Trent's Own Case

by E. C. Bentley

  ‘Here goes,’ he said to himself, ‘for the Hotel of the Little Universe. And there is Gargantua himself to welcome me! What more could the god of travellers have done for me?’

  Gargantua had, in fact, appeared at the door in the shape of an enormous man wearing a cook’s cap. His face was round and red and merry, and the leather belt around his middle would have girt two men of average corpulence.

  Trent, taking off his hat, addressed this being courteously in the being’s own language. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘I have come from across the sea to greet you in the name of the Curé de Meudon. For surely you are a Tourangeau of the country of Rabelais.’ As he spoke, he pointed to the notice ‘Vins de Touraine.’

  Gargantua was quite unmoved by the extravagance of this greeting. With a gesture of his great arms he bade Trent enter, saying simply, ‘Welcome. Monsieur is right, I am of Chinon. We have good wine.’

  The Hotel of the Little Universe and of the Chimera was such an inn as wise men hope to find at the end of the world. Its rooms were long and low, shaped by an eccentric magician with a sense of humour and a taste for complicated geometry. Here and there the darkness of old oak was lightened by the gleam of burnished copper.

  Trent found himself in a room half dining-room, half café. A tall fair woman with handsome impassive features and dark eyes was sitting behind the caisse. Trent had resolved that for that night at any rate he would be ‘lodged on foot’ at this fantastic inn, and when he made his intention known, the lady, whom Gargantua addressed as Louise, laid aside her knitting and led him up a crazy zigzag staircase to the chief bedroom. This was a chamber with a matrimonial four-poster, an uneven floor and walls broken by a variety of unexpected bulges and angles. The air was stuffy, but pleasantly burdened with the scent of pot-pourri. He opened the window and looked out into a wilderness of trees and shrubs, surrounding a grey villa that must have been gay and smiling in the days of the Pompadour, though now in the abandonment of its shuttered windows it looked desolate enough.

  ‘Tiens!’ exclaimed Trent, ‘is that the Pavillon de l’Ecstase?’

  There was no reply. Surprised at the silence, he turned round to find Louise already leaving the room, forgetful of the busy politeness with which she had dwelt upon the qualities of her best bedchamber. Had she made this sudden retreat to avoid his question? He repeated it as he followed her down the headlong stairs, and she mumbled something that sounded like ‘Mais oui, Monsieur.’ She made it clear that the Pavillon de l’Ecstase was not a subject that she intended to discuss. Her attention was absorbed first in sending the maid to prepare Trent’s room for his occupation, then in despatching the boot-boy to bring his bag from the station consigne.

  Trent fell into talk with Gargantua in the café. It soon appeared that his name in this incarnation was Alphonse Legros, known to his intimates as ‘Le Joufflu’ from his cherubic cheeks. His wife was a Lorrainer and responsible for the Quetsch, the liqueur made from her father’s plums. Trent called for a Pernod, and had no difficulty in persuading his host to take thought for the good of the house.

  ‘Welcome to the Hotel of the Little Universe,’ said Gargantua, raising his glass, when a merry, black-eyed maid had busied herself about them.

  Trent banished for the moment his natural curiosity about the oddly-named Pavillon, and his deeper concern with the events that had brought him to Dieppe. He addressed himself to the immediate and pleasing mystery of the name of this inn, the Hotel of the Little Universe and of the Chimera. Certainly the Chimera—a fabulous mongrel of lion, goat and dragon, if Trent remembered rightly—might reasonably adorn the escutcheon of some noble family; and the name, no doubt, was taken from that unidentifiable monster in weathered stone which stood above the gateway of the neighbouring château. But the Petit Univers! On the sign, he recalled, these words were painted in above ‘de la Chimère’ as though they were a later addition. Gargantua could never have thought for himself of anything so philosophically satisfying and cosy.

  ‘Monsieur Garg …,’ he began, ‘I mean Monsieur Legros, your very good health; and would you mind telling me, in the name of Rabelais and all other livers of the good life, what fly had bitten you when you named your inn the Little Universe?’

  Gargantua scratched his head. ‘It was an idea,’ he said. ‘An idea of Monsieur le Comte. In the old times it was just the Hôtel de la Chimère, like the Impasse and like the Maison de la Chimère, the great house that belongs to the count. That was good enough for me and my father. But one day—perhaps it was five years ago, or seven … when was it, Louise?’

  Louise was back behind the caisse, silent and inscrutable, her knitting-needles flying with incredible speed.

  ‘It was the year of the great storm,’ she said calmly, ‘when your brother’s vintage was ruined by the hail.’

  Gargantua nodded. ‘That was it. Not a drop of decent wine did they make on the Loire that year. Happily the next year made up for it. I still have some bottles of Chinon and Rochecorbon of that year behind the faggots. It was a good year both for red and white. Perhaps Monsieur will like to taste them.’

  Monsieur certainly would, but for the moment his interest was monopolized by the Little Universe.

  With an effort Gargantua resumed his tale.

  ‘One day in 19— … now was it in the spring or summer?’

  Trent mildly suggested that perhaps it didn’t matter.

  ‘Well, anyhow, Monsieur le Comte came to me and said “Eh, le Joufflu”—it is like that he calls me—“I am going to diminish your rent.” I was all taken aback; not but what it had been hard enough to make both ends meet, what with the dearness of life and the taxes. Oui, Monsieur le Comte est gentil, mais il a des idées, quoi?’

  Gargantua talked warily of the count’s ideas as though they were dangerous, almost disreputable, possessions.

  Trent waited patiently for Gargantua to unfold his story. He was clearly not a man to be hurried.

  ‘Enfin, he diminished the rent by ten per cent, and in return I called the hotel “The Little Universe and the Chimera”. Ça lui faisait plaisir. Voilà.’

  He evidently considered the problem to be adequately explained.

  ‘But,’ asked Trent, ‘did he not say why he had chosen so strange an appellation?’

  Gargantua shrugged his shoulders. ‘Monsieur le Comte a des idées,’ he repeated, as though that explained everything. ‘He had a fancy to eat in a hotel that was called the Hotel of the Little Universe. For, mark you, he often eats at that very table in the corner. It was something to do with a book he had written. Yes, Monsieur le Comte is not proud, though he has written books and one can see his name in the newspapers … Hélas!’

  Gargantua shook his head and sighed heavily.

  Madame Louise clucked sharply, like a hen, from behind the caisse, and laid her fingers on her lips, frowning heavily.

  Her husband pulled himself together. ‘Yes, the Comte d’Astalys is well known as a savant, a psycho … psychosophe … What is it, Louise?’

  ‘Psychologue,’ Louise said with pursed lips, ‘but it would be well for us to mind our own business. It is not for us to inquire into the ideas of Monsieur le Comte.’

  ‘No indeed,’ said Gargantua. ‘Least of all after the misfortune …’

  Louise cut him short with a serpentine hiss. ‘Alphonse, will you stop chattering and look after your customers? There is Monsieur Gautier waiting for you to receive him, and no one to take his hat and coat.’

  Gargantua rose, and Trent had perforce to possess his soul in patience. He was evidently on the track of some obscure affair—perhaps some scandal—about which these two good folk were, for their own reasons, unwilling to talk; and in this might lie the key to the secret of Fairman’s visit to the Impasse de la Chimère.

  The newcomer, Monsieur Gautier, a lean stooping man with a short beard and big spectacles over bloodshot eyes, the violet ribbon of the academic palms in his buttonhole, sat down on the banquette at the table next to Trent’
s. He was, it appeared, a neighbouring bookseller, therefore a man of learning, and peculiarly gifted, as it occurred suddenly to Gargantua, to explain to this inquisitive foreigner the count’s ‘ideas’ about the name of the hotel. So Trent and Monsieur Gautier were made acquainted with each other; they shook hands, and the bookseller was persuaded to have an apéritif with the visitor, who in his turn accepted a cigarette from the new friend whom Gargantua addressed as Hégésippe.

  Then Monsieur Gautier, after sipping his Amer Picon—that formidable brown drink of which, according to legend, a single undiluted drop will burn a neat round hole in a shirt cuff and on which the average Frenchman thrives nevertheless—tried to expound to Trent the count’s ideas of the Little Universe.

  ‘The Comte d’Astalys, whose family has owned the Maison de la Chimère and the houses of the Impasse for many generations—’

  ‘That includes the Pavillon de l’Ecstase?’ asked Trent.

  A curious expression passed over the bookseller’s face, and he raised his eyebrows fractionally.

  ‘Yes, but it used to be known as the Pavillon de la Chimère,’ he said shortly; and went on, as if in haste to pass over an awkward subject. ‘The Astalys family has always been famous for its love of curious learning. It was said the Count Balthazar, the alchemist and magician, first added the Chimera to their coat of arms. He made a great fortune, ascribed by less lucky people to the black art and to unholy intimacy with the devil, and built the Maison de la Chimère. The present count has followed the family tradition in his search for knowledge. The nature of consciousness has been his special interest. He studied hypnotism, and experimented with narcotic drugs.’

  Monsieur Gautier quite frankly disapproved of such researches. In his opinion the less a man knew about artificial paradises the better. He admitted, however, that the knowledge acquired by the count had proved of practical utility, since it had given him a high position in the poison-gas department of G.Q.G. during the war. Later the count had been fascinated by the new-born science of psychology, and had published certain monographs and treatises—bouquins, Monsieur Gautier called them—which had won for him a considerable reputation among experts.

  ‘Je ne suis pas psychologue pour deux sous,’ said the bookseller, emphasizing the remark with a wave of his long artistic hands, ‘I am of the old school, the generation which saw 1870. For me, this life, my country, notre belle France, are the only realities, and after death nothing. But M. le Comte has ideas. His researches have led him into strange paths, and sometimes he does me the honour to argue with me in my shop, when we turn over the pages of the latest books. Once he wrote a little book which he called L’Univers Particulier, and it was thence that he took the name of the Little Universe, that private world which each one of us inhabits, and from which he can never escape.’

  ‘Now I understand,’ Trent exclaimed. ‘I have read it. It was translated into English under the title of The Private Universe.’

  A dim recollection of that book had been in the background of his mind ever since he had seen the curious name of the hotel. He had thought it notable, in particular, for the charm of its author’s personality, which had found a haunting expression even through the dark glass of translation. The bookseller’s evident affection and respect for one with whose ideas he profoundly disagreed made it natural that the count should be just such a man. The book had been published by one of those firms that specialize in works dealing with magic, astrology and the occult in general. Not that there had been anything occult or magical in The Private Universe. It was no more than a development of Berkeley and Kant, maintaining that things in themselves we can never know, so that a man lives in a private universe of his own, of which he alone is the centre, though he may hold much of it in common with his fellows—the purpose of existence, then, must be the development of consciousness. The main part of the book was concerned with a series of experiments with narcotics and excitants which have the power of modifying consciousness either for good or ill, transforming the private universe into a hell of nightmares, or enriching and extending its content beyond this three-dimensional existence.

  ‘But,’ said Trent, ‘the author’s name … I have forgotten, but surely it was not d’Astalys?’

  ‘The count has never written under his own name. His pseudonym is Pierre Deffaux. It was a strange book, and to my mind a dangerous book. As I said, je n’aime pas les paradis artificiels. Alas! events have proved me right.’

  ‘I have not read the count’s book,’ said Gargantua suddenly and unnecessarily, just as Trent was about to ask the meaning of the bookseller’s last words. ‘I read only the Petit Parisien.’

  M. Gautier shook his head with a gentle smile and went on. ‘For the count, dreams were as real as life, and the idea has served him ill.’

  He stopped abruptly. Once again the fringe of a dangerous subject had been reached.

  Trent, to encourage him, repeated in a low voice the lines:

  ‘Le seul rêve intéresse;

  Vivre sans rêve, qu’est-ce?

  Moi, j’aime la Princesse

  Lointaine.’

  ‘It was no far-away princess,’ said M. Gautier sadly. ‘In fact, Monsieur’—and then again Trent was tantalized by an interruption. A tubby little man with a close-clipped beard and extraordinarily bright beady eyes bounced into the café with a boisterous ‘Bonjour Madame Louise; bonjour, le Joufflu; bonjour, la compagnie.’ He was evidently a chartered buffoon, for he made a great ceremony of kissing the hand of Madame, whose statuesque serenity was for an instant broken by a smile. The newcomer was hailed affectionately as Bibi by Le Joufflu and M. Gautier, and after the indispensable formality of hand-shaking all round had been accomplished, he was presented to Trent as Monsieur William Rond-de-Cuir.

  Trent, as he shook Bibi’s hand, thought his ears must have played him false. William, camouflaged as Viyiamm, is not uncommon among the French in preference to Guillaume; but Rond-de-Cuir was a most unlikely surname, being a contemptuous sobriquet for a quill-driver or clerk, derived from the circular leather cushion on which in France he is wont to sit. Bibi saw the puzzlement on Trent’s face, and produced from his pocket-book with a flourish of modest self-satisfaction an enormous card, bearing the inscription:

  WILLIAM ROND-DE-CUIR.

  (G. Dumanet.)

  Rédacteur à la Gazette de la Manche.

  Echotier et Courrieriste.

  Bibi leaned across the table, and with a fat stumpy forefinger, stained with ink and tobacco, directed Trent’s attention to ‘William.’

  ‘Viyiamm,’ he said, ‘Engleesh. It is like that—William Rond-de-Cuir—that I sign my echoes in the Gazette de la Manche; but to all the world in the Café of the Little Universe I am Bibi, just Bibi tout court.’

  Trent, as in honour bound, brought out in exchange the miserable little slip of pasteboard which serves an Englishman as visiting card. He was duly impressed by the importance of Bibi’s description. As ‘échotier,’ he would be responsible for the miscellaneous notes that brightened the front page of his paper. No doubt they would be humorous over such a signature, and Bibi clearly tried to live up to his job. For payment he would have the right to insert a number of blatant advertisements, scarcely disguised in the form of news, and would make what he could out of the advertisers. As ‘courriériste’ he probably produced a Paris letter, extracted and more or less cunningly worked up from the Paris papers. As rédacteur he would certainly be alive to the slightest breath of scandal in his town, and he was therefore just the man Trent needed.

  Trent, however, found himself forgotten. Bibi challenged the bookseller to a game of ‘trictrac,’ otherwise backgammon. This was an amusement which Trent had attempted only in his boyhood, and then with a minimum of enthusiasm; but in the Café of the Little Universe, the only athletic sport that Douglas Jerrold ever mastered was taken as seriously as cricket or football. Every evening—so Le Joufflu informed Trent in an undertone—Bibi and Hégésippe duelled despera
tely for the price of their drinks.

  A waiter, appearing suddenly in a condition which suggested that he had just risen from bed after sleeping in his dress clothes, produced the necessary apparatus. The antagonists plunged into their combat. For the moment it evidently would be mere waste of time to talk to either of the players; so Trent tried a new opening with Le Joufflu, who was watching the game with the eye of an aficionado at a bullfight.

  ‘Monsieur Legros,’ he said, ‘did you see one of my compatriots here the other day in the early morning—a rather thin, dark-haired fellow, about my own age? I believe he took some coffee here. He was ill, poor chap, and—’

  Trent stopped. This time, it was only too clear, he had really put the cat among the pigeons. Le Joufflu blew his nose violently, and gulped as if he had swallowed an emetic. M. Gautier, who had overheard the fateful question, kept on shaking the dice box as if eventually it might provide an answer. Bibi screwed round his head like a bird, so that his shiny little eyes might gimlet into Trent’s, and inquired casually: ‘Is Monsieur of the police—of the English police, bien entendu?’

  ‘Mais non, jamais de la vie.’

  ‘Then perhaps Monsieur is of the press?’

  ‘Well,’ Trent said cautiously, ‘I have not the honour of being échotier and courriériste, like M. Rond-de-Cuir.’ He bowed ceremoniously. ‘But it is true that I have written for the London papers—for the Record and the Sun.’

  Bibi beamed, and jumped up to shake hands with Trent all over again. ‘Mon cher confrère, I understand perfectly. I ought to have recognized your name. We in Dieppe know well your London newspapers. Believe me, I am entirely at your disposal for all the information you may need, and I am sure that I can count on your discretion—le secret professionel, quoi?’

  Trent replied that Bibi could rely on his honour and secrecy.

  ‘Mon cher confrère, I am sure of it … but excuse me an instant while I restore the confidence of my fat friend here.’