The Case of the Flying Donkey: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  “Something very satisfactory about a good fire and a bright light at this time of year,” remarked Travers. “And now good-bye till to-morrow. Meanwhile, I hope you get an idea for your canvas.”

  “Yes,” said Larne, and then was suddenly looking up. “Do you know, I think you’ve given me an idea?”

  “You don’t mean, for a picture?”

  “I think so,” Larne said. “There’s an idea if only I can fill it in.”

  “Do tell me,” Travers pleaded.

  Larne shook his head. “It’s too nebulous at the moment. Five o’clock to-morrow, and perhaps you’ll see things.”

  CHAPTER III

  SIX O’CLOCK IN THE RUE JOURDOISE

  THE Traverses had arranged a sensible, free-and-easy programme for that Paris holiday. Each had different ideas, tastes, and objects in view, and it was only when there was an overlapping that they would he in each other’s company. Travers particularly wanted a round of museums and antique shops, and—not unexpected in an unofficial expert of Scotland Yard—a certain amount of time with Gallois and a study of Sûreté methods. Bernice had shopping chiefly in mind, and there were those old friends of hers, and, of course, a theatre and a concert or two.

  The first overlapping was the Louvre, which Bernice shamelessly confessed she had never visited. A long morning was spent there, and it was almost one o’clock when they returned to the hotel. Lunch had just begun when Travers was called to the phone. Gallois, he imagined it was, and when he heard the strange voice he thought it was someone at the Sûreté, passing on a message.

  “It is M. Travers?”

  “Yes.”

  “You permit that I talk in French?”

  “Certainly,” said Travers in that language. “Speak slowly and distinctly, if you don’t mind. Who are you, by the way?”

  “It is M. Braque, who called on you in London. A friend of mine happened to tell me where you are staying in Paris.”

  “Yes?”

  “You are at liberty this afternoon?”

  “Before half-past four or after half-past five,” Travers told him. “What is it that you want?”

  “You can see me at my private apartment at six o’clock?”

  “Provided I am back at this hotel at half-past. That isn’t much good to you, is it?”

  “Monsieur, I shall detain you no more than five minutes,” Braque said. Or that was what Travers thought he said. The phone was none too distinct, and it was none too easy in any ease listening to French over the phone.

  “Do you mind repeating that? The phone isn’t very good.”

  “One moment,” Braque said, and there was the sound of the receiver being well shaken. Then: “Allo? That is better, is it not?”

  “Much better,” Travers said, though in fact Braque was audible and no more. “If I understood you, I am to see you at six o’clock ac your private address, and the interview will take no more than five minutes. What is it you want me to see?”

  “It is something private and very important, which you will very much wish to see.”

  “And how shall I find my way there?”

  “But, monsieur, it is so simple. You take a taxi, and voilà! The taxi can wait to take you back. There is a door which will be open and you mount the stairs and there is the other door.”

  “Very good,” Travers said. “At six o’clock, rue Jourdoise, seventeen, St. Sulpice.”

  He rang off and stood for a moment thoughtfully by the phone. What puzzled him was, who had told Braque the name of the hotel where he was staying, and at once he began to think back to that interview in the flat. Yes, he had mentioned that he would be coming by train and not by car, and he had mentioned the date. Maybe Braque had taken the trouble to watch the arrival of boat trains at the Gare du Nord, and if so he was playing a game that he evidently considered would be well worth the candle.

  “As soon as I get in that place of his this evening,” said Travers to himself, “I shall insist on his telling me exactly how he knew my present whereabouts. I shall make it a condition of good faith, as it were. After lunch I will mention the matter to Gallois.”

  “Well, was it your Inspector?” asked Bernice when he came back to the table.

  Travers, who had told her nothing of what he considered the dangerous side of the picture dealer, gave merely the facts, and as amusedly as he could.

  “But you said he wasn’t at all a nice man,” said Bernice.

  “Did I?” He laughed. “My dear, if honest men never had dealings with rascals, there’d be very little trade.”

  “Well, you must be careful,” she said. “One hears such dreadful tales of horrible places in Paris and people disappearing.”

  He laughed again. “Now you’re pulling my leg. I promise you I won’t let myself be kidnapped. You’re not going to get rid of me half as easily as all that. Besides, I may take Gallois round with me. He’s a fanatic where pictures are concerned.”

  “Then you can both come straight on here,” Bernice said. “You did tell him, didn’t you, that it didn’t matter about dressing?”

  Bernice left soon after lunch, and Travers at once rang Gallois.

  “It is you, my friend,” Gallois said. “You have some news?”

  “How did you know?”

  “If it is about the dinner, then you speak in a different voice. Our friend has asked you to come and see him, is it not?”

  “Yes,” Travers said. “He rang me about an hour ago, and I’ve arranged to go at six o’clock.”

  “Good. That is what you wish, is it not? At six o’clock you see our friend, and—voilà—the mystery is not a mystery.”

  “Yes,” said Travers lamely. “But I was wondering whether you’d like to come with me.”

  “Ah, my friend!” There was a world of regret in the voice. “Unhappily I am busy. Also our friend wishes it should be in confidence, is it not?” Then quickly: “You have not by chance a—what you call it?—an uneasiness? No?”

  “I don’t know that I’m any too happy about it,” Travers said frankly.

  “‘That, my friend, is foolish,” Gallois said reprovingly. “You have confidence in me? Yes? Then this afternoon you will go. There will be no danger, no blackmail. At half-past six I arrive at your hotel and you tell me everything. You have seen M. Larne?”

  “Yesterday afternoon, as I told you. He was very puzzled. I am seeing him again this afternoon at five o’clock. He says he is making some enquiries of his own.”

  “That is what you call, sensible. And you will ask a question of M. Larne? If by chance he sell a picture in Spain?”

  “A picture in Spain!” repeated the astonished Travers.

  “That is so. If you find it difficult, you will pretend you hear he sell a picture very valuable to someone in Spain. This evening you tell me what he says. M. Larne, he is well?”

  “Very well.”

  “I am glad,” Gallois said fervently. “Were I of more importance, I would arrange so that I too become a friend of so great a man. Perhaps some time, if he do not consider it too great a liberty, you will arrange.”

  “I’d be delighted.”

  “You are more than amiable,” Gallois said. “To know M. Larne would be the grand moment of my life. And now, my friend, that is all. A ton hôtel a dix-huit heures et demi.”

  Once more it was a puzzled Travers who stood by the phone. He had rung up Gallois knowing that all his problems would be solved at once, and every uneasiness dismissed. Now he felt, if anything, more uneasy than ever. Why had Gallois pretended that it was vital for him to know the precise minute of the call on Braque if he was going to take the whole thing as trivial and commonplace? Had he discovered something that had made him change his outlook? And what was that business about Larne’s having sold a picture to a Spanish client?

  Travers shook his head, and then all at once his fingers were fidgeting nervously with his glasses— a trick of his when at a mental loss or on the edge of some astonishing discovery. He wa
s glad he had not mentioned to Gallois that curious business of Braque’s knowing the hotel, and for this reason. It was probably Gallois himself who had given Braque that anonymous information.

  That was it, thought Travers. Gallois was more interested in Braque than he had cared to admit. He wanted that private interview to take place, and earlier than he had pretended, and he had therefore contrived to let Braque have the news that the Mr. Travers was staying at the Hotel Mirande. Rather theatrical that, on the part of Gallois, surely? And then Travers smiled. Surely the last epithets in the world to apply to a man of the devastating seriousness of Gallois, were ‘theatrical’ and ‘flamboyant.’ Artistic, that was the word, if not the mot juste, and was it not a Frenchman who had made the immortal remark that speech was given to us to conceal our thoughts?

  It was on the stroke of five when Travers arrived at the Villa Claire, and he told his taxi-man to wait. Larne himself opened the door.

  “My dear fellow,” he began. “I’m terribly sorry but I shan’t be able to spare more than a few minutes. But do come upstairs. My brother is away and I’m desperately busy.”

  “But would you rather I didn’t stay at all?” Travers said at once.

  “Perhaps I was exaggerating,” Larne told him. “Besides, there’s something I want to show you.”

  “But you’re going to work!” exclaimed Travers as soon as he clapped eyes on the studio.

  “That’s right,” Larne said. “Your mention of the light yesterday gave me an idea. There was something in my mind and what you said was an impetus. I’m painting that picture at once.”

  Travers stared. “But can one paint by artificial light?”

  Larne smiled. “How did Michaelangelo paint the roof of the Sistine Chapel? You know the Riccardi Palace at Florence? Benozzo Gozzoli worked by rushlight when he did those marvellous frescoes. And—from the sublime to the ridiculous—what about my own experiments in colour?”

  “You’re right, of course,” Travers said. “You must pardon a layman’s ignorance.”

  “And look at this,” Larne said.

  He switched on the lights and Travers saw he was using green daylight bulbs.

  “It certainly makes a difference,” he had to admit.

  Larne held his hand in the light for Travers to see the effect.

  “It takes out a lot of the colour, as you see, but it has the same relative effect on my palette as on the subject.”

  “A still-life,” Travers said. “But why the ancient chair?”

  Larne explained the picture. It might be called either the Tired One or the Lazy One, and it was to show a servant who had fallen asleep while preparing the vegetables for a meal. She might be painted vaguely, and the high lights would be the turnips, onions, cabbage, and the potatoes which were already in position, and, as Travers saw from the canvas, lightly sketched in.

  “I like the idea,” Travers said. “You feel you’re going to do something fine?”

  “I know it,” Larne said quietly. “I feel like a hungry man; a ravenous man, tripes rumbling, as Rabelais would say.” His face was the face of a dreamer, lighting with joy, and his hands were making vague gestures of pleasure in the air.

  Travers suddenly realized something. ‘‘But you have a model coming. I think I’ll be going—

  “No, no,” Larne said. “She isn’t due for five minutes yet.”

  “An oldish woman, is she?”

  “Oh, no,” Larne said, and smiled amusedly. “My idea is to get something—what shall I say?— something piquant, something ironic. I know what’s in my mind.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But the model—except as a symbolic background is unimportant.” His finger was making invisible lines on the canvas. “She creates a mass just there, and makes this balance. A curve like this, and this, and this.”

  He broke off with: “I expect I’m boring you, but the whole thing is this. I’ve told you the kind of man I am, and perhaps you know me just a little. What I get out of life is a series of ironic stimuluses. The donkey flies in his own way. When I rang up the Models’ Club I told them to send me someone young and presentable. When she wears that black dress and sits in that chair—little cocotte that she probably is—there will be an irony, will there not?” He broke off as if he thought he heard the taxi, then shook his head.

  “But I am forgetting. Have you any news about this man Braque?”

  “I’m seeing him at six o’clock to-night; in other words, in three-quarters on an hour’s time.”

  Larne’s eyes opened wide.

  “That’s sooner than you expected, isn’t it?”

  “Perhaps yes,” Travers said. “If I can get out of him why he’s ostensibly so interested in your pictures,you can be sure I will. What about yourself? Did you manage to find out anything about him?”

  “My brother made enquiries through an agent or two,” Larne said. “And he thinks that Braque is trying to impress people with my name so as to gain their confidence for some other scheme of his own. By the way, I went round to that shop in the Boulevard Bastide this morning. Braque was not there, hut I saw the other partner, Cointeau.” His lip drooped. “A little fat bourgeois who probably began life as a picture framer.”

  There was the toot of a taxi horn. Larne grimaced.

  “She arrives. Don’t move, my dear fellow, unless you’re in a hurry.”

  “I’d love to see the preliminaries,” Travers said. “If I ever write a book of reminiscences, this will be a big chapter.”

  Larne smiled reprovingly, and then was making his way down the stairs. Travers heard a woman’s voice and what sounded like quite a petulant argument, and then the taxi was heard moving off again. Another minute and the model was entering the room, followed by Larne. Her eyes dwelt for only a moment on Travers, but she cast a long, level look round that studio.

  “This is Elise Deschamps,” Larne said to Travers, with a wave for the curt introduction.

  She was a girl of rather more than the average height, handsome in a somewhat wary way, and with a look that was thoroughly self-possessed and, at the moment, distinctly petulant.

  “You are going to work by artificial light?” she demanded.

  “How else does one work at this hour?” Larne asked gently.

  “How long?”

  Larne shrugged his shoulders. “That I cannot say.”

  She shook her head annoyedly. “Already I have had two sittings, and except that they told me it was important, I would have refused.” She shook her head again. “One hour and no more.”

  Larne bowed with an ironic cringe. “As you wish, ma petite. But you are different from every model I have used. Most considered it an honour to come to the studio of I, Henri Larne.”

  Her mouth gaped. “You are Henri Larne!”

  “Yes.” Another cringe. “I am Henri Larne.”

  She smiled foolishly. Larne’s lip curled and his tone dramatically changed.

  “You are fatigued perhaps? Well, you do not even have to sit. It will be a posture of repose. I will explain all that, and then I paint for an hour maybe, or two hours, or three. When at last I say I am finished, even if it is not till midnight, then we ring for a taxi and you go.”

  He was now at the far door and drawing back the curtain, and he had picked the black dress from the chair as he passed.

  “You will dress here, and since you are fatigued, you will make some tea or chocolate for us both. After that we paint. Enter, if you please.”

  The curtain fell behind her, and he turned smilingly to Travers.

  “Everything ready, as you see. You will ring me to-morrow, or come and see me?”

  “One or the other,” Travers said. “It depends on what my wife is doing.” He smiled. “I rather think I shall come. I want to see the picture.”

  “Perhaps there will be little to see,” Larne said, but there was a confidence in his tone. “But you will not obtrude my name with this man Braque? I do not like him to think his antics disturb me. Also, I do not w
ant that kind of notoriety; I mean, if it is necessary to take some action.”

  “Trust me,” Travers said. “I shall be tactful enough.” His hand went out. “Good-bye, and good luck to the picture. Don’t bother to come down. I can find my way out, and my taxi’s waiting.”

  In the gathering dusk the river looked chilly and mournful and in the air was a mist that looked as if it might turn to a cold drizzle. As the taxi neared the Metro, Travers saw that it was not yet half-past five, and at a handy cafe he told the taxi-driver to stop. A note was handed over for the man to get himself a drink.

  “How long from here to the rue Jourdoise?”

  “That depends,” the man said, but didn’t add on what. “Five minutes, perhaps.”

  Over a Suze-citron, Travers began working out his approaches to Braque. Braque would begin the talking, but he would say: “I know nothing about you and you know nothing about me. It would put things on a much easier footing therefore if you told me the real reason why you are interested in the pictures of Henri Larne. If you refuse, then this interview is at an end.” Bluff, perhaps, that might not work. If it did not, then one could always shift ground.

  Then Travers remembered something that he had forgotten to do. In the excitement at the Villa Claire, he had not asked Larne about having sold a picture to a Spanish client as Gallois had specially asked. Still, the harm was not irreparable. One could always phone later, and it would be some sort of excuse to hear how the picture was progressing.

  Lights were twinkling everywhere, but they seemed mournful lights in the drizzle that was now-falling. Travers’s uneasiness returned. He had looked for the rue Jourdoise on the map and had gathered that it was a tiny backwater. Ill-lighted, he now thought, and in spite of his laughing at Bernice, he began to wonder if he had not been ill-advised. And he had quite a fairish sum of money on him.

  Then his eye caught the clock. Ten to six, and with the realization something of the uneasiness went. The small reckoning was paid and he slowly made his way to the taxi. For a mile it hugged the river-bank, then turned sharp left, and he knew they were nearing St. Sulpice. There was a sudden gloom as they crawled through a narrow way between tall houses, then the taxi turned sharp left again. It crawled again for a moment or two, then stopped at the pavement.