Arsène Lupin intervenes

Maxime Tuillier’s three friends. One in particular, the eldest and most influential, Alfred Auvard, volleyed abuse: “You unspeakable blackguard! You made us believe that poor Erstein had returned the money to us—when really you had stolen it after murdering him!” He flung the notes at Maxime Tuillier’s head. The other two, equally indignant, trampled the loathsome money underfoot. By degrees order was restored. Maxime Tuillier, half fainting and uttering groans, was carried out of the room. An inspector gathered up the banknotes and handed them to the magistrates. The latter requested the Fougeraies and old Erstein to withdraw. They then complimented Jim Barnett on his extraordinary powers of deduction. “Tuillier’s collapse and confession,” he told them, “are quite commonplace features in the case. Its originality, the real mystery that lifts it out of the usual run of such crimes, lies in something quite different. So now, although this is none of my business, please allow me——” Barnett, turning to the three manufacturers who were talking together in low tones, went up to them and tapped Monsieur Auvard gently on the shoulder. “A word with you, my friend. Something tells me you can throw a little light on one aspect of this case that remains obscure.” “In what connection, pray?” asked Auvard coldly. “In connection with the part which you and your friends play in it, monsieur.” “But we don’t come into it at all!” “Not actively, of course, I quite see that. But there are some features which, I am sure you will agree with me, present a disconcerting series of contradictions. For instance, you declared on the morning after the murder that the game of baccarat had ended with three deals in your favor, which cancelled your losses and broke up the card party. Well, the facts don’t happen to bear out your statement.” Monsieur Auvard answered him defiantly: “That’s so. But there’s been a misunderstanding. Actually, those last three deals only increased our losses. When Erstein left the table, Maxime, who seemed perfectly self-possessed, followed him into the Round Room for a smoke, while we three remained here, talking. When Tuillier came back, nearly ten minutes later, he told us that Erstein had never been in earnest over the game, that it had merely been a series of flukes following on the champagne, to be treated as a joke. He therefore insisted on returning the money to us, but pledged us to secrecy. If anything ever came out, we were to say that the end of the game had evened things up unexpectedly.” “And you accepted such an offer! As a present from Paul Erstein which he had absolutely no reason to make you!” cried Barnett. “And having accepted it, you didn’t even bother to thank him! And you found it perfectly natural that Erstein, who was an inveterate gambler, inured to gain and loss alike, should suddenly be ashamed to profit by his luck! How unlikely!” “It was four in the morning. We were all overwrought. Maxime Tuillier gave us no time for reflection. Anyhow, what reason had we to doubt his word? We didn’t know then that he had just murdered Erstein and robbed him.” “But next day you learned of the murder.” “Yes, but we naturally thought it had happened after our departure from the club—it made no difference to Erstein’s last action on earth—the restoration of our losses—nor to his wish that we should hold our tongues about it.” “And you never for one moment suspected Maxime Tuillier?” “Why should we have suspected him? He is a member of the club. His father was a friend of mine and I’ve known him practically all his life. Of course we had no suspicions.” “Are you positive?” Barnett rapped the words out in ironic incredulity. Alfred Auvard hesitated, glanced at the other two men, and then countered haughtily: “Your questions, sir, are in the nature of a cross-examination. What do you think we’re here for anyway?” “In the eyes of the law you’re here as witnesses. But in mine——” “In yours——?” “That’s just what I’m going to explain now.” Quietly Barnett took the floor, toying with the string of his monocle. “The whole of this case is really dominated by one factor—the confidence you people inspired. Practically speaking, the crime could have been an outside or an inside job. Yet those investigating at once turned to the outside for the simple reason that one does not normally suspect such a monument of respectability and righteousness as is constituted by four wealthy manufacturers of unblemished reputation. If one of you, say, Maxime Tuillier, had played a game of écarté with Paul Erstein alone, he would naturally and undoubtedly have been suspected. But there were four of you, and Tuillier was temporarily saved by the silence of his friends. It would never occur to anyone that three men of your standing could be guilty of complicity in a crime! Yet you were guilty—and that was what I guessed from the start.” Alfred Auvard started forward. “You must be mad. Do you seriously suggest that we were Tuillier’s accomplices?” “Oh, no. Obviously, you had no idea of what was going on in the Round Room after Tuillier joined Erstein there. But you did know that he had followed him in a peculiar frame of mind! And when he came back, you knew that something had happened.” “We knew nothing of the sort.” “Oh, yes, you did, and that Tuillier must have used force of some kind. There had not necessarily been a crime of violence, but there had certainly not been merely a friendly conversation. I repeat, it was quite evident that Maxime Tuillier must have used force to get back that money for you.” “Preposterous!” “Not at all. When a coward like your friend kills a man, his face is bound to betray him. It is impossible that you should have utterly failed to notice his expression of horror when he came back after committing the crime.” Both Batinet and Dupin were trembling, but Auvard kept up his blustering attitude. “I protest that we noticed nothing.” “None so blind....” Barnett shrugged his shoulders and smiled unpleasantly. “What do you mean by that?” “You didn’t want to see. Because you had got your money back. I know you are all rich men. But that game of baccarat had shaken you considerably. Like all occasional gamblers, you had the feeling that your money had been stolen from you, and when it was returned, you accepted it without troubling to inquire too closely into the methods by which your friend had recovered it. You clung desperately to silence. That night, as you drove back to Maromme together, in spite of the urgent need for you to agree upon a safer version of the evening’s episode, not one of you dared speak a word. I have that from your chauffeur. And the next day—and the days after that—when the crime had been discovered, you avoided meeting each other, for fear of finding your secret thoughts confirmed.” “This is mere conjecture.” Auvard was indignant still, but his two friends were on the verge of collapse. “Not conjecture, but certainty,” Barnett corrected him gently. “Certainty based on facts acquired by exhaustive inquiries among the people who know you. For you to accuse your friend was to expose your own criminal weakness in the beginning. It meant turning the searchlight of public opinion on yourselves and your families, and damaging your reputations for honorable dealing with your fellow-men. It meant a scandal. So you kept silent and cheated justice while you shielded your friend Maxime.” Jim Barnett had been so vehement and telling in his accusation that for a moment Monsieur Auvard wavered. But, suddenly changing his tactics, the bewildering Barnett did not follow up his advantage. He merely laughed and said: “Cheer up, Monsieur Auvard. I succeeded in undoing your friend Tuillier because he was a weakling and suffering the agonies of remorse. I did it by faking the cards in the game of baccarat we had here just now. The accuracy of the reconstruction unnerved him. But I had no more real proof against him than I have against you, and you are not the sort to give in without showing fight. All the more so as your complicity in the crime is so vague and negative, very much up in the air when it comes to hard facts. So you have nothing to fear. Only”—he came closer to his man, and thrust his face into the other’s—“only, I did not want your peace of mind to be too complete. By your silence and your astuteness, the three of you managed to cloak your actions from the light of the law, so that people lost sight of your own more or less voluntary complicity in the crime. We can’t have that, though. You must never cease to be conscious that to a certain extent you shared in the committal of the murder. Had you only prevented your friend from following Paul Erstein into the Round Room, as you should have done, Paul Erstein would not be dead to-day. And had you come forward at the outset and told what you knew, Maxime Tuillier would not have come within an ace of escaping his deserts. “Now it is for you to clear yourselves as best you may, messieurs. Somehow, I don’t think the law will be too hard on you. Good-day.” Jim Barnett took his hat, and, disregarding the manufacturers’ protest, spoke to the magistrates: “Messieurs, I promised Madame Fougeraie that I would help her and I promised Paul Erstein’s father to unmask the murderer. My work is done.” The magistrates were half-hearted in their valedictory handshake. Probably Barnett’s words had fallen none too pleasantly on their ears and they did not feel particularly inclined to follow his lead. To Inspector Béchoux, who had followed him on to the landing, Barnett was just a wee bit more expansive: “Those three chaps can’t be touched. They’re safe as houses. Blasted bourgeois bolstered up by bullion!” he almost blew bubbles in his wrath. “They’re pillars of society, all right, and all the case against them is the inferences to be drawn from my deductions. Too fine a thread for the law to noose them in, I’m afraid. Never mind, I’ve brought my case off well.” “And honestly,” approved Béchoux, adding, sotto voce, the words “for once!” Barnett’s eyebrows arched interrogatively. “I must own,” Béchoux admitted, “that there were moments when I feared for those banknotes. You could have snaffled them so easily.” “What do you take me for, Inspector Béchoux? A common thief?” Barnett’s tone was one of outraged innocence. He left his friend and went out of the building and on to the Fougeraies’ flat next door. There he was effusively thanked. With great dignity he refused to take any reward for his services. Afterwards he called on Paul Erstein’s father and there exhibited the same spirit of disinterested philanthropy. “The services of the Barnett Agency are free,” he told his clients. “That is the secret both of its efficiency and of its integrity. We work for glory only.” Jim Barnett settled his hotel bill and ordered them to send his bag to the station. Then, presuming that Béchoux would accompany him back to Paris, he walked along the quayside to the club building. On the first landing he halted abruptly. The inspector was hurtling down the stairs. The moment he saw Barnett he cried out angrily: “Got you, curse you!” He jumped the remaining stairs at a bound and thrust his fingers inside Barnett’s coat collar. “What have you done with those notes?” “Doh, ray, me, fah——” began Barnett. “Banknotes!” the inspector screamed. “The notes you had when you were acting Tuillier’s part upstairs.” “What’s all this? Do let go my collar. That’s better. Why, I gave those notes back. Surely you remember? A little while ago you were even congratulating me on my honesty!”