't lie any further! Something happened last night that you haven't
told me of. I know, because you brought in no report last night. Out
with it!"
Under that merciless look the young clerk made a clean breast of the
matter. His voice shook as he realized that it probably meant instant
dismissal for him. Here was the end of all his hopes.
Lars Larssen made no comment until the last details had been faltered
out. Then he said abruptly: "I propose to raise you £300 a year."
Dean stared at him in silent amazement.
"£300 a year is good salary for a young man. If I pay it, I want it
earned. Now understand this: what I want in my men is absolute loyalty,
absolute obedience to orders, and absolute truthfulness to me. Lie to
others if you like--that's no concern of mine--but not to me. Further,
understand what orders mean. If I tell you to do a thing, I am wholly
responsible for its outcome. The responsibility is not yours--it's
mine. Got that?"
"It's very generous of you to give me such a chance, sir. It's much more
than I have the right to expect. You can count on my loyalty and
obedience to the utmost--of course, provided that----"
"The men I want to raise in my employ, and the men I have raised, leave
fine scruples to me. That's my end. Your end is to carry out orders. If
you're going to set store on niceties of truthfulness when business
interests demand otherwise, you'll remain a two-pound-a-week clerk all
your life."
Dean's weakness of moral fibre had been shrewdly weighed up by Larssen.
The young man was plastic clay to be moulded by a firm grasp. £300 a
year opened out to him a vista of roseate possibilities. £300 a year was
his price.
The colour came and went in his face as he thought out the meaning of
what his employer had just said. At length he answered: "I owe you many
thanks, sir. What do you want me to do?"
"Understand this: £300 a year is your starting salary. If I find you
after trial to be the man I think you are, you can look forward to
bigger money.... Now my point lies here; Mr Matheson was engaged with me
in a large-scale enterprise. Alive, he would have been useful to me. I
intend to keep him alive!"