Читать книгу A Debt Discharged - Edgar Wallace - Страница 3
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PROLOGUE
France was passing through a passive period of lawfulness which was particularly complimentary to the genius of the Italian who had adopted the nationality of France with some profit to himself.
Crime ran in normal grooves, the mystery of the Seven Banks had been satisfactorily cleared up, and M. Trebolino was enjoying a rest. It was the bus driver's holiday for him—no other would have pleased him. The smaller incidents, which ordinarily would have engaged the attention of his subordinates, were, in the circumstances, big enough to interest him, and such an incident now occupied the restless brain of the man who, perhaps, more than any other in modern times, fought crime effectively.
He reached forward and pressed a bell-push by the side of the fireplace, and a clerk answered the summons.
"Send M. Lecomte to me," he said, without withdrawing his gaze from the dancing flames.
In a few moments there was a knock on the door and the dapper Lecomte, fated to take the place of his chief, came in.
"M. Lecomte," said the great detective, looking up with a smile of welcome, "seat you, if you please. Have you heard of a certain 'Crime Club' which exists in this Paris of yours?"
M. Lecomte nodded.
"It is amusing, that 'Cercle de Crime', is it not?" Trebolino went on with a smile; "but I am not easy in my mind, and I think you had best break it up—students are the devil."
"Will it not break itself?" asked Lecomte.
The detective pursed his lips as one who had thought both ways and was decided on one.
"What do you know of it?" he asked.
"No more than yourself," said Lecomte, stretching out his fingers to the blaze, "a number of students join together, they have solemn rituals, passwords, oaths—the whole paraphernalia of mystic brotherhood, and they meet in divers secret places, all of which are known to the police a week before."
He laughed softly, and Trebolino nodded.
"Each member swears to break some law of France," Lecomte went on; "so far they have confined their illegalities to annoying one poor gendarme."
"They threw one into the Seine," commented the chief.
"And two of the rascals nearly lost their lives getting him out," chuckled Lecomte; "we gave them three days' detention and fined them each a hundred francs for that."
"Nothing more?"
"Nothing more—their 'crimes' have never got beyond opéra bouffe."
Still the chief was not satisfied.
"I think we will put a period to their folly," he said. "I understand students, and know something of the emulating spirit of youth. There is a member—Willetts?"
Lecomte nodded.
"This Willetts," said the chief slowly, "is something of an artist; he shares lodgings with another youth, Comstock Bell, an American."
"He shared," corrected the other. "Mr Bell is a rich man, and gratifies his whims; he is also a fastidious man—and Mr Willetts drinks."
"So they have parted?" commented Trebolino, tapping his teeth with his ring. "I did not hear that; all that I heard was that they were conspiring together to give us an unpleasant surprise. You understand, my dear friend? No gendarme baiting, no smashing of municipal clocks, but crime, men's crime."
He rose abruptly.
"It is time we stopped this amusement—parbleu! The Quartier must find other diversion. I like my little students, they are bon garçon, but they must be naughty without being nasty. See to that, dear friend."
Lecomte left the bureau with an inward smile, for he was a good friend of the students, dined with them at times and was a welcome figure in the ateliers.
That night after he had left the bureau he made his way to the Café of the Savages—a happy piece of prophetic nomenclature, he thought, for here the wilder spirits of the Latin Quarter congregated for dinner.
"Welcome, M. le procureur!" they greeted him.
Somebody made place for him at the big table in the inner salon. A handsome youth with a sweep of his hand cleared a space at the table.
Lecomte looked at the boy with more than usual interest. He was tall, fair, athletic, with big grey eyes that sparkled now with good nature.
"You have come in time, my policeman," he said gravely, "to hear a fascinating discourse on the propriety of anarchism—our friend," he jerked his head to a wild-haired French youth with an untidy beard —"our friend was remarking as you entered that the assassination of a policeman is justified by the divine Aristotle."
"I am of the Stoics," said Lecomte, "what would you?"
"Anarchy," said the bearded youth fiercely, "is the real order, the true law—"
"And you have pink eyes and a green nose," said the young chief of the police inconsequently, as he poured himself a glass of wine.
"I am prepared to debate that," said the other, when the laughter which inconsequence invariably provokes had died down, "my friend Willetts—" he indicated a drowsy youth with a peaked white face, "my friend Willetts"—he proceeded to illustrate his argument on anarchy by drawing upon the experiences of his companion.
"Your friend also, M. Bell?" asked the policeman, lowering his voice.
The tall man raised his eyebrows.
"Why?" he asked coldly.
M. Lecomte shrugged his shoulders.
"We learn things," he said vaguely, "especially concerning your 'Crime Club.'"
A look of anxiety came into Comstock Bell's eyes.
"That was a folly—" he began, then stopped short, and no effort of Lecomte could induce him to reopen the subject.
Only once did the famous "Cercle de Crime" arise in conversation.
A laughing question put by one of the students cut into the conversation and he shook his head reprovingly.
"No—he did not die. It takes worse than a ducking to kill a member of the municipal police—which reminds me, gentlemen, that I want you to put a period—to quote M. Trebolino—to this famous club of yours."
"Après!"
It was the shrill voice of the young man addressed as Willetts that spoke. He had seemed to be dozing, taking little or no interest in the proceedings.
Lecomte, watching him, had marked the unhealthy pallor of his face, detected in the slight flush over the cheekbones, evidence of Willetts' failing.
He had suddenly awakened from his somnolent mood. His eyes were wide open and bright.
"Après, Messieurs!" he said exultantly, "you shall shut down our little circle, but it shall justify its name, its aspirations, and its worthy members."
Lecomte thought that Comstock Bell looked pale and his face a little drawn as the drunkard went on.
"Here is Mr Bell," Willetts made an extravagant little bow to the other and would have fallen over the table, but the young man with anarchistic tendencies put out his hand and saved him.
"Mr Bell," Willetts went on, "is the great American, a capitalist, and until recently my honoured companion in crime. But we have disagreed. Mr Bell is too nice," there was a sneer in his laugh, "bourgeoise, by Bacchus! Unresponsive to the joie de vivre, which is every good student's peculiar heritage. Moreover, a poltroon!"
He spat the word along the table; in his cups Willetts was a vicious brute, as all there knew.
Comstock Bell said nothing, eyeing the other steadily.
"We—" Willetts was going on, when a man came into the café, and searching the faces of the diners discerned Lecomte.
"One moment, gentlemen," said the policeman, and rose to meet the newcomer. They conversed together in low tones. They saw Lecomte frown, heard his startled exclamation and saw him half turn. He continued talking, still in the same low tone, then he came back to the table.
"Gentlemen," he said, and his voice had a hard ring, "this afternoon a fifty-pound English banknote was changed at Cook's in the Place de l'Opéra—that note was a forgery."
There was a dead silence.
"It was cashed by a student and on the back in pencil was written 'C de C'—that is no joke, and I shall ask the gentleman who was responsible to attend the bureau of the Chief of the Police tomorrow morning."
* * * * *
No one attended M. Trebolino's office on the following day. Willetts was called to London that same night; Comstock Bell left by the same train.
M. Lecomte saw them leave, though neither knew this. Three days later he received a £50 Bank of England note, with no name or address attached, but a typewritten note which said, "Make reparation to Messrs Cook."
M. Lecomte reported the matter to his chief and Trebolino nodded.
"It is the best there should be no scandal."
He put the forged note into his private cabinet and eventually forgot all about it.
Many years after the great detective was shot dead whilst attempting to arrest an anarchist; and his successor, searching his cabinet, came upon a £50 note, obviously forged.
"I will send this to the Bank of England," he said, and Lecomte, who could have explained the circumstances under which the note came into Trebolino's possession, was away in Lyons.
