Travers had just finished wrestling with the incredibly underdone beef when the elderly man gave a final gasp as of satisfaction and repletion, and rose from the table. Travers continued his own meal at the same methodical pace. When it was over he ordered a café-filtre and writing-materials, then at long last he was alone in the room with the waiter and about to pay the bill.
“I should have met a gentleman here,” he said. “A stranger of the name of Laroche, who should have introduced himself.”
“And he did not come?”
“Apparently not,” Travers said. “I suppose, by chance, he could not have been the gentleman who was sitting at that table there?”
“But no,” the waiter told him promptly, “That is M. Rionne, who is residing here.”
“Well, perhaps there is some mistake, and this M. Laroche will turn up to-morrow.”
Then he had a sudden idea; and it was quite a large note that he offered in payment of the bill. No sooner had the waiter gone for change than he was pocketing the menu which had been used by Rionne and bore his fingerprints. And the idea was also part of another one, for when, he came out to the street again he consulted his map and then made his way to the headquarters of the police.
There he stated he had come about a matter in which he desired the assistance of the police, though he preferred to disclose it only to someone in authority. Then his particulars were taken, his passport examined, and he was asked about references. Travers quoted Gallois, then was asked to wait in a private room. In ten minutes a sergeant of police came in and Travers was of the opinion that the ten minutes had been employed in inquiries at the Hôtel Royal. In any case the sergeant’s manner was most cordial. His name was Fournal, he said, and once he had actually met the famous Gallois.
“Voilà un homme formidable,” he said with a shake of the head, and Travers gave a nod of earnest agreement. Then the explanations were made and in strict confidence.
“You yourself, then, propose to approach this Rionne,” Fournal summarized, “and to inform him that if he continues these efforts to obtain money from your wife you will refer matters to us, and you therefore warn us beforehand.”
“Yes,” said Travers, “But I would also like you to do this. Find out at once, and through Inspector Gallois if you wish, whether Rionne has a criminal record in France. That should give me a considerable hold over him when I actually decide to speak.”
Fournal twirled his moustache. That, he said, could be arranged, but first it might be as well to endeavour to obtain his fingerprints.
Travels produced the menu and again explained.
“Ah!” said Fournal delightedly, and the gasp, Travers was to learn later, was a mannerism he had learned from one of his superiors. “When one is a detective one has all the tricks.”
“And how soon will there be a reply?” Travers wanted to know.
Fournal looked at his own watch, then at the clock in the tower of the Hôtel de Ville. Paris could be rung immediately and the prints could be hurried to Toulon to catch the afternoon ’plane. Probably before midnight therefore an answer might be obtained over the ’phone.
Once more Travers was very well satisfied. It was still short of three o’clock when his glance happened to turn northwards, behind the massed villas of the foothills to the higher hills and their shaded, pine-covered slopes. Ten minutes later he was clear of the last of the villas and still making his way upwards, with the heavy smell of the pines about him and the unmistakable scent of wild thyme.
At about half-past three he was well up in the hills, and, in spite of the shade, tremendously hot. So he rested on a carpet of pine needles, his back against a tree. A minute or two and he was nodding, and then, with some last instinct for comfort, he turned on his side and was lying at full length when he fell asleep.
It was an hour later when he awoke, blinked, and slowly raised himself. So comfortable was he in that scented warmth that his first thought was to lie down again. Then he looked at his watch and got to his feet. A few steps and he was on the narrow rocky track which would bring him down to the fork, but as he stepped from the bank he heard the harsh grinding of a car and almost at once he saw it, and its driver stopped at the sight of him.
It was a rather old saloon and the driver was a man of about thirty clean-shaven and well spoken, though now there was a definite petulance in his tone.
“Pardon, m’sieur, but is this the road for Lizou?”
“Lizou?” Travers remembered. “I imagine you ought to have taken the right turn at the fork.”
The other shrugged his shoulders exasperatedly. There was no indication, he said, and he had taken the left, and then it had petered out into that abominable track.
Travers was sympathetic and consolatory and admitted that he had done the same thing himself. Then he produced the map of the district and showed precisely where they were at that moment.
“A thousand thanks,” the man said. “All that is necessary then is to reverse.”
More thanks, and the reversing began. Travers followed and was just in time to catch a glimpse of the car as it moved behind the pines on what was the main road to Lizou. A minute or two later he heard the sound of a bell. It was the clock in the Hôtel de Ville striking five, and with a sudden thirst upon him he quickened his pace. What had taken half an hour to climb took barely a quarter to descend. The clock on the Hôtel de Ville struck a quarter past the hour as he took a seat beneath the shaded awning of a café-restaurant on the front and wiped his brow and his sticky collar. A large café-crème was ordered, and when he had drunk it he looked round to order a second.
It was at that moment that the shouting came. It was a yell, sudden and startling. A man was in the road about a hundred yards to the right, just in front of that beach lavatory. What he was calling, Travers had no idea, but he was also waving and beckoning. Then in the same moment a gendarme was making for him at the double. But others had understood what the frantic man had called, for people around Travers were on their feet and others were moving. More people were on the pavement and they were running. Travers, half knocked off his feet by two men who thrust by him, calmly sat down again.
As for the man in the street, he could no longer be seen, for from pavement to pavement there was a crowd, and still more of the curious were making their way from the beach and the road.
One of the waiters had run across. Within a minute he was coming back.
“What is it?” Travels asked.
“Who knows?” He shrugged his shoulders philosophically. “Some say a man was stabbed; perhaps there was a fight.”
More gendarmes appeared and the crowd was being pushed back from the immediate vicinity of the lavatory. Then a car flashed by and in it Travers caught a glimpse of his friend Fournal. Travers was on his feet at once. When Fournal left the car he was at his heels. A way was made through the crowd, and Travers still followed, like one having authority. At the very entrance to the lavatory Fournal happened to glance back.
“Ah—M. Travers!” he said, and then the surprise became interrogation. “Yon are concerned in this? A witness perhaps?”
Travers smiled and shook his head. The noise of the crowd was so great that Fournal had to shout, and before Travers could speak he was bellowing furiously. More gendarmes must be fetched, and the road roped off. It was impossible to work in such a clamour. Then he let out a roar at the crowd itself. Every one was to go. It was forbidden to remain on pain of arrest.
There was slightly less noise as the half-dozen gendarmes sprang into action; then he turned to Travers with a look that seemed to expect some word of approbation. But Travers was staring, and in a moment Fournal was staring too. Between a couple of protesting gendarmes, a tall figure was making his placid way. Travers blinked, and his fingers went nervously to his glasses.
It was not much after ten o’clock when Gallois arrived at Carliens that Monday morning, and when he had seen his room and had a brief gossip with Monsieur Velot, the propriet
or, and his wife, he wondered what he could do with himself till lunch. But first he took a stroll through the main shopping street, and almost at once an immense poster caught his eye. The Grand Cirque Pertini had arrived. Gallois took a look round as if to make sure that no one who knew him should catch him in anything so frivolous, then he read the poster from top to bottom. A supplementary bill announced that the circus was staying for three days and there would be five performances: two on the Monday, two on the Tuesday and one on the Wednesday.
The eyes of Gallois left the poster, and it was a queer reflective look that he was casting up at the sky. Bariche had been in his thoughts as he left the hotel, and now he was remembering something, Bariche had been mad about circuses. On two occasions, as the authorities were aware, he had actually met his future victim at a circus, and in his patient examination of all the vague and tenuous evidence that had subsequently been amassed, Gallois had more than once had the curious feeling—a feeling which he did not impart even to Charles— that the career of Bariche, and the man himself, stood out in their vagueness against some stronger background of the circus and its file.
Then he was shaking his head. His eyes fell on the poster again, and though he nodded benignly he was not prepared to admit, even to himself, that the circus was an attraction. But at least the poster made him turn back towards the hotel. In the open garage at the back was a pile of canvas chairs for the use of guests, and he carried one across the road to the beach and sat in the sun as he had promised himself, with his mind on the seventeenth-century dramatists. Then his eyes began to wander to the bathers, and there was another distraction as the photographer moved along the beach, snapping this group and that and handing out his cards. As he came his way Gallois pretended to nap, and when he had gone the desire for work had gone too and he lay back in his chair, watching the divers and the romping children. So quickly did the morning pass that hunger told him it was well past noon.
M. Velot and his wife were both at the desk as he came in, and he lingered for a brief gossip. There was a regret that he was staying only until Wednesday.
“Fortunately you will not miss the circus,” Velot said.
Gallois smiled sadly. “I am too old for circuses.”
“But no!” protested Madame.
“It is unique,” added Velot. “My nephew who saw it yesterday at Furolles says it is unbelievable.”
“To go to such things one needs a companion,” Gallois said.
Velot shrugged his shoulders and smiled. “Come with me then. I’m going this afternoon. Would you like me to buy you a ticket when I buy my own?”
So just before three o’clock Gallois was in a seat at the circus, and, though one would scarcely have judged it from his face, was enjoying himself immensely. As he explained to Velot, in the course of a sudden argument, it was the perfection of artistry which he himself, as something of an artist, could appreciate.
The show went on until the final item had arrived. The crowd was not so large as at Furolles, because perhaps Carliens knew it had the choice of performances, but it was enthusiastic enough, and there was the same curiously dramatic hush before the entrance of the trio for their aerial act. There was also once more a delay, but this time there was no hitch. It was, one might have gathered, a calculated delay by the management to increase suspense and whet the appetite.
“They tell me these trapezists are masked,” Velot said. “The man, I believe, is a Russian prince, a cousin of the late Tsar, and one of the women is his wife.”
“These cousins of the Tsar could populate a province,” Gallois remarked dryly. Then there was a blare from the band and the trapezists entered to a vast burst of applause. While they were climbing to their lofty platforms, Velot whispered again.
“Ah! Now we see the rat!”
Gallois raised his eyebrows. Velot explained. “There is a rat called Auguste, who’s also going to climb the rope and perform. But, voilà!”
An attendant had come in with the cage. He scooped and held the rope taut. The cage door was opened, Jules called from high in the roof and at once the rat began to climb. Then something went wrong. All at once Auguste scampered down and shot back into his cage. The attendant picked him out and placed him at the rope once more.
Jules called. The rat refused to budge.
“That’s strange,” said Velot. “My nephew said that yesterday he was perfect.”
“The rat perhaps is a woman and temperamental,” said Gallois, with his same dry smile.
But the Ringmaster was calling something. The cage door was shut and Auguste was taken off. Then came the announcement. Auguste had not been well that morning, but the Ringmaster promised that everything should be done to ensure his performance that night. Also with many grandiloquent gestures and flourishes he assured the audience that even without Auguste they were about to see something that they would always remember.
“The gentleman has a considerable gift of explanation,” whispered Gallois.
But when the act was over his applause was as loud as any one’s.
“For my part,” he told Velot, as they were making their way out, “the others can have this Auguste. I am not one of those who desire to see the artistic and the superb mixed up with buffoonery.”
The two were wedged in the crowd that made its way out along the narrow lane to the main road. Very far from all of the population had patronized the circus, for Gallois, peering over the hats of those ahead of him, could see a crowd near the hotel and there seemed to be gendarmes who were keeping them in order. At that moment a young man in a bathing-costume came running from that way along the beach and he caught sight of Velot. It was the nephew, and he called excitedly across, gesticulating back at the crowd in the road ahead.
“Murder! A man stabbed!”
There was a swaying as the circus crowd heard the words. Some pulled up to hear more, some started to run ahead, and in the mix-up Gallois had gone before Velot was aware of it, and had slipped deftly through the edge of the crowd. Where others ran his long legs strode.
Another minute and he had slipped through a momentary gap where the gendarmes were forcing back the crowd. Two of them made to stop him, but he waved a bland hand and went on. Then he stared and his mouth gaped. He halted a second, then his face was beaming, and he was moving forward with hand outstretched.
CHAPTER IV
A SHOCK FOR CHARLES
“MY friend, it is really you?” Gallois was beginning, as it were, where he had left off, for with Travers he would never speak anything but English. And there was more in it than the opportunity to practise his remarkable knowledge of the language. It was a proud assertion of a profound respect for things English, and the outward and audible sign of something that was more than friendship for Travers himself.
Travers grasped the hand. Fournal was still staring.
“It is M. Gallois!”
“And why not?” asked Gallois blandly.
“But, m’sieu, only two hours ago I was assured by Paris that you were in Nîmes.”
The eyes of Gallois narrowed. There was news then about Bariche.
“You had some information for me?”
“It was M. Travers who desired the information.”
Gallois looked, gasped, and shrugged his shoulders in humorous despair.
“Apparently there is a mystery. And you, my friend, what is your name?”
Fournal told him.
“Then, my dear Fournal, why are the three of us here at this excellent public lavatory?”
“Ah!” said Fournal and whipped round. The two followed.
On the floor of that brave new lavatory lay a man face downwards, a knife neatly in his back. Further on by the closets was another man, a civilian, standing by a gendarme. He was trying to attract the attention of Fournal, who was trying hard not to see him.
“Well, what happened?” Fournal demanded of the gendarme.
“It is M. Croize who knows,” the gendarme told him.
Then Fournal condescended to be aware of the witness, Georges Croize, a local chemist, whose story was simplicity itself, had entered the lavatory in time to see the final agonies of the dead man, then he had run out and summoned the police.
“You saw no one else in here?” demanded Fournal.
“Not a soul,” Croize assured him.
“You have touched nothing—the knife, for instance?”
Before Croize could reply Fournal felt a hand on his arm. Travers was blinking away in considerable perturbation.
“M. Fournal, I know this man,” he was saying. “It is M. Rionne.”
Fournal gasped. “The man about whom you inquired?”
“Yes,” said Travers.
Fournal stared again, then snapped an order. The gendarme was to fetch from the Hôtel du Sud someone capable of identifying the deceased. He turned to see Gallois, who had been stooping to examine the handle of the knife, getting to his feet again and with a shake of his head.
“There are no prints?”
“None that are visible,” Gallois told him. “Is it permitted to ask exactly who he is?”
Travers began explaining in English. Fournal, for some reason known only to himself, began examining the soles of the dead man’s boots, and then was wriggling his fingers under the coat to feel in the inner pockets.
Something was in a breast-pocket and he hoisted the body and felt again. Out came two letters, each in an envelope that bore the dead man’s name and the Hôtel du Sud address. One was an ordinary bank form, which, as Travers explained, had been enclosed with the last quarter’s instalment of the pension. The second letter was actually that which had been sent by Bernice. That too, Travers explained, and translated. Then feet were heard outside, and in came the waiter of the Hôtel du Sud. The proprietor, it appeared, was out.
“The name of this man, please?” Fournal demanded officially.
“It is M. Rionne who resides at the hotel.”
“And how long has he been at the hotel?”
The Case of the Climbing Rat: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 4