Arsène Lupin intervenes
They got to Paris at close on to three o’clock. Barnett invited Béchoux
to lunch with him near the Bourse, and Béchoux, incapable of
resistance, went with him meekly.
“You do the ordering,” said Barnett, rising from the table a moment
after they had entered the restaurant. “I’ve some business I must
attend to. Won’t be a moment!”
Béchoux did not have long to wait. Barnett was back again almost
immediately, and the two men ate a hearty meal. When they were drinking
their coffee, Béchoux ventured a remark:
“I must send the torn bits of that check back to Monsieur Cazévon.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t bother to do that, Béchoux.”
“Why not?”
“The check was quite worthless.”
“But how?”
“Oh,” said Barnett airily, “I foresaw that Mademoiselle d’Alescar was
certain to refuse to take it, so when I put the deed of gift into the
envelope I slipped in with it an old cancelled check. Waste not, want
not.”
“But what happened to the genuine check?” groaned Béchoux, “the one
Monsieur Cazévon signed?”
“Oh, that! I’ve just been and cashed it at the bank!”
He opened his coat, displaying a wad of notes. Béchoux’s coffee cup
slipped from his nerveless grasp. With an effort he controlled himself.
For a long while they sat smoking in silence, facing one another across
the table. At last Barnett spoke:
“There’s no denying it, Béchoux, so far our collaboration has proved
decidedly fruitful. We seem to ring the bell every time, and it’s all
helped to enlarge my little nest-egg. But, honestly, I’m beginning to
feel very troubled about you, old horse. Here we are, working side by
side, and I always pocket the dibs. Look here, Béchoux, won’t you come
into partnership with me? The Barnett and Béchoux Agency? It really
sounds rather well!”
Béchoux gave him a look of hatred. The man goaded him beyond endurance.
He rose, flung down a note to pay for the lunch, and mumbled as he took
his leave:
“There are times when I think it must be Arsène Lupin after all!”
“I sometimes wonder, too,” said Barnett—and laughed.
IX
DOUBLE ENTRY
A serious breach in the Béchoux-Barnett friendship seemed to have been
caused by the affair of the Old Dungeon at Mazurech, and the fleecing
of Georges Cazévon, so that when a taxi came to a halt in the rue
Laborde and Inspector Béchoux leapt from it and hurled himself into the
office of his friend, Jim Barnett, no one was more surprised than the
latter.
“This is indeed a pleasure,” he said, advancing with alacrity. “Our
last parting was rather in silence and tears, and I was afraid you were
feeling sore. And is there anything I can do for you in a small way
this merry morning?”
“There is.”
Barnett shook the inspector warmly by the hand.
“Splendid! But what’s up? You look positively apoplectic. Please don’t
burst in my office.”
“Kindly be serious, Barnett,” said poor Béchoux stiffly. “I’m working
on a most complicated case from which I particularly want to emerge
triumphant.”
“What’s it all about?”
“My wife,” said Béchoux, and there was anguish in his tone.
Barnett’s eyebrows shot up.
“Your wife?” he echoed. “Then you’re married?”
“Been divorced six years,” was the laconic answer.
“Incompatibility?”
“No. My wife found she had a vocation for the stage! The stage—I ask
you! Married to an inspector of police and she wanted to go on——”
Béchoux sneezed abruptly and violently, giving Barnett time to ask:
“Then she became an actress?”
“A singer.”
“At the Opéra?”
“No. The Folies Bergère. She’s Olga Vaubant.”
“What, not the lady who does the Acrobatic Arias? But she’s wonderful,
Béchoux. Olga Vaubant is a superb artiste. She has created a new art
form. Her latest number brings down the house. It’s sheer
genius—absolutely. You know, she stands on her head and sings:
“‘I’m in luck, I gotta boy
Fills his momma’s heart with joy—
Yes, you otta see my Jim!’
And she’s your wife!”
“Was,” said Béchoux shortly. “Well, I’m glad you like the lady’s
performance. I’ve just been honored with a note from her.”
He produced a sheet of rose-colored notepaper, with an embossed crimson
O in one corner. Scrawled in pencil and dated that very morning was the
following message:
“My bedroom suite has been stolen. Mother in a state of collapse. Come
at once.—Olga.”
“The moment I got this,” said Béchoux, “I telephoned the préfecture.
They had already been called in on the case, and I obtained permission
to collaborate with the men who are handling it.”
“Then why are you all of a dither?” asked Barnett.
“It’s—it’s because this will mean meeting her again,” said Béchoux,
ashamed and furious.
“Are you still in love with her?”
“Whenever I see her—it’s idiotic, but something comes over me—I can’t
help myself. I feel myself blushing like a schoolboy. My mouth goes dry
and I begin stammering. You must see, Barnett, that I can’t take charge
of the case like that. I should make a perfect fool of myself.”
“Whereas, what you want to do is to impress madame with the cool
dignity, the daring and resource that go to make Inspector Béchoux the
Pride of Paris Police?”
“Er—yes.”
“And you look to me to help you. Béchoux, you can count on me. Now tell
me, what sort of life does your ex-wife lead off the stage?”
Béchoux looked almost pained at the question.
“She is above suspicion and lives for her art alone. If it weren’t for
her profession, Olga would still be Madame Béchoux.”
“Which would be a nation’s loss,” pronounced Barnett solemnly,
gathering up hat and coat.
A few minutes later the two men came to one of the quietest, most
deserted streets near the Luxembourg. Olga Vaubant lived on the top
floor of an old-fashioned house whose bricks breathed respectability.
The ground-floor windows were heavily barred.
“Before we go any further,” said Béchoux, “I am going to suggest that
in this instance you refrain from playing your own hand and making a
dishonorable private profit out of the case, as you have unhappily been
known to do in the past.”
“My conscience ...” began Barnett, but Béchoux waved away the
objection.
“Never mind your conscience,” he said. “Think of the way mine has
pricked me whenever we’ve worked together!”
“You don’t think I’d rob your own ex-wife? Oh, Béchoux, how you wrong
me!”
“I don’t want you to rob anyone,” said Béchoux.
“Not even those who deserve it?”
“Leave Justice to take its course. Heaven has not appointed you as an
avenging angel.”
Barnett sighed.
“You are spoiling all my fun, Béchoux, but what you say goes.”
One policeman was on guard at the door, and another was with the
concierges—husband and wife—who were badly upset by what had happened.
Béchoux learned that the district superintendent and two headquarters’
men had just left after making a preliminary investigation.
“Now’s our chance,” said Béchoux to Barnett. “Let’s get a move on while
the coast is clear.”
As they went up the staircase he explained to his friend that the house
was run on old-fashioned lines, and the street door was kept shut.
“No one has a key, and everyone has to ring for admittance. A priest
lives on the first floor and a magistrate on the second. The concierge
acts as housekeeper to both of them. Olga has the top floor flat and
leads a most conventional existence, complete with her mother and two
old maidservants who have always been in the family.”
They knocked at the door of Olga Vaubant’s flat, and one of the maids
let them into the hall. Béchoux rapidly explained the position of the
rooms to Barnett—the passage on the right led to Olga’s bedroom and
boudoir, that on the left to her mother’s room and the servants’
quarters. Straight ahead was a studio fitted up as a gymnasium, with a
horizontal bar, a trapeze, rings, ropes and ribstalls. Strewn about the
place were Indian clubs, dumb-bells, foils, and so forth.
As the two men entered this vast room, something seemed to drop in a
heap at their feet from the sky-light. The heap resolved itself into a
slender, laughing boy, with a mop of untidy red hair framing the
delicate features of a charming face. Wide green eyes, tip-tilted nose,
slightly crooked mouth—all were unmistakable, and Barnett immediately
recognized in the pajama-clad “boy” the one and only Olga Vaubant. She
exclaimed at once in the Parisian drawl that has its parallel in the
Londoner’s cockney:
“Maman’s all right, Béchoux. Sleeping like a top, bless her. Lucky,
isn’t it?”
She made a sudden dive floorwards, stood on her hands and, with her
feet waving in the air, began singing in a husky, thrilling contralto:
“I’m in luck, I gotta boy,
Fills his momma’s heart with joy—
And believe me, Béchoux, you fill my heart with joy, too, old dear,”
she added, standing up. “You’re a real sport to have got here so soon.
Who’s the boy-friend?”
“Jim Barnett. He’s an old—acquaintance,” said Béchoux, vainly
attempting to control his twitching countenance.
“Fine,” said Olga. “Well let’s hope between the pair of you you’ll
solve the mystery and get back my bedroom suite. I leave it to you. Now
it’s my turn to do a bit of introducing,” as a bulky form hove up from
the far end of the studio. “May I present Del Prego, my gym instructor?
He’s masseur, make-up expert, and beauty doctor, and he’s the darling
of the chorus. Regular osteopath, he is, for dislocation and
rejuvenation! Say pretty to the gentlemen, Del Prego!”
Del Prego bowed low. He was a broad-shouldered, copper-skinned fellow,
genial of countenance and vaguely suggesting the clown in his
appearance. He wore a grey suit, with white spats and gloves, and held
a light-colored felt hat in his hands.
Immediately, gesticulating violently and speaking with a marked foreign
accent, he began to discourse on his method of “progressive
dislocation,” larding his outlandish French with phrases in Spanish,
English, and Russian. Olga cut him short.
“We’ve no time to waste. What do you want me to tell you, Béchoux?”
“First,” said Béchoux, “will you show us your bedroom?”
“Right! Half a mo’.” She sprang up in the air, caught on to the
trapeze, swung from that to the rings, and landed at a door in the wall
on the right.
“Here you are,” she told them, kicking it open.
The room was absolutely empty. Bed, chairs, curtains, mirrors, rugs,
dressing-table, ornaments, pictures—all gone. Furniture removers could
not have made a better job of it. The place was stripped.
Olga began to giggle helplessly.
“See that? Thorough, weren’t they? They even pinched my ivory toilet
set. Almost walked off with the floor-boards. Don’t you think it’s a
shame, Mr. Barnett?” she went on, addressing Jim, her eyes wider than
ever. “I’m a girl that’s real fond of good furniture. All pure Louis
Quinze it was, that I’d collected bit by bit—and they all had a
history, including a genuine Pompadour bed! Why, furnishing this room
cost me nearly everything I made on my American tour.”
Abruptly she broke off to turn a somersault, then tossed the hair off
her face and went on cheerfully:
“Oh, well, there’s plenty of good fish in the sea and I can replace all
that lot. I needn’t worry so long as I have my india rubber muscles and
my bee-yewtiful cracked voice.... What are you looking at me like that
for, Béchoux? Going to faint at my feet? Give us a kiss, and let’s get
on with any questions you want to ask before we have the rest of the
police force back on the scene.”
“Tell me exactly what happened,” said Béchoux.
“Oh, there isn’t much to tell,” answered Olga. “Let’s see, last night,
it had just gone half-past ten.... Oh, I should have told you, I left
here at eight with Del Prego, who escorted me to the Folies Bergère in
maman’s place.... Well, as I was saying, it had just gone the