"I must confess," remarked Monsieur Lefevre, as he sat with Mr.
Stapleton and Duvall over their after dinner cigars the following
evening, "that while the case as a whole appears simple enough to me,
there are one or two points that I fail to understand."
"There are a great many that _I_ fail to understand," exclaimed the
banker, chewing reflectively on his cigar. "However, now that the boy is
safe at home, it really makes very little difference."
"On the contrary, Mr. Stapleton," remarked Duvall, "it makes a great
deal of difference. For instance, I understand that you have discharged
the nurse, Mary Lanahan."
"Yes. You say that she is quite innocent of any part in the kidnapping
of my boy; but the fact remains that I don't trust her. I am informed
that she was married to that fellow, Valentin, this afternoon."
Duvall smiled. "That was quite to be expected."
"At one time," said Mr. Stapleton, "you believed this fellow Valentin to
have been concerned in the plot."
"Yes. That is true. My early investigations of the matter showed me at
once that there was some understanding between these two, something
which they were endeavoring to conceal. I did not at first understand
the motive which actuated them. I thought it was guilt. In reality, it
was love. Therefore I am not surprised to learn of their marriage." He
gazed critically at his cigar for a time, in silence.
"As matters have turned out, gentlemen," he resumed, after a few
moments, "there is no cause for anything but congratulation on all
hands. The child is recovered, the criminals are under arrest, the
money--the hundred thousand dollars you paid out, Mr. Stapleton--was
found on the kidnapper's person and returned to you."
"Exactly. Nothing could be more satisfactory all around."
"And yet," went on the detective, "I have never before taken part in a
case in which I have done so little, in which I have been so uniformly
unsuccessful."
Mr. Stapleton raised his hand. "My dear Duvall," he began, "but for you,
we should have been nowhere."
"You are wrong, my friend. Had I kept out of the case altogether, your
son would have been returned to you just the same. It is true that the
men who kidnapped him would not have been caught, and your money would
not have been returned to you; but the prime object which you sought,
the recovery of your child, would have been realized in any event."
"That is true," remarked the Prefect; "but, from the standpoint of the
police, it is the detection and capture of the criminal that is desired,
not the buying of him off. By insisting on that, Mr. Stapleton, you
rendered our work extremely difficult."
"So difficult, indeed," said Duvall, earnestly, "that but for the
energy, the courage, the wit of a woman, all our plans would have
failed. I refer to my wife. It is to her that all the credit in this
affair is due."
"By all means!" said Mr. Stapleton. "I could not fail to realize, when
she told her story at dinner tonight, how much Mrs. Stapleton and
myself owe her. I shall have something to say on the subject of our
debt, as soon as the ladies rejoin us. But tell us, Mr. Duvall, a little
more about the case, as you now understand it. I confess that I am
becoming more and more interested. What, for instance, was the mystery,
if indeed there was any, connected with the box of gold-tipped
cigarettes?"
Duvall smiled. "That, my dear sir, is in fact the crux, the starting
point, of the whole affair." He settled back in his chair comfortably.
"Otherwise the case was simple enough. Certain scoundrels steal a child,
hold it for ransom, and frighten the parents into paying over a large
sum. Nothing unusual in that. A clever scheme or two for turning the
money over, and returning the child--simple, yet perfect enough to defy
all attempts to foil them.
"The real mystery lay in the utter absence of any clues which would
throw light on the actual stealing of the child. In this respect the
case was unique. A trusted nurse swears that the child has disappeared
in broad daylight, without the slightest knowledge of how it was
accomplished. Here we have a case so simple, so devoid of incident of
any sort, that we are baffled at the very start by the impossibility of
the thing. Yet the nurse is a woman of good reputation, honest, clearly
telling what she believes to be the truth.
"But a single clue existed upon which I could build the least semblance
of a case. I refer to the half-smoked cigarette with the gold tip, which
I discovered in the grass at the scene of the crime. Without that
apparently trivial clue, the criminals would in all probability never
have been captured at all."
"But," exclaimed Mr. Stapleton, "I don't see how you make that out."
"Nor I," observed the Prefect.
"No. I suppose not. And yet, it is simple enough. That half-smoked
cigarette and nothing else is the basic reason for the arrest of the
three men now in your hands."
Monsieur Lefevre smiled. "Be good enough," he said, "to explain."
"Very well, I will. But first, let me indicate to you my course of
reasoning. When I originally found the cigarette, I regarded it as of
very small value, from the standpoint of evidence. It happened to be
lying in the grass at the point where the crime occurred; but during
the week or more which had elapsed between the stealing of the boy and
my examination of the ground, a hundred people might have walked over
the spot. I took it, because I realized that it _might_ have a bearing
on the case, and I have learned to discard no clue, however trifling it
may appear, until it has been proven valueless.
"Now to go back to the cigarette, I observed at once that it was of
American make, yet of such small size as to have been either used by a
woman, or by a man of rather effeminate taste.
"Now if the cigarette had been used by a woman, it meant one of two
things. Either it was used by Mary Lanahan herself, in which case it
apparently proved nothing, or by some other woman who was there with
her, and who might have had a hand in the kidnapping.
"On the other hand, if used by a man, it pointed clearly to the
chauffeur, Valentin, for several reasons. He was a friend, a former
lover, of the nurse. He had been discharged by Mr. Stapleton for
dishonesty. He was, I had reason to know, of rather a weak and
effeminate type. The cigarette was of American make, and he had but
recently come from America. These things pointed to Valentin. The fact
that the nurse was in love with him would cause her to shield him. I
determined to try the matter out at once.
"As soon as I returned to the house, therefore, I confronted her, and
asked her if Valentin smoked gold-tipped cigarettes. I did this, not
because I expected to get any reply of value, but because I wished to
observe her manner, her face, when I flung the question at her.
"She was greatly startled. She denied that Valentin smoked. Fifteen
minutes later, she sent him a message to destroy the cigarettes.
"I at once concluded that they were working together, and were both
guilty, a conclusion in which, however much I was justified by the
evidence, I was quite wrong.
"Then came the attempt on the part of someone--the man with the black
beard, I am told--to steal the cigarettes from Valentin. I learned that
the man was followed to Mr. Stapleton's house.
"This at once threw a new light upon the matter, although I will admit a
confusing one. Someone else, besides the nurse, desired the box of
cigarettes removed as evidence; someone, in fact, who belonged to, or
had friends in, the house. Who could this be? I could think of no one,
outside of Mary Lanahan herself, but the chauffeur, Francois."
"Why did you first suspect him?" asked Mr. Stapleton.
"Because he was the only person, besides the nurse, who was present at
the time of the kidnapping. I did not abandon my suspicions of either
the nurse or Valentin. I fully believed that they knew a great deal more
about the affair than they admitted. But I became convinced that
Francois, too, was in the thing. He had testified that he was asleep
when the affair occurred. I concluded at once that he was lying.
"At the first opportunity, therefore, I made a thorough search of his
room, and found the box of cigarettes hidden in a clock on his mantel."
"Ha! I did not know that," exclaimed the Prefect. "What were they doing
there?"
"I concluded that the fellow with the black beard who stole them from
Valentin, in order to prevent their use as evidence against him, turned
them over to Francois for a definite purpose."
"And that purpose was?"
"Their use in subsequent crimes of a similar nature."
Mr. Stapleton and the Prefect gazed at Duvall in bewilderment. "Explain
yourself, my friend," exclaimed the latter. "I confess I do not
understand what you are talking about. Who, may I ask, really smoked the
cigarette, the remains of which you found in the grass?"
"Mary Lanahan," said the detective, with a smile.
"The nurse! Name of a dog! Then I fail to see that the matter is of the
slightest importance one way or the other."
"On the contrary, Monsieur, it is of the greatest importance. May I ask
whether you are, by any chance, familiar with the properties of an
Eastern drug, made from hemp, and generally known as hashish?"
The Prefect sat up suddenly, and clapped his hands to his knees. "Mon
Dieu!" he exclaimed. "Now I begin to understand."
"More than I do," said Mr. Stapleton.
"The cigarettes were drugged, that is all," went on Duvall. "The men who
planned this thing went to work very carefully. They ascertained,
through Francois, that Mary Lanahan was in the habit, no doubt on the
sly, of using cigarettes. I discovered the fact, myself, before I left
New York. They also learned that she smoked the same brand as Mrs.
Stapleton herself used. No doubt she helped herself from Mrs.
Stapleton's supply. They therefore secured, also through Francois, a box
of these cigarettes, and had them heavily drugged with hashish. The box
of drugged cigarettes was substituted, later on, for her own."
"But," exclaimed Mr. Stapleton, "how could Mary Lanahan swear that she
turned away but a moment--that no one came near her?"
"When Mary Lanahan testified that, she believed that she was telling the
truth. The hashish had simply destroyed her conception of the passage of
time."
"Is that its effect?"
"Yes. It produces a delightful languor, a stupor in which all
realization of the passage of time ceases. Sometimes, to those who use
the drug, it may apparently require hours to walk a few yards. To make a
momentary movement of the hand may seem to take many minutes. On the
other hand, in the stupor which the drug induces, hours may be spent in
the contemplation of a flower, a bit of scenery, the page of a book,
without any realization on the part of the user that more than a few
seconds have elapsed. That is what happened to Mary Lanahan. She inhaled
a few puffs of the cigarette, heavily charged with the drug; without
knowing, of course, of its presence. She probably passed at once into a
state of stupor which may have extended over fifteen minutes or more.
She was not unconscious. She sat upon the grass, looking off toward the
distant sky, in a waking dream, not unlike a trance, in which all the
world about her--the world of sound, of movement--had simply ceased to
exist. She was to all intents and purposes unconscious of what was going
on about her. The kidnapper, whom I strongly suspect to be Francois,
merely strolled up behind her, picked up the boy, and walked off with
him."
The detective's listeners looked at him in astonishment. Presently Mr.
Stapleton spoke. "Why do you think it was Francois?" he asked.
"Oh, for many reasons. Had he, on approaching, found the nurse not
sufficiently under the influence of the drug, he could have pretended to
wish to speak to her, on some trivial matter. Again, the child would go
away with him of course without making an outcry, which he would
probably not have done, with a stranger. There are other reasons. He no
doubt took the boy to the road, and handed him to his confederates,
passing in another car. The affair occurred, you will remember, in a
little frequented part of the Bois.
"The subsequent actions of Mary Lanahan are a trifle difficult to
account for; but I suppose them to have been as follows: On slowly
coming out of her stupor, and realizing that the boy was gone, she was
terribly frightened. It had seemed to her but a moment since she turned
away. She fears that the cigarette has made her drowsy--she has heard
that they sometimes contain opium. She thinks she may have dozed off;
but is not willing to admit it. Especially does she not want her
employers to know that she uses cigarettes. She fears that such
knowledge would cost her her place. It is not until later that she
begins to suspect the cigarettes."
"When is that?" inquired Lefevre.
"Several days later, when she is supposed to have been poisoned. She was
with Valentin at the time; although, on account of Mr. Stapleton's
dislike for him, she feared to admit it. She smokes another of the
cigarettes, while sitting on a bench with him, in the Champs Elysees.
Suddenly she is taken ill--a frequent result of hashish, when taken in
excessive doses, or by one otherwise nervously upset. Valentin takes the
box, puts her into a cab, and goes to his room, where he leaves the
cigarettes. No doubt, as she begins to feel ill, she discusses with him
the possibility of the cigarettes having been poisoned. It is for that
reason that she gives them to him.
"Her sudden message to Valentin to destroy them arose from a fear that I
would discover the part which they had played in the boy's loss. This
would, she knew, not only cost her her place, but would make her, in a
way, responsible for the entire affair. She feared Mr. Stapleton's
wrath, and therefore both she and Valentin remained dumb, so far as the
cigarettes were concerned.
"They both, however, were all this time doing their best to find the
child. Her message to Valentin, that she was suspicious of Francois,
telling Valentin to watch him, arose no doubt from a realization that
the box of drugged cigarettes had been substituted for her own by the
chauffeur.
"Valentin, acting on her advice, does watch Francois, as his presence
clinging to the rear of the latter's car the other night has proved. He
tells me, today, that Francois did not take his car to the garage that
night at all. The men there who so testified lied, at his request,
supposing it merely an excuse to cover a joy ride.
"Francois, not wishing that the drugged cigarettes should remain in the
nurse's hands as evidence against him, evidently made an attempt to
recover them, discovered that she had turned them over to Valentin, and,
being watched himself, sent word of the matter to his confederate, the
fellow who went about in the black beard. He must have been admitted to
Mr. Stapleton's house that night by Francois himself.
"I came to the conclusion, early in the course of my investigations,
that the cigarette, the end of which I had found in the Bois, had been
smoked by Mary Lanahan, and I so told Mr. Stapleton."
The banker nodded. "Yes," he said; "but you did not then say anything
about the hashish."
"I was not certain of it. I intended to have the fragment I had found
analyzed. When I discovered the cigarettes in Francois' room, you will
remember that I took one of them. I smoked that cigarette, before going
to bed that night. It produced exactly the sensations that Mary Lanahan
must have felt. I floated away in the land of dreams for over half an
hour, and came to with no recollection whatever of the passage of time.
It is a remarkable drug, but an extremely dangerous one.
"After that, the case became simple enough. I knew at once, beyond any
question, that Francois was one of the kidnappers. My plans last night
would have worked perfectly, but for the chauffeur's accidental
discovery of me, hiding in the closet. Had that not happened, the boy
would have been returned, according to program, and Francois I had
safely in my hands."
"But we wouldn't have got the others," laughed the Prefect. "You must
thank your wife for that. Vernet has told me how the kidnappers
outwitted you at the Avenue Malakoff. The car from which the signal
apparently was made contained a well known stockbroker, who knew nothing
of the matter at all. He merely happened to be passing the Avenue
Malakoff at the precise moment when the signal was given to Francois."
"You are mistaken, Monsieur," observed the detective, quietly. "The
signal was undoubtedly made from that car; not by Monsieur Lemaitre, I
will admit, but by his chauffeur. He has admitted to Vernet that a
stranger paid him fifty francs to do so, on the plea that it was some
signal to a woman. The man knows nothing of the affair, beyond that."
As he finished speaking, there was a ripple of laughter from the hall,
and Mrs. Stapleton, Madame Lefevre, and Grace came in.
"We have been debating a most important question," said Mrs. Stapleton,
with an assumption of extreme gravity, "and we beg that you, Monsieur
Lefevre, will be so good as to decide it."
"What is this question so grave, Madame," inquired the Prefect, rising,
with a smile. "I am all impatience to hear it."
"The question is this, Monsieur Lefevre: Which deserves the greater
credit for the recovery of my boy--Mr. Duvall, or his charming wife?"
The Prefect stepped forward, placed one hand affectionately upon
Duvall's shoulder, and with the other grasped Grace by the arm.
"The question you propound, Madame," he said, looking from the detective
to his wife with a smile, "is easily answered. The credit belongs
equally to both. And that, my children, is as it should be. This affair,
so happily terminated, has taught me one important lesson. It is this:
The husband and the wife should never be in opposition to each other.
They must work together always, not only in matters of this sort, but in
all the affairs of life. I attempted a risky experiment in allowing
these two dear friends of mine to attack this case from opposite sides.
But for some very excellent strokes of luck, it might have resulted most
unhappily for all concerned. Hereafter, should Monsieur Duvall and his
wife serve me, it must be together, or not at all." He turned to Grace.
"I feel that I owe you both a great debt, my child, for having once
again so rudely interrupted the course of your honeymoon. What
reparation can I make? Ask of me what you will."
"Anything?" inquired Grace, laughing.
"Anything." The Prefect bowed gallantly.
"Then I demand your promise, Monsieur, to visit us at our place in
Maryland, before the end of the year."
"That," exclaimed the Prefect, as he bent and kissed her hand, "would be
the most delightful way of paying a debt that I could possibly
imagine."
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Transcriber Notes
Obvious punctuation and spelling errors have been corrected.
page 291 Original: he is no longer in the horse; but he may be in
Replaced: he is no longer in the house; but he may be in
page 256 Original: The man seemed hurried. He grouped his way
Replaced: The man seemed hurried. He groped his way