The Case of the Climbing Rat: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  He was halting and taking Travers’s arm as if to force him to listen.

  “Think, if you will, one minute. When he speaks on the ’phone his voice to me is genuine and I, Gallois, do not make mistakes. I tell myself it is not a trick that someone makes to bring me to Toulon. And there was the talk of a reward. I ask myself again if that is some trick to obtain money, and then I know it is not. This informer knows that we do not part with money until we have satisfied ourselves.” His shoulders raised with something of exasperation. “And there are other things which I know, which even to you I cannot explain. I tell you that here, in my heart, I know that Bariche is alive, and that this informer knows also that Bariche is alive.”

  “There is something I’ve been thinking,” Travers said. “Last night he expected to see you absolutely alone. Suppose he was a minute or two late, wouldn’t he have been frightened away at seeing you with Debran? Surely it would have looked to him as if you were trying to lure him into some trap.”

  The shoulders of Gallois raised again, and his palms spread to something of a helpless cringe.

  “That also I think of, and I do not know. But at six o’clock I shall he in Toulon again at the rendezvous. If this informer does not appear I will return to Paris. Some day perhaps he will ring me again. Until then this cursed Bariche remains dead.”

  Gabrielle was calling them. Their breakfast was ready, and as the early morning was so delightful she had placed the table beneath the awning over the salon window, and the two ate their croissants and drank their coffee out in the lovely morning cool. There was a little pot of marmalade which Travers rather thought had been obtained especially for himself as an essential to an English breakfast.

  “Isn’t it curious,” he said to Gallois, “the thousands of wonderful people there are in the world whom one ought to meet but never will? When we were through here the other afternoon we never had the slightest idea there were people here called Debran, and now here we are. Guests, as it were of two of the kindest and nicest people I ever met in my life.”

  “Yes,” said Gallois. “For me, as a Frenchman, there is a pride that you should discover people so generous and of such good heart. It is the Debrans, my friend, and not the politicians and the blagueurs, who are the true France.”

  Travers was not at all disposed to argue the point. That morning he was on such good terms with himself and so romantically minded that he would have agreed with almost anything. Romance—though that perhaps was not quite what he would have called it—was everywhere about him, and not only in the beauty of the morning. There was romance in the scent of the pines and spring flowers; in the near ridge that faced them across the valley, and the red terraced earth with its young vines. There was a romance in the very thought that he was in France at all, and even in the whiff of Gallois’s French tobacco.

  No sooner had Travers lighted his pipe than the doctor was joining them. Charles was now presentable, be said, and might be seen for a moment. Never had he known a concussion patient so resilient.

  “But why the ominous shake of the head?” he asked Gallois. “This is only an experience he has had. I admit he was fortunate, but a few days in bed are an easy price to pay for being alive. Don’t you think so?”

  “It is not that,” Gallois said. “To my mind he had no right to embark on adventures with a car.”

  “You are not to be angry with him.” Gabrielle was in the porch and shaking her head reprovingly at Gallois. “You yourself were young once.”

  Gallois shrugged his shoulders. “But I did not take strange cars among mountains.”

  She laughed. “Perhaps because there were no cars and no mountains. But I am not going to have him scolded. In a sense he is my patient and I like him.”

  “Better than myself?” asked Gallois with an unexpected raillery.

  “Much better,” she told him promptly. “Better even than M. Travers.”

  The doctor laughed as he got to his feet. It was high time for a few minutes with Charles, he said, and doubtless the bark of M. Gallois was infinitely worse than his bite.

  But there was something of reproach in the sad smile upon the face of Gallois as he halted just inside the bedroom door, and with a quiet melancholy surveyed the occupant of the bed.

  “Eh bien?” was all he said.

  Charles shrugged his shoulders, caught for a moment the winking eye of Travers and then grinned feebly. Travers felt an enormous desire to laugh. There was a charm of comedy and something superbly French about it all, with the snub nose of Charles giving a roguishness and somehow dominating the scene as completely as if it had been the nose of Cyrano. Gallois approached the bed, patted a hand, then drew up a chair for himself. Travers took the end of the bed.

  “And you are feeling yourself again?” Gallois asked.

  “Almost,” Charles told him. “My head still buzzes a little, but the doctor’s certain it will be gone in a day or two.”

  Gallois leaned over and examined the stitches, and his head was shaking reprovingly. “All your life that scar will remind you—” He broke off in time. “But the car in which you were driving. It belongs to some friend?”

  Charles told him the whole story. Gallois took down the address of the Toulon garage. He would ring them at once, he said, and reassure them, and, as the doctor was positive the car was already repaired, he would drive is to Toulon himself that morning.

  “The priest did not arrive then?” Charles said with something of diplomacy and certainly relief.

  “Never mind the priest,” Gallois told him dryly. “Let us confine ourselves to this accident of yours. Tell us how it happened.”

  Charles told him what he could. All he remembered was the lights of the lorry, and a tremendous lorry it must have been. There was the overturning of the car and then a tremendous crack on the skull, and, as to that last, what must have happened was that he had been thrown across the car and had then crashed back against the comparatively sharp upright of the door.

  After that he had had the most fantastic dreams which now seemed to be causing him a certain ironic amusement. All the time he had been drowning in the depth of the sea and trying to get to the surface, and then suddenly it was as if something ceased to press on his brain, and there he was in bed. The sun was shining and the first thing he heard was a distant clock striking three and he was wondering in a sort of childish, bewildered way what three o’clock it was and where he was and if he was alive at all. Then Gabrielle came in and at once she was calling excitedly to someone, and it turned out to be the doctor, who appeared in a dressing-gown and as if not properly awake.

  “He was still recovering from his malaria and had been asleep,” put in Travers, always ready with an explanation.

  Charles said the doctor himself had explained and apologized for that, but Charles had been more anxious about the car than himself, but when he referred to the accident of “last night” the doctor smiled and Charles learned that he had been unconscious for thirty-six hours or more. So queer did it seem to lose a whole day of his life, and so incredulous must he have looked, that the doctor told Gabrielle to bring him the newspaper to convince him.

  “That is nothing,” Gallois said. “Rest for a moment now while I tell you something. In the Great War when I was operated on for shrapnel, I knew the doctor who was about to perform the operation, and just at the very moment of receiving the anaesthetic I was asking about his brother, but I did not catch his reply, so I repeated the question. Then I repeated it again and then I found was asking the question of myself, for I was back in my bed and the operation was already over. Two hours had gone by since I put that first question but, as far as I was concerned, there had been an interval of two seconds. But to continue your own experiences. What did you feel like in yourself when you woke?”

  What Charles now recalled most was the pain in the head and the nausea, and how he seemed to hear things none too distinctly. But he did hear Gabrielle and her brother talking about a Dr. Favre who h
ad seen him on the previous day. Then Dr. Debran asked his name. Had he any friends who should be advised of what had happened? Then it turned out that the bag which had been in the car had been stolen as well as all the money from his pockets, and even his wrist-watch. The doctor had said he was not to worry about anything. The police would soon recover the missing things and he himself would go to Toulon and bring back M. Gallois. All he was to do was to rest and then, almost at once, he was given what he guessed was brandy and milk. Either the doctor or Gabrielle came in every few minutes and then the doctor examined him again and gave him a tonic. If he felt like sleeping he was to do so. He heard the distant clock strike four, and then he had slept for an hour or two and felt very much better when he woke. Gabrielle tidied him up, and almost at once M. Travers arrived.

  “You owe a debt of enormous gratitude,” Gallois was beginning, and then Gabrielle came smilingly in. There was a lot of talking, she said, and now the patient must rest. Gallois rose at once with an amusing docility.

  “In the morning we shall see you again,” he told Charles. “Meanwhile, you’re to obey implicitly every instruction of those who know better than yourself.”

  He shook Charles’s hand and went mournfully out. Travers gave a friendly grip and followed him. Almost at once Gabrielle was coming down the stairs.

  “What did you mean about not seeing him till the morning?” she asked Gallois. “This afternoon perhaps you might be able to spend as much as an hour upstairs.”

  “But he is in no danger.”

  “Of course he is in no danger,” she said and hesitated for a moment. “But we hoped that both of you would stay.”

  Gallois shrugged his shoulders in preliminary protest. Then she was anticipating all he had to say.

  “It would do you good,” she said, “to have the pure air of the country for another day. There are magnificent walks here among the mountains. If my brother had been quite well he would have gone with you, but I can show you the paths, and if you and M. Travers prefer not to return for lunch, you can lunch at Gevrol.”

  Gallois began explaining, and then the doctor came in. He added his own invitation, but Gallois with an enormous regret and an enormous gratitude still insisted that he must go. His business in Toulon was official and important and there was the matter of Charles’s car. Travers regretted too, but he would have to accompany Gallois, though in the morning they would both return and that same evening they would be sure to ring up.

  The doctor and his sister looked so genuinely disappointed that Travers had an idea.

  “It’s not absolutely necessary for me to be at Toulon till the evening,” he said to Gabrielle. “Would you permit me to drive you somewhere for a brief holiday? There are friends perhaps you would like to see somewhere, and you could show me the countryside.”

  But now Gabrielle had to refuse. There was the house to look after, and her brother, and that afternoon she had thought of making up for lost sleep.

  “But you need not worry about me,” the doctor said.

  “Exactly,” cut in Travers, and had a new idea. “Did you see the circus which was at Carliens?”

  She looked astonished, as well she might, at the unexpected question.

  “It was really marvellous and worth any one seeing,” Travers was going on. “It’s at Cannes this afternoon, so why shouldn’t I drive you there. Then we can come back here and I can see Charles and then go on to Toulon, and everything will fit in perfectly splendidly.”

  She was shaking her head. “I am foolish perhaps, but I always dislike circuses. It’s the animals, and how they have to perform.”

  “But you can shut your eyes when we come to the animals,” Travers said, and the smile was suddenly turning to one of reminiscence. “There was one animal you would have loved—a little white rat called Auguste. He was perfectly delightful and brave as a lion—if lions fly through the air.”

  “You’re talking in riddles,” she told him, and smiled. “But I don’t think I will go all the same.” And then in English, “You are very kind.”

  Gallois emitted something of a chuckle. “Another week in the company of M. Travers,” he said in English, “and you would be speaking an English better than my own. But if you will excuse us, we must return at once to Toulon.”

  When he had uttered his thanks for the hospitality which he and Travers had already received, he insisted that such hospitality must not also include Charles. In the morning the doctor’s bill must be ready, including that of Dr. Favre. There would also be some reward for the cantonnier.

  There would be plenty of time to think of all that, the doctor told him and, now he remembered it, some time that day, if he felt equal to it, Charles would have to sign an official statement for the local police, both about the accident and the property that had been stolen.

  The two started off for the local garage in Travers’s car. Just round the bend Gallois asked if Travers would wait for a minute. There was something he wished to ask which, though to Travers it might sound fantastic, he himself preferred to accept as instinct. It was a feeling of being involved in something strange. It was something like a burning of the ears, for instance, when you wondered if people were really talking about you. It was the alarming feeling as of things happening which could neither be seen nor heard. Perhaps it was a reaction after the anticipation of the interview with the informer and the arrival in its place of that extraordinary accident to Charles, and there Gallois came to his question. Was it an accident?

  Travers stared. “You mean, someone tried to kill him?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “But surely Charles has not an enemy in the world?”

  “But might he not have been mistaken for myself?”

  Travers stared again.

  “But how on earth could he be? How could any one possibly know he was coming here? He didn’t make up his mind to go anywhere till the Monday afternoon, and he wouldn’t have come here at all if he hadn’t lost his way.”

  Gallois shook an obstinate head. The more inexplicable a thing was, the greater the need for patience in seeking an explanation. The newspapers, as he pointed out, had all announced that conference at Nîmes, which was an annual event and not without importance. Later the newspapers published a list of all the delegates, and the name of Charles had been bracketed with that of Gallois as if the two of them were one. Gallois himself had left unexpectedly early, so why should someone not have mistaken Charles for him and have followed him and arranged the accident, which instead of putting him out of action for a couple of days, should really have killed him outright.

  “But my dear fellow,” protested Travers. “If a car was following behind Charles’s car, how could it have been in touch with the camion—even supposing the camion was waiting here at Lizou, which in itself is incredible. How could it have been told just when and how to stage a head-on collision?”

  “It is admitted there are difficulties,” Gallois said. “Nevertheless there remains also the instinct which assures me that I am not without reason. This car, for instance, that follows the car of Charles. When it sees that Charles takes the road to Lizou, it proceeds to Gevrol and telephones perhaps to the camion which is here at Lizou.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Then there is the theft. One cannot deny that someone examined Charles when he was unconscious, and took his bag and searched his pockets.”

  “Yes,” Travers said, “but the same person doing all that searching would have known that Charles was not dead. If he wanted to kill him why didn’t he kill him then?”

  “He thought perhaps he was dead, or about to die.”

  “If Charles had died, all the papers of the South would have announced the accident. I hate to put in so many objections, but this murderer of yours must be aware by now that Charles is alive. By the way, who is this murderer? Bariche, or someone connected with him?”

  “Ah!” said Gallois. “At last we arrive. As it is not impossible that Bariche knew of the intention of the informer and
arranged that he should not appear at the rendezvous last night, would it not be in the interest of this Bariche to kill myself, or even Charles?”

  Travers shook his head. “If we bring your arguments to a logical conclusion, you and I oughtn’t to be going away from Lizou. We ought to be staying behind to keep an eye on Charles. As for the theft of Charles’s belongings, the lights of the car were still burning after the accident. I think someone went down to investigate and decided to help himself, and if it comes to that we do not know the cantonnier. He might have taken the bag and the money.”

  Gallois spread his hands resignedly, and the car moved on. The garage people had made a good job of the repairs. The brakes and everything were in perfect order, Gallois was told, but nevertheless he decided that he would not trust himself among the mountains, but take the coast road. There was no necessity, there appeared, to go into Carliens, as the road branched to Furolles.

  Travers was proposing to do nothing in particular except to arrive at the Toulon rendezvous at six o’clock. Then Gallois remembered the photographs which ought to be waiting for him at Carliens.

  Travers said he would fetch them, and when he had watched Gallois depart, supervised a rapid overhaul of his own car. It was about half-past eleven when he arrived at Carliens. He parked the car and bought some cigarettes, and sat for a few minutes on a bench facing the sea with the Hôtel de Ville at his back.

  What he was thinking about was the accident that had happened to Charles. Though he himself was ready enough to attach importance to hunches and instincts, he could not for the life of him find in the theories and apprehensions of Gallois the least foundation of sober fact. For all that he spent a good ten minutes in trying to puzzle out how that lorry could have made a deliberate attack, as it were, upon Charles. Then at last he was giving it up and turning to the French newspaper which he had bought as a kind of afterthought with the cigarettes. One look at it and he was gaping.