Arsène Lupin intervenes
“But he couldn’t have got into the flat on his own!”
“Of course not.”
“Then who opened the door to him?”
“You, Del Prego.”
The brief statement was almost shockingly abrupt.
Even though from the beginning of the conversation Barnett’s remarks
had been obviously aimed at the gym instructor, becoming increasingly
plain in their import, yet this downright attack took Del Prego by
surprise. Rage, fear, and the determination to act swiftly were easily
discernible in his changed expression. Divining his adversary’s
perplexity, Barnett took advantage of it to run out into the hall. He
jerked a man out of the cupboard, and pushed him, struggling, before
him into the studio.
“Oh,” cried Olga, utterly taken aback, “then it’s true!”
The man was the same height as Del Prego. Like Del Prego he wore a grey
suit and white spats. He had much the same type of greasy, mobile
countenance.
“Milord has forgotten his hat and gloves,” said Barnett, and clapped an
ash-colored hat on the man’s head, at the same time handing him a pair
of white gloves.
Struck dumb with amazement, Olga drew slowly from the scene of action,
and, never shifting her gaze from the two men, proceeded to climb a
rope-ladder backwards. It had now fully dawned on her what kind of man
Del Prego was, and what frightful risks she had run during the time
spent in his company.
“Funny, isn’t it?” Barnett said, laughing. “Not as like as twins, of
course, but they’re the same height and have much the same sort of
physiog., and what with that and their dressing in duplicate, they
might be brothers!”
The two crooks were recovering from their confusion, and simultaneously
began to realize that, after all, they were only up against one man,
and that a poor-looking specimen, with apparently a wretched physique
under his shabby frock-coat.
Del Prego spluttered some words in a foreign language which Barnett
translated immediately.
“No use speaking Russian,” he observed, “to ask your friend if he’s got
a gun handy!”
Del Prego shook with rage and spoke again in a different language.
“Unluckily for you,” Barnett told him, “I know Turkish inside out.
Berlitz has nothing on me. Also, I think it only fair to tell you that
Béchoux—you know, Olga’s policeman husband that was—is waiting on the
stairs with two friends. If that gun goes off, they will break down the
door!”
Del Prego and the other man exchanged glances. They saw they were
cornered, but they were the sort that doesn’t give in without putting
up a stiff fight.
Without seeming to move, they drew imperceptibly closer to Barnett.
“Fine!” the latter told them genially. “You propose to set upon me and
finish me off at close quarters, do you? And when I’m done for, you’ll
try to elude Béchoux. Now then, madame, keep your eyes open and you’ll
see something! Tom Thumb and the two Giants! David and the twin
Goliaths! Get a move on, Del Prego. Brace up, now! Try springing at my
throat for a start!”
The distance between them had lessened again. The two men stood tense,
ready to hurl themselves on Barnett.
But Barnett most unexpectedly forestalled them. In a flash he had dived
to the floor, seized a leg of each and brought them crashing! Before
they had time to counter, the head of each was being ground into the
floor by an implacable, murderous hand. They gasped convulsively,
choking in Barnett’s vise-like grip. Their countenances took on a
purple tinge.
“Olga!” called Barnett with perfect calm, “be a good girl and open the
door and call Béchoux, will you?”
Olga dropped, monkey-like, from her ladder, and tottered rather than
ran out of the room, calling “Béchoux! Béchoux!”
A moment later she returned with the inspector, babbling excitedly to
him:
“He did it! Bowled them both over single-handed! I’d never have
believed it of him!”
“Behold,” said Barnett to Béchoux, “your two bright lads. Just slip the
bracelets on them so that I can let ’em come up for breath! You needn’t
worry about fixing them too tightly. They’ll come quietly, won’t you,
Del Prego? All lamb-like and pretty!”
He rose from the floor, gallantly kissed Olga’s hand, while she
regarded him in ever-growing wonder, and chortled gaily:
“How’s that for a haul, Béchoux? Two of the most cunning criminals in
Paris snared at last. Really, Del Prego, you must allow me to
congratulate you on your methods!”
He dug the professor playfully in the ribs, while the latter was
powerless, handcuffed to Béchoux, and continued jubilantly:
“My good man, you’re a genius. Why, when Béchoux and I were on the
watch downstairs, I, having tumbled to your trick, naturally saw that
it was not you the third time, but Béchoux, who didn’t know, soon
swallowed the bait and really thought the gentleman in white gloves,
white spats, grey hat and grey suit was the same Del Prego that he had
already seen pass several times. So Del Prego the Second was able to go
quietly upstairs, sneak through the door—which you had left ajar for
him—and hide in the hall cupboard. Exactly the same tactics as you
employed on the night when the bedroom suite disappeared into space.
You can’t deny it, Del Prego, you’re a genius!”
Barnett was by now bubbling over with sheer exuberance. With a flying
leap, he was astride the trapeze; in a moment he was twirling like a
top round and round an upright pole; he swung on to a rope, then to the
rings, then up the ladder he went, swaying like a sailor in the
rigging. The tails of his ancient frock-coat flapped stiffly,
disapprovingly behind him, the venerable garment seeming to protest
against these unseemly gambols.
Olga gave a little gasp as he unexpectedly landed at her feet, bowing
low.
“Feel my heart, madame; beating quite normally. And I’m not the least
bit out of breath. Don’t you wonder, Béchoux, how I keep in training?”
He snatched up the telephone and called a number.
“That the préfecture?... Extension two, please.... That you, Albert?
Béchoux speaking.... It doesn’t sound like my voice?... Well, I can’t
help that. Now then, listen. You can report that I have just arrested
two murderers who are wanted for the Olga Vaubant robbery.”
He hung up, and held out a hand to Béchoux.
“The laurels are all yours, old chap. Madame, it’s time I took my
leave. What’s up, Del Prego? You are not regarding me with that warm
affection I could desire!”
Del Prego was muttering furiously:
“There’s only one man alive who could get the better of me ... only
one....”
“Who’s that?”
“Arsène Lupin!”
Barnett laughed as though he would split.
“Bully for you, my boy. You ought to have been a Professor of
Psychology. And then you would never have got yourself into this
mix-up!”
He had another joyous spasm, bowed to Olga, and went off in a gale of
merriment, humming that catchy little tune:
“Yes, you otta see my Jim!”
Next day Del Prego, overwhelmed by the case against him, revealed the
whereabouts of the garage in the suburbs in which he had hidden Olga
Vaubant’s bedroom suite. This was on the Tuesday. Barnett had fulfilled
his promise.
Béchoux was sent out of Paris on a fresh case, and was away some days.
When he got back he found a note from Barnett.
“You must own that I have played strictly fair. There hasn’t been a sou
of profit for me in the whole business—none of the ‘pickings’ that have
distressed your gentle soul in the past. It is satisfaction for me to
know that I retain your friendship and respect!”
That afternoon Béchoux, who had made up his mind to part brass-rags
once and for all with Barnett, went along to the office in the rue
Laborde. The office was closed, and there was a notice on the door
which read:
“Closed on account of a sudden attachment.
Reopening after the honeymoon trip.”
“And what the hell may that mean?” muttered Béchoux, smitten with
sudden vague anxiety. He rushed off to Olga’s flat. It was shut up. He
rushed on to the Folies Bergère. There he was told that the star had
paid a large forfeit to break her contract and had gone off on holiday.
“Nom d’un Nom d’un Nom!” spluttered Béchoux when he got out in the
street. “Is it possible?... Instead of collaring some cash, can he have
used his triumph to ... can he have dared to....”
The cloud of suspicion grew bigger and blacker. Béchoux became frantic.
How was he to learn the truth? Or rather, what course could he take
that would keep the truth from him, and save him from appalling
certainty in place of his suspicion?
But Barnett was not the man to leave his victim in peace. At intervals
the unlucky Béchoux was the recipient of highly colored post-cards,
scrawled with even more lurid legends:
“Oh, Béchoux! One moonlight night in Rome!”
“Béchoux, next time you’re in love, bring her to Sicily!”
And from Venice: “If you were here, Béchoux, I should have to stop you
jumping in a canal!”
“I will never forgive him this, never! He has outraged me past hope of
pardon! Next time I will have my revenge!”
And, like a mocking echo, he seemed to hear Olga’s husky tones:
“I’m in luck, I gotta boy
Fills his momma’s heart with joy.
Yes, you otta see my Jim!”
X
ARRESTING ARSÈNE LUPIN!
Suddenly, unexpectedly, the fight between Barnett and Béchoux, which
had dragged on so long under cover, had reached the last round—in the
open!
Inspector Béchoux sped through the arched gateway of the préfecture and
across a couple of courtyards, took the stairs two at a time, and
dashed, without pausing to knock, into the sanctum of his chief. Pale
and breathless, he stammered:
“Arsène Lupin is mixed up in the Desroques case!”
The chief gave a startled exclamation.
“Surely not!”
“I saw him myself only a little while ago, outside Desroques’ flat, and
recognized him at once.”
“Don’t try and be funny, Béchoux. Nobody ever recognizes Arsène Lupin.”
“I do!” declared Béchoux. “This time he’s disguised as a private
detective and calls himself Jim Barnett—you remember, the chap I told
you about before, who left Paris a little while ago.”
The chief gave a slight chuckle.
“Left with Olga Vaubant of the Folies Bergère, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” assented Béchoux wrathfully. “Olga Vaubant, the singing acrobat,
and my ex-wife!”
“Well,” said the chief, “what did you do when you—recognized Lupin?”
“I shadowed him.”
“Without his knowing it?” The other was frankly incredulous.
Béchoux drew himself up stiffly. “When I shadow a man, chief, he never
knows it,” he declared. “All the same,” he added thoughtfully,
“although the beggar was pretending to be out for a stroll, he didn’t
take any chances. First he walked round the Place de l’Etoile. Then he
went along the Avenue Kléber and stopped on the east side of the Rond
Point du Trocadéro. Sitting on a bench there was a gipsy girl. She was
a pretty piece of goods, with her black head bare in the sunshine, and
her colored shawl wrapped about her. Well I watched Lupin, alias
Barnett, sit down beside her, and a minute later they were talking away
together, but hardly moving their lips—an old prison trick that, chief.
More than once I noticed them looking up at a house on the corner of
the Place du Trocadéro and the Avenue Kléber. After a while, Lupin got
up and took the Metro.”
“Did you keep on shadowing him?”
“Yes—or, rather, I tried to,” said Béchoux. “But he jumped aboard a
train that was just moving while I was held up in the crowd. When I got
back to the bench, the gipsy girl was gone.”
“And what about the house they were looking up at?”
“That’s where I’ve just come from,” said Béchoux. He took a deep
breath, and launched forth: “On the fourth floor of that house is a
furnished flat where for the last month old General Desroques, Jean