The Case of the Climbing Rat: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  Gallois smiled warily. “The discovery of the assassin may depend on the co-operation of the Swiss police.”

  Aumade smiled. “That, I can assure you, has already been sought.” Then he was giving a shrewd look. “May I put a question which seems to me somewhat pertinent? There was nothing taken from his room. Why remove the man when something which is a danger may remain written down on paper?”

  The eyes of Gallois narrowed as if in pain. He was loath to admit that he had spoken quickly and without sufficient thought.

  “May I make a suggestion?” Travers said.

  “Suggestions are what we wish,” Aumade told him.

  “Then the chemist, Croize, entered the lavatory in time to see the agonies of Rionne. Therefore he arrived within some seconds of the knife thrust. Within those seconds the assassin left the lavatory, after a precautionary peep outside, and was walking along the beach. He would not even have run or he would have attracted attention, so we must imagine that he walked, and if anything at a slightly sub-normal pace. At once, and this is the important point as I see it, Croize was in the road and shouting. The murderer knew the alarm had been given, for he must have still been within earshot—also, as far as he knew, the man who was raising the alarm might be acquainted with Rionne, and therefore the murderer was afraid to go to the hotel as he had originally intended.”

  Aumade had been slowly nodding an agreement, but he had a last question to put.

  “But the pockets of the dead man?”

  “Admitted,” said Travers. “We know what was left but we do not know what was taken.”

  Gallois cut in. “What is being done in addition to Switzerland?”

  “First, at the very excellent suggestion of our good friend Fournal, we are at this moment posting up photographs of the dead man in the town and district and requesting information. It is possible that the Swiss associate who murdered him may even have been seen in his company.”

  “An excellent idea,” said Gallois dryly. “An idea in fact which I should have been happy to have thought of myself.”

  It was nearly noon when they left the Hôtel de Ville. Travers suggested a brief walk along the front for the sake of exercise and then an apéritif before lunch. Not far from his former hotel he looked up to see his old friend, the photographer, levelling the camera again. He recognized Travers and gave him something like a grin, and it was to Gallois he handed his card. Travers was considerably amused as Gallois read it and then turned back for a word or two.

  What the two talked about Travers did not know, for he had walked politely on. Gallois caught him up with an expression of delight on his face. Travers took it for amusement.

  “An enterprising fellow that,” he said, “Quite cosmopolitan in his catering for all nationalities.”

  “Why not?” Gallois said. “Look at the cars in the parks there, and you will find the places of all the countries in Europe. But this idea of a photograph pleases me. You will not object if I obtain one? An enlargement, perhaps, which makes an excellent souvenir to exhibit in my room.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Travers told him. “I wouldn’t mind having one myself. That country-man of yours deserves to be patronized.”

  “But he is not French.”

  “Not French?”

  Gallois shrugged his shoulders. “For once you have not observed, or perhaps you have not heard him speak. I am of the opinion that he is American or even English.”

  So flabbergasted was Travers that he was blinking away in the sun as he polished his glasses. Then he tried a revenge with a gentle pull on the leg of Gallois.

  “There is something else he may be.”

  “And what is that?”

  Travers whispered mysteriously. “Perhaps he is Bariche!”

  After lunch, with the weather so tremendously hot, Gallois had a siesta of an hour, and then Travers proposed that he should get out the car for a tour of the countryside. He had prepared a route with which Gallois was wholly in agreement—along the road half-way to Cannes, up to St. Isare, on to Gevrol-les-Vignes and home by Lizou. Everything went according to schedule, and before half the trip was over Gallois had more than once congratulated Travers on the excellence of his choice. From the mountains they more than once stopped and looked back. The views were superb, but it was not only the turquoise sea, veined by the currents with opalescent greens; there were also the shifting colours of the hills, the entrancing vistas of their valleys and gorges, and, far ahead, the grandeur of the Alps. Never, Gallois said, had he so enjoyed a trip. It was he who made the suggestion as they were near Lizou, and he caught sight of the tiny square and its café under the planes.

  “Why not take an apéritif here, in the evening cool?”

  So they found a table in the shade with the tiny plane-surrounded place before them, and Gallois was soon growing poetical.

  Lizou, he said, was the ideal haven for one of the artistic temperament. Amid its peace and profound quiet, thought would not be cramped, but it would enlarge and expand itself. In towns one became a member of some herd. Thoughts were disseminated and identity became lost.

  Travers was sitting there, eyes on nothing in particular, and with an expression of what seemed interest on his face, so that Gallois was thinking he was finding a sympathy for his theories. But Travers was thinking of something quite different. Quite near them on the main road, a car had just passed and in it was the young man he had seen that previous afternoon at the fork which they would soon be passing, and with his usual curiosity and interest in his fellow men, he was wondering who the young man was and the business that brought him from Carliens to Lizou—or maybe beyond—in the late afternoons.

  “It is a theory which pleases you?” Gallois was saying. “You find it sympathetic?”

  “Er—yes,” said Travers, suddenly aware that he had not been listening. “But it is getting late. You will permit me to pay the bill?”

  “But no, it is I who pay,” Gallois said, and at once was getting to his feet and clicking his long fingers as a call to the waiter.

  Then as the tiny bill was paid he had a last look round.

  “You are fortunate to live in a spot as quiet and peaceful as this,” he told the waiter.

  The waiter shrugged his shoulders. To-morrow, he said, it would not he so quiet.

  “What happens to-morrow?” demanded Gallois.

  The waiter said there was the annual cattle fair. Cattle, sheep, and even goats came down from the mountains at the end of the winter, and it was at Lizou that there was held a sale which was famous throughout the district.

  “So you see, Lizou has its distractions even for a philosopher,” Travers said amusedly as the car moved off once more.

  Two miles out of the tiny town they overtook an ancient autobus, and crawled behind it till there was room to pass. Travers tried pulling the leg of Gallois again.

  “Lizou may be a haven of peace to you,” he said, “but it seems to pay somebody to run an autobus service for its inhabitants to get out of it.”

  “Those are what you call in English, the trippers,” Gallois said contemptuously. “For my part, if the time comes when I wish to retire, I may even consider this Lizou.”

  It was after seven o’clock when they were back in the hotel. Velot was doubtless supervising the dinner, but Madame was at the desk.

  “You have not been to the circus?” asked Gallois.

  “But yes,” she said. “It is over an hour since I got back.”

  “And you enjoyed it?”

  She smiled. “It was even better than every one said. Everything was marvellous.” Then a cloud came over her face. “Unfortunately I did not see the celebrated Auguste.”

  “He did not perform?”

  Her hand spread in a gesture of resignation.

  “He is dead! There was an announcement made, and even the gentleman who made it was overcome by emotion. For myself, it was with difficulty that I did not cry, he spoke so sympathetically.”

&n
bsp; As they moved off, Gallois seemed perfectly indifferent to the fate of Auguste, but all the evening, whenever he thought of that little white rat, Travers, in spite of himself, felt something very much like gloom.

  Wednesday morning dawned, and a sudden restlessness in Gallois betokened the arrival of what might be, for himself, as vital a day as he had ever known. Though nothing whatever had been discovered of the supposed priest he was far from despairing of his arrival at the Toulon rendezvous. As he told Travers, it was in the priest’s own interest to keep his identity a secret, which might explain why it was that Toulon had found no trace of him. “When he comes”—Travers nearly said “if”—“what are you going to tell him about the reward? What he asks is really very little, surely? In English money, about three hundred pounds. That isn’t a lot, is it, for the apprehension of any one as important as Bariche?”

  On the face of Gallois was that dreaminess which always announced that everything had been foreseen and there was a prospect in view.

  “To you the sum may seem little,” he said, “but he will have to take less. In France we are not so lavish with our money.”

  “But if he demands it?”

  Gallois shrugged his shoulders. “The reward is nothing. The main thing is for me to contact myself with him. Then he will be known and every movement will be observed, until he again makes contact with Bariche. After that, it is not a question of what reward he demands, but of what we shall give.”

  Whatever Travers thought about all that, he made no comment. There were times when Gallois would seem ruthless and even wholly unprincipled, but Travers was far from wishing to condemn. Every one to his own methods and, as Gallois himself had once said, if you wanted scruples and fair play, then let messieurs les assassins commence.

  The two strolled before lunch and sat for a time on the beach, and then as the clock on the Hôtel de Ville struck twelve, Gallois remembered that a ceremonial farewell ought to be paid to M. Aumade. Five minutes later they were being shown into his room.

  “All holidays come to an end,” Aumade said as he shook hands. “I, myself, was spending a holiday among my vines when this affair called me here. You return to Paris? And you, M. Travers, go to Marseilles to await the arrival of your wife?”

  Before Travers could reply there was a knock at the door. A man was urgently desiring to see someone in authority. He had information about Rionne.

  “His name?” demanded Aumade.

  “M. Cippe. He has a restaurant at Furolles.”

  “Admit him at once,” Aumade said. “You gentleman would like to hear his information?”

  Gallois said he would esteem it as a favour and an honour. In came M. Cippe and with him a stenographer.

  Aumade took his official seat at the desk.

  “You have information for us?”

  “Yes,” said Cippe, and looked round nervously at the array of strangers.

  “Then give us the information, please,” said Aumade, with a smile time was most friendly. “If there is a beginning, perhaps you will be so good as to commence at it.”

  Cippe perceived something of a joke and was at once at his ease.

  On Thursday last, he said, a man entered his restaurant at about four o’clock in the afternoon in company with a lady who wore a veil. The man was the man of the photograph which had been posted outside the Town Hall at Furolles. This man asked if there was a private room where he and the lady could have tea, and he was shown upstairs to the spare dining-room where tea was brought, and cakes from a neighbouring pâtisserie. The bill was paid and the couple left. Where they went he had no idea.

  “You are positive, M. Cippe, that the man was the Gustave Rionne of the photograph?” asked Aumade.

  “Positive. Also he had on his hand the scar which is mentioned. I noticed it myself when he was paying the bill.”

  “Ah!” said Aumade and nodded. “You are a man of acute perception. Without doubt it was Rionne. And the lady? You can describe her?”

  “Alas,” said Cippe, “there is little that I remember.”

  “She did not speak?”

  “Not a word.”

  “She seemed anxious to avoid notice?”

  Cippe smiled. “Afterwards that is what I thought myself. It is rare that a lady wears a veil nowadays.”

  Aumade gave him a nod of praise. “But what was she like? Her clothes, for instance. Her height; the colour of her hair beneath her hat?”

  In ten minutes something like a description was slowly put together. She had the manner of a lady. She was well, even smartly dressed, in dark clothes, and there was a white feather or ornament in her dark, or black hat. Her hair was dark and her clothes fitted well. That was all the evidence which Cippe could produce, except that he thought her age would be about thirty or thirty-five. To make still more sure that the man he had seen was really Rionne he was to be taken for a sight of the body.

  Aumade seemed delighted. “Now we begin,” he said. “It is a pity that you gentlemen are not able to remain to find out whether or not we arrive.”

  But the farewells had to be concluded and the two departed. It was one o’clock when they came out into a dazzling light.

  “Well,” said Travers, “we seem to have arrived once more at the old precept—cherchez la femme.”

  Gallois seemed amused and indifferent. “For my part, I still find it difficult to be interested much in this Rionne. As for the lady, doubtless she has already returned to Switzerland. She becomes the needle in the stack of hay.”

  “But she may not be the one who killed him,” Travers said.

  “Why not?” Then he realized. “You mean that to have entered the lavatory of the men would have been too conspicuous?”

  “Well, wouldn’t it?”

  Gallois shrugged his shoulders again. “All that becomes the affair of M. Aumade. A week or two and nothing more will be heard.” He chuckled. “M. Aumade will return to his vines and thank God also that he has disembarrassed himself of a rogue.”

  It was three o’clock when the Rolls moved off towards Toulon. Travers, if only to show an optimism which he was far from feeling, had paid his own bill and put all his luggage in the car and said farewell to Carliens. There was no need for hurry on the journey, for the preliminary business which Gallois had at Toulon would not take long. All that was to be arranged was for men to be ready to follow the priest when he left the rendezvous.

  The two parted on the outskirts of the city where Gallois took the precaution of taking a tram. Travers was to see no more of him till the very moment of the meeting with the priest, but his instructions were that just before six o’clock he was to sit at the same seat as Charles, to whom he would give the necessary and surreptitious explanations, and then be a witness to the meeting. When it was over there would be nothing to do but wait.

  Travers parked the car, rediscovered an English-owned café, had tea and took a scroll round. His own excitement was increasing as six o’clock drew near. For the life of him he could not help peering at this passer-by and that and wandering if by chance he was rubbing elbows with Bariche. At a quarter to six he was in the Place de la Liberté and looking for Charles. There were two seats on which he might have been, but he was on neither and then it was too late to look longer, for the clock on the hotel opposite was striking the hour. At that very moment Gallois appeared as if from nowhere, and was on the steps of the Syndicat building. At once he was approached by a man.

  Travers’s heart missed a beat, and then, almost at once, something curious appeared to be happening. The man was not in the garb of a priest. He was a short, rather plump man with a neat black moustache, and he and Gallois were gesticulating away as if at cross-purposes. Then Gallois was raising to heaven hands that looked like the hands of despair. His shoulders drooped resignedly and the two were all at once crossing the road and coming towards the Place. Travers got to his feet, fingers uneasily at his glasses.

  CHAPTER VI

  THE GOOD FORTUNE OF CHARLE
S

  THREE other men were on the same seat as Travers. Gallois gave a glance at them, motioned, and passed on. A few yards ahead, in the direction of the railway station, he halted in a strategic position, with the Syndicat building still beneath his eye. His manner was agitated as he made the introductions.

  “Dr. Debran,” he said in French, “brings bad news. It is about Charles. He has had a bad accident.”

  Travers was staring.

  “Oh, no,” cut in the doctor. “On your return you will find him, I hope, reasonably well. A day or two and he should be quite himself again. It is possible, if my colleague, Dr. Favre, agrees, that he may return here to-morrow.”

  Again Gallois was raising hands of incomprehension and despair.

  “But why should he be at Lizou? Everything is extremely urgent. I must remain here to see a man who ought to have arrived just now.” He turned to Travers.

  “My friend, will you accompany the doctor to Lizou? His own car was punctured, so he hired a car to bring him here. Return to Lizou, both of you, in your car, and later perhaps I shall be able to come in the car which the doctor hired.”

  Dr. Debran was perfectly agreeable and thought the arrangement an excellent one. Gallois was given his telephone number and gave in return that of police headquarters.

  “Meanwhile,” Gallois said, “my profound gratitude, He is not without interest to me, this M. Rabaud. As for your malaria, may I hope it will soon be better.”

  “It is nothing,” Debran said. “Yesterday was different, but to-day it has almost gone. This gentleman and I will return immediately then to Lizou, and later perhaps we shall see you.”

  Gallois was off at once. Travers repeated his name to Debran in case he had not caught it.

  “Travers,” he said. “Travers,” and made quite a good hand of it, “You speak excellent French, M. Travers.”

  “Not as good as I should wish,” Travers told him. “Perhaps you will speak slowly so that I can be absolutely sure to understand.”

  Their business took them no more than a minute or two, for the doctor had only to arrange about his hired car, then there was nothing else to do but to find the side street where the Rolls was parked, and at once they were off again. Travers liked the look of the doctor. He was a much younger man than he had seemed at a distance, only about forty perhaps. His manner had been charming enough, but now there was no talk between them till the car had left the tricky traffic of the town, and then, at the doctor’s direction, was turning left from the coast road and already beginning to ascend.