The Mysterious Mickey Finn (35 page)

‘I shall be prime minister,' the minister of justice said, shaking Evans by the hand. ‘Sergeant, I'll see that you are named prefect.'

Sergeant Frémont's honest face showed real dismay.

‘I implore you, not prefect. Only chief of detectives. That is a non-political job I can handle. I know my limitations. As prefect I should rapidly go mad.'

‘I forbid any man to go mad on my name day,' said the colonel, tickling Mme Sosthène playfully with his gold-headed cane. They were passing the fragrant Halles aux Vins behind which could be heard the roaring of lions, jackals, hyenas, tigers, and the cries of exotic birds. The lusty timbre of the colonel's voice set off the elephants and all the wild boars to add to the din. Along the quays, the
Presque Sans Souci
was greeted by admiring throngs waving handkerchiefs, parasols and the like and shouting, ‘Vive Frémont! Death to traitors ! Long live the American and his millions.' For the news of Fremont's triumph in the matter of the murder, the kidnapping, the arms plot and the Old Master racket had travelled from Charenton faster than the huge grey barge.

‘I'm ready for questions while there's yet time,' Evans said.

‘F
IRST
,' said the ambassador, ‘will you tell us why the devil you sent two sets of false Grecos to those six museums? One would have been enough. Everything in moderation....'

‘That was to aid Mr Weiss and Mr Jackson. When Mr Weiss leaves these shores bound for the U.S.A. he will have complete proofs and documentation with which to confront his old enemy, Mr T. Prosper Stables. What he does with them is his own affair, but I hope he will not let that arch-hypocrite off too lightly.'

‘Never fear,' said Weiss, accepting a bottle from Kvek. ‘I'll make him pray and sweat as he never has before. I'll even make him pay his back taxes, which will leave him practically penniless, less than fifty million dollars if I figure it right.'

‘Don't make us weep,' said Barnabé.

Evans smiled and continued: ‘Mr Jackson, if I mistake me not, will, upon landing, hasten to tip off all the American editors and news services to be on hand when the shipments of fake Grecos pour in. They'll make Stables' life a hell with questions. In that way, our friend Oklahoma Tom will make himself solid with everyone who matters in the newspaper game.'

‘What a story !' Jackson said.

‘No one must work or worry on my name day,' shouted Kvek. He had just been informed by Weiss that a good executive job was open for him in the States if he wanted it, and the ambassador had. assured him that the visa would be fixed up in a jiffy. There were men who had less cause for rejoicing.

Hjalmar at the wheel suddenly began to wave his arms and shout. ‘Where are my 250,000 francs, by God. I'll get 'em or the prefect goes overboard.'

The prefect indicated an inside pocket he himself could not reach, tied up as he was, and Hjalmar turned over the wheel to Jacques Goujon, vaulted tables and chairs, and nearly tore the prefect's coat inside out. Sheaves of bank notes were scattered all over the deck but Hjalmar's companions retrieved them gaily. He counted them, and the total was correct within a few thousand. From that time until they docked, he outdid even Lvov Kvek among the brandy bottles.

‘Don't forget my portrait. Next trip I'll sit for it,' said Hugo Weiss.

‘By the way,' asked Evans, ‘did you get a written statement from me?'

The ambassador grinned a little shamefacedly.

‘Forgive me, boy. What with one thing and another, business, pleasure, and all that, the thing slipped my mind. My secretary does most of my reading, you know. Anything in it I ought to know?'

Homer turned to the minister of justice. ‘Did you receive your copy?'

The minister was apologetic, too. ‘Must have got mixed up with some other papers. Sorry. I'll try to find it, but nobody ever finds anything in my office. Sometimes it's just as well.'

‘Exactly,' chimed in the ambassador. ‘Nothing like papers for getting a man into trouble.'

The sergeant was hopping and skipping around the bow, humming snatches of song from the Blackbirds' Revue. When he caught sight of Melchisedek he called to him and appointed him chauffeur to the chief of detectives, at which the ex-serviceman began to dance the Black Bottom. Kvek, not to be outdone on his name day, performed a rollicking Kazotzky with butcher knives from the galley in his mouth, behind his ears, and in both hands.

Would it be too depressing to leave the scene of festivity aboard the
Presque Sans Souci
to spend a moment with one member of the cast who was consumed with grief and sadness ‒ none other than Gwendolyn Poularde? She was seated on the cot in her shabby garret, weeping softly and wringing her shapely hands. Her life's work, the hours of toil and privation she had suffered in order to learn to paint, had gone for nothing. No one in the Louvre would even listen to her pleadings any longer, and in fact, the attendants had threatened her with arrest if she entered the museum again. Rosa Stier, Simon, Sturlusson, all her friends in Montparnasse had tried to cheer her in vain. Gwendolyn was sunk.

At perhaps the lowest moment of her suffering and agony, a rap sounded on the door.

‘Who is it?' she asked.

‘Telegram,' a voice replied.

Listlessly she dragged herself to the door and took the message. No use opening it, she thought. It must be from Chicago. The Arson Galleries inquiring about her show. However, she tore open the telegram and sank to the cot, almost fainting, not with despair but joy.

        
CANVASSES SUPERB TEN GARAGES SOLD BEFORE OPENING SEND EVERYTHING YOU PAINT IN FUTURE THANKS FOR SHIPPING AIR MAIL GLAD TO FOOT BILL

ARSON

Weeping and laughing hysterically, she hurried to the
terrasse
of the Café du Dôme.

‘Of course,' said Rosa Stier, reaching for her twelfth Pernod. ‘You didn't think Homer Evans would let you down.'

By the time the
Presque Sans Souci
was made fast to the stanchions at the Pont Royal, such a throng had gathered that double police cordons had to be drawn around the area. Hugo Weiss, when he walked the plank to the quay, was given such a hearty ovation as only Parisian crowds can give. The cheering was spontaneous and in every way sympathetic, which so warmed the heart of the genial multi-millionaire that he decided to demand, as a part of his pound of flesh from T. Prosper Stables, the real No. 1 candlelight Greco for the Louvre.

As the prefect, handcuffed inconspicuously, was about to be helped into the wagon, Hjalmar thought of his friends in Montparnasse and particularly of Messrs Chalgrin and Delbos. Well he might, for M. Chalgrin, at his cashbox in the Dôme, was declaiming with feeling Harpagon's immortal soliloquy from ‘L'Avare,' Act IV, Scene VII.

            
‘Alas, my poor money, my poor 125,000 francs. My dear friend. I have been deprived of you; and since you were taken from me, I have lost my support, my consolation, my joy; all is over for me, and I have nothing left to do in the world. Without you, it is impossible for me to live. It's done, and I no longer exist; I die, I am dead, I am buried. Is there no one who will bring me back to life, by giving me back my money …'

In the Coupole, a similar heart-rending scene was taking place, but since M. Delbos had not taste for the classics he was cursing Hjalmar and his own proper folly in modern style, with a somewhat staccato rhythm beautified, however, by a generous sprinkling of the names of the Saints.

On the quay, Hjalmar yelled, ‘Hey, you, wait a minute,' to the prefect, rushed to the back door of the wagon and nearly tore the prefect's pants off retrieving the two cheques. He and Lvov lifted off the taxi, amid the plaudits of the crowd, and the convivial Russian vowed he would take one last ride at the wheel of his old machine before turning it in to the company. With Hjalmar in the rear seat, he set out for the corner of the boulevards Raspail and Montparnasse. With a roar the Norwegian embraced M. Chalgrin and handed him the rumpled cheque.

‘It's O.K.,' he said. ‘Hugo Weiss is back in town.'

And he rushed to the Coupole to gladden the heart of M. Delbos, who, quite unjustly, was in the act of wishing on Hjalmar an assortment of social diseases.

The two proprietors held their cheques to the light and gurgled like babies staring at a photographer's canary bird. They began to turn them, veer them, frisk them, jumble and shuffle them, all the while murmuring and chuckling with joy. They huddled them, rustled them, inverted and subverted them, tapped them, twisted them upside down, topsy-turvy, arsiversy. Finally, they raced for the bank across from the Dôme to cash them, and since Hugo Weiss was so well known and the news of his safe return had spread to all branches of the Crédit Lyonnais, the bank clerks and officials outdid themselves and it only took Messrs Chalgrin and Delbos the remainder of that happy day to get the money in their hands.

When the ambassador's turn came to walk the plank, Homer Evans felt called upon to go with him and steady him a bit, and the cheer that greeted the ambassador's difficult feat of balancing attested the appreciation of the crowd.

Sergeant Frémont got the biggest hand, when he descended from the barge with Miriam on his arm. Once the ambassador was safely away, Evans approached the sergeant and spirited him to the rue Delambre where an introduction to Joe ensured him a perpetual supply of Fine Michel or Mickey Finns.

‘You're sure ... er ... there'll be no other accident?' the sergeant asked, hesitantly, his mind for an instant on the late Ambrose Gring.

‘Positive, old man,' said Evans, and the sergeant set off happily for Le Havre where, when the
Ile de France
reached the breakwater, he could easily distinguish his darling Hydrangea in the midst of the passengers grouped at the rail. The idyll that followed and the success of the new chief inspector in suppressing crime is too blissful to relate.

Agents Bonnet and Schlumberger were promoted at once and given a roving commission which took them into all the rural museums in France. Whenever they found a canvas signed H. Jansen, they returned it to its proper author, and the fame of the fifty stray paintings grew to such an extent that art dealers bid high to possess one. Of course, the breakage of glass in the Dôme and the Coupole rose correspondingly.

Imagine Hjalmar's relief when he found waiting for him, in his accumulated mail, two letters: one the announcement of Maggie's engagement to a swain, the other from the British embassy enjoining him against following the girl to England.

It was a jolly sight, indeed, to see Melchisedek Knockwoode strutting up and down the main boulevards, the cynosure of all feminine eyes from the large and expensive cafés. His new British officer's uniform fitted him like a glove and he quickly acquired skill with the swagger stick.

Dinde, at Evans' suggestion, took possession of the Heiss and Lourde galleries and their contents, and no one seemed to know the difference. Adolphe, rescued from the Goldfish Bowl, became Weiss's valet.

The good doctor, Hyacinthe Toudoux, won more fame and considerable fortune with his masterpiece
Observations divers sur quelques ivrognes d'Amérique du Nord
with case histories of the hangovers of the Montparnasse group which had been under his care in the prefecture. Also, he fought and won a duel in the Bois de Boulogne against a jealous rival physician who accused him of having thrown an important fencing match in 1910.

T
HE
last brief and final chapter is in the nature of a postlude. Sufficient time for rest and refreshment having elapsed since the adventures just related, Miriam Leonard was standing by an open window, looking at the stars and caressing gently with her fingertips the folds of a small American flag attached to the casement of a certain high window.

She had been wearing a costume which had gracefully expressed the return of the curved outline, without resort to corselette, wrap-around, combinaire, or any of the other strange and complicated inner garments so much in demand that summer. Tea-rose scanties of a light and supple silk jersey had been hidden by her chic frock. They had been, strictly speaking, only necessary to Miriam as a means of attaching her beige silk stockings which had matched her suede gloves with scrupulous perfection.

Her jumper frock, which lay limply across the back of a chair, was of pale sorrel
crapella frisca
and had a box-pleated skirt and a fitted blouse with long full sleeves falling in soft folds above tight cuffs. From the neat hip-level pocket, embellished with a Czerny motif embroidered in chestnut roan stitching, her automatic had fallen into one of Evans' shoes.

Beneath the broad bed in which Homer at last was sleeping with unusual soundness, were a pair of slippers of Java lizard with Louis XV heels. Her narrow-brimmed high-crowned hat of rengale straw was set off by a scarf of grosgrain ribbon in four shades of horse colours as it snuggled jauntily on the hook beside a certain panama.

A light night breeze cooled her strong young limbs and she threw back her head happily to gaze at the Milky Way.

‘Now I know,' she murmured, ‘exactly why I came to Paris.'

                    
THE END

                    
of everything

                    
except Problem ‘C '

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