Charles, imperturbable as ever, went out to the passage.
“A comedy is about to play itself,” Gallois said to Travers. “But first we see this Elise Deschamps.”
He made a signal at the outer door and in a minute she was being brought into the room. There was nothing hysterical about her now, and her look was watchful and sullen.
Gallois motioned her to a seat and he himself sat with arms resting on the table. His look was that of a father who is forced at last to appeal to—and reprimand—the daughter who is near to breaking his heart.
“Why was it that you shrieked?” he said. “We do not bring you here to do you harm.”
There are many Englishmen who find it easier to follow the French of a woman than a man. Travers, who could get the gist of most conversations, found a quality in her voice, and—when she was excited— a speed that made her almost incomprehensible. He did gather that she had thought she was being kidnapped.
“But that is droll,” said Gallois amusedly. “You are twenty-seven and a woman. One admits that you are good-looking, but it is not for that people are kidnapped. It is for ransom, and one does not expect a model to be a mine of that kind of gold. You have been a model—how long?”
The words came in a torrent and it was a minute before he attempted to stem it.
“Une histoire vraiment tragique. Your father is an artist and be drinks himself to death. Your brother is an artist also and he does the same, and you are without money.” He shook his head mournfully. “And now tell me, if you please, how was it that you happened to go this evening to the studio of Henri Larne?”
Travers managed to gather that she came into the club and was informed that as she was the only one available of the type required, she would have to take on another sitting. She admitted she was less annoyed than she had made out, for she needed the money.
“But why should you need the money?” Gallois asked gently. “M. Braque ceases then to supply you?”
Her cheeks flared, and the words were spat out with an intensity of fury.
“Lui! Un vieux salaud, un m—”
“Silence!” Gallois too was glaring. Then he shrugged his shoulders apologetically. “Pardon, mais quand il est question des morts, on parle avec respect.”
“Dead!”
“Happily—or unhappily—yes. While you pose in that chair this afternoon at a quarter to six, he is being murdered.”
She went limp. For a moment Travers wondered if she were going to faint. Then she roused herself.
“Moi, je n’en sais rien.”
“But naturally you know nothing,” he assured her. “And there is no reason why you should feel any pity. M. Braque arranges for you to leave the rue Vagnolles, and to establish you in this apartment. That is so, is it not? And where do you think that he obtains the money tor this superb apartment?”
In a flash that look of malevolence was on her face again.
“He told me he had a fortune in his hands. He said he would be enormously rich.”
Gallois turned triumphantly to Travers. “At last, my friend, we arrive. And M. Braque, he tells you in what this fortune consists?”
But she knew no more. He had suddenly become generous with his money, and she had taken what he said for truth.
“And then came the disappointment,” said Gallois, as if it had been his own. “He shows you that apartment and behold—it is only his own! Four rooms, which he is also to share, in the rue Jourdoise! He makes love economically, our good Braque. You tell him so. You spit on his new furniture and you remain in the rue Vagnolles till he finds the flat which he promises.”
Her frightened eyes were never off his face, but his own were across the room as if he were talking to himself.
“It is not for me to arrange the affairs of others, but it desolates me to think that one like yourself should be prepared to domesticate herself with this Braque. It is strange even that you should associate with such a one at all.”
It had been his arranging, she said. It was only six months since she met him in a restaurant where she was dining with a mutual friend. As he was a picture dealer and she was hard-up, she showed him one of her brother’s pictures—the only one she had—and he promised to sell it. Then later he proposed other arrangements instead.
Gallois was shaking his head as he got to his feet.
“I understand. All the same, you had a grievance against him because of the flat. One less understanding than myself might have had suspicions that were serious. But I know that when he was murdered, you were in the studio of M. Larne.”
“But M. Larne, he also knows that I was not here.”
“Exactly.” He made a gesture of finality, then moved towards the door. “Now if you will be so good as to go downstairs, you shall be taken to the rue Vagnolles. To-morrow, perhaps, there are other things which I shall ask.”
There was still a look of fright on her face as she got to her feet. Gallois showed her to the top of the landing, then came quickly back.
“She is not without good looks—that one. But to the window, my friend,” he said. “There is, as I tell you, a comedy which is about to play itself.”
CHAPTER VI
GALLOIS CONCLUDES
GALLOIS had switched off the light and now he whisked back the curtain and gently raised the window. Before Travers could look out, there were curious sounds from the pavement below. An angry voice was demanding something. Another voice was joining in, and a third. Then Travers could see a sort of confused movement of men in the shadow beyond the light from the shop window and there was the shriek of a woman’s voice, and then the struggling group seemed to dissolve. A man was running and others after him. He was lost in the shadows again, then reappeared in the brief light of a distant street-lamp, and it seemed that he was outdistancing his pursuers. Nearer was the sound of a moving car.
“Descendons!” said Gallois, making for the door.
Travers emerged to find the pavement deserted. Gallois made for the gendarme who was still on guard at the shop door.
What is it? What happens?
Travers gathered that some pig had insulted the police and had ended by striking a certain Maximilien.
“And the woman? Where is she?”
She had just left in the car, the man said, and he had understood that it was by the Inspector’s own orders.
“Everything disarranges itself,” Gallois said exasperatedly. It seemed to Travers that he was about to speak more of his mind, but a car was drawing up. It was the police ambulance, and more men must have been about, for almost at once the body was brought down, and the doctor departed with it.
“All this is part of your comedy?” Travers asked dryly.
Gallois parted his arm. “Have patience, my friend, and you also will find it a comedy. Now we mount again and decide what it is best to do.”
The light had been left on in the living-room and he closed the window and drew the curtain. Almost at once there was a sound in the kitchen, then in the passage, and Charles was entering the room. He was breathing hard but his quick glance at Travers was one of friendly impudence.
“Everything went well?” demanded Gallois in French.
“Superbly,” said Charles impassively.
“She observed you well?”
“At close quarters,” Charles told him with the same impassiveness.
Gallois smiled sadly. “Why so gloomy, then? At your age I was never given a job half so romantic.”
A quick flicker of amusement passed across Charles’s face.
“And Cointeau?” Gallois said.
“That is arranged.”
“Then we go,” Gallois said. “And you go too. It will still be necessary, of course, for you to dissociate yourself from the police.”
Another quick flicker of amusement, and Charles was going. Gallois watched him as he went through the door. Travers was watching him too, for he had suddenly noticed a something which had vaguely interested him before. That b
rief smile on the face of Charles had given some singular resemblance to Gallois himself.
“You interest yourself also in that young man?”
Travers started, then smiled.
“What an uncanny aptitude you have for reading people’s thoughts.”
“But no,” Gallois told him modestly. “All the same, one interests one’s self in a pupil, and of this Charles I have hopes. Science marches, my friend, and it is the young who march with it. One day this little Charles becomes a someone. When I retire and devote myself to literature and art, there is someone who fills my shoes, as you say.” He shrugged his shoulders resignedly. “Meanwhile he remains the pupil.”
“And the player of comedies.”
“Precisely. You understand the plot of this comedy that we play?”
“Yes,” said Travers, “though I don’t know that I’d quite call it a comedy. I take it your men pretended to handle that model roughly. Charles was coming opportunely by and protested. There was a squabble and he knocked a man down, and bolted. To-morrow he’ll recognize her somewhere, and re-introduce himself. The rest—well, there we are.”
Gallois caught the irony of his tone.
“It is not with me myself that you are displeased?”
Travers smiled. “But I’m not displeased.”
“My friend, you deceive yourself,” Gallois told him sadly. “I study, as you know, the methods of your Scotland Yard, which are the most admirable in the world. But they are for the English criminals. Here one is different. One adapts one’s self to the methods of one’s own assassins. At the moment I am not Lautin Gallois. I am the fighter of assassins. But it is with the brain that I fight. If necessary I use other weapons also, but for the moment I am the artist. Everything depends on messieurs les assassins.”
“You’re right,” Travers said, and was glancing at the clock.
“Before ten o’clock you will be back at your hotel,” Gallois told him. “You would like to accompany me to the shop of M. Cointeau where we break the desolate news?”
“Most decidedly,” Travers said. “And don’t worry about me. I’m prepared to stay up all night.”
Gallois took his arm affectionately.
“My friend, do not speak as if it is I who confer the favours. Without you I arrive nowhere. This is an affair of the two of us. You observe everything with myself, and you employ the methods that are your own. Every facility that you need, it is yours.”
Then a look of consternation was coming over his face.
“But I forget. You pass a holiday here. You have affairs of your own.”
“My idea of a holiday is to find out the truth about Braque.”
“But madame your wife?”Gallois asked roguishly, and now it was in his face that Travers could see a queer resemblance to Charles. Then he smiled too.
“I expect that that also could arrange itself.”
“Telephone, then, at once to madame,” Gallois said, “and assure her that by ten o’clock you will have returned. I also have things to do, and then you and I will visit the shop of the admirable Cointeau.”
The Boulevard Bastide is inconspicuous enough, and the shop of the partners, Cointeau and Braque, was even more so, for it was the short side of its rectangle that faced the boulevard, with the longer one running back into the rue Gévrance.
There was a side door at which Gallois knocked. A light was visible at once and soon Cointeau himself was opening the door. He was a man of over sixty, short and inclined to stoutness. Gallois introduced himself and said he had bad news to report about Braque. There had been an accident.
“Entrez, messieurs,” Cointeau said calmly, and his hand went out to the switch that lighted the shop.
“You allow us to go up?” Gallois said. “We shall be more at our ease upstairs and we don’t wish to announce everything to all the world.”
The upstair room was a living-room that seemed to have admitted work much as the Arab of the fable admitted the camel. Pictures and frames were everywhere, and on the table was an unframed picture that Cointeau had evidently been cleaning. A smell of methylated spirits was in the air. Cointeau seemed a phlegmatic soul who had known sufficient of the kicks of fortune to be able to accept with equanimity any new disaster, but he was certainly startled enough at what Gallois had to tell.
“You yourself were here at a quarter to six?” Gallois asked suggestively.
Cointeau thought hard, then said he was in the shop. There had been a possible client with whom he had been talking business. He admitted he had never seen that client before and he did not know his name.
“You are married?”
“I am a widower these last six years,” Cointeau said. “My evenings, as you observe, I generally occupy with work.”
“And when did you last see your partner?”
“At nine o’clock this morning. He arrived here and at ten o’clock he said he had business. Since then I have not seen him. But, one moment. This afternoon he came in at about four o’clock. He said simply that he would see me later and then he went off again. Since then I’ve seen nothing of him.”
“Do you know what his business was?”
Cointeau said he had no idea. Braque had been very secretive of late.
“Of late?” Gallois said, and gave a quick look ac Travers. “But we had better begin at the beginning. Tell us, if you please, how it was you first became associated with Georges Braque.”
The history of the partnership was as follows. Cointeau had a small business in the rue des Vinaigriers, and ten years ago he became acquainted with Braque, who tried to sell him two of his own pictures. Out of that evolved the partnership. Braque put money into the concern which was moved to the Boulevard Bastide. Cointeau confessed he was a valuable partner. He made connections with the art schools, he knew infinitely more than his partner about painting, and it was he who began and managed a system whereby the firm’s pictures were exhibited at hotels and high-class restaurants, which drew their own commission on sales.
“Then you’ve made money,” said Gallois jocularly.
Cointreau said he didn’t know about that, but they had managed to buy the property, and they had survived the slump. Then about a year ago, Braque began to change. He said he had a scheme which he did not confide, whereby big money might be made, It took him away for periods varying from a day or two to a week, and then he confessed that what he had hoped was a gold-mine was after all not worth the candle.
“What he said first was ‘risk,’ and then when I demanded if it was something against the law, he excused himself. By ‘risk’ he said he meant risk of time and money, but I had the suspicion that he was involving himself with something else. That is why I was not surprised when you gentlemen came here to-night.”
Cointeau had not the least idea what it was that Braque was even likely to be engaged in, unless it was a deal in pictures. Then about six months ago, he said, Braque had yet another scheme which he assured his partner was a veritable gold-mine. Again he did not divulge what the scheme was, but again there were the long absences.
“But this afternoon,” said Cointeau, “something happened which I now prefer to relate. He came to the shop, as I told you, and announced that he would see me again later. I was annoyed and I said that all the work was on me, and we were losing business, and he was doing nothing. Then he felt in his pocket like this”—he made the motions of a man who hauls something from a hip-pocket—“and there is a bundle of notes, big as this. Thousands and thousands of francs there were, and then he laughed. ‘The gold-mine already commences to produce dividends,’ was what he said, and then he replaced the notes, and laughed again, and he was away and gone.”
“Two gold-mines,” said Gallois reflectively. “One was not worth, the risk, and the other commences already to produce dividends. But that gold-mine was also not worth the risk, if one is to he murdered and the dividends taken from one’s pocket. But tell me, Monsieur Cointeau, as the man of standing and probity that yo
u are. Did these travels of your partner ever lead him to Spain?”
Cointeau shrugged his broad shoulders and spread his pudgy hands in despair. He had no idea; no idea at all where his partner had spent his time.
“He took an interest in the great painters of, say, since the war?”
Cointeau explained regretfully that such things could scarcely interest the firm of Braque and Cointeau, who had not the available capital. They merely picked up the leavings of the big dealers, though more than once they had made lucky purchases and had unexpected windfalls.
“At the moment we have a sketch by Ingres, for which we ask forty thousand francs,” he said. “That costs us five hundred francs, but that is a windfall that occurs rarely.”
“You never had the good fortune to acquire a picture by Henri Larne?”
Cointeau smiled. “M’sicur I’Inspecteur amuses himself,” he said.
“All the same, you never heard him mention the great Larne?”
Cointeau shrugged his shoulders. “But he mentions every painter. When one sells pictures, naturally one talks of painters.”
“Naturally,” said Gallois placatingly. “And that flat of his in the rue Jourdoise, what does he do there?”
“He sleeps there.”
Gallois smiled bitterly. “But, of course, I didn’t think of that.”
He got to his feet. “For tonight, that is all. Tomorrow it will be necessary to examine any papers belonging to your late colleague.”
“Here?”
“But certainly.”
“I assure you there are no papers,” Cointeau said earnestly. “There are the accounts of the business, and that is all. Why should he leave here any papers concerning his private affairs?”
“Then why should you make difficulties if the law considers it necessary to make certain?” Gallois challenged him. “If it is the upsetting of your business in the morning that you wish to avoid, I am at your service. The documents shall be examined at once. You will excuse me for a minute?”
The Case of the Flying Donkey: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 7
