The Mysterious Mickey Finn (9 page)

‘He's gone. He went away at a quarter to eight,' Delbos said. ‘Sergeant ! What shall I do? The cheque I cashed was signed by Hugo Weiss, the multi-millionaire. M. Jansen is an old customer, besides, he owed me quite a bill.'

Sergeant Frémont was visibly annoyed. ‘M. Delbos, I think I should tell you that there is kidnapping and probably murder involved in this case. This M. Gonzo is fiendishly clever but he couldn't be in two places at once. Your neighbour at the Dôme, M. Chalgrin, has stated that he cashed a cheque for $2,500 at a quarter to eight and handed the money to this Gonzo, and that they drank six glasses of Calvados together. Now you tell me that Gonzo was
here
at a quarter to eight. A man doesn't swallow six glasses of Calvados in as many seconds.'

‘You don't know M. Johnson,' the
concierge
said.

Delbos was too frightened to talk or to think. ‘Is the cheque good or not?'

‘Our experts will decide whether or not it has been forged, and our legal advisers will look up precedents. I'll have to take the cheque. . . . Bonnet !' he said. ‘Go to the Rotonde and the Select and collect all cheques for $2,500 signed by Hugo Weiss.'

The agent saluted and crossed the busy thoroughfare.

‘Who are the intimates of this Gonzo? Do you know Mademoiselle Montana, or an American called Ivan, or an alleged taxi-driver named Lvov Kvek?'

‘I know Kvek. He's a former colonel in the recent army of the late Tsar, and he drives a Citroën cab. As for Mademoiselle Montana, is she a red-headed girl, rather thin. . . .'

‘That's the one. Do you know where she is?'

‘She wasn't with Jansen to-night. That's strange. Usually she stays quite close to him, to keep him out of trouble.'

‘What kind of company does Gonzo keep?'

‘All kinds,' said Delbos. ‘But his friend Mr Evans is a fine gentleman.'

‘That must be Ivan. Where is he?'

‘I haven't seen any of them to-night. That's strange.'

‘What's strange? They've made a big clean-up and a clean get-away. You and M. Chalgrin furnished them the money....'

‘Don't say that !' said M. Delbos.

‘Not only kidnapping and murder, but some new racket connected with the making and marketing of paintings. I found Gonzo's studio filled with canvases he did not paint, each one signed by him. The last seen of Hugo Weiss, the American multi-millionaire, was when he left Gonzo's place in the taxi driven by the confederate, Kvek. Mademoiselle Montana had fled two days previously. Other members of the gang.... By the way, was it one of your waiters who served the party in that studio this afternoon?'

‘I think the waiter was from the Dôme,' the
concierge
said.

‘Why didn't you say so before,' Frémont said, and hurried back toward the Dôme again.

Rug peddlers and sandwich men strolled through the swarms of merrymakers on the sidewalks, the street lamps showed yellow-green among the trees, and everywhere
agents de police
, singly, in pairs, or in squads, on foot, on bicycles, and in automobiles, were scouring the district for Gonzo, Ivan, Kvek and Mademoiselle Montana. And Ambrose Gring was leaning weakly against the bars, his eyes glued to the doorway, listening for the sound of a familiar voice and murmuring ‘Miriam. Petroleum. The people, no, no, no.' Every fifteen or twenty minutes an officer would approach his cell and scowl at him.

‘Your cock and bull story has given your confederates a chance to get away. Not one of them is in Montparnasse,' the
commissaire
bellowed.

‘You mean she's gone? The girl has disappeared?'

‘Your precious girl went to America day before yesterday,' the
commissaire
said.

‘She couldn't have. It's not true. I talked with her to-night,' Ambrose sobbed. ‘It's Evans who's stolen her. It's Evans who's to blame. Can't you do something? Can't you stop him, before it's too late? The girl belongs to me.'

‘When a multi-millionaire has been kidnapped, or murdered, there's no time to be bothering with one of the trollops of the studios. I tell you, your sweetheart left the country day before yesterday, and not one of the persons you mentioned has been seen or heard from since eight o'clock to-night. It was lucky we landed you, otherwise we'd have nothing to show the American ambassador.'

‘I don't want to be shown to an ambassador,' said Gring, his face paler and more haggard than before. ‘I want Miriam.... I want to warn her father….'

‘What's that?'

‘The people are after the oil. The proletariat....' Gring stammered, in a pitiful effort to get his point across.

‘My dear sir. We were not born yesterday,' the
commissaire
said. ‘If you think that by feigning insanity you can escape the guillotine, let me disillusion you at once. No use babbling about trollops or oil, to say nothing of the proletariat. I can hold you six months more for even mentioning the proletariat. You know that, I suppose.'

Gring, in despair, flung himself on the hard wooden bunk and began to cry.

Frémont, in Montparnasse, was making headway, or at least he thought he was. He spotted the waiter who had carried the bottles, glasses and trays to and from Hjalmar's studio and from him, prompted by M. Chalgrin, got the names of Rosa Stier, Gwendolyn Poularde, and another kind of Swede named Snorre, who had two front teeth missing. On investigation Frémont found that all of Snorre was missing from the quarter, as well as Mme Stier, Mile Poularde, and an eccentric named Simon, a religious fanatic who spent his time carving out the Gospels on blocks of wood.

The sergeant, leaving a large force on watch for any or all of the missing persons, went back to the commissariat to have another go at Gring, whom he found in a state of collapse.

‘Be careful,' the
commissaire
said. ‘He's all we have to show the ambassador, or the prefect, either, as a matter of fact. The prefect wouldn't care much but the ambassador will be shocked if our suspect is in bad shape. I should have thought of that in time, before I talked so much about the guillotine. The mention of the guillotine upset the fellow no end.'

‘He's not a forceful type,' the sergeant said.

The paintings were stacked in a cell adjacent to Gring's and
Agent
Schlumberger, a whimsical Alsatian who spent his days off painting landscapes and churches, was looking at them, one by one.

‘Why, this one's been altered, just recently,' the
agent
said. He turned on the strong white light ordinarily used as an aid to questioning, held up a still life of oysters and lobsters, and said: ‘Look here, sergeant. There's another signature underneath H. Jansen. I think we've hit on a smuggling scheme. It's more than possible these are old masters, with scenes and faces painted over them to make them appear of little value. That's been done, you know. A dozen Italian primitives got by the customs in New York last month, because each one had a picture of Garibaldi painted over the original.'

‘I'll have every last one of them expertized at the Louvre,' the sergeant said. ‘I'm going to get to the bottom of this, if it takes the rest of my life.'

The telephone rang and at the end of the conversation the
commissaire
said: ‘The minister of justice is taking a hand. He's having the Seine dragged for the missing taxi.'

‘Don't forget to tell him there's a painting of Gonzo in the cab. The grappling hooks might mess it up, and then if it turned out to be something like the Mona Lisa the department would get a black eye. The public is touchy about works of art. The man in the street doesn't care much what happens to people, if they're not related to him or in some way profitable. But let anything happen to a work of art and the whole world is up in arms.'

The phone rang again. ‘Every taxi in Paris has been checked, and only one, the Citroën driven by Kvek, is missing,' the
commissaire
said.

‘Have all the railroad stations been watched?'

‘Of course, and all the tramways, buses, and airplanes. How a dozen suspicious characters could escape as if there were not a policeman in all Paris is mysterious to me,' the
commissaire
said. ‘There'll be an investigation, a shakeup, an international scandal....'

‘I thought at first that our list of people came from this Greeng's imagination, but it seems such people exist, or existed up till eight o'clock this evening.'

‘I shall hold you responsible for finding them,' the
commissaire
said. ‘The prefect will come down on me, and the ministries of justice and foreign affairs will be severe with him. The American ambassador will make it hot for the foreign office. The United States Government will prod the ambassador.'

‘I shall find them,' Frémont said, and started for Montparnasse again.

I
N
the sub-cellar of the Hotel du Caveau, rue de la Huchette, roast goose had just been served. The group of artists and friends, little suspecting what was taking place above stairs and in the embassies, city rooms, chancelleries,
préfectures
, commissariats and Montparnasse cafés, had done justice to mixed hors d'œuvres, turbots which were truly noble, and several wines as good as those at the Interalliée. M. Julliard, the proprietor, had called in a fiddler and piper from the dance hall nearby, thereby furnishing not only music but partners for Rosa Stier and Gwendolyn Poularde. The latter had, clutched in her shapely fingers, a volume entitled
Les attributions des huiles diverses
, but the worry about her Chicago show was fading from her mind.

Hjalmar, his pockets stuffed with thousand franc and five thousand franc notes which he mistook now and then for a napkin or handkerchief, sat lustily at the head of the wooden table with Miriam on his right and Cirage on his left.

‘Skal,' he shouted from time to time.

In a less boisterous way, Homer Evans was enjoying the party, too. He did not roar and drink from bottles after biting off the neck, or recite Barbara Frietchie in Swedish, jumping up on the revolutionary table when he was Barbara and down again to reply in the person of Stonewall Jackson. Neither did he fill pipes with red wine or carve snatches of the Twenty-Third Psalm on the woodwork of the piano. His was a contemplative nature, and in idle moments he was thinking about Miriam, or problem ‘c'. When his eyes began to smart from the smoke, he suggested to her that they get a breath of air. Upstairs, meanwhile, M. Julliard was reading the early morning papers, still wet with ink.

‘Any news?' asked Evans as he passed.

‘Nothing much,' replied the Savoyard.' Some American chap got lost.'

‘They should stay away from the Alps,' Homer said, from the doorway. The sun was rising in green and gold behind the towers of Notre Dame.

‘How lovely ! How unbelievably lovely,' said Miriam. ‘Let's go to the end of the street, then walk the entire length of it, facing the cathedral and the sun. It seems to me as if I had never seen suns or cathedrals before.'

Evans started to utter a warning, then checked himself and reached for her hand again. ‘Oh, what the hell,' he said to himself. ‘Why dampen her pleasure? After all, I've ruined her career. . . .'

A scream cut short his thoughts. Miriam and he were arm in arm, passing the commissariat where Ambrose Gring's cell faced the door. Thus, the anguished prisoner had caught a glimpse of his oil princess with his dread rival.

‘What was that?' asked Miriam, startled.

‘Just a drunk,' Homer said reassuringly. ‘The Paris police are gentle and understanding with drunks, but of course a drunk will yell now and then.'

At the barred entrance of Gring's cell a lively scene was taking place. The officer who had been left to guard Ambrose understood no English and Ambrose was in such a frenzy that he forgot to speak French. He was shrieking, squealing, tearing his hair and his clothes, grinding his teeth, and exhibiting other symptoms of emotional instability, and between the grimy fingers of the officer, whose hand was across Gring's mouth, came words which convulsed with laughter Jackson, the
Herald
reporter, and a young Frenchman with an American hat, the two last-named having been just recently snared in the dragnet.

‘There he goes ! That's the man you want ! He's stolen Miriam. He's in league with the proletariat. He's going to get the oil... the petroleum . . . the wells . . . gushers....'

The
commissaire
, who had been dozing, was awakened by the rumpus and came swearing to confront Ambrose, spurring the officer to such efforts that no sounds at all came forth.

‘What has this louse been shouting about?' the
commissaire
asked Jackson, to whom all the officers had taken a liking because he spoke fairly fluent French.

‘He thinks someone has stolen his girl, and that the girl and the other man just passed by,' Jackson said. ‘Also there is an oil field involved but I haven't made out just how that fits in.'

‘Feigning insanity,' the
commissaire
said, and sighed. ‘I told him it wouldn't help him, but he continues. He'll wear himself out, then blame us for brutality when the ambassador comes.'

‘The ambassador'll identify me and insist that you let me go,' Jackson said.

‘How can I let you go? You're the only one of the lot here who speaks both American and French. Be reasonable. Don't make a complaint and get yourself released just when I need you. You may send out for food or tobacco. I'll have girls, books, or magazines brought in.'

‘Well, if you put it that way, I'll have to stick with you, I suppose,' said Jackson. ‘As a matter of fact, I'm beginning to like it here.'

‘That's very nice,' the
commissaire
said. ‘So few people appreciate what we try to do for them.' He turned to the officer who was still holding his hand over Gring's mouth and nose, notwithstanding that the unfortunate Ambrose had passed into a semi-swoon. ‘Schlumberger,' he barked. ‘I am going to try for a wink of sleep again and I shall expect you to suppress any unnecessary noise until further notice.' And suiting the action to the word the
commissaire
resumed his place behind the counter, rested his face on his palms and his elbows on the desk and in a moment was fast asleep. The following moment Jackson began a series of blood-curdling yells.