There was a knock at the door of the modest office in the rue Laborde.
It roused Jim Barnett of the Barnett Agency from his doze in the
comfortable armchair, where he sat awaiting clients.
“Come in!” he cried, and, as the door opened to admit his visitor,
“why, Inspector Béchoux, how nice of you to look me up! How are you?”
In both manner and appearance, Inspector Béchoux was a striking
contrast to the usual type of detective. He aimed at sartorial
elegance, exaggerated the crease in his trousers, had a pretty taste in
ties and was very particular about the starching of his collars. He had
a curious waxen pallor. In build, he was small, lean, and seemingly
weedy. Oddly enough, he had the muscular arms of a heavyweight
champion—arms which gave the impression of having been tacked haphazard
on to his limp frame. He was intensely proud of those arms. Though
quite a young man, his bearing was most self-assured. His eyes gleamed
alert and intelligent.
“I happened to be passing,” he announced, “and, knowing your clock-like
habits, I thought: ‘This being old Barnett’s consultation hour, he’s
sure to be there. Why not drop in....’”
“And ask his advice,” finished Jim Barnett.
“Perhaps,” admitted the Inspector, to whom Barnett’s perspicacity was a
never-failing source of surprise.
Seeing his hesitation, Barnett spoke again: “What’s up, old son?
Finding it a bit difficult to consult the oracle to-day?”
Béchoux smote the table with his clenched fist; no mean blow, with his
great arm to back it.
“Fact is, I’m a bit stumped. We’ve worked together on three cases now,
Barnett—you as a private detective and I as a police inspector—and each
time I haven’t been able to help feeling that your clients—Baronne
Assermann, for instance—ended by regarding you with a very jaundiced
eye.”
“As if I’d taken advantage of my opportunity to blackmail them,”
Barnett interrupted, fiddling with his eternal monocle, and smiling
sardonically.
“No, I don’t mean....” Béchoux forgot his resolve to find out just what
had happened in the case of Baronne Assermann.
Barnett clapped him on the shoulder.
“Inspector Béchoux, you’re forgetting the slogan of this firm:
‘Information Free.’ I give you my word of honor that I never ask my
clients for a penny and I never accept a penny from them.”
Béchoux breathed more freely.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’m glad to have that assurance. My professional
conscience will only allow me to avail myself of your coöperation on
certain conditions. You understand, don’t you? But if you don’t mind my
asking the question, there’s one thing I feel I must know. Just what
financial backing have you in the Barnett Agency?”
“I have a sleeping partner—a philanthropist.” Barnett’s tone was remote
and casual.
“Is he anybody I know?”
“I rather think so. In fact, I’m almost certain. For even a police
inspector must at some time have heard the name of—Arsène Lupin!”
Béchoux jumped.
“That’s no name to jest about, Barnett.”
Inspector Béchoux’s existence was dominated by two emotions—his
admiration for Barnett’s detective ability and his fierce hatred of
Arsène Lupin. Béchoux was one of Caminard’s little band and fully
shared that great man’s bitterness, especially as he had himself
suffered humiliating defeats at the enemy’s hands. He still smarted
with resentment at the memory of these, and never forgot that Arsène
Lupin had added insult to injury by robbing him more than once of the
lady of his choice.
“We won’t discuss the fellow,” he said gruffly, “unless there’s a
chance of my laying hands on him.”
“Or I,” and Barnett blandly extended his own hands—oddly enough, at the
level of his nose! “But let’s get to work. Whereabouts is your new
job?”
“Near Marly. It’s the business of the murder of old Vaucherel. You’ve
heard about it?”
“Only vaguely.”
Barnett’s attitude was one of acute detachment from anything so mundane
as murder.
“I’m not surprised. The newspapers aren’t giving it much space yet,
though it’s infernally baffling....”
“He was done in with a knife, wasn’t he?” After all, Barnett’s
detachment was only assumed.
“Yes. Stabbed between the shoulder-blades.”
“Any finger-marks on the knife?”
“None. We found a piece of paper in ashes; it was probably wrapped
round the handle by the murderer.”
“Any clews?”
Inspector Béchoux shook his head. “Vaucherel’s room was a bit
disordered. Some of the furniture had been knocked over and the drawer
of a table had been broken open, but we don’t know why that was done or
what’s missing.”
“Where have they got to on the inquest?”
“They’re confronting a retired official called Leboc with the Gaudu
cousins—three ne’er-do-weel blackguards of poachers. Without any real
evidence, each side is accusing the other of the murder. Want me to run
you over there in my car? Nothing like a good, stiff cross-examination,
you know!”
“Right you are.” Barnett rose, albeit reluctantly.
“Just one thing, Barnett. Formerie, who’s conducting the inquiry, hopes
to attract attention and get a Paris appointment. He’s a touchy sort of
chap and he won’t stand for your usual bright bedside manner with the
law, so cut out the flippancy.” Béchoux’s tone was eloquent with
painful memories of Barnett’s past exploits.
“I promise to treat him most respectfully,” replied Barnett, “and I
never break my word!”
Half-way between the village of Fontines and Marly Forest, in a copse
separated from the forest by a strip of ground, stands a one-storied
house with a small kitchen garden, surrounded by a low wall. Eight days
before Béchoux’s conversation with Jim Barnett, the cottage was still
inhabited by a retired bookseller, old Vaucherel, who never left his
little domain of flowers and vegetables except to browse in the
bookstalls along the Paris quays. He was very miserly and reputed a
rich man, although frugal in his habits. He had no visitors except his
friend, Leboc, who lived at Fontines.
The reconstruction of the crime and the examination of Leboc were over,
and the inspection of the garden had begun, when Jim Barnett and
Inspector Béchoux alighted from their car. Béchoux made himself known
to the gendarmes guarding the cottage gate and, followed by Barnett, he
joined the examining magistrate and the deputy just as the latter had
halted before an angle of the wall. The three Gaudu cousins were there
to give their evidence. They were all three farm-hands of just about
the same age; they bore no facial resemblance to one another save for a
similar sly stubbornness of expression. The eldest Gaudu was speaking:
“Yes, your worship, that’s where we jumped over when we ran to the
rescue, as you might say.”
“You were coming from Fontines?”
“Yes, your worship, from Fontines. We were on our way back to work,
about two o’clock it must have been. It was like this: we were chatting
with Mère Denise close by at the edge of the copse, when we heard
screams. ‘Somebody’s crying for help,’ I says. ‘It’s from the cottage.’
Old Vaucherel, that we knew as well as anything, your worship. So we
ran like mad. We climbed over this here wall—a nasty bit of work, with
all them broken bottles on top—and we were across the garden in no
time, as you might say.”
“Where exactly were you when the front door flew open?”
“Right here,” said the eldest Gaudu, leading the way to a flower-bed.
“That means about twenty yards from the porch,” said the magistrate,
pointing to the two steps leading up to the hall. “And from where you
stood you saw——” He paused expectantly.
“Monsieur Leboc himself ... I saw him as clear as I see you, your
worship ... he was rushing out, as if the devil was at his heels—or the
police, for that matter, which they soon may be—and when he saw us he
bolted straight back again.”
“You’re quite sure it was he?”
“I swear to God it was!”
The other two men took a similar oath.
“You can’t have been mistaken?”
“Why, he’s been living near our place for five years now, down the end
of the village,” the eldest Gaudu stated. “I’ve even delivered milk at
his house!”
The magistrate gave an order. The door of the hall opened and a man
came out. He was about sixty, and wore a brown drill suit and a straw
hat. His face was pink and smiling.
The three Gaudus spoke simultaneously.
“Monsieur Leboc!”
Their choral affirmation made Leboc’s entrance grotesquely like
something in musical comedy.
The deputy whispered, “It’s obvious there can’t be any mistake at such
close range and the Gaudu cousins can’t have gone wrong on the identity
of the fugitive—which means, of the murderer.”
“Quite so,” said the magistrate. “But are they speaking the truth? Was
it Monsieur Leboc they saw? Now we’ll go on.”
The party went into the house and entered a big room whose walls were
literally lined with books. There were just a few sticks of furniture;
a large table—the one whose drawer had been broken into; and an
unframed full-length portrait of old Vaucherel—a life-size daub by some
unskilled artist who had yet managed to invest his subject with a
certain verisimilitude.
A dummy lay stretched on the floor to represent the victim of the
tragedy.
The magistrate resumed his examination.
“When you came on the scene, Gaudu, you did not see Monsieur Leboc
again?”
“No, your worship. We heard groans from this room and rushed in at
once.”
“That means that Monsieur Vaucherel was still alive?”
“Hardly that, as you might say. He was lying face down with a knife
stuck right in the middle of his back ... we knelt down by him ... the
poor gentleman was trying to speak.”
“Could you catch what he said?”
“No, your worship. We could only make out the name of Leboc—he said it
over several times—‘Monsieur Leboc, Monsieur Leboc ...’ like that. Then
a kind of shudder passed over him and he was gone. After that we
searched everywhere, but Monsieur Leboc had vanished. He must have
jumped out of the kitchen window, which was open, and made off down the
little gravel path. It goes straight to his house and the trees hide it
all the way.... Then we all went together to the gendarmes ... and we
told them all about it....”
The magistrate asked a few more questions, made the three cousins
formulate even more definitely their charge against Monsieur Leboc, and
then turned his attention to the latter.
Monsieur Leboc had listened without attempting to interrupt. His
perfect calm was unruffled by any display of indignation. He gave the
impression of finding the Gaudus’ story so utterly absurd that he did
not for a moment doubt that the magistrate would take a precisely
similar view of it. Why bother to refute such a tale?
“Have you anything to add, Monsieur Leboc?”
“Nothing further.”
“Then you still maintain——”
“I maintain what you, monsieur, know as well as I to be the truth. All
the villagers you have examined have testified that I never go out
during the daytime. At midday I have my lunch sent in from the inn.
From one to four I sit at my window reading and smoking my pipe. The
day in question was fine. My window was open, and five people—no less
than five—saw me, as on any other day, from the garden gate.”
“I have summoned them to appear later on.”
“I’m glad to hear it. They will repeat their evidence. Since I am not
ubiquitous and cannot at one and the same moment be here and in my own
house you must admit that I could not have been seen leaving the
cottage, that my poor friend Vaucherel could not have spoken my name in
his agony, and therefore that these three Gaudus are unmitigated
scoundrels.”
“And you turn the murder charge against them, don’t you?”
“Oh! Merely a matter of surmise....”
“On the other hand, an old woman, Mère Denise, who was out gathering
firewood, states that she was talking with the men when they first
heard the screams.”
“She was talking with two of them. Where was the third?”
“A little way behind.”
“Did she see him?”
“She thinks so ... she isn’t positive....”
“In that case, what proof have you that the third Gaudu wasn’t right
here, committing the murder? What proof have you that the other two,
posted near, didn’t climb the wall, not to rush to the victim’s help
but to smother his cries and finish him off?”
“If that were so, why should they accuse you personally?”
“I have a small shoot and the Gaudus are incorrigible poachers. It was
thanks to me that they were twice caught in the act and sentenced. Now,
as they’ve got to accuse some one to shift suspicion from themselves,
they’re getting their own back.”
“Merely surmise, as you said yourself. Why should they want to kill
Vaucherel?”
“How should I know?” Leboc shrugged his shoulders.
“You have no idea what it was that may have been stolen from the drawer
in the table?”
“None, your lordship. My friend Vaucherel was not rich, whatever people
may have said. I happen to know that he had entrusted his savings to a
broker and kept no money in the house.”
“Nor anything valuable?”
“Nothing whatever.”
“What about his books?”
“They aren’t worth anything, as you can see for yourself. He always
wanted to collect first editions and old bindings, but he could never
afford it.”
“Did he ever mention the Gaudu cousins to you?”
“Never. Much as I long to avenge my poor friend’s death, I have no wish
to speak anything but the strict truth.”
The examination went on. The magistrate questioned the cousins closely,
but at the finish the confrontation showed no results. Having cleared
up a few minor points, the magistrates adjourned to Fontines.
Monsieur Leboc’s property, at the end of the village, was no bigger
than the cottage. The garden was enclosed by a very high, neatly
clipped hedge. The white-painted brick house faced on to a tiny,
perfectly circular lawn. As at the cottage the distance from gate to
porch was between fifteen and twenty yards.
The magistrate asked Monsieur Leboc to take up his position as on the
fatal afternoon. Monsieur Leboc thereupon seated himself at the window,
a book on his knees, and his pipe in his mouth.
Here again no mistake was possible. Anyone passing the gate and
glancing towards the house could not fail to see Monsieur Leboc
distinctly. The five witnesses who had been summoned—laborers and
shopkeepers of Fontines—repeated their evidence in such a way that it
was quite impossible to doubt Monsieur Leboc’s whereabouts between
midday and four o’clock on the day of the crime.
The magistrates did not attempt to hide their bewilderment from the
inspector, and Formerie, to whom Béchoux had introduced Barnett as a
detective of exceptional ability, could not help saying:
“A complicated case, monsieur. What do you make of it?”
“Yes, what do you make of it?” echoed Béchoux, signing pointedly to
remind Barnett of the need for tact.
Jim Barnett had followed the whole investigation at the cottage in
silence. Béchoux had kept asking him questions, to which he had only
replied with nods and muttered monosyllables. Now he answered
pleasantly:
“A most complicated case, monsieur.”
“Ah, you think so too. All things considered, the allegations of the
two parties balance each other. On the one hand, we have Monsieur
Leboc’s alibi. It is incontestable that he could not have left his
house that afternoon. On the other hand, the story of the three cousins
impresses me favorably.”
“That’s so. One side or the other is acting an abject farce. But which
side? Can the three Gaudus, bad characters of brutal aspect, be
innocent? Or may the smiling Monsieur Leboc, all candor and calm, be
guilty? Or are we to take it that the appearance of the actors in this
drama is an indication of their respective rôles, Monsieur Leboc being
innocent and the Gaudus guilty?”
“After all,” Monsieur Formerie concluded with some satisfaction,
“you’re no nearer seeing daylight than we are.”
“Oh, yes, I am!” Jim Barnett declared, a twinkle in his eye.
Monsieur Formerie bit his lip.
“That being so,” he observed icily, “perhaps you will be so good as to
tell us what more you have been able to discover.”
“I will certainly do so at the proper moment. To-day, monsieur, all I
can do is to beg you to call a new witness.”
“A new witness? But—what’s his name?”
“I really don’t know.”
“What’s that? You don’t know?”
Monsieur Formerie was wondering whether this super-detective was
ragging him. Béchoux showed signs of anxiety. Was Barnett going to pull
a hornet’s nest about his ears at the start?
At last Jim Barnett leaned over to Monsieur Formerie and pointing to
Monsieur Leboc, who was still puffing conscientiously at his pipe by
the window, he whispered:
“In the inner compartment of Monsieur Leboc’s pocketbook there is a
visiting card pierced with four small holes in lozenge formation. That
card will give us the name and address of our new witness.”
This ridiculous oracular pronouncement was hardly calculated to restore
Formerie’s equilibrium, but Inspector Béchoux did not hesitate to act.
Without giving any reason, he ordered Monsieur Leboc to hand over his
pocketbook. He opened it and took out a visiting card pierced with four
holes arranged in a lozenge and bearing the name: Miss Elizabeth
Lovendale, with an address in blue pencil: Grand Hotel Vendôme, Paris.
The two magistrates looked at one another in amazement. Béchoux fairly
beamed, while Monsieur Leboc, utterly unembarrassed, exclaimed:
“Good gracious! What a search I had for that card! And so did poor
Vaucherel!”
“Why should he have been looking for it?”
“Really, your lordship, you can’t expect me to know that. I expect he
wanted the address.”
“Then what are the four holes doing?”
“Oh, I made those to mark the four points I scored in a game of écarté.
We often played écarté together, and I must have picked this visiting
card up without thinking and put it in my pocketbook.”
Leboc gave this plausible explanation in a perfectly natural manner and
it seemed to satisfy Formerie. What remained unexplained was how on
earth Jim Barnett could have guessed that such a card was hidden in the
pocketbook of a man he had never seen before in his life.
And Barnett himself furnished no elucidation. He merely smiled and
insisted that they should call Elizabeth Lovendale as a witness. This
they agreed to do.
Miss Lovendale was out of town and did not put in an appearance for a
week. The inquiry was at a standstill for that time, although Formerie
zealously pursued his investigations, the memory of Jim Barnett egging
him on.
“You’ve riled him,” Béchoux told Barnett on the afternoon when they
were all assembled again at the cottage. “So much so that he’s
determined to decline your assistance.”
“Ought I to clear out?” Barnett asked. “I don’t want to cloud any one’s
sky—not even Formerie’s!”
“No, you can stay,” Béchoux told him. “Anyway, I fancy he’s come to a
definite decision.”
“All the better. It’s sure to be the wrong one. There’s a good time
coming!”
“Don’t be so disrespectful, Barnett!”
“Oh, all right, I’ll be respectful and, of course, absolutely
disinterested. Nothing in hand or pocket. But, I must say, a little
more Formerie will about finish me!”
Monsieur Leboc had been waiting half an hour when a car drew up and
Miss Lovendale got out. Monsieur Formerie came up briskly.
“How do you do, Mr. Barnett,” he said. “Any more bright ideas?”
“Perhaps, monsieur,” was Barnett’s cautious reply.
“Well, wait till you’ve heard mine. But first we must get through with
your witness. Absolutely irrelevant and a sheer waste of time, you’ll
be glad to hear. Still, it can’t be helped.”
Elizabeth Lovendale was a dowdily dressed, middle-aged Englishwoman,
her slight eccentricity of manner heightened by her dishevelled hair.
She spoke French fluently, but so volubly that she was hard to
understand.
At once, before any question could be put to her, she launched forth:
“That poor Monsieur Vaucherel! Murdered! Such a nice man, if he was a
bit queer. And you want to know whether I knew him? Oh, not well. I
only came here once—on business. I wanted to buy something from him. We
disagreed about the price. I was going to have another appointment with
him after seeing my brothers. My brothers are well known in
London—Lovendale and Lovendale, Limited, the big provision merchants.”
Monsieur Formerie strove to stem this flow of eloquence.
“What was it you wanted to buy, mademoiselle?”
“A little scrap of paper—nothing but a scrap of paper. Sentimental
value only, as people say. But it was worth a lot to me and I made the
mistake of telling him so. It all goes back to my great-grandmother,
Dorothy Lovendale. She was a beauty and much admired by King George the
Fourth. She kept eighteen love-letters that he wrote her and hid them,
one in each volume of an eighteen-volume calf-bound edition of
Richardson’s works. When she died, the family found every volume except
the fourteenth, which was missing, together with the letter inside of
it—the fourteenth letter and the most interesting, for it was known to
prove that the lovely Dorothy had stepped aside from virtue’s
path,”—Miss Lovendale lowered her eyes discreetly so as not to meet
Barnett’s look of amusement—“just nine months before the birth of her
eldest son. You can understand what it would mean to us to get that
letter back! Why, it would prove our royal descent!”
Formerie was growing more and more impatient.
Elizabeth Lovendale took a deep breath, and went on with her story.
“After searching and advertising for nearly thirty years, I learned one
day that among a number of books sold at auction was the fourteenth
volume of the set of Richardson. I flew to the purchaser, a second-hand
bookseller on the Quai Voltaire, who referred me to Monsieur Vaucherel
who had just bought the book. Monsieur Vaucherel produced the precious
volume, and, like a fool, I told him that the letter I was after must
be in the back of the binding. He examined it closely and changed
color. Then, of course, I realized my stupidity. If I had kept quiet
about the letter he would have sold me the book for fifty francs. I
offered him a thousand. Monsieur Vaucherel, shaking with excitement,
asked ten thousand. I agreed. We both lost our heads. It was like a
nightmare auction. Twenty thousand—thirty—finally he demanded fifty
thousand francs, yelling like a madman, with his eyes blazing. ‘Fifty
thousand,’ he cried, ‘not a sou less—that will buy me all the books I
want—the rarest and finest—fifty thousand francs!’ He wanted a deposit
then and there—a check. I said I would come back. He let me go and I
saw him lock the book into the drawer of this table.”
Elizabeth Lovendale went on embellishing her statement with much
unnecessary detail. Nobody paid any attention to her. All eyes were for
the contorted countenance of the magistrate. He was obviously the prey
of somewhat violent emotion and was quite overwhelmed with excessive
jubilation. At last he managed to get out:
“In short, mademoiselle, you are asking for the return of the
fourteenth volume of Richardson’s collected works?”
“I am.” She looked at him with sudden hope.
“Then here it is,” he cried, and with a theatrical gesture he produced
a small calf-bound book from his pocket.
“Not really!” cried Miss Lovendale.
“Here it is,” he repeated. “But King George’s love-letter isn’t there.
I should have noticed it. But I’ll wager I can find it if I was able to
discover the missing volume that people have been after for the past
century. The man who stole the one indubitably stole the other.”
Monsieur Formerie paced the room, his hands behind his back, enjoying
his triumph. Suddenly he drummed on the table and spoke again.
“Now we know the motive for the murder. Someone overheard the
conversation between Vaucherel and Miss Lovendale and saw where
Vaucherel had put the book. A few days later that person murdered
Vaucherel to rob him of the book so that he could later on dispose of
the fourteenth letter. Who was it? Why, Gaudu, the farm-hand, whose
guilt I never doubted. I searched his house yesterday and noticed a
large crack between the bricks of the fireplace. Hidden in a hole
behind this crack I found a book, which obviously belonged to Monsieur
Vaucherel’s library. Miss Lovendale’s story, coming as it does, proves
the accuracy of my deductions. The Gaudu cousins will be placed under
arrest, the scum, as the murderers of poor old Vaucherel and the
criminal accusers of Monsieur Leboc.”
Monsieur Formerie solemnly shook hands with Monsieur Leboc as a mark of
his esteem and was effusively thanked by the latter. Then he gallantly
escorted Elizabeth Lovendale to her car and returned, rubbing his hands
together.
After this, everybody made for the Gaudus’ house, whither the three
cousins were being brought under escort. It was a brilliant day.
Monsieur Formerie, walking between Barnett and Béchoux, with Leboc
bringing up the rear, was full of satisfaction. The coveted Paris
appointment loomed ever nearer on his horizon.
“Well, well, Barnett,” he remarked, “very neatly done, eh? Not quite
what you expected, though. After all, you were inclined to be hostile
to Monsieur Leboc, weren’t you?”
“I admit, monsieur,” Barnett confessed, “that I allowed my line of
reasoning to be influenced by that confounded visiting card. Would you
believe it? That card was lying on the cottage floor during the
confrontation, and I actually saw Leboc drawing stealthily nearer and
nearer till he got his right foot on it. When we left the place, he had
it stuck to the sole of his boot. Afterwards he detached it and slipped
it into his pocketbook. Well, the imprint of his right sole on the damp
ground showed me that the said sole had four spikes arranged in a
lozenge. That meant that our friend Leboc, knowing that he had
forgotten the card lying on the floor, and anxious to keep Elizabeth
Lovendale’s name and address out of things, hit upon this neat little
dodge. And really, it’s thanks to the visiting card that——”
Monsieur Formerie burst out laughing.
“My dear Barnett, don’t be childish! Why all these pointless
complications? You shouldn’t waste your energy ferreting out mares’
nests. It’s a thing I never do. For goodness sake let’s stick to the
facts as we find them and refrain from distorting them to fit
impossible theories.”
The party was by now near Monsieur Leboc’s house which was on their way
to the Gaudus’. Monsieur Formerie took Barnett’s arm and went affably
on with his curtain lecture.
“Where you went wrong, Barnett, was in refusing to admit the
incontrovertible truth that, after all, one man cannot be in two places
at the same moment. Everything turns on that—Monsieur Leboc, smoking at
his window, couldn’t be at the same time committing a murder at the
cottage. Here we have Monsieur Leboc just behind us. There is the gate
of his house, three yards away. I say it’s impossible to conceive a
miracle by which Monsieur Leboc could be at once behind us and at his
window.”
Suddenly Formerie stood still in his tracks, choking, helpless and
amazed.
“What is it?” Béchoux asked.
Formerie pointed towards the house.
“There!... Look!...”
Through the bars of the gate, twenty yards away, beyond the lawn, they
could see Monsieur Leboc smoking his pipe, framed in the open
window—Monsieur Leboc who nevertheless was standing with the group in
the road.
A nightmare vision—a hallucination! It was incredible. Who could be
impersonating the real Leboc, whom Formerie had by the arm?
Béchoux had opened the gate and was running to the house. Formerie
followed him, shouting threats at Leboc’s extraordinary double. But the
figure in the window never heeded nor stirred. How should it heed or
stir, since, as they could see on drawing closer, it was merely a
picture, a painted canvas fitting the window-frame exactly and
presenting a tolerably life-like profile of Monsieur Leboc smoking his
pipe. It was daubed in the same style as the portrait of Vaucherel
hanging in the cottage. Obviously the same artist had painted both.
Formerie wheeled round. The mask of smiling placidity had dropped from
Monsieur Leboc’s face; the man had collapsed utterly under this
unforeseen blow. He began a maudlin confession.
“I lost my head—I never meant to stab him—I only wanted to share in
with him, fifty-fifty.... He refused—I didn’t know what I was doing. I
never meant to stab him.”
His whining trailed off and Jim Barnett’s voice, now harsh and
scathing, was raised in mocking inquiry.
“What do you say to that, Monsieur Formerie? Nice lad, Leboc, all ready
with a perfect alibi! How were the unobservant passers-by to doubt the
reality of the Monsieur Leboc they only saw at a distance? Personally,
I suspected something like this when I saw the portrait of old
Vaucherel. I wondered if the same artist could have painted Leboc. I
didn’t have to look hard—Leboc was too sure he’d fooled us all. The
canvas was rolled up and hidden in the corner of a shed under a heap of
rusty tools. I only had to nail it in place at the window a little
while ago, after Leboc had gone to answer your summons. That’s how a
man can simultaneously murder abroad and smoke his pipe at home!”
Jim Barnett was ruthless. His grating voice flayed the hapless
Formerie.
“Just look what a clean sheet Leboc had. What a ready answer about the
visiting card—the four holes marking his score at écarté. And the book
he hid the other day in the Gaudus’ fireplace. I was shadowing him! And
the anonymous letter he sent you—for that was what got you going.
Leboc, you scoundrel, I’ve had some real amusement out of you. D’you
hear, my bright lad?”
Formerie was pale but restrained. After a prolonged scrutiny of Leboc,
he murmured:
“I’m not surprised ... shifty eyes ... a slippery way with him.... What
a rogue!” His wrath overflowed. “You blackguard, I’ll see you get
yours! Now then, where’s that letter?”
Leboc, stricken helpless, stammered:
“In the bowl of the pipe that’s hanging on the wall in the room on your
left. I haven’t cleaned it. The letter’s there.”
They rushed into the room. Béchoux fell upon the pipe and shook out the
ashes. But the bowl was quite empty. Leboc seemed utterly overcome and
Formerie’s temper broke out again.
“You liar—you confounded faker! But you’re going to tell me where that
letter is—at once!”
At that moment the inspector met Barnett’s gaze. Barnett was smiling a
happy, childlike smile. Béchoux’s fists clenched convulsively. He began
to understand that the Barnett Agency was gratuitous in a peculiar
fashion all its own. Dimly he saw how Jim Barnett, while protesting
truthfully that he never asked his clients for a penny, could afford to
live in comfort as a private detective.
He drew close to him and muttered:
“You think you’re pretty clever, don’t you? The Arsène Lupin touch!”
“What?” Barnett was all wide-eyed innocence.
“The way you spirited that letter away!”
“So you guessed my weakness? I always had a passion for the autographs
of royalty!”
Three months later there called upon Elizabeth Lovendale, then in
London, a highly distinguished gentleman, who assured her that he could
lay hands on King George’s love-letter to great-grandmother Dorothy.
His price was a mere bagatelle of a hundred thousand francs.
There were lengthy negotiations. Elizabeth took counsel with her
brothers, the renowned provision merchants. They haggled, refused to
pay, and finally gave in.
The highly distinguished gentleman pocketed his hundred thousand francs
and appropriated, into the bargain, an entire vanload of choice
groceries which disappeared into the void!