Travers got out and quickly looked about him. An unsavoury quarter, he told himself, or was it that it was merely ill-lighted and unimportant?
“Monsieur, pardon, mais—”
Travers jumped. It was a poorly dressed man, collar buttoned to his ears and shoulders hunched against the cold drizzle. His moustache was bedraggled, but. there was something of respectability about him. But the taxi-driver’s voice was coming in. A moment and there was the fierce squabble of voices. Perhaps they were talking some Paris slang, but Travers understood nothing, yet something serious seemed afoot.
“What is it?” he demanded of the taxi-driver.
The taxi-driver collapsed like a pricked balloon. It was nothing, he said; nothing at all. Merely a beggar.
Travers smiled relievedly. The beggar stood patiently by and there was a hurt in his gratitude as he took the small note that Travers gave him. Then he shuffled off in the dark and drizzle, while the taximan snarled something after him.
“Wait here and keep your engine running,” Travers told him curtly.
“Bien, m’sieur.”
“If I am not here in ten minutes, come and find me.”
“Bien, m’sieur,” said the taxi-driver, and settled unconcernedly into his corner.
Travers turned to the door, with the 17 plainly above it. It was ajar and he pushed it open, and saw at once the stairs, and the landing which was feebly lighted with a gas-jet. A last look back and he was mounting to the landing. In front of him was that other door that Braque had mentioned.
He tapped gently, waited, then tapped more distinctly. There was no sound from inside, and then he became aware of a chink of light that ran alongside the door. His hand went to the knob and the door opened of itself. A light was suddenly dazzling him and it was a moment or two before he could see into the room.
A step forward and his foot struck something. He looked down and saw at once that it was the body of a man: a sprawling man with head towards that door. Instinctively he stooped and turned the body till he clearly saw the face, though all the time he knew that the man was Braque.
Then he turned the body till he could see what kept it to that sprawling kind of rise, and as his finger touched the dead hand, he felt the warmth, and wondered if he were still alive. Then he saw the knife that stuck sideways in the ribs.
Travers got to his feet. His tongue licked nervously round his lips, and he was straining to listen. Then suddenly he was closing the door behind him and making a hurried way down those creaky steps. As he burst from the pavement door he collided with a man.
It was the beggar again. With a quick “Pardon!” Travers waved him aside and was making for the taxi-man. The beggar’s hand was holding him back by the sleeve.
“M. Travers. What is there? What has happened?”
Travers halted.
“It is I—M. Charles. There is M. Gallois who approaches.”
A shadow was on the pavement at Travers’s feet, and the lean figure of Gallois loomed up through the misty drizzle.
CHAPTER IV
GALLOIS IS AFRAID
THE long thin fingers of Gallois gently stroked the cheeks of the dead man. As they neared the chin, they almost caressed the short imperial, and then with a shake of the head he got to his feet. There seemed to Travers some strange malevolence about his smile.
“A quarter of an hour ago, or twenty minutes perhaps, he was alive. One cannot say therefore that it was you, my friend, who killed him?”
Travers smiled feebly. “There was no earthly reason why I should have killed him. Besides, I didn’t arrive till five minutes ago.”
Gallois clapped him amiably on the shoulder. “My friend, I amuse myself at your expense, which is in very bad taste. When one stuck the knife in Monsieur Braque, you were at the Café Blanquette. Also if one wishes to—what does one say?—acquire a courage to commit a murder, one does not drink a Suze. One fortifies one’s self with brandy, perhaps, or whisky. But again I amuse myself. You observe, perhaps, something strange about the face of Monsieur Braque?”
Travers looked down again at the face of the dead man, and saw nothing unusual. Even that slight gape of the mouth did not take away the simple attitude of sleep.
“Perhaps I make an error,” Gallois said mournfully, and once more knelt down and examined the body. From an inner room came the sound of Charles’s voice, as if he were telephoning and it made a queer uneasy background, so that Travers suddenly felt a strange disquietude, and something of fear, like a man whose feet have unknowingly trodden the edge of a precipice in the inky dark, and who now sees the sheer depth to which he might have crashed.
There was something hampering, too, in the use of a strange tongue, and even in that English of Gallois, fluent and perfectly comprehensible though it was. And Gallois himself seemed different, with his reticences and that one sudden, almost challenging revelation that since leaving the Villa Claire, every movement of Ludovic Travers had been watched. Or was it safeguarded? And was this new Gallois merely Gallois the man of action?
A queer thought came to Travers then. Larne had been different that afternoon. He too had changed at the prospect of action, and had not Gallois claimed a spiritual affinity with Larne? Gallois was now the artist he had claimed to be; reticent because his brain was busy with the working out of things, just as Larne’s had evolved a finished picture before a brush had touched the bare canvas.
Charles came in, and Travers remembered something.
“My wife,” he said to Gallois. “Do you think I ought to let her know?”
“Ah, that dinner of which I was so expectant!” said Gallois, and raised his hands in misery.
“Madame, as you say, will be disquiet. You permit perhaps that I phone myself? Meanwhile, you perhaps write a note—yes? And it is sent by the taxi.”
More men arrived, and a doctor among them. Measurements were taken and all the routine began with which Travers was familiar enough. The body was turned over on its back, and there was red on the bare boards of the floor and red on the handle of the knife. Gallois said something to Charles, who began a search of the pockets.
“Un moment!” said Gallois quickly. “You observe the pocket?”
it was the inner breast-pocket he meant, with the lining visible.
“Someone took something out in a hurry,” Travers said, “It was probably snatched out, and the lining came out with it.”
“That is as I see it,” Gallois said, and felt the pocket for himself. Then he looked at the hip-pocket. Its button was undone and it too was empty.
There was nothing lethargic about the way he got to his feet, and the snapping of his orders. All Travers could gather was something about taking the body to another room, and the mention of the name Cointeau, and searching of some sort. There was a scurrying here and there, with Charles alone standing impassively by, as if he, too, had thoughts of his own. He also was curiously unlike a detective, Travers was thinking, with that snub nose of his and the friendly boyish face.
“And now, my friend,” Gallois said, “you and I will seek the—what shall I say?—the explanation of things.”
He drew back towards the door in the far corner, eyes everywhere about the room.
“This monsieur demands to see you, and there is something of particular importance he wish to show. Then, my friend, what is it he wish to show?”
“You know what other rooms there are?” asked Travers.
Gallois smiled. “There is no private cinema for the exhibition of what you call dirty films. Regard for a minute and I will show you all the house.”
It was on paper that he meant, and in a minute Travers had the lie of the land.
It was Charles who drew the rough plan of the flat itself.
“That outer staircase is a kind of fire-escape?” Travers asked.
“That is so,” Gallois said. “Once, perhaps, it was the only way of entering the flat. And now, the question that I asked. What was it that he was so insisting that you m
ust see?”
Travers shook his head. “I haven’t any idea, unless it was something he had in his pocket and which the murderer took away.”
Gallois shrugged his shoulders and his spread palms remained a moment suspended in air.
“It is possible. But I put the question another way. What was it that you yourself expected to see?”
“Don’t know. Ruling out—well, what we have ruled out—I should say some pictures. Possibly a pornographic picture.”
Gallois nodded benignly. “And the murderer takes that too? It is more than possible.”
He remained in thought for a moment, and Travers ran a quick eye round the room, with its cheap, if comfortable, easy chairs, its gas fire, and the small dining-table and chairs. Its only ornaments were the ornate vases on the mantelpiece, for its clock was also a cheap one for strict utility. But what looked like a brand-new cabinet gramophone stood in the corner.
“You remark something curious perhaps?” Gallois was saying.
“Yes,” Travers said, “it doesn’t strike me as a comfortable room. No, I don’t mean that quite. It isn’t a room that people have lived in a great deal.”
“It has not what you call the English comfort,” Gallois said, and nodded. Then he really saw the two pictures that hung on the west wall above a cheap and modern sideboard, and his face wrinkled with a kind of horror. Travers looked at them too, and made a wry face.
“My hat, what atrocities!”
One was a landscape: a view that never was on sea or land, with a flaring sunset to match. It was the kind of thing that only the departed junk-dealer below might have disposed of. The other was the head of a woman, and looked like the first effort of some art-school aspirant. The lip of Gallois curled at that affront to his artistic tastes.
“There is the kind of thing on which I would not even spit. We will see another room, if you please.”
Outside the door was a passage, and there he halted.
“To me it is incomprehensible. If there is anything he wish indeed to show you, it is a picture. One who deals in pictures does not show you— what shall I say?—a table or a chair. You say perhaps he show you some papers—the papers the murderer take from his pockets—but I say, why do he wish to show you papers?”
“You permit?” said Charles. “The murderer perhaps takes the picture which should have been shown to M. Travers.”
“It is the opinion of M. Travers that I wish,” Gallois told him in French, “It is something that does not agree. To me there is nothing that agrees. Two and two make four, that is so, is it not? But here”—and he shrugged his shoulders expressively—“two and two make nothing at all.”
He opened the door in front of him which led to a kitchen. Beyond its window could be seen a flicker of a torch where the men were doubtless searching for the prints of the murderer’s feet. Beyond them twinkled the long row of lights from the boulevard.
Gallois came out to the passage again and opened the next door, which was that of the bathroom, which had also a lavatory and a wash-basin. Above the basin was a glass shelf and on it was a dirty safety-razor and an uncleaned shaving-brush. Gallois had a good look at them, and nodded.
“Here perhaps is one small two and two which make also a little four,” he said, and looked at Travers enquiringly.
Travers shook his head. Gallois explained.
“The razor and the brush are not of this morning, you observe that? It is last night that he shave. He is lazy, perhaps, and he shave always at night, to save time, as you say. I also know that when I feel his face. But that is strange, is it not? He ask to see you, which is a favour. To him you are rich, and a client, and he wish to make the good impression. And yet he do not shave!”
He came out to the passage once more, and opened the door of the room to his right. It was Braque’s bedroom, and the bed had not been made. A chest of drawers stood by the single bed, and one drawer was slightly open. Gallois was across at once. The contents of that drawer were higgledy-piggledy, and it was the only one that contained papers. The others had merely clothes. At the same time Travers noticed the telephone standing on the bedside table, and something struck him at once. “If he wanted everything so private, about this being his private address, why was there a telephone?”
“The telephone is also what you call private,” Gallois said. “It is a number that does not appear in the book. That is always permitted if one wishes. But you observe that one has searched this drawer. It is not in a drawer that one searches for pictures.”
“Unless they were miniatures,” said Travers quietly.
“Ah!” said Gallois, and stared. “There is something that I forget.”
He waved at the drawer and said something to Charles in a French that was too quick for Travers to follow, then made his way to the remaining room. As soon as he ran his eyes round it, he was turning to Charles again.
“This is the surprise, then, of which you speak.”
That room was a mass of new furniture, not properly unpacked and none of it in place. It was showy furniture, and Travers also saw that new curtains had already been put up at the window.
“Ah!” said Gallois, as if delighted. “The good Braque was perhaps about to marry. You observe the bed, my friend. And the bride, perhaps, she already places the curtains. She have a taste for music also, perhaps. In the other room you doubtless observe the gramophone, which is of a newness veritably beautiful.”
A label was still attached to one of the gilt chairs, and with his penknife he cut the string.
“It is necessary to telephone,” he said to Charles. “Demand if you please, when one has delivered the furniture.”
He was preparing to wait in that room, and he drew up two of the new chairs for himself and Travers.
“Sit, my friend,” he said. “To-night, perhaps, we remain a long time on our legs. This afternoon you saw M. Larne?”
“I came straight from his studio to here,” Travers said, and then smiled wryly. “Not quite straight, as you know.”
“And you find a way to ask of M. Larne if he sell a picture to a client in Spain?”
“My hat, no!” said Travers. “Everything was so exciting that it went clean out of my head.”
He explained about the picture and how the master was already at work. Gallois seemed disappointed.
“I had wished that M. Larne should ask to see me himself. That would have been the introduction which for a long time I wish, and which I ask you as an honour to perhaps arrange. Now I am occupied. And yet I do not know. Perhaps M. Larne excuse if I telephone.”
But there was evidently no hurry, and Travers mentioned that other curious happening which had just come back to him.
“Don’t he annoyed with me, but I suppose you didn’t by any chance—for private reasons—let Braque know my address here?”
Gallois looked astounded, then hurt.
“But, my friend, why should I do that thing? It is a confidence, and I do not tell confidences.”
“I thought, you might have had special reasons of your own,” Travers said. “After all, you have done a whole lot of things without letting me know. Having me followed here to-night, for instance.”
Gallois got to his feet, and his smile was almost paternal.
“You forgive me, my friend. I do not wish that you should be alarmed. If there is no danger, then one laughs, is it not? But if there is danger, then one is prepared.”
Travers grasped warmly the hand held out to his own.
“I have a regard for you, my friend,” Gallois said, and his mournful eyes were dwelling on Travers with affection. “But who is it that also knows your hotel?”
“As far as I am concerned, only M. Larne.”
“But M. Larne do not announce to all the world your address,” said Gallois. “If someone tell your address, then it is not he.”
Travers expounded his own theories, how that Braque might have been at the station that evening to await the arrival of the boat-train
. Gallois agreed that the solution was a likely one, but it also showed that Braque had been even more anxious than suspected, to secure that interview with Travers.
Charles came back then. The furniture had been delivered a week ago, and no reason had been given for its purchase. Gallois merely shrugged his shoulders, and then said he would telephone Henri Larne.
“He will be annoyed, perhaps, that he is disturbed,” he said to Travers. “Perhaps, my friend, you will do me the favour to explain.”
“By all means,” Travers said, and followed him out to the phone.
But in a minute or two Travers was aware that there was some difficulty. Gallois, who was trying to get the number, finally hung up. There was no answer, and apparently nobody in the studio at all! And with each word that he reported to Travers, the apprehension of Gallois seemed to be increasing.
“You’re worried?” Travers said. “But there must be something wrong with the telephone itself.”
Gallois shook his head. “It is not what you call worry. I am afraid.” His hand rose, then fell. “It is for M. Larne that I am afraid.”
His lean fingers closed round Travers’s arm.
“Tell me, my friend. Who was it that was in the studio when you departed?”
“The brother wasn’t there—”
“There is a brother?”
Travers explained about Pierre, Larne was there alone, he said, and the model.
“And you do not by chance know the name of this model?”
“Yes,” Travers said. “Elise something or other. Elise Deschamps, that was it.”
But Gallois and Charles were staring at each other.
“You are sure?” Gallois said.
“Perfectly sure,” Travers told him. “Elise Deschamps, that was the name.”
Gallois turned away, fingers feeling the air as if to clutch some thought that would bring relief to his mind. Then suddenly, dramatically, the hands fell. His voice was calm, though it could only have been excitement that made him still speak in English.
The Case of the Flying Donkey: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 5