Arsène Lupin intervenes
Haveline who teaches the flute? She took second prize at the
Conservatoire.”
Béchoux grew wrathful.
“Huh, you’re asking for her because you’ve just seen her brass plate up
there....”
“Well,” replied Barnett, “haven’t I a perfect right to learn the flute
if I like? It’s a free country!”
“You can’t come here.”
“Sorry, but I am consumed with a passion for the flute.”
“I absolutely forbid it.”
For sole answer Barnett snapped his fingers in the other’s face and
pushed past him into the house. No one dared bar his way. Béchoux, his
heart full of misgivings, watched him ascend the first flight of stairs
and vanish out of sight.
It must have taken Barnett only a little while to get started with his
teacher, for in ten minutes’ time wobbly scales on the flute began
floating down from the top floor. Mademoiselle Haveline’s pupil was on
the job!
“The scoundrel!” cried Béchoux, his anxiety increasing every minute.
“With him in the house, heaven help us!”
He set to work again madly. They ransacked the empty ground floor flat,
also the concierge’s room, in case the bundle of securities had been
thrown down somewhere. It was all fruitless. And the whole afternoon
the sound of flute practice went on, like a mocking goblin under the
eaves. Béchoux nearly collapsed beneath the strain.
At last, on the stroke of six, Barnett appeared, skipping down the
stairs and humming a ribald tune. And, as he went, he swung to and fro
a large cardboard box.
A cardboard box! Béchoux, with a strangled exclamation, seized it and
snatched off the lid. Out tumbled some old hat-shapes and bits of
moth-eaten fur.
“Since she is not allowed to leave the house,” Barnett explained
solemnly, “Mademoiselle Haveline has asked me to throw this stuff away
for her. I say, isn’t she a peach? And what a flautist! She thinks I am
full of talent and says that if I keep on at it I shall soon be able to
qualify for the post of blind man on the church steps. Ta, ta!” And he
was gone.
All night long, Béchoux and Gassire mounted guard, one inside and the
other outside the street door, in case the thief should try to throw a
parcel out of a window to an accomplice waiting below. And next day
they set to work again, but all in vain.
At three o’clock that afternoon Barnett was on the scene again,
carrying the empty cardboard box. He went straight upstairs, nodding
affably to poor Béchoux in the manner of one whose time is well and
fully occupied.
The flute lesson began. Scales, followed by exercises. The critical
listener would have detected plenty of wrong notes.
Suddenly all was quiet. The silence continued unbroken, until Béchoux
was thoroughly puzzled.
“What on earth can he be up to now?” he wondered, as he pictured
Barnett busy with those private researches which would assuredly
culminate in some extraordinary discovery.
He ran upstairs and stood listening on the landing. No sound came from
Mademoiselle Haveline’s room. But a man’s voice was distinctly audible
in the next door flatlet of Mademoiselle Legoffier, the typist.
“Barnett’s voice,” thought Béchoux, his curiosity now at white-heat.
Then, incapable of holding back any longer, he rang the bell.
“Come in!” called Barnett from within. “The key is in the lock
outside.”
Béchoux entered the room. Mademoiselle Legoffier, an attractive
brunette, was sitting at a table by her typewriter, taking shorthand at
Barnett’s dictation.
“The hunt is up, is it?” said the latter. “Carry on, old man. Nothing
up my sleeves”—he mimicked a conjurer—“and as for Mademoiselle
Legoffier——” That damsel blushed discreetly; her arms were bare to the
shoulder.
“Well,” Barnett continued, “I’m dictating my memoirs. You won’t mind if
I go on?”
And, while Béchoux peered under the furniture, he proceeded:
“That afternoon Inspector Béchoux dropped in while I was dictating my
memoirs to a charming young lady called Legoffier. She had been
recommended to me by her friend, the flautist. Béchoux searched high
and low for his Twelve Little Nigger Boys, who heartlessly persisted in
eluding him. Under the couch he collected three grains of dust; under
the wardrobe a shoe-heel and a hairpin. Inspector Béchoux never
overlooks the slightest detail. What a life!”
Béchoux stood up and shook his fist in Barnett’s face, volleying abuse.
The other went on dictating, and the detective departed in a fury.
A little later Barnett came down with his cardboard box. Béchoux, who
was keeping watch, had a moment’s hesitation. But his fears conquered
him and he opened the box, to find that it contained nothing but old
papers and rags.
Life became unbearable for the unhappy Béchoux. Barnett’s continued
presence, his quizzical attitude and freakish pranks threw the
detective into fresh fits of rage. Every day Barnett came to the house,
and after each flute lesson or shorthand séance, he would display his
cardboard box.
Béchoux did not know what to do. He had no doubt that the whole thing
was a farce and that Barnett was ragging him. All the same, there was
always the chance that this time Barnett really was spiriting away the
securities. Suppose he was kidnapping the Twelve Little Nigger Boys?
Suppose he was smuggling his haul out of the house?
Béchoux was forced to rummage in the box, empty it and run his hands
over its oddly assorted contents of torn clothing, rags, old feather
dusters, broom handles, ashes and potato peelings. And this made
Barnett roar with laughter.
“He’s found his shares! No, false alarm! He’s getting warm ... try that
lettuce leaf! Ah, Béchoux, what a lot of quiet fun you manage to give
me, bless you!”
This went on for a week. Béchoux lost the whole of his holiday over the
wretched business, and made himself the laughing-stock of the
neighborhood. For neither he nor Nicolas Gassire had been able to stop
the tenants from attending to their own affairs, even while allowing
their persons to be searched on exit and entrance. Gossip travelled
apace. Gassire’s misfortune became known. His terrified clients flocked
to the office and demanded the immediate return of their money.
As for Monsieur Touffémont, the ex-Cabinet Minister, who came under the
amateur surveillance four times a day, to his great annoyance and the
interruption of his customary routine, he was all for calling in the
police officially, and urged Gassire to take this course without
further delay. The situation could not be prolonged indefinitely.
At last things came to a head. Late one afternoon Gassire and Béchoux
heard sounds of violent quarreling coming from the top of the house.
Two high-pitched voices were raised in rival but continuous clamor, the
uproar punctuated by stamps and screams. It sounded most alarming.
The two men hurried upstairs. On the top landing Mademoiselle Haveline
and Mademoiselle Legoffier were doing battle. Standing over them like
an umpire was Jim Barnett!
Although quite unable to restrain the combatants, Barnett wore an
expression of genuine enjoyment. The girls continued to fly at each
other, their hair like that of Furies, and their frocks getting torn to
shreds. The air was thick with Parisienne invective!
After heroic efforts the pair was separated. The typist promptly went
into hysterics, and Barnett carried her into her flat, while the flute
teacher proceeded to expound her wrongs to Béchoux and Gassire on the
landing.
“Caught them together, I did,” shrilled Mademoiselle Haveline. “Barnett
was mine first, and then I caught him kissing her! I can tell you, he’s
up to no good, that Barnett. He’s a queer sort and no mistake. Why
don’t you ask him, Monsieur Béchoux, what his game’s been up here all
this week, questioning the two of us and poking his nose everywhere?
I’m going to give him away, though. He knows who the thief is. It’s the
concierge, Madame Alain. But he made us swear we wouldn’t let on to
you. Another thing, he knows where those securities are. Didn’t he tell
us: ‘The securities are in the house, and yet not in it, and they’re
out of it, and yet in it’? Those were his very words. You want to be
careful of him, Monsieur Béchoux!”
Jim Barnett had finished with the typist and now came forth. Taking
Mademoiselle Haveline by the shoulders, he pushed her firmly through
her own front door.
“Come along, professor mine, and no idle gossip, if you please! You’re
going right off the handle. Stop talking nonsense and stick to the
flute. I don’t want you playing in my band!”
Béchoux did not stay any longer. Mademoiselle Haveline’s sudden
revelation had shed a ray of light on the case. He now saw that the
thief must be Madame Alain. He only marveled that he could ever have
overlooked her guilt.
Spurred by his conviction, he rushed downstairs, followed by Nicolas
Gassire, and burst in upon the concierge.
“My Africans! Where are they? It was you who stole them!”
Nicolas Gassire panted at his heels.
“My securities! Where have you put them, you thief?”
They each took hold of the poor woman, shaking her violently and
overwhelming her with abuse and questions. She seemed quite dazed by it
all, but stuck bravely to her protestations of innocence and ignorance.
When at last they let her be, she retired to bed and passed a sleepless
night. Next morning the inquisition recommenced, and that day and its
successor were long hours of unrelieved ordeal for the poor woman.
Béchoux would not for a minute admit that Jim Barnett could have made a
mistake. Besides, in the light of this definite accusation, it was easy
to put the right construction on the facts of the case. The concierge,
while cleaning the flat, had doubtless noticed the unaccustomed bundle
on the table by the bed. She was the only person who had the key to the
flat. Knowing Monsieur Gassire’s regular habits, she might well have
returned to the flat, seized the securities, run off with them, and
taken refuge in the little room where Nicolas Gassire found her when he
rushed downstairs.
Béchoux began to get discouraged.
“Yes,” he said, “it’s obvious that this woman is the guilty party. But
still we’re no nearer a solution of the mystery. I don’t care if the
criminal is the concierge or the man in the moon. It makes no odds as
long as we are still without news of my Twelve Little Nigger Boys. I
can see that she had them in her room, but by what miracle did they
leave it between nine o’clock and the time we searched her belongings?”
All their threats, and the “third degree” cross-examination to which
she was subjected failed to make the fat Madame Alain disclose any
helpful information. She denied everything. She had seen nothing. She
knew nothing. Even though there was now no doubt of her guilt she stood
firm.
“We’ve simply got to settle this,” Gassire told Béchoux one morning.
“You know that Touffémont overthrew the Cabinet last night. The
reporters will be here any minute to interview him, and we can’t
possibly go searching them, too.”
Béchoux agreed that they had come to an impasse.
“But keep smiling,” he urged, “for within three hours I shall know the
truth.”
That afternoon he called at the Barnett Detective Agency.
“I was waiting for you to drop in, Béchoux,” said Barnett amicably.
“What do you want?”
“I want your coöperation, Barnett. I’m at a loss what to do.”
This was unvarnished admission of defeat. The inspector’s surrender was
unconditional. Béchoux was making the amende honorable.
Jim Barnett clapped him friendliwise on the back, then took him by the
shoulders and rocked him gently to and fro, by sheer geniality sparing
the other humiliation. This was no meeting of vanquished and victor.
Rather was it a scene of reconciliation between two comrades.
“To tell you the truth, Béchoux, I was awfully cut up about that