“The war has put consciences so far out of joint…not a word of this to anyone, Doctor, until further notice.”
III. Fabio Canti is on the Right Track
For three days, Baudard, cared for and pampered by his hostess, had been ruminating his plan. He was in place now, and had no doubt that he would succeed. The test tube containing the culture of typhoid fever microbes was in the saddlebag of his bicycle. He shivered. What if the excessively obliging hosts have sent it for repair?
When Madeleine, who was attending to him and bringing him food, next came to his room, he asked: “Where’s my bike?”
“Still in the garage. They’ll have it repaired for you.”
“No, tell them not to bother. I’ll be able to take care of that myself.”
“You’re a man who can turn his hand to anything, Monsieur Brémond.”
As she was going out of the electrician’s room, however, which was next door to Fabio Canti’s, she ran into the painter.
“Well, how’s our invalid?”
“Very well, Monsieur Fabio. He’s even thinking of going.”
“What, already? But he’s supposed to do some work here.”
“Oh, I only said that because he’s just asked me about his bicycle. He doesn’t want you to bother with it—he’ll repair it himself.”
Hey! thought the artist. I didn’t think of the bicycle! He went to the garage where the machine had been deposited and examined it attentively. It bore the address of a hire shop in Cannes with a number: 271. Bicycle on hire. Let’s take a look in the saddlebag. The usual tools…but what’s this tube? I’ll find out.
He slipped the test tube into his pocket and made a note of the hirer’s address.
First, let’s go see Dr. Gayraud.
He went up to get dressed and inform Madame Desambez.
“I’m out of silver white. I’m going to Cannes with the auto, and I’ll be back for lunch.”
Prudently, he had telephoned the doctor. Gayraud was at home, and he had asked him to wait for an urgent matter.
Twenty minutes later, the painter was shown into the doctor’s study.
“What’s new?” asked Gayraud. “How’s your injured man?”
“It’s him that it’s about.”
Fabio Canti brought the physician up to date and gave him the suspicious test tube.
“We’ll see what it is.”
He opened it, carefully took out some of the contents with a spatula, placed it under a microscope and examined it, and then said: “It’s the typhoid fever microbe.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Fabio Canti.
The doctor opened a medical textbook and showed him an engraving in which the microbe was represented, greatly magnified.
“Now take a look in the microscope and compare it yourself.”
Slightly terrified, the painter looked and was convinced.
“I have the letter that I mentioned, to my friend Raynaud, the Commissaire de Police in Paris, in my wallet. Will you permit me to complete it before putting it in the post?”
“In the meantime, I’ll replace the tube with another identical to it, but filled with something inoffensive, and I’ll keep this one, with your permission, as proof in support of our testimony.”
When he left the doctor’s house, delighted with his debut as a detective, Fabio Canti went to the address of the bicycle hirer.
“I’m bringing you news of an accident to one of your clients,” he said, “to whom you lent a bicycle numbered 271.” And he gave him an account of the cyclist’s fall.
“Number 271. Lent to Monsieur Adolphe Brémond for a month. A hundred and twenty-five francs, facultative, with a guarantee in the sum of twelve hundred francs, pledged by Monsieur Paul Granger of Bordeaux.”
“Who is Monsieur Granger?” the painter asked.
“I know you by sight, just as everyone in Cannes knows the famous artist Fabio Canti, so I’ll give you a frank reply. Whether his name is Granger or not is of no importance to me, from the moment he insured my bike for its full value, but my wife, who was present, recognized him as the thought-reader, Thomas Keysar, who gave a demonstration in Cannes last week.”
Fabio knew Keysar vaguely; the latter had once talked about his paintings in his art criticism, lambasting them for their poor style, denying that they had any merit, color or poetry. His friend, Guilleret, the member of the Institut, and a number of pretty girls had pointed him out one evening in Paris at the Café de la Rotonde.
“Your wife is sure about that?”
“Damn! Ask her yourself.” And the worthy man called his wife, who confirmed what he said.
“I swear that it was him. A sorcerer, a man who can divine what you’re thinking, has a face that makes an impression on you. I only saw him once, in one of the three séances he held at the Casino, with the pythoness Souriah. He’s quite tall, has a pale face with black hair and magnificent yellow eyes, like those of a cat.”
“Thank you, Monsieur and Madame. I beg you not to say anything to anyone about my visit, and whatever happens, you know that your bicycle is at Théoule, at the Villa Bellarosa, in the home of Madame Desambez, whose guest I am.”
“It can stay there if he wishes. It’s paid for.”
Fabio Canti saluted the two hirers and left. The affair was getting complicated. Obviously, the role of the wounded man was that of a hireling, an instrument. But then, what was Thomas Keysar? He remembered, suddenly, having seen the impostor at Monte Carlo, in the gaming rooms of the Sporting Club, in the company of two women, one of whom was Josette Coutan, a troubling and perverse svelte individual—that was why he had noticed her and asked her name—an expert seductress, the wife of a bluffer, Sixte Coutan. In fact, that was the name of Antoine Aubert’s former associate. Now, the chain of connection was complete.
It was him, this Keysar, who was the instigator of the accidents, on behalf of Etienne Aubert, the master of the factory.
He went into a café, ordered a Martini and a piece of paper, and drafted a further postscript to his letter to the Commissaire, relating the conversation with the bicycle hirer and his suspicions of the critic and charlatan Thomas Keysar, thought-reader, and his mistress, Souriah.
That way, Raynaud can obtain more information, and act in consequence. As for my electrician, who has put on the mask of a flunkey, I won’t lose sight of him.
He got back into his automobile, set his gloved hands on the steering wheel, and headed back to Théoule.
Fabio Canti’s first concern was to replace the inoffensive test tube where he had found the one with the typhoid fever bacilli in the saddlebag of the bicycle. And then, now satisfied with his debut as a policeman, he rejoined the exquisite society of women and children, who had no suspicion of the danger lurking in the villa of roses, for lunch, a little late.
IV. The Commissaire as Humorist
Louis Lafon was at work in his office, in his capacity as head of personnel and supervisor of materials at the Aubert factory on the Quai de Javel, when he saw a tall, affable and smiling individual come in, after knocking.
He held out his hand. “Do you remember me, Monsieur Lafon?”
“Certainly—you’re the Commissaire of Grenelle; it was you who made the initial enquiries after the accident to Monsieur Antoine Aubert.”
“Exactly. And it’s in connection with that matter that I’ve come to see you.”
“Please take a seat, Monsieur le Commissaire.”
“One of my friends, the fine painter Fabio Canti has sent me some singular news from Théoule. Someone has attempted to murder the little boy, the son of your former employer’s second marriage.”
“You’ve done well to come, Monsieur Raynaud. For my part, I have certain things to confide in you.”
Lafon recounted what he had learned from Albaret, and the deductions that he had extracted, without daring to go any further.
“Would you recognize this individual?”
“Perfectly. His name is Armand Baudard. A
well-built fellow, but of shady appearance—that of a pimp. Curly chestnut-colored hair, long russet moustache.”
“We’re getting hot. That’s the individual whose description has been sent to me from the Côte d’Azur.”
“Hmm. The net’s tightening.”
“Yes,” said the Commisionaire, “but it’s necessary to have proof of the connection between Armand Baudard and Etienne Aubert. An intermediary has been identified to me: a former petty critic of art and literature, Thomas Keysar, now a thought-reader and graphologist, accompanied by a female chiromancer and clairvoyant. Do you know him as one of your boss’s acquaintances?”
“No, I don’t know any of Etienne Aubert’s intimate friends now that he no longer frequents Sixte Coutan, his father’s former associate...or rather, his wife.”
“It’s said that she has relaxed thighs.”
“She was Antoine Aubert’s mistress, and Etienne’s.”
“The father and the son, eh! What does Coutan do now that he’s let go of the factory?”
“I don’t know. ‘Business.’ He’s very artful.”
“Thanks. I think I’ve grasped the thread. This Thomas Keysar and the seeress are friends of Josette Coutan. They’ve been seen together on the Riviera. There’s no doubt about it: the thought-reader knows Etienne Aubert. I’ve found the connection.”
The Commissaire, Albert Raynaud, reflected momentarily. He was a humorist in addition to his functions; he liked fantasy, satire and farce, and exercised his whimsy under various pseudonyms in some of the best-known specialist papers, including La Sourire and La Merle Blanc. He transposed serious matters, and supposedly important men of the day, onto another plane, altering their proportions like a distorting mirror, concave or convex.
“Have you read Macbeth, Monsieur Lafon?”
“Shakespeare? Of course. My wife makes translations from English.”
“You know that the two guilty parties, obsessed by their remorse and their imagination, see specters everywhere.”
“That’s not so common nowadays. Perhaps Etienne Aubert can only be irritated by the police.”
“He will be—but before then, it’s necessary to trouble his idle mind a little.”
“What do you mean?”
“Who has the key to the wheel where Monsieur Aubert perished?”
“Me.”
“That’s perfect. Will you please have a duplicate key made, secretly?”
“I can do that myself. I’ve been a metalworker, like Baudard—and I think that he must have made a key to the gate, too.”
“In fact, since it’s you who’ll keep the key, it will be sufficient for you to open the gate when you think that Etienne Aubert is going to go past it.”
“He won’t be going past it much longer. The annex he’s building will permit him to go home without going through the machine-room.”
“All the more reason to work quickly. So, you open the gate, and if possible, scatter a few drops of red ink here and there to strike the boss’s imagination, create an unease in his mind, a suggestion that might make him do something silly and start him on the fatal path. From now on, I’ll put him under surveillance. You understand, Lafon?”
“Yes—the boss is stuffed.”
Gravely, the Commissairre said: “Everything that I’ve just learned corroborates my presumptions. What do you expect? Etienne Aubert is another victim of that infamous war: it’s a case of a slightly unsteady mind unhinged by life at the front. Those men living under the continual threat of death, seeing friends and comrades fall around them, have come to see life as a battlefield in which everyone must boldly entrench himself, without outdated scruples. Devotion, honesty, fraternity are just words on parade. Strength or skill—and success justifies anything. But the man isn’t a devotee of the high life: one gets lost following all the meanders and manifestations of human mentality.”
“Etienne wanted the factory.”
“He would have had it. But his father’s new marriage and the birth of a son have eaten away at his share. Perhaps there’s also something else—who knows?” The Commissaire rose to his feet. “But I’ll find out, damn it! It’s my job and my passion.”
But Lafon was asking himself what was going to become of the factory in all this.
V. The Specter of Antoine Aubert
At the very moment that fortune was turning against him, Etienne Aubert was opening his mail. No part of his daily work pleased him more. Nothing in fact, does more to affirm an industrialist’s strength and supremacy within his factory. It is the mail, the offers and requests, the commissions and orders, on which the ongoing life of workshops depends. There, he felt that he was truly the master of the twelve hundred workers awaiting his orders. As he went along, he sorted out the correspondence.
Among the personal letters, two were from the Alpes-Maritimes. Etienne Aubert had recognized Keysar’s handwriting on one and Josette’s on the other. However strong his desire was to read them, however, he judged it to be his duty to deal with the affairs of the factory before passing on to his own, often dirty business. Having finished with the factory matters, he was about to turn his own concerns when voices became audible in the office next door.
He heard: “…in Monsieur Antoine’s time...” The rest was lost in a mixture of other voices, but three times the same piercing words were repeated: “…in Monsieur Antoine’s time...”
His father’s name, pronounced at the moment when Etienne was opening one of Thomas Keysar’s “epistles”—as the rogue liked to say—caused him to shudder. Shrugging his shoulders, he read on. It was inconsequential. Thomas talked about his successes in Nice and Cannes, and concluded with the underlined words: “All’s going well.” He threw the letter into the wastebasket and opened Josette’s, written on mimosa paper.
My dear Etienne, Sixte joins me in sending you a bonjour from Nice. Why aren’t you with us? It’s the good life, my dear. Sixte is working. He has a big deal in Rumania. Millions to be made. How stupid it is, Etienne, to remain buried in your scrap iron! Come then, with your cash. Sixte will multiply it for you tenfold in a year. Just think that I have seven or eight hundred thousand a year to spend. This life is splendid. Hurry up and come. I miss you. Come, friend, come. Come on, then!
Screwed up into a ball, the letter went to join the other in the wastebasket. All that’s swagger to draw me into the trap. Her husband makes millions…not astonishing, for such a cuckold...
Lafon came in.
“What was the matter just now?” asked Etienne. “You were making a racket.”
“It’s Ouchy and a couple of others who came, in a panic, to tell me that when they were going to the storage they saw the door in the mesh of the flywheel open ‘as in Monsieur Antoine’s time.’ I told them they were dreaming, since the key’s in my office.”
“So?”
“I don’t understand it. I went with them. It was true.”
“Come on, Lafon. I don’t like people making fun of me.”
“The gate’s slightly free in its movement. It could be that the lock wasn’t completely engaged and that the vibrations of the machine, by making it jump, opened it.”
“In any case, give me the key. Someone can come to get it from my desk when it’s necessary.”
“As you wish.”
Lafon went to fetch the key.
“There,” he said, handing it to Etienne.
Aubert took it, but immediately dropped it in horror.
“What’s the matter?” said Lafon, picking the key up and putting it on the desk.
“There’s blood on that key!” said the decorated young man in a strangled voice. “There’s blood on it!”
Lafon started to laugh. “Blood! That’s a funny idea, Boss. It’s just some red ink that I spilled just now, when we were arguing. Ouchy threw the key down into it.
With a hoarse sigh, Etienne said: “It’s stupid, these stories! Isn’t it enough to have lost my father in that horrible manner without awakening su
ch macabre recollections?”
“I’m painfully impressed myself by these strange coincidences,” said Lafon, hypocritically. “But one often gets disturbed mistakenly. Everything’s explicable.”
“It’s certain,” said Etienne, regaining his self-control, “that the fantastic doesn’t exist. It’s only our impressionable minds that create it...”
You’re strong, Lafon thought, but it touched you all the same. It’s not going to stop.
“Anything else in particular to tell me, my friend?”
VI. Shadows and Light
“The Arnal factory’s on strike. A number of workers have come looking for employment. If you want my advice, you could take on fifty or so. We have enough room and work for them. I know almost all of them, Boss; we’d have the pick of them.”
“Arnal’s shares were on the rise, though. I don’t understand why the board of directors is obstinate in not agreeing to the same pay rates as mine.”
“The shareholders are forcing the hand of the board. Arnal’s washed his hands of the matter.”
“Arnal’s too rich. It’s unfortunate to have to say it, but there are very few industrialists who love their factory for itself, for the joy of seeing it prosper and grow.”
“Like you, for instance, Monsieur Etienne—and like me, too.”
“Yes, I love it fanatically. It’s the work of the Auberts. If, in time, I have a son, I want him to love the factory more than anything else, like my ancestors and like me. A man who doesn’t create an objective in life for himself is a sterile man. One needs a stimulus. Personally, I’ve forged a colossal dream: incessantly to augment the production of the factory until it encompasses all the specialties of metalwork; to create, in Paris, an iron industry district, to extend it further and further, to make it a second Creusot. Perhaps, my dear Lafon, my dream’s too big for me. Before being the master of the factory, I was the adversary, almost the enemy, of the workers. I’ve recognized my error. I shall make them—I have made them—my allies. If, by chance—since that bizarre business with the key a little while ago reminded me of what happened to my father—something happens to me, open this drawer. You’ll find my testament in it, in which I’ve taken measures for the work begun to be continued.”
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