The Mysterious Mickey Finn (13 page)

Jackson was as well-meaning a chap as the next reporter, but he hadn't been to bed for some time, had received his instructions hastily, and all during a troubled night had been hearing about Gonzo. So he confused Gonzo with Greco without realizing his mistake. The effect on the clerk was catastrophic.

‘Gonzos?' he gasped.

‘Gonzos. You got me that time, buddy. And when Ah gets a hankering for Gonzos, Ah don't mean maybe. It ain't a question of what they cost....'

‘But we haven't any Gonzos…. I never heard of him,' said the clerk, already terrified. Jackson's manner changed.

‘Now look a-here, pal. Ah got it straight from mah friend the sheik that there's Gonzos in this here joint….'

‘I assure you, Monsieur, that I have never seen a Gonzo.'

‘Ah didn't come in here aimin' to make no trouble, pardner, but Tom Jackson's not the man to be trifled with. You can ask anybody in Oklahoma and they'll say the same thing. Now Ah'll give you five minutes to trot out one of them Gonzos, and the best in the house is none too good for me.' Jackson took out his watch. ‘An', pardner. Don't try no false moves, either.'

‘I'd be glad ...' the clerk began, and probably would have fainted had not the door opened and Miriam, followed by Ibn Hassan, entered. Evans, or Ibn, or Ivan saw at once, to his surprise, that Jackson had not got his hands on the Greco. The clerk, prayerfully thankful for the entrance of the Arabs, appealed to Evans at once.

‘Your honour. Have you heard of a painter named Gonzo?'

‘Who has not?' Evans answered haughtily.

‘This little runt here, for one,' said Jackson. ‘Ah came in here, not aimin' to make no trouble, and Ah says to him: “ Trot out a Gonzo…….”'

‘Perhaps you meant a Greco,' suggested Evans, suavely.

The clerk began jumping up and down with relief.

‘All right, friend, make it a Greco, only make it snappy, pardner. The service in this place ain't what we're used to in Oklahoma.'

This time the clerk was actually in tears. ‘But, monsieur, the Grecos ... I've strict instructions ...'

‘You've never had instructions as strict as what you're gettin' right this minute,' Jackson said, slipping his hand around to his hip pocket and clutching a briar pipe as if it were a shooting iron. ‘If you-all don't have every Greco in this joint out here on the table before I count ten, then there's a-goin' to be some preachin' that you won't hear.'

The clerk had just so much stamina and no more. It had been exhausted. There was none left whatsoever. Yammering and shivering he ducked into the back room, ran up the stairs and came down again with a canvas about the size of the Mona Lisa, only tipped the other way. On it was painted the picture of a coloured boy leaning on a table by candlelight. It was a matter of a split second before Jackson had a firm grip on the frame.

‘Now that's something like,' he said.

‘Is that all you have?' asked Evans, kindly, but fixing the clerk with a glance that brooked no refusal.

The clerk rushed up the stairway again and was about to bring down another Greco when the outside door of the store burst open and not without a brisk struggle two Arabs, one tall and the other short, were propelled into the gallery by Abel and Dodo. The dealers' astonishment at seeing Evans and Miriam was almost equalled by Evans' dismay at seeing the real Ibn Hassan, whose passport (having been stolen) was reposing in the folds of Evans' burnoose. There was a decided resemblance.

The tableau was as follows: Abel and Dodo, having loosened their clutches on the new Arab's robes, were staring first at Miriam and Evans, then at Jackson who still had the candlelight Greco in a grip of steel. Upstairs the clerk was cowering, expecting to be shot, then fired. The real Ibn Hassan was the first to regain a measure of composure. Gravely he salaamed toward Evans, then toward Miriam.

‘These Christian dogs have something on their minds which is hidden from these old eyes,' Ibn Hassan said. ‘Their ways are not our ways, and are indeed mysterious.'

‘True,' murmured Evans, in Arabic.

‘What a break. He really knows the lingo,' said Tom Jackson to himself.

The real Ibn Hassan stepped nearer to Evans and continued:

‘We were walking peaceably, my nephew and I, and thinking of the Koran when these fellows set upon us and begged that we accompany them, insisted, in fact. . .'

‘I noticed,' said Evans. ‘Their manner of insisting, O countryman, is known in their parlance as “ the bum's rush”, and is only applied to gentlemen in extreme cases. Their need must, indeed, be urgent.'

Instead of being reassured, the real Ibn Hassan's distinguished countenance grew black and he turned to Abel and Dodo. With a scornful finger pointed toward Evans, the tall Arab said:

‘That man is an impostor. He has been drinking what no Son of Allah permits to pass his lips, and a very bad quality to boot.'

‘You must have sneaked one, then got too close,' Jackson murmured. The clerk upstairs began screaming ‘Police', in which he was joined by Abel and Dodo.

‘Impostors. Police.
Au secours.
'

Evans saw that the jig was up. ‘Follow me', he said, taking hold of Miriam's hand and rushing for the rear exit as fast as his burnoose would permit. Jackson was almost abreast of him with the candlelight Greco flapping like a sail in his hand.

‘What am I to do with this, chief?' he grunted.

‘Drop it and scram. I know these little alleys,' Evans said, turning just in time to catch the oncoming Dodo neatly on the jaw, in such manner and at such an angle that Dodo's falling body tripped the real Ibn Hassan and brought forth a stream of Arab curses that Evans, had he had time, would have been glad to note down. As soon as Jackson and Miriam were safely outside, Evans jerked the key from the lock, followed them out, banged the door behind him and locked it from the outside, tucking the key into his burnoose as he ran.

By a circuitous route, the fleeing trio, led by Evans, found refuge in the Cernuschi Museum where the single attendant was sleeping at his desk. There Homer persuaded Jackson to find Sergeant Frémont, and try to convince him to give up the idea of arresting Evans, who had been of service to him in a famous suicide case not long before, and to meet Homer at nine o'clock at the Café de la Paix.

The late afternoon crowd was milling to and fro on the sidewalks of Montparnasse, so far away. Residents mingled with tourists (when it couldn't be avoided), merrymakers rubbed shoulders with philosophers and poets. The sandwich man and the chap passing out handbills were doing the usual, waiters scurried or ambled, according to their respective temperaments, drinks flowed, coursed, gurgled, dripped, and dribbled. But one element was lacking from the customary scene. There were no rug peddlers in sight The dragnet had been spread once more and all Arabs, Bedouins, Riffs, Turks, Armenians, Syrians, Moroccans, Algerians, and the like, had been caught in its relentless mesh and were severally and surlily assembled in a hall at the
préfecture,
not knowing why or what to expect. Among them was the real Ibn Hassan and his boy friend, and the former was the least philosophical of any of the sons of Allah. He had denounced an impostor and as a reward the ungrateful dogs of infidels had chucked him in the can. The bum's rush and the clink on one and the same day, to say nothing of a lost or stolen passport, was too much for Ibn Hassan's peace of mind.

Of course, because of burnooses, fezzes, and complexions, sons of Allah are jam for dragnetters. There is nothing easier to spot and dragnet than a man with flowing robes. Not less than two hundred were dragnetted in the first half hour, including a batch of disciples of Raymond Duncan and two Maharajahs, one with Maharanee. Frémont was slowly going mad. Not enough had it been for a world-famous millionaire to disappear and half Montparnasse devote itself to suspicious actions. The art world was in eruption everywhere, and a new volcano had started spewing trouble all over the boulevard Haussmann and the rue de la Boëtie.

It would be unnecessarily brutal to relate what the minister of justice had said to the prefect, on the subject of the release of Ambrose Gring, because the mysterious Ambrose, whether sane or insane, was the crux of the Heiss and Lourde affair. Gring had plotted something, a huge robbery, no doubt, and had sent his accomplices, a roughspoken American gunman known as Oklahoma Tom, and a pair of crooks disguised as Arabs and had nearly got away with one of the most valuable paintings then in Paris. There had been some discrepancy in the testimony of the partners, Abel Heiss and Dodo Lourde, also the clerk, M. Dinde, who was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but nevertheless insisted in his delirium that the canvas chosen by the picture bandits, or Gring mob, had been a priceless Gonzo. The curator of the Louvre denied the existence of an Old Master named Gonzo. Heiss and Lourde were being held under guard in their place of business while Mont-parnasse was not only being combed, but practically being filtered for the missing Gring and the picture bandit trio disguised as Arabs and Americans.

But although the word Gonzo meant nothing to the experts of the Louvre, it meant a good deal to the sergeant, the prefect, the minister of justice, and others who were waiting for Hjalmar Jansen to wake up. Dr Hyacinthe Toudoux hovered near Hjalmar with his watch in his hand, now and then stooping with a stethoscope, feeling the pulse, testing the breath with a lighted match and becoming more officious each moment. The prefect had seen at once that the two sensational cases of the day were linked, and therefore had passed the entire buck to Sergeant Frémont, who had been relieved of his duty in Montparnasse exclusively and had been given a roving commission wherever art was erupting or even rumbling. And no one, not even Tom Jackson, disliked art as thoroughly as did Sergeant Frémont. It was in this mood that the reporter found him, and instead of bringing out what they had in common, a healthy detestation of painting, and especially oil painting, Jackson blurted out his plea for Evans and held his breath while the sergeant had one of the closest bouts with apoplexy the reporter had ever witnessed.

‘The Café de la Paix, indeed,' he shrieked, when once he got his breath.

‘That's what he said. I'm only trying to help you, sergeant.'

‘And Evans thinks the case is not yet of adequate dimensions, that we've been trifling. That the ambassador, premier, presidents of at least two republics, and the prefect don't mean what they say when they tell me that either I must produce Hugo Weiss or my resignation. I have heard that you Americans have considerable nerve,
culot
, we call it. I have underestimated your capacities,' the sergeant said.

‘You're going around circles,' Jackson said. ‘Why not let Evans straighten you out? You have pinched Gring because he telephoned Weiss, which ought to have proved that he knew nothing of the disappearance; you let Gring go because the prefect doesn't like his face. You are holding Abel Heiss and Dodo Lourde virtual prisoners in their gallery because they have been mixed up with Gring, whom you want and do not want alternately. Our friend Evans is a big-hearted man. He goes about doing good deeds almost constantly.'

‘Tell him if he's not here, with his papers, in half an hour, I'll spread the dragnet,' Sergeant Frémont said.

‘You've had the dragnet spread already nearly twenty-four hours and Evans slips in and out of it when he pleases. Do you think he'll show up at the Café de la Paix unless I give him the “all clear” signal? You need help badly, sergeant. You're not doing well with this case, so far, and I'm not the only one to notice it. Even the people in the streets are beginning to think you were merely lucky in solving the Rosary game. . . .'

Jackson paused. He was not a total washout as a psychologist, and the expression he saw on Frémont's face warned him that he had better try another tack.

‘Ah, there's my raincoat,' Jackson said, seeing the garment in question on the sergeant's desk. ‘I must have left it here.'

What Jackson did not see was that the coat had been tagged carefully as ‘Raincoat. Exhibit A. Found, with no identifying marks and pockets empty on premises of Heiss et Lourde. According to testimony of Witness Dinde, coat was left behind by member of picture bandit gang.' In his haste, and his indecision as to what to do with the candlelight Greco, Jackson had, indeed, left the raincoat slung across the Louis XIV chair. In fact, the raincoat, if a couple of hundred Arabs and the like may be disregarded, was all the sergeant had to show for his raiding and dragnetting in the vicinity of the boulevard Hauss-mann.

The sergeant did not lose his head. ‘Oh, so it's yours? You must have forgotten it somewhere? You know, Jackson, these army raincoats are very much alike. Are you positive it's yours? Could you, for instance, testify in court....?'

‘Of course,' Jackson said, relieved that he had sidetracked the sergeant's anger so successfully. ‘There's a hole in the left pocket, a hole that one franc will slip through but which is just too small for two francs.'

The sergeant was listening but also pressing buttons. Buzzers were ringing in the guard room, gongs were sounding in the corridors. Before the sergeant had time to speak again, a dozen of the toughest officers in Paris had crowded silently into the room.

‘Monsieur Jackson,' Sergeant Frémont said, ‘you admit the ownership of the raincoat, but you are wrong about where you left it. You left it in the gallery of Heiss et Lourde, where you were occupied with holding up the clerk, M. Dinde, at the point of a gun, and later, when Messrs Heiss and Lourde returned, you fled through the back door with your accomplices and a priceless Gonzo.'

‘Not a Gonzo, a Greco,' Jackson said. ‘And I didn't take it.'

The sergeant turned to the officers. ‘Put this gentleman into the cell known as the Goldfish Bowl, after taking his papers, his money, his necktie, belt, and shoelaces. Watch every move he makes, take note of every word and if he appears to be thinking try to make some intelligent guess as to what he is thinking about. We are on the right track at last. The Café de la Paix, indeed.'