Arsène Lupin intervenes
Desroques’ father, has been living. You remember that he came up from
Limoges to defend his son when the latter was arrested and
charged”—Béchoux swelled with the majesty of the law—“with abduction,
illegal detention, and wilful murder!”
This repetition of the roll of crimes seemingly impressed the chief,
who nodded solemnly and asked his subordinate:
“Did you call on the general?”
“I did, and he opened the door to me himself. Then I described to him
the little comedy that had just been played under his windows, leaving
out all mention of Arsène Lupin, of course. He was not surprised, and
told me that the day before a gipsy girl had come to see him. She
offered to tell his fortune and reveal the outcome of the trial. She
demanded three thousand francs and said she would await his answer next
afternoon in the Place du Trocadéro between two and half-past two.”
“But why should the general pay her all that money?”
“She assured him that she could get hold of the mystery photograph and
let him have it.”
“What?” the chief was genuinely surprised. “You mean that photograph
we’ve all been searching for and can’t find anywhere?”
“That’s it,” said Béchoux. “The photograph that would save the
general’s son—or finally establish his guilt!”
Both were silent for a while. At last the chief said:
“I expect you know, Béchoux, how anxious we are to get hold of that
photograph ourselves?”
Béchoux nodded.
“It means even more than you realize, though. Listen, Béchoux, if you
can lay hands on that photograph it must be turned over to me before
the Parquet gets wind of it.” He added in a whisper: “The Department
comes first, see?...”
And, with equal seriousness and set purpose, Béchoux replied, “Chief,
you shall have it. I will get it for you, and, at the same time, I will
get Jim Barnett, or rather Arsène Lupin!”
Just a month before this conversation at the préfecture, Jacques
Veraldy had been kept waiting for his dinner. Jacques Veraldy, one of
the foremost figures in Parisian society, a man of vast wealth, one of
the unscrupulous spiders that spin political webs, had waited till long
past the dinner hour for the return of his wife, Christiane. But she
did not come home that night, and next morning the police were called
in. They soon elicited the following facts:
On the afternoon of her disappearance, Christiane Veraldy had gone for
a walk in the Bois de Boulogne, near her house. On this walk she had
been stopped by a well-dressed man who, after a brief conversation, had
led her to a closed car, with the blinds pulled down, which was waiting
in a deserted alley. They both got into the car and drove off quickly
in the direction of Saint-Cloud.
None of the witnesses who came forward to describe this meeting in the
Bois had been able to see the man’s face. He seemed young, they said,
and they were all agreed that he wore a very smart dark-blue overcoat
and a black beret.
Two days passed, and still there was no news of the missing Christiane
Veraldy. Then, suddenly, the tragedy happened.
About sunset, some peasants working in the fields on the main road from
Paris to Chartres noticed a car being driven at a reckless speed. Even
as they watched its onrush, the car door was pushed open, and a woman
fell out on the road. They rushed to her assistance. At the same time
the car raced up the steep bank at the side of the road, crashed into a
tree and overturned. A man sprang from it, miraculously uninjured, and
dashed to where the woman lay. She was dead. Her head had struck a heap
of stones in her fall. They carried her body to the nearest village and
told the gendarmes what had happened.
The man made no secret of his identity. He was Député Jean Desroques, a
well-known political figure, and at that time leader of the Opposition.
The dead woman was Christiane Veraldy.
Immediately trouble began brewing. The bereaved husband, thirsting for
revenge rather than overcome with grief, was determined to make his
supplanter, as he considered Jean Desroques, pay the penalty of the
law. The accused man, on the other hand, had powerful political
supporters, who strenuously denied that the leader of their party could
be guilty of such a crime. These in turn brought pressure to bear on
the police.
Meanwhile, the peasants, one and all, swore that they had seen a man’s
arm push the woman out of the car. Nor did there seem any possible
doubt that the man who had been observed talking with Madame Veraldy in
the Bois was indeed Desroques. At the time of the accident Jean
Desroques was wearing a dark-blue greatcoat and a black beret.
In any case, Desroques did not attempt to advance an alibi. He admitted
having abducted Madame Veraldy, and acknowledged that he had detained
her illegally. On the other hand, he swore that he had done all in his
power to prevent her committing—suicide! For that was his explanation
of the tragic occurrence.
Desroques’ account of what had happened was that he had been struggling
to hold Madame Veraldy down in her seat, that the door of the car had
been forced open when she flung her weight against it, and she had
fallen out.
But concerning what had led up to the struggle, where they had spent
the days since their meeting in the Bois, what had happened during that
time, or even when and how he had first made the acquaintance of Madame
Veraldy, Jean Desroques was obstinately silent.
This last point—the question of the first meeting of Desroques and the
banker’s wife—remained one of the minor yet most baffling mysteries of
the case, since Veraldy declared he had never, since his marriage, had
anything to do with Desroques, whom he regarded as a dangerous Radical.
He testified to having frequently spoken disparagingly about him to
Christiane, who had invariably refrained from comment.
The examining magistrate tried in vain to get past the accused’s
enigmatic barrier of reserve. The only reply his efforts elicited was:
“I have nothing to say. You can do what you like with me. Whatever
happens I shall not speak another word.”
And when the police officials, one of whom was Béchoux, called at
Desroques’ flat, he opened the door to them in person, saying:
“I am quite ready to come with you, gentlemen.”
Before leaving, a thorough search was made of the flat. There was a
pile of ashes in the study fireplace, showing that Desroques had been
burning papers. The police found nothing of any importance in the
drawers of the desk or anywhere else. They took down every volume from
the well-stocked bookshelves and shook them vigorously, but no telltale
document fluttered out to reward their efforts. They took up the carpet
and discovered nothing but dust!
While this routine search was going on, Béchoux, pursuing his own
rather more intuitive methods, stood perfectly still near the door and
darted a lightning glance over the room. Suddenly he swooped down on
the waste-paper basket. To one side of it lay a screw of paper which
might have been an advertisement leaflet.
Béchoux had it in his hands and was just smoothing it out, when Jean
Desroques, who had been standing quietly by during the search of his
study, sprang forward and snatched it from the detective’s hands.
“You don’t want that,” he cried, “its only an old photograph. It came
off its mount and I threw it away.”
Béchoux, struck by Desroques’ eagerness to retain possession of an
apparently worthless bit of rubbish that he had self-avowedly thrown
away, was on the point of using force to make him give it up.
But Desroques was too quick for him. Before the detective could bar the
way, he had darted into the adjoining room and slammed the door behind
him.
There was a policeman on guard in the anteroom into which he had fled.
When Béchoux and the others got the door open, this man had Desroques
pinned on the floor. Immediately Béchoux searched his prisoner. He
turned out the man’s pockets, made him take off his shoes and socks.
But the unmounted photograph had disappeared!
The window was tightly shut and there was no fire in the room. The
policeman stated that he had stopped Desroques when he rushed in in
case he should be trying to escape, but had seen no sign of any
photograph or paper.
Béchoux had a warrant for Desroques’ arrest, and, without vouchsafing a
word, he went quietly off to prison.
The foregoing are the bare facts of the case which, a little while
before the Great War, caused such a stir in the press and among the
public of Paris. There is no need to give in detail the inquiry
conducted by the examining magistrate, as it shed no light on the
mystery. But there should be considerable interest in the relation for
the first time of an episode which led up to certain startling
disclosures and put an entirely different complexion on the case,
besides marking the last encounter in the long duel between Inspector
Béchoux and his “friendly enemy,” Jim Barnett, of the Barnett Agency.
The stage was set, and for once Béchoux felt happy in the possession of
a little advance information as to the program. He knew what Barnett
was up to—had watched his little confabulation with the gipsy girl
under the windows of General Desroques’ flat. This time he intended to
be first on the scene and to spoil Barnett’s entrance!
On the day after the conversation with his chief at the préfecture,
Béchoux again called at General Desroques’ flat. The latter had been
advised by headquarters of the inspector’s visit.
A rather corpulent, clean-shaven man-servant opened the door to
Béchoux. In silence, and exuding a kind of aura of intense
respectability, he ushered the inspector into the drawing-room, then
softly withdrew.
Béchoux took up his stand at a window from which he could survey the
entire extent of the Place du Trocadéro without himself being seen from
the street. For a long while he scrutinized the people passing to and
fro in the busy square below.
There was no sign of the gipsy girl, nor of the wily “Barnett” in whom
Béchoux declared he had recognized Arsène Lupin.
Neither of the suspects showed up all that day, nor the day after.
During his self-imposed vigil, Béchoux sometimes had the company of
General Desroques. The latter was tall, lean, grey-haired—the typical
retired cavalry officer who has spent much of his life outdoors, and is
in the habit of giving orders and having them promptly obeyed.
Ordinarily taciturn, the general was one of those men who, when deeply
moved, will lay aside some of their customary reserve. The charge
against his son had wounded him terribly. Not only was he firmly
convinced of Jean’s innocence, but he was certain that the young man
was the victim of one of those mysterious political plots which
occasionally blot the fair fame of every state.
Although undetermined as to whence the blow had come, the old man stood
at bay—like a lion defending its cub.
“Jean would not, could not, do such a thing,” he declared. “The boy’s
only fault is that he is over-scrupulous, absurdly quixotic. He is
perfectly capable of sacrificing his own interests to some exaggerated
idea of honor. He is the sort of person who would unhesitatingly
shoulder a friend’s guilt and let the culprit go free. I am so sure of
what I say, that I’m not going to see Jean in his cell. I won’t pay the
slightest attention to what his lawyer says, or to what they print in
the newspapers. Pack of lies, probably! The boy’s innocent, whether he
says so or not. And I’m going to prove it, whether he likes it or not!
We all have our own idea of what’s our duty. He thinks he ought to keep
his mouth shut. Well and good. But I know I ought to clear his name, no
matter who gets hurt in the process!”
One day, when the reporters were harrying him with questions, the
general burst out: