Читать книгу The Mélamare Mystery - Морис Леблан - Страница 7

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THE meeting of the clans was fixed for eleven o’clock in Régine Aubry’s boudoir. When Van Houben got there, he found d’Enneris making himself thoroughly at home, indulging in airy badinage with the actress and Arlette Mazolle. All three seemed highly amused. It was hard to believe that Arlette, bubbling over with high spirits, even if a trifle tired, was the same girl who had spent such hours of anguish only the previous night. Her eyes were fixed on d’Enneris. Like Régine, she hung on his words, laughing merrily at his lighthearted wit.

Van Houben, thoroughly upset by the loss of his diamonds, and seeing life as one great tragedy, was moved to furious ejaculation.

“Ha, ha! Laugh, damn you! Funny, isn’t it?”

“Well, really,” said d’Enneris mildly, “all is not lost. On the whole, everything’s turned out remarkably well.”

“Huh!” snorted Van Houben. “Easy to see it’s not your diamonds that have vanished into thin air. As for mademoiselle here, her little adventure’s been written up in all the papers. Lovely! Columns of free publicity! Oh, I’m the only one that’s going to lose on the deal. Of course, you”—he turned to Arlette—“are looking all washed out—you’ve lost the roses out of your cheeks, which means, I suppose, that your rouge was not all the chemist cracked it up to be....”

“Don’t take any notice of him, Arlette,” counselled Régine. “Van Houben has no education and less manners.”

“Shall I tell you who has plenty of both, my girl?” snarled Van Houben.

“Oh, please,” cooed Régine.

“Well, last night I surprised your precious d’Enneris on his knees beside mademoiselle, experimenting with his patent cure-all treatment which proved such a splendid pick-me-up in your own case a little while ago!”

“I know. They’ve just been telling me.”

“And aren’t you jealous?”

Régine threw back her head and laughed heartily.

“Do you mean to tell me d’Enneris never made love to you?”

“Bet your life!” Régine was amusedly emphatic. “D’Enneris has a unique method which it’s his positive duty to demonstrate!”

“Or his pleasure?”

“Oh well, he can’t help it if they coincide!”

Van Houben waxed lugubrious.

“D’Enneris has all the luck,” he grumbled. “He can twist you women round his little finger.”

“Men just the same,” Régine said. “You may not like him, but you pitch on him as the only hope of getting back your diamonds.”

“Oh, that was because Béchoux wasn’t there. But now Béchoux is back——”

“Now Béchoux is back?” echoed Jean d’Enneris interrogatively.

“Well, my young friend, I shall deny myself the pleasure of your kind advice.”

“Don’t forget you asked me for it in the first instance!”

“Fact is,” admitted Van Houben, “you have an inexplicable and undue influence over myself, over Régine, over every one with whom you come in contact. And I for one shall be only too happy to get free of it in future. And since Béchoux——”

Van Houben’s words died on his lips. Turning, he beheld on the threshold Chief Inspector Béchoux.

“Here you are then, Inspector!”

“Been here a minute,” said Béchoux, bowing to Régine Aubry. “The door was ajar.”

“You heard our conversation?” Béchoux nodded. “What do you think of my decision in the matter?”

Chief Inspector Béchoux preserved a fixed scowl and a definitely hostile manner. He stared at Jean d’Enneris as he had done the night before, and pronounced emphatically:

“Monsieur Van Houben, although in my absence the matter of your diamonds was entrusted to one of my colleagues, it was an absolute certainty that I should be called in on the case. I have, as a matter of fact, been asked to make inquiries at the home of Mademoiselle Mazolle. But I must warn you, in no uncertain terms, that under no consideration whatever will I consent to the open or clandestine collaboration of any one of your friends!”

“Well, you’ve made that clear,” said Jean d’Enneris, laughing.

“As clear as possible.”

D’Enneris, placid as ever, took no pains to conceal his astonishment.

“Tut, tut, Monsieur Béchoux! Anyone would think you didn’t love me!”

“You’ve said it,” was the curt rejoinder.

“Alas!” said d’Enneris, rising to open the window, and casting a suicidal leg across the balcony. “If Béchoux doesn’t love me, then only death remains!”

Chief Inspector Béchoux came up to him, and ground out, in his face:

“Are you quite sure, monsieur, that we haven’t met before?”

“Why, yes,” cried d’Enneris gladly. “How nice of you to remember! It was twenty-three years ago in the Champs Elysées. We were bowling hoops together—I tripped you up and you never forgave me. Ah, I see it all. Van Houben, old sport, Monsieur Béchoux is right. You’re free to act as you please while I get on with the job. We couldn’t possibly collaborate. You have my permission to go.”

“Your permission to go?” said Van Houben.

“Well, my good man, here we are at Régine Aubry’s. I asked you to come. As we can’t agree, I ask you to go! So farewell, adios, step on the gas!”

He flung himself on the sofa between the two girls and took Arlette’s hands in his.

“Arlette, my dear, since you are quite recovered, suppose you waste no more time. Tell me in detail just what happened to you last night. Don’t leave out anything, however unimportant it seems to you.

“And don’t bother about those two blighters. Relatively they are not there. They have gone far, far away. Tell on, my sweet Arlette.”

Arlette, pink with confusion, began her artless narrative. Van Houben and Béchoux, who wanted the valuable information contained therein, seemed rooted to the soil like a couple of waxworks.

D’Enneris listened in absolute silence. Twice, however, he caught her up with:

“Say that again, Arlette. I was following up a line of thought and didn’t hear what you said. Go on, now——”

She went on, speaking only for him and taking no more notice of the other two than if they had not been there. From time to time Régine chimed agreement.

“That’s right ... a flight of six steps.... Yes, a hall flagged in black and white, like a chessboard ... and the salon on the first floor, opposite as you came up....”

When Arlette had done, d’Enneris strode up and down the room, hands clasped behind. He proceeded to glue his forehead against the window, and stood thus a long while in reflection. Then he gritted, between clenched teeth:

“Complicated ... very complicated.... Still, we can but try.... I see glimmerings ... faint glimmerings at the end of the tunnel....”

He resumed his seat on the sofa.

“Look here,” he said to the two girls, “when you get two adventures so strikingly parallel, with the same procedure and protagonists—for it was undoubtedly the same pair of criminals—then you’ve got to see where your two adventures differ from each other, and when you’ve got that clear you must stick to it till you’ve deduced everything possible. Now, thinking it over from every angle, the important point seems to me to lie in the different motives prompting your abduction, Régine, and yours, Arlette.”

He broke off to laugh.

“What I’ve doped out looks like nothing at all—absolutely obvious—but I’m telling you it’s pretty good! It clears the ground a lot. In your case, Régine, there’s absolutely no doubt that you were carried off because of those diamonds that our friend Van Houben is even now bewailing. There’s no disputing that, and I’m sure Monsieur Béchoux himself, if he were here, would agree with me.”

Monsieur Béchoux uttered not a word, hanging on the words of d’Enneris, who now turned to his other young friend.

“In your case, peaches, what was the motive for carrying you off? Your face is your fortune, just about, isn’t it?”

Arlette blushed pleasedly and spread out empty hands.

“Exactly,” said d’Enneris. “That knocks any idea of theft right out of court, and the only motives we have to consider are love or revenge or some such emotion which would account for——Tell me, Arlette, if you don’t mind my asking, have you ever been in love?”

“I don’t think so,” was the reply.

“Has anyone been in love with you?”

“I don’t know,” coyly.

“But you’ve had young men keen on you, surely—come now, what about Pierre and Philippe——”

“Oh no,” came the quick, ingenuous protest. “It was Octave and Jacques!”

“And were they good sorts, these two? I mean, they wouldn’t have been mixed up in a shady deal like this?”

“Certainly not,” maintained Arlette, staunch in defence of absent swains.

“Then——” began d’Enneris, and stopped short.

“Then what?”

Bending over her, he looked full into those wide, smoky eyes, and when he spoke it was with almost hypnotic, soft insistence:

“Think hard, Arlette. I don’t want you to try and remember all that has ever happened to you. But I want you to try to remember things which made no very deep impression on you at the time, things buried in your subconscious mind. That’s the hidden treasure I’m after. Can’t you dig up something rather out of the way, something different?”

Arlette smiled.

“I’m afraid I can’t,” she said. “There’s nothing like that in my life.”

“There must be. This kidnapping can’t have happened out of a clear sky. There must have been some kind of prelude, something with which you came in contact unconsciously.... Think hard.”

Arlette was making a great effort. She forced herself to recall all sorts of trivialities from the depths of memory. Once or twice, she came out with some detail in her past life, but each time Jean d’Enneris cut her short.

“It’s not that,” he said, almost petulantly. “Dig deeper, if you can.... Have you ever felt some one was shadowing you? Have you ever felt a vague premonition of dread, as if on the threshold of some mystery? I’m not talking of actual danger, but of those strange psychic warnings that make one suddenly uneasy and expectant, like the calm before a thunderstorm.”

Arlette’s expression changed suddenly. Her eyes darkened and seemed fixed on a point in time. D’Enneris exclaimed:

“That’s got it! Fine! What a shame Béchoux and Van Houben aren’t with us.... Come on, out with it, Arlette.”

With thoughtful precision, she began:

“There was once a gentleman ...”

Jean d’Enneris, overjoyed at this opening, snatched her up from the sofa and began to whirl her round the room.

“Splendid! Begins just like a fairy story. There was once ... You know, you’re frightfully attractive, Arlette, my child. And what became of your gentleman?”

They had gone right round the room and were back at the sofa. With a complete lack of confusion or self-consciousness, Arlette sat down again and went on, speaking rather slowly:

“This gentleman and his sister came to Chernitz’ one afternoon six months ago. We had a lot of people there for the dress show. I didn’t notice him, but one of my friends said: ‘You’ve got off, Arlette, with a priceless man, who couldn’t take his eyes off you. The directrice says he’s all taken up with social work. Aren’t you in luck, seeing you’re after money?’ ”

“After money, are you?” interrupted d’Enneris.

“Oh, that’s just my friends’ fun,” said Arlette. “They rag me because I want to have a benevolent fund for the atelier, and a fund for dots, and all sorts of mad ideas. Well, when I left work an hour later, I found a tall gentleman waiting for me. When he started following me, I thought perhaps there was something coming. But at my métro station, he stopped dead. The next day, the same thing happened. He kept some way behind me, probably thinking I didn’t see him. So I purposely walked right on to the third, and then to the fourth station. But I was thoroughly sold, for at the end of a week he disappeared. And then, a few days later, one evening ...”

“One evening? ...”

Arlette’s voice grew mysterious.

“Well, some evenings after I’ve cleared dinner I leave Mother and go to see a friend of mine who lives at the top of Montmartre. Before I get there, I have to go along a dark, narrow little street—almost a passage. It’s always deserted when I come back at eleven. And in that street, three times running, I spotted a shadow lurking against a courtyard door. The first and second times the shadow didn’t stir. But the third time it stepped out and tried to bar my way. I screamed, and bolted. The shadow didn’t come after me. Ever since I’ve kept away from that street. That’s all there is to tell.”

She subsided. Her story did not seem to have interested Béchoux and Van Houben, but d’Enneris asked her:

“Why did you tell us those two little episodes together? Do you yourself see any connection between them?”

Arlette nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ve always thought, myself, that the man who jumped out on me was the same as the gentleman who followed me before.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I was able to see, that third evening at Montmartre, that the man in the shadow was wearing light spats, or cloth-top boots.”

“Like the gentleman of the boulevards?” exclaimed d’Enneris, in some excitement.

Again Arlette nodded.

Van Houben and Béchoux were stupefied. Régine, greatly excited, asked the girl:

“But don’t you remember, Arlette, the man who carried me off also wore light spats?”

“Why, so he did,” said Arlette. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“And your man, too, Arlette ... the man yesterday, who called himself Doctor Bricou....”

“Why, yes,” said the girl. “But I hadn’t put two and two together ... it’s only this moment that I’ve remembered all that I’ve been telling you.”

Van Houben was beaming now. He came over and kissed Arlette’s hand.

“Mademoiselle, we have made great progress, thanks to you, and are much nearer getting back my diamonds.”

“What, you’ve come back, Van Houben? Arlette, one more effort, please, my dear. You haven’t mentioned the name of your gentleman. Do you know it?”

“I do.”

“And he is——?”

“The Comte de Mélamare.”

Régine and Van Houben both started violently. Jean controlled a movement of surprise. Béchoux shrugged his shoulders, and Van Houben, with a sudden revulsion of feeling towards Arlette, exclaimed:

“But that’s absurd! Comte Adrien de Mélamare. ... But I know the man! I’ve sat next to him on charity committees. He’s perfectly all right—a fellow I should be proud to shake hands with. You needn’t tell me the Comte de Mélamare stole my diamonds!”

“But I never said he did,” cried poor Arlette. “I only gave his name in answer to a question.”

“Arlette’s perfectly right,” said Régine. “She is asked a question and answers it. But it’s obvious the Comte de Mélamare, in view of his reputation and that of his sister, cannot be the man who followed you in the street, nor the man who carried us both off.”

“Does he wear light spats?” asked Jean d’Enneris.

“I really don’t know ... yes, I think he does ... sometimes....”

“Almost always,” said Van Houben sharply.

This confirmation was followed by silence. Then Van Houben spoke again: “There must be some misunderstanding. I can only repeat that the Comte de Mélamare is a pukka gentleman.”

“Let’s go and see him,” was d’Enneris’ bright suggestion. “Van Houben, haven’t you a friend in the police, the noble Béchoux? He can get us in all right.”

Béchoux registered annoyance.

“So you think you can call on people like that, without any kind of inquiry or warrant, on the strength of idiotic stories? Yes, I said idiotic and I mean it. All that I’ve heard during the last half-hour strikes me as being the height of idiocy.”

D’Enneris was murmuring:

“To think I bowled my hoop with such an abject goop! Tut, tut!”

He turned to Régine.

“My dear,” he said, “would you be so good as to look in the telephone book and ring up Comte Adrien de Mélamare? We’ll manage without the noble Béchoux.”

He rose, and a moment later Régine handed him the instrument.

“Hullo,” he said. “Is that the Comte de Mélamare’s house? This is Baron d’Enneris speaking. ... Oh, is that Monsieur le Comte de Mélamare? Excuse me, monsieur, I’m so sorry to bother you, but I saw in a paper a few weeks ago an advertisement about some things you had had stolen—the knob off a pair of tongs, a silver candle sconce, a lock, and half a blue bell-cord ... all valueless objects which you had special reasons for wanting back.... Am I right, monsieur? ... Then, if you will be kind enough to see me, I think I can give you some useful information.... Two o’clock to-day? ... Very well.... Oh, one other thing—may I bring with me two ladies, whose part in the matter I will explain to you? Thank you, thank you, you’re really too kind.”

D’Enneris hung up, and said sweetly:

“If the noble Béchoux is there, that’ll show him we go where we please. Régine, did you notice in the telephone book where it is the Comte lives?”

“Thirteen, Rue d’Urfé.”

“That’s in the Faubourg Saint Germain, then.”

Régine was afire with curiosity.

“But where are those things you were talking about?”

“I’ve got them. I bought them on the day the advertisement appeared, for the modest sum of thirteen francs fifty.”

“And why didn’t you send them back to the Comte?”

“The name of Mélamare struck an odd chord in my mind. I somehow think that during the last century there was a Mélamare Case. And I haven’t had time to go into it. But we must go right ahead now. Régine and Arlette, we will join forces again at ten-past two in the Place du Palais Bourbon. The meeting is adjourned.”

It had been a profitable séance. In half an hour d’Enneris had cleared the ground and opened up a new avenue for exploration. A figure was looming up in the shadow, and the problem was assuming definite shape: where did the Comte de Mélamare come in?

Régine kept Arlette to lunch. D’Enneris left a few minutes after Van Houben and Béchoux, but fell in with them on the second-floor landing. Béchoux, thoroughly exasperated, had hold of Van Houben by his coat-lapel and was haranguing him.

“No, I can’t let you go any further along the path to destruction. I won’t have you victimized by an impostor. Do you know who that man is?”

D’Enneris came forward.

“You’re obviously talking about me, and the noble Béchoux wants to unload his mind on the subject.” He produced a visiting-card. “Baron Jean d’Enneris, navigator,” he told Van Houben.

“Rot!” said Béchoux. “You’re no more Baron than you are d’Enneris, and no more d’Enneris than navigator.”

“Really, Monsieur Béchoux, your courtesy confounds me. And who am I, pray?”

“You’re Jim Barnett! Jim Barnett himself! ... It’s all very well to disguise yourself, and leave off the wig, and the old coat. I recognize you under your pose of man-about-town and sportsman. It’s you, all right! You are Jim Barnett of the Barnett Agency. Barnett with whom I worked on a dozen cases, and who tricked me every time. I’ve had enough, and it’s my duty to warn others. Monsieur Van Houben, you mustn’t let this fellow prey on you!”

Van Houben, horribly embarrassed, was watching Jean d’Enneris, who was peacefully lighting a cigarette.

“Is what Béchoux says true?” he asked nervously.

D’Enneris smiled.

“It may be ... I really know so little about it. My papers are all in order as Baron d’Enneris, but I believe I may also have a set in the name of Jim Barnett—he was my best friend, you see.”

“But what about your voyage round the world in a motor-boat? Did you really make it?”

“I may have done. I’m rather vague about it all. What’s it matter to you, anyway? For you the one essential is to get back your diamonds. Now if I should be this extraordinary Jim Barnett, as your policeman friend thinks, then that’s the best possible guarantee that I shall be successful, Van Houben.”

“The best possible guarantee that you will be robbed, Monsieur Van Houben,” persisted Béchoux. “Oh, he’ll succeed all right. Each time we worked together, he managed to unravel the case, and bring the guilty party to book or recover the stolen property. But each time he kept back a part or the whole of such property. He’ll find your diamonds, but he’ll walk off with them under your nose, and you’ll never see them more. He’s got you in his toils, and you can’t escape. Do you really think he’ll work in your interests? He’s out for himself. Barnett or d’Enneris, gentleman or detective, navigator or crook, he plays his own hand. If you let him join in the search, good-bye to your diamonds, monsieur.”

“No, no,” protested Van Houben. “If that’s the case, we’ll go no further. If I’m going to get my diamonds back only to have them pinched again, good morning! You mind your own business, d’Enneris, and I’ll mind mine.”

D’Enneris burst out laughing.

“Trouble is, your business, for the moment, interests me more than my own.”

“I forbid you!”

“What do you forbid me? Anyone can get busy on those diamonds. They’re lost; I’ve as much right as anyone else to look for them. And, anyhow, I’m afraid I can’t resist danger. I’m thrilled to the marrow by the whole affair. The women in the case are delectable. Régine, Arlette! Charming creatures.... I tell you, old chap, I shan’t give up this show until I have got hold of your diamonds.”

“And I,” snarled Béchoux, beside himself, “shall not give up until I have jailed you, Jim Barnett.”

“Jim Barnett? He’s dead. Alas, my poor brother. Good-bye, my friends, and good luck. Who knows? We may meet again ere long.”

And d’Enneris, cigarette in mouth, went off with a hop, skip and a jump.

.........

Arlette and Régine were looking pale when they got out of the car in the quiet little Place du Palais Bourbon where d’Enneris awaited them.

“Now do tell us, d’Enneris,” said Régine, “don’t you really believe it was the Comte de Mélamare who carried us off?”

“What makes you think that, Régine?”

“I don’t know ... intuition perhaps. I’m rather scared. And Arlette feels just the same, don’t you, Arlette?”

“Yes. My heart’s in my boots.”

“Well,” said Jean. “What about it? Even if he is the man, he can’t eat you.”

They were near the Rue d’Urfé, a street of old eighteenth-century houses, bearing historic names. Hôtel de la Rocheferté, Hôtel d’Ourmes ... all much alike, with melancholy façades, low first floors, heavy carriage gates. The houses themselves stood back behind their ill-paved courtyards. The Hôtel de Mélamare was the same as the rest.

Just as d’Enneris was about to ring the bell, a taxi drove up and out of it sprang Van Houben and Béchoux, both pretty sheepfaced, but proportionately overbearing.

D’Enneris folded his arms and gazed upon them, a Napoléon of calm wrath.

“Well, really,” he said, “of all the cheek. An hour ago those two blighters thought drowning too good for me, and here they are on our tracks!”

He turned his back on them and rang the bell. A moment later a small door cut in the big one was opened by a manservant in chestnut livery—a feeble, tottering ancient. D’Enneris gave his name and was told:

“Monsieur le comte is expecting monsieur. If monsieur will step this way ...”

He pointed out on the other side of the courtyard the central steps, sheltered by an awning. Régine’s heart began to thump alarmingly.

“Six steps ... it’s a flight of six steps,” she cried.

And Arlette echoed her in desolate accents:

“Six steps ... the same steps ... the same courtyard.... Is it possible? ... It was here, in this place....”