The Mysterious Mickey Finn (21 page)

The candid answer could only be ‘Nothing, sir', but doctors can seldom afford to give candid answers.

‘There is a trace of something or other besides
crême de cacao
in the contents of the stomach,' Dr Toudoux began. ‘It does not respond in the orthodox way to any known tests and is so mild that earthworms have no difficulty in swimming in it.' He held up another beaker containing fishing worms who seemed to be resigned, if not content.

‘What do the governments of several countries care about earthworms?' the prefect demanded. ‘In God's name, get down to cases. How and why did this wart on the body politic come by his death? He wasn't stabbed, choked, drowned, or thrown from a high window. Neither was he shot, gassed, hanged, or guillotined. You can find no poison. Why not say he died a natural death and let it go at that?'

‘I feel sure his death was anything but natural,' said the doctor. ‘In fact, I shall refuse to sign any certificate to that effect.'

The prefect dashed from the room, smashing a row of test-tubes as he dashed. He did not know that one of his lady bassos, thinking it might annoy him, was phoning the British Embassy anonymously to let it be known that a red-headed girl claiming to be a British subject was being held incomunicado in a tepid bath and was calling loudly for her government to help her.

Heiss and Lourde were playing pinochle in the prefect's office and complaining that the cards had been marked with violet ink. They had spilled nothing because no one had asked them any questions. The candlelight Grecos had already passed most of the experts in France so they did not anticipate any trouble from the Louvre, and they were in blissful ignorance of what had happened to Whistler's aunt and the fifteen modern canvases that were now signed ‘Poularde' and were on their way to the Arson Galleries, Chicago.

‘Dismiss the boatmen,' Evans said to Sergeant Frémont as they boarded the
Deuxième Pays de Tout le Monde
which was the name of the prefectorial launch. ‘Jansen knows the river, every inch. He's got a master's licence.'

‘But what if the engine stops running?' the sergeant asked. Like so many romantics, mechanics was Greek to him.

‘Even Miriam could take it apart with her eyes shut,' Evans said.

‘Ah, you Americans,' sighed the sergeant. ‘My Hydrangea, though, is the clinging feminine type. I'm sure she would scream at the sight of a gun or an engine. She'll be seasick, I'm afraid, poor girl. What is the earliest date she might arrive?'

‘She's on her way,' Evans said. ‘To-night we've other work to do.'

Hjalmar was at the wheel and already had started the engine. The sergeant and Jackson took places amidships. Miriam sat with Evans in the bow, her hand resting lightly on the smooth automatic. Evans smiled. He was trying to keep his mind on the object of their journey but he could not stifle a feeling' of pride because of the way Miriam was behaving. It stirred a latent love for his own far country and the institutions which made such resolute women possible. Desirable? Feminine? Yes. . . .

‘Damn Walt Whitman,' he said, aloud.

‘I know. A woman waits,' she murmured, her eyes sparkling. ‘Let's hurry up and finish this case.'

Skilfully, almost exultantly, Hjalmar had swung the launch into mid-channel and was heading rapidly upstream. From the river, and especially in a low-lying craft like the
Deuxième Pays
, old Paris has an unexpected allure. Walls and towers take on new proportions, perspectives are shortened, altitudes lengthened. They passed the Grand Palais and in no time they were streaming past the Louvre where they believed the forty-nine paintings were reposing. As a matter of fact, they had been mixed up with a batch of 19th-century works destined for provincial museums and had been scattered from Dijon to Aries in small consignments incorrectly labelled. On the left, the Samaritaine was receding in all its superb ugliness which verged on the poetic.

‘Which way?' asked Hjalmar as they were about to breast the tip of the He de la Cité.

‘Port,' Evans said.

Ah, centuries of yore ! Ah, history ! The
conciergerie
at the crack of dawn. Notre Dame backed with cirrus clouds like rose-tinted angels. The spire of the Sainte Chapelle. The ominous Tour St Jacques. Gaining speed and momentum they slid between the old city and the He St Louis, the fragrant Halle aux Vins behind which they heard the roar of lions, tigers, jackals and hyenas in the Jardin des Plantes. That brought the cautious members of the party to an awareness of the dangers before them. The cautious members, of course, were Frémont and Tom Jackson. The latter, like many good men, was a wow on land but on the water, even a narrow river like the Seine, he began to think at once of the beauty of Panurge's immortal thought: ‘Happy is he who plants potatoes, for he has both feet firmly on the ground.' The combination of the motion of the launch and the jungle cries of wild beasts was a bit too much for Oklahoma Tom.

‘I think I'll go downstairs and lie down,' he said.

‘Where do you think you are?' railed Hjalmar, good-naturedly. ‘Don't say “downstairs”. Say “below”. And take a good swig of
Quetsch.
. . .'

‘Kwaup, gug, gug,' said Jackson and dived down the short companionway.

The others, nothing loth, passed a bottle around, and when it reached Hjalmar he finished it and tossed it over the side.

‘Should have left a note for my friend the prefect in the bottle, I suppose,' Hjalmar said.' Cripes. It's good to get out in the air.'

‘You're in my custody, remember,' the sergeant said. ‘If any of you get lost, I'll lose my job.'

‘Don't worry. I've got 250,000 francs I'm going to get or else take ‘em out of the prefect's hide,' Hjalmar said.

At that prospect the sergeant smiled and chuckled again. He didn't know much about Gonzo as a painter, but as an inker of prefects and a helmsman he was tops. The big Norwegian found the channel effortlessly, roared greetings to friends on passing tugs and barges and to the
café
keepers along the shore. The river folk had long since taken the big roaring artist to their hearts and even Evans was reassured by his friend's handling of a boat and his standing with the bargemen and longshoremen.

‘We'll be safe as far as Chatillon,' Evans said, consulting the map again. ‘There we'll disembark and do some reconnoitering. What's Frontville like, Hjalmar?'

‘It's just a clump of houses across from a wooded island.'

‘An island, you say?'

‘It's about a hundred metres long. A few shacks the bargemen sleep in sometimes, also four or five big dugouts.'

‘Dugouts? What for?'

‘It was an ammunition dump during the war. The army kept high explosives there, where the airmen wouldn't look for them. Plenty of shelter. Tall trees. And if the stuff blew up, almost nobody near enough to get hurt. Not dumb, the Frogs. . . .'

The sergeant drew himself up stiffly. ‘Your tribute to my countrymen is overwhelming,' he said.

‘What the hell? I like your country well enough to live here,' Hjalmar said. ‘I've just got myself in jail trying to stay here, haven't I?'

Jackson came up from the cabin, looking pea green.

‘Don't quarrel when a pal is dying,' he said.

They were passing through a rolling countryside, with red-roofed villages and distant hills, white roads cut straight across the flats and twisting around the hills and through the gullies. Fertile rural France, the envy of less-favoured lands, the mother of peaceful sturdy folk to whom life itself is an end. The Frogs, indeed, were not dumb along the Seine that morning. They were ploughing rich dark earth, or moving at a rate consistent with human comfort along chalk-white roads lined with double files of poplars (
populus nigra italica
)
.
Their horses were glossy and strong, their cattle knee-deep in lush grasses.

‘I shall die if this gets more beautiful,' Miriam said. Her fingers were not toying with her automatic then, but were raised to the level of her white young throat.

‘Can you swim?' Evans asked.

For answer she rose and only his quick grasping of her slender hips prevented her from executing a perfect backward dive into the rippling current.

‘I'll take your word for it,' Evans said. ‘And please don't show off any more in front of the sergeant. He can stand just so much excitement and no more. By the way, that was a real Whistler you punctured this morning. Don't shoot anything else, not even paintings, without my O.K.'

‘I'll be good,' she said. ‘Let's have another drink.'

‘You'll all be zigzag before we get to Bar-sur-Seine,' the sergeant said woefully.

‘Hell. You never have seen us drunk aboard ship,' Hjalmar said. ‘It isn't like
café
drinking, where a man has to be a little careful.'

‘I'm responsible for you, drunk or sober,' the sergeant groaned, and his hollow voice was echoed by that of Jackson.

‘I may as well take a drink,' he said. ‘I couldn't feel worse.'

Miriam was singing like a thrush: ‘I shall have an old age full of rum and riot.' She paused to turn to Evans again. ‘You will find the man who killed poor Ambrose?' she said. ‘I feel somehow responsible.'

‘His last thoughts were of you,' Evans said. ‘Of you and oil, no doubt.' Then he added, seriously: ‘I'll revenge the poor chap, never fear. But I'm puzzled about that feature of this tangled affair. Now if Heiss and Lourde had been extinguished. . . . God ! What a fool I've been ! Sergeant! Hjalmar ! Run her nose to the next telephone booth. I've got to get in touch with headquarters at once.'

‘And pray, what for?' asked the sergeant.

‘To stave off a couple more murders. . . . No, make it three, I forgot the poor clerk, M. Dinde.'

There was a gentle impact as the nose of the
Deuxième Pays
touched the bank in front of the
Rendezvous des Imprévoyants
just west of Bar-sur-Seine. There the river was broader and still, tall grass fringed the sloughs, treetops touched over narrow creeks and tributaries and the song of the merle (
merula merula
) mingled with the delighted ‘Bonjour' the proprietor was extending to Hjalmar. While Evans was phoning, the rest of the party gathered at the bar and this time even Sergeant Frémont broke down and swallowed a small brandy. The prospect of three more murders in his absence had done things to Frémont. He knew that, somehow, he would be blamed.

Evans did not call the prefect. He wanted action and no argument. It was a matter of no more than thirty minutes to get through to the minister of justice.

‘I'm Homer Evans,' he began.

‘Perhaps you want the ministry of war,' the minister of justice suggested. He was no mean passer of the buck, himself.

‘The special envoy of the American
sûrete generale
,
'
Evans continued.

‘Ah, yes. Of course. That disappearing millionaire. . . . M. . . . M. . . .'

‘Weiss.'

‘Yes. By all means. Weiss. Have you found him? Your ambassador, droll fellow, assured me the man was probably out drinking. Is he, in fact, on a bender. . . .?'

‘I'll have news of him before the day is over,' Evans said. ‘Just now I've another matter of frightful importance. Will you please phone the prefect and have two suspects, Abel Heiss. . . . No. Not Weiss. Weiss's name is Hugo. “ H ” for Henriette. No. Not Henriette. Abel Heiss. H-E-I-S-S. And his partner Sascha Lourde. Now you've got it. Heiss and Lourde. And a clerk named Dinde. Heiss, Lourde and Dinde. Have them sent to your office at once, under guard, and keep them there. Don't let anyone go near them.'

‘Suspects are customarily held at the
préfecture
,' the minister said.

‘If these men lose their lives, the press will know I warned you,' said Evans, severely. ‘Now. Will you act, or must I call my ambassador?'

‘I'll do what you ask,' the minister said. ‘You Americans have no regard for precedent, but I like your ambassador. Makes no trouble at all. Always gay and carefree.'

‘This evening you shall have Hugo Weiss,' Evans promised. ‘If you carry out my suggestions, I'll bring him to your office first, for press photographs.'

‘No stone shall be left unturned. Heiss, Lourde, and Dinde. Good day.'

The phone clicked and Evans joined his companions at the bar. Jackson was almost himself again. Not quite, but he was definitely on the mend.

‘Lie down, little dogies,' he was singing, while Miriam was explaining that dogies in American, did not mean
chiens
or dogs but the brothers, sadly altered, of
vaches
or cows.

‘There's no logic in your language. I suppose logic would be out of place in so vast a country,' Sergeant Frémont said.

T
HE
proprietor's wife, on the approach of Hjalmar, had locked her daughter, Gaby, in an upper room, and was guarding her grimly.

‘My own mother was a hard woman,' Madame Sosthène said to the pouting girl. ‘My own mother was hard, but not quite hard enough. You shall profit by her errors.'

Had Homer Evans not been so intent on his telephone call, had his sympathy not been so boundless and so catholic that it could be aroused in the interest of the safety of even such unpromising specimens as Heiss and Lourde, he undoubtedly would have noticed in the back room a slim but wiry man who, although he wore riverman's clothes, did not wear them well. The stranger seemed to be enormously affected by what he heard the rescue party saying. Outstripping the merles (
merula merula
) and also the swift
Carduelis elegans
, or goldfinch, that unsavoury character set out through the woods at a frantic clip and finally spied a motor cycle, the owner of which, having stopped for a
tête-à-tête
with his girl, was, in Rabelais' words, already found useful in this story, not in a position to right wrongs or retrieve receding Harley-Davidsons. The speed with which the stranger left those parts may be partially explained by his name. It was Barnabé Vieuxchamp, and his late grandfather, after having sired the father of Barnabé, had fled to America where he had raised another family under his American name, Barney Oldfield.