Monsieur Jonquelle

by Melville Davisson Post

  “With pleasure,” replied Monsieur Jonquelle. “You have said that the English criminal courts are stupid, and I have concurred in that opinion. Observe, Monsieur, the evidence of that stupidity. This criminal court could not understand how a knife blade four inches long could inflict a direct wound seven inches deep. They measured the knife blade and the wound, these English, and wrote it down impossible.… But you, Monsieur, who are Slav, and I who am Latin, would hardly arrive at this conclusion. For we would reflect that a knife blade four inches long, driven into the soft tissues of the body compressed together by the impact of a powerful blow might easily leave a wound measuring seven inches in length behind it—when that compression was released and the tissues relaxed. It is a fact, Monsieur, that the Service de la Sûreté has frequently demonstrated.”

  The man at the table was motionless, as in some indecision. He did not change. He remained only in a sort of dreadful immobility, and he seemed in this immobility to consider some desperate hazard. He was awakened by the two young men from the Bois de Boulogne, who now entered the drawing-room.

  “Monsieur,” said the voice of the Prefect of Police, “I feared that I might not be your equal in all directions, and I have asked these two agents of the Service to come up. They will also be useful as witnesses to the indenture.”

  Lord Valleys made no reply. He opened a drawer of the table, took out a pen and attached his signature to the deed—waited until the witnesses had signed it, blotted it carefully and folding it together, handed it to the Prefect of Police.

  “I purchase immunity,” he said, “from a second trial before the English criminal court!”

  Monsieur Jonquelle received the indenture and put it into his pocket. He took up his gloves, his hat, his stick; then he smiled.

  “You purchased, Monsieur,” he said, “a thing that you already possess. It is the law of England that one who has been acquitted of a crime cannot again be tried in her courts for it!”

  XI.—The Mottled Butterfly

  The opera had opened. The music began to fill the corridors. But Monsieur Jonquelle did not go in.

  He remained idling in the foyer, a cigarette in his fingers, his manner and air a well-bred, bored indifference. The whole house was crowded. There was not a vacant seat.

  It was the last performance in Paris of Madame Zirtenzoff’s Salome.

  A few belated persons passed Monsieur Jonquelle and entered the doors to the boxes. Some of these persons addressed him; all regarded him. He was a well-known figure in Paris. His friendship was worth something, and whether one knew him, or cared to know him, all were curious about the man.

  The vast music assembled and extended itself.

  The foyer became empty, and still Monsieur Jonquelle did not go in. Perhaps it was because Madame Zirtenzoff had not gone on. She was a famous beauty; her Salome had the abandon which stimulated even the jaded nerves of France. It had been on at the Opera for fifty days, and Paris was still keen to see it.

  The woman was a Russian exotic, one of those alluring creatures that always assemble a fabulous legend. There was a wild passion in her Salome, and her conquests were the gossip of Paris.

  The opera had continued for perhaps thirty minutes. Madame Zirtenzoff had come on; her voice, like a silver bell, reached Monsieur Jonquelle clearly where he sauntered in the foyer.

  Presently the door to a box opened and one of the pages of the theater appeared with an immense bouquet of orchids. The flowers were worth a thousand francs. They could have been grown in Paris only with extreme care and under every perfection of light and temperature. It was a mass of flowers that would have drawn the attention of anybody, exquisite orchids of the genus Oncidium Kramerii, called the Mottled Butterfly.

  It seemed to have drawn the attention of Monsieur Jonquelle. He stopped the page as he passed him.

  “Garçon,” he said, handing him a piece of gold, “find me a box of cigarettes before you go on with those flowers. Quickly—run; I will hold them until you return.”

  The boy knew the great chief of the Service de la Sûreté. For a moment he was uncertain what to do; he had been sent to deliver these flowers to Madame Zirtenzoff. There was a generous gratuity behind the direction, but it was not more than Monsieur Jonquelle’s gold-piece, and besides, one does not disobey the Prefect of Police of Paris.

  He gave Monsieur Jonquelle the bouquet of orchids and disappeared down the stairway. He was gone hardly a moment; when he returned, Monsieur Jonquelle had not moved from his position by a pillar of the foyer. He handed back the orchids to the page and received the box of cigarettes.

  He paused a moment, fingered the box but did not open it; instead he walked a few steps down the foyer and entered the box from which the page had come out with the orchids.

  One looking on would have wondered why the Prefect of Police required a pack of cigarettes, at the cost of a ten-franc gold-piece—especially as, after having turned it in his hand, he had put it carelessly into his pocket and entered a box.

  It would appear that he waited for these cigarettes before entering the box. But to what end? One could not smoke in a box at the Opera, at its most expensive point in the ultrafashionable audience of Paris. Although the great opera house was packed with people,—not a vacant seat visible to the eye,—there was but one person in the box which Monsieur Jonquelle entered.

  He was a person that any one would pause almost anywhere to observe. He was young; he was exquisitely dressed—a dress in which there was some of the over-extravagance of detail, that suggestion of elegance, which the Parisian cannot avoid. The severity of the English tailor he must always modify; he must be permitted to add a jewel, a bracelet—some feminine touch.

  He was a young man and extremely handsome, a blond French type with a dainty mustache and regular Italian features, and thick, soft, yellow hair presenting the gloss of the seal’s coat. In his physical aspect, for perfection of detail, the man had no equal on the Paris boulevards.

  It had got him a rich American wife and lifted him, as by a fairy lamp, out of the sordid environments of an old family in decay. The thing seemed a piece of the design of a Providence with an esthetic sense.

  This exquisite person would have been incongruous except in an atmosphere of wealth. He had an apartment now beyond the Arc de Triomphe, one of those wonderful apartments that the American invasion after the Great War had set up in Paris.

  The Marquis was the envy of the boulevardier.

  But it was rumored that he had not the freedom of his wife’s money-sacks. He got what she allowed him, but it ought to be written here, in justice to the Marquis, that it was not he who complained. Why should he? The allowance was evidently enough for any reasonable man. He had the best of everything; if he felt any sense of stint, there was no sign either by word or act.

  In form the Marquis was above reproach. There could be no surprise to the fashionable audience of Paris in the fact that the Marquis was alone in the box. His wife was on a visit to America, and it was better fitting that the Marquis should be alone than to be with another who might console him for his wife’s absence. If the Marquis was not the best of men, he was at any rate not the least discreet.

  He rose and bowed when the Prefect entered.

  “Ah, Monsieur,” he said, “I am charmed to see you; Madame Zirtenzoff will be worth even an hour of the priceless time of the Prefect of Paris.… I shall be honored to have you as guest; pray sit down.”

  Monsieur Jonquelle sat down. He looked a moment over the vast audience, brilliant and distinguished; a moment at Madame Zirtenzoff on the distant stage; and then he addressed his host.

  “Monsieur,” he said, “Madame Zirtenzoff is, I imagine, beyond rubies. But I have not come here to observe her; I have come to ask you about the robbery in your apartment. That was an extraordinary robbery.”

  “It was most extraordinary, Monsieur,” replied the Marquis. “The whole of Paris regretted that you were out of France at the time. Where were you,
Monsieur?”

  Then the Marquis added with a laugh:

  “You cannot be expected to tell that; you protect us, Monsieur, by your mystery. If the Lecca could say, ‘To-morrow Monsieur Jonquelle will be in Brussels,’ we should not have a jewel or a five-franc piece remaining to us.”

  “Alas, Monsieur,” replied the Prefect, “you do me too much honor; there are a number of very good men with the Service de la Sûreté, quite as capable as I to protect Paris.”

  The Marquis laughed.

  “You have an affection for your associates, Monsieur Jonquelle, that I fear clouds your intelligence. Nothing could have been managed with more stupidity than the investigation of my apartment. In your absence, Monsieur, you cannot imagine into what hopeless commonplace the investigation of a criminal affair in Paris can descend.

  “Alas, Monsieur, there is a gulf fixed between Alexander and the lieutenants of Alexander! But for my own feeble efforts, nothing would have resulted from the police investigation in my apartment. The necklace of diamonds which the Marquise purchased for five hundred thousand francs—assembled from the crown jewels of Russia— would have disappeared without a clew to the thief. As it happened, he was brought to justice; he confessed and was sentenced for an incredible period by the court. But for me”—and again the Marquis laughed—“there would have been no thief sentenced.… Your inspectors, Monsieur, were ridiculous.”

  There was humility in the Prefect’s reply.

  “And the Marquis Chantelle was magnificent! His fame in the affair has reached me; he is the admiration of the Sûreté! I have come, Monsieur, to verify the details, and from yourself. I do not know what rumor may have added or omitted.”

  He bowed slightly, like one who would add a gesture of compliment to his words.

  “Willingly, Monsieur,” replied the Marquis. “I shall be charmed to verify details; but you will pardon me if I am moved to ask you for your opinion on a certain phase of this mystery. You must have an opinion, Monsieur, if you do not have an explanation, in fact.”

  He turned a little in his seat.

  “Monsieur,” he said, “how did it happen that when we had fixed this robbery upon Jean Lequex, a member of the Lecca, he admitted it before the court, and asked for an immediate sentence? But he would admit nothing else; he would not say what he had done with the necklace or where it was?

  “That was a strange position for a man to take, Monsieur. He could hope nothing from the judge. Why confess? It did not lighten his sentence; and after all, our evidence against him was circumstantial. Why did he not say what he had done with the necklace? The judge would have reduced the sentence. Why conceal it, Monsieur, and go for this long period of servitude? Did he hope to escape?”

  Monsieur Jonquelle spoke with decision.

  “He did not.”

  “Then, Monsieur,” continued the Marquis, “why did he refuse to say where the necklace was? Of what service would be the necklace to him after twenty years?”

  Again Monsieur Jonquelle replied directly and with decision.

  “Of no use, Monsieur; the man did not expect it to be of any use to him.”

  “Then, Monsieur,” continued the Marquis, “why in the name of heaven did he not say where this necklace was, and thereby reduce his sentence?”

  Monsieur Jonquelle seemed to reflect.

  “You have asked for my opinion,” he said; “I think I can do better than give an opinion. I think I can tell you precisely the reason why Jean Lequex, when he confessed this crime before the court, refused to say what had become of the necklace.”

  He smiled.

  “But I must be permitted, Monsieur, to hold this explanation as a sort of wage against the details of your story. The Service de la Sûreté is filled with admiration for you; you must omit no item of the narrative.… Ah, how enchanting Madame Zirtenzoff is! Hair like a sunburst of dreams, and the figure of a dryad! One would do murder for her.”

  The Marquis laughed.

  “Murder, Monsieur?”

  “Ah, yes,” replied the Prefect, “murder or any lesser crime.”

  The Marquis looked the Prefect frankly in the face.

  “You believe this robbery was committed for a woman?”

  “Could jewels be intended for any other?” replied Jonquelle.

  The Marquis continued to regard the Prefect with a certain interest.

  “You mean,” he said, “that the reason why the Apache, Jean Lequex, did not tell what he had done with the necklace was, in fact, because he had given it to a woman?”

  The Prefect of Police looked at the Marquis with some concern, with, in fact, a certain element of wonder.

  “Why, no, Monsieur, that is not the reason at all.”

  The Marquis seemed puzzled.

  “Do you generalize, then, to no definite purpose?”

  “By no means,” replied the Prefect of Police. “I would generalize to the solution of this mystery; and with Monsieur the Marquis’ aid, I think we can arrive at it.”

  “Monsieur,” replied the Marquis coldly, “I believe the mystery has already been concluded; I believe its solution seems complete.”

  “‘Seems,’” repeated the Prefect of Police, “is the word precisely. While it is true that the criminal, Jean Lequex, has confessed before the court and been sentenced to a term of years for the robbery of these jewels, the jewels remain to be discovered.”

  He paused and regarded the Marquis with an expression of compliment.

  “We feel, at the Service de la Sûreté, that if we could bring to the remaining feature of this matter the same degree of excellent acumen that was brought to its initial stages, by the Marquis de Chantelle, we should be able to restore the necklace to the Marquise upon her return from America. She returns to-morrow, does she not? It seems a brief time for so difficult an undertaking.”

  Monsieur Jonquelle smiled.

  “I regret to intrude upon your pleasure, Marquis, and especially on this, the final night of Madame Zirtenzoff’s triumph—amazing woman, adorable woman! One should lose no moment of her excellence.”

  He paused.

  “But Monsieur, I cannot adequately admire your excellent handling of this matter unless I am quite certain that I have the details of it correctly. Permit me, Monsieur, to repeat these details, and correct me, I beg of you, if I should present them with an item of inaccuracy. I was absent and I have only the memory of inferiors.”

  The Prefect of Police rested his arm on the seat of the box, while the Marquis fingered his monocle idly, twisting the silk cord. He assumed an attitude of careless attention, and Monsieur Jonquelle went on:

  “On the night of the eighteenth of February, Monsieur le Marquis, opening the door of his apartment at a late hour, saw a slip of paper beside the door. At the moment the Marquis gave this item no attention; it did not impress him. It was late, the servants having retired, and the Marquis withdrew to his bedroom alone. It appears, however, that digressions of the mind occur to all of us, even to the Marquise de Chantelle, on the border of dreamland. It occurred to him that this slip of paper was a memorandum by the concierge to call the attention of the Marquis upon his arrival to some inquiry that had been made for him. The Marquis, however, did not arise at that hour to verify this impression, but in the morning when he awoke, he remembered it, and going into the drawing-room in his dressing-gown and slippers—it was before the arrival of his valet—he found the slip of paper where it had remained as though it had been slipped under the door.

  “The Marquis was surprised when he came to examine this bit of paper. It contained some numbers written with a pencil, and the words in a strained, unformed hand: ‘The combination of the safe of the Marquise de Chantelle.’ Monsieur turned at once to the small safe which is built into the wall of the apartment after the American fashion. He tried the combination written on the slip of paper, found it correct, opened the safe and discovered that the necklace had disappeared.”

  The Prefect of Police hesitated i
n the narrative and addressed an inquiry.

  “It is true, Monsieur,” he said, “that you did not know the combination of this safe, that the combination was known only to your wife, the Marquise, and that more than once, for example at the Café Anglais on the fourteenth of December at midnight, when any creature from the underworld of Paris might have been present, you spoke of the danger of keeping this necklace in a small private safe in the apartment when it should be deposited with a banker? But to these objections the Marquise always returned the same answer— that she alone had the combination of the safe. This is true?”

  “It is true,” replied the Marquis. “But it was not discreet, as after-events have demonstrated. Perhaps by these discussions we gave information of the whereabouts of this necklace to this Apache Lequex.”

  The Prefect of Police made a vague gesture and continued to speak.

  “The Marquis, upon discovery of the robbery, at once notified the Service de la Sûreté; old Forneau and an agent arrived immediately. Upon examination of the bit of paper, it proved to be a slip bearing the name in print of Moore-Poole & Company, a firm of American brokers in Paris. Old Forneau at once suggested that the robbery must have been committed by some one from the office of these brokers, probably an American, since the slip of paper must have come from some one employed in the establishment. But here the Marquis de Chantelle, showing an intelligence superior to that of this officer of the Sûreté, pointed out that no one would come on such an adventure bringing with him a piece of paper, and especially an indicatory piece of paper, upon which to set down such a memorandum. It was far more likely that the piece of paper had been acquired somewhere in the apartment.

  “He then suggested that an inquiry be made to discover whether some one from this American firm of Moore-Poole & Company had not at one time occupied an apartment in the building. Forneau acted upon this suggestion and ascertained that Monsieur the Marquis was correct. He discovered a quantity of these blank printed slips in the basement of the building, where, with other rubbish, they had been retained by the concierge to kindle fire in the furnace. Thus Monsieur the Marquis at one stroke removed any suspicion that might have been attached to this firm of brokers and confined the inquiry to some one having access to the building and knowledge of it, else he would not have been in the basement where this débris from the apartments of old tenants had accumulated.