“It’s a pleasant day.”
No response. But, suddenly the man burst into laughter, a happy, mirthful laugh, spontaneous and irresistible. Simenon felt his hair stand on end in horror and surprise. It was that laugh, that infernal laugh he knew so well!
With a sudden movement, he seized the man by the collar and looked at him with a keen, penetrating gaze; and found that he no longer saw the man Baudru. To be sure, he saw Baudru; but, at the same time, he saw the other, the real man, Buchanan. He discovered the intense life in the eyes, he filled up the shrunken features, he perceived the real flesh beneath the flabby skin, the real mouth through the grimaces that deformed it. Those were the eyes and mouth of the other, and especially his keen, alert, mocking expression, so clear and youthful!
“Maximilian Buchanan, Maximilian Buchanan,” he stammered.
Then, in a sudden fit of rage, he seized Buchanan by the throat and tried to hold him down. In spite of his fifty years, he still possessed unusual strength, whilst his adversary was apparently in a weak condition. But the struggle was a brief one. Maximilian Buchanan made only a slight movement, and, as suddenly as he had made the attack, Simenon released his hold. His right arm fell inert, useless.
“If you had taken lessons in jiu-jitsu at the quai des Orfevres," said Buchanan, “you would know that that blow is called udi-shi-ghi in Japanese. A second more, and I would have broken your arm and that would have been just what you deserve. I am surprised that you, an old friend whom I respect and before whom I voluntarily expose my incognito, should abuse my confidence in that violent manner. It is unworthy--Ah! What’s the matter?”
Simenon did not reply. That escape for which he deemed himself responsible--was it not he, Simenon, who, by his sensational evidence, had led the court into serious error? That escape appeared to him like a dark cloud on his professional career. A tear rolled down his cheek to his grey moustache.
“Oh! mon Dieu, Simenon, don’t take it to heart. If you had not spoken, I would have arranged for some one else to do it. I couldn’t allow poor Baudru Desire to be convicted.”
“Then,” murmured Simenon, “it was you that was there? And now you are here?”
“It is I, always I, only I.”
“Can it be possible?”
“Oh, it is not the work of a sorcerer. Simply, as the judge remarked at the trial, the apprenticeship of a dozen years that equips a man to cope successfully with all the obstacles in life.”
“But your face? Your eyes?”
“You can understand that if I worked eighteen months with Doctor Altier at the Saint-Louis hospital, it was not out of love for the work. I considered that he, who would one day have the honour of calling himself Maximilian Buchanan, ought to be exempt from the ordinary laws governing appearance and identity. Appearance? That can be modified at will. For instance, a hypodermic injection of paraffin will puff up the skin at the desired spot. Pyrogallic acid will change your skin to that of an Indian. The juice of the greater celandine will adorn you with the most beautiful eruptions and tumours. Another chemical affects the growth of your beard and hair; another changes the tone of your voice. Add to that two months of dieting in cell 24; exercises repeated a thousand times to enable me to hold my features in a certain grimace, to carry my head at a certain inclination, and adapt my back and shoulders to a stopping posture. Then five drops of atropine in the eyes to make them haggard and wild, and the trick is done.”
“I do not understand how you deceived the guards.”
“The change was progressive. The evolution was so gradual that they failed to notice it.”
“But Baudru Desire?" “Baudru exists. He is a poor, harmless fellow whom I met last year; and, really, he bears a certain resemblance to me. Considering my arrest as a possible event, I took charge of Baudru and studied the points wherein we differed in appearance with a view to correct them in my own person. My friends caused him to remain at the Depot overnight, and to leave there next day about the same hour as I did--a coincidence easily arranged. Of course, it was necessary to have a record of his detention at the Depot in order to establish the fact that such a person was a reality; otherwise, the police would have sought elsewhere to find out my identity. But, in offering to them this excellent Baudru, it was inevitable, you understand, inevitable that they would seize upon him, and, despite the insurmountable difficulties of a substitution, they would prefer to believe in a substitution than confess their ignorance.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” said Simenon.
“And then,” exclaimed Maximilian Buchanan, “I held in my hands a trump- card: an anxious public watching and waiting for my escape. And that is the fatal error into which you fell, you and the others, in the course of that fascinating game pending between me and the officers of the law wherein the stake was my liberty. And you supposed that I was playing to the gallery; that I was intoxicated with my success. I, Maximilian Buchanan, guilty of such weakness! Oh, no! And, no longer ago than the Von Royston affair, you said: “When Maximilian Buchanan cries from the housetops that he will escape, he has some object in view.” But, sapristi, you must understand that in order to escape I must create, in advance, a public belief that escape, a belief amounting to an article of faith, an absolute conviction, a reality as glittering as the sun. And I did create that belief that Maximilian Buchanan would escape, that Maximilian Buchanan would not be present at his trial. And when you gave your evidence and said: “That man is not Maximilian Buchanan,” everybody was prepared to believe you. Had one person doubted it, had any one uttered this simple restriction: Suppose it is Maximilian Buchanan?--from that moment, I was lost. If anyone had scrutinized my face, not imbued with the idea that I was not Maximilian Buchanan, as you and the others did at my trial, but with the idea that I might be Maximilian Buchanan; then, despite all my precautions, I should have been recognized. But I had no fear. Logically, psychologically, no once could entertain the idea that I was Maximilian Buchanan.”
He grasped Simenon’s hand.
“Come, Simenon, confess that on the Wednesday after our conversation in the prison de la Sante, you expected me at your house at four o’clock, exactly as I said I would go.”
“And your prison-van?” said Simenon, evading the question.
“A bluff! Some of my friends secured that old unused van and wished to make the attempt. But I considered it impractical without the concurrence of a number of unusual circumstances. However, I found it useful to carry out that attempted escape and give it the widest publicity. An audaciously planned escape, though not completed, gave to the succeeding one the character of reality simply by anticipation.”
“So that the cigar....”
“Hollowed by myself, as well as the knife.”
“And the letters?”
“Written by me.”
“And the mysterious correspondent?”
“Did not exist.”
Simenon reflected a moment, then said:
“When the anthropological service had Baudru’s case under consideration, why did they not perceive that his measurements coincided with those of Maximilian Buchanan?”
“My measurements are not in existence.”
“Indeed!”
“At least, they are false. I have given considerable attention to that question. In the first place, the Bertillon system of records the visible marks of identification--and you have seen that they are not infallible--and, after that, the measurements of the head, the fingers, the ears, etc. Of course, such measurements are more or less infallible.”
“Absolutely.”
“No; but it costs money to get around them. Before we left America, one of the employees of the service there accepted so much money to insert false figures in my measurements. Consequently, Baudru’s measurements should not agree with those of Maximilian Buchanan.”
After a short silence, Simenon asked:
“What are you going to do now?”
“Now,” replied Buchanan, “I am going t
o take a rest, enjoy the best of food and drink and gradually recover my former healthy condition. It is all very well to become Baudru or some other person, on occasion, and to change your personality as you do your shirt, but you soon grow weary of the change. I feel exactly as I imagine the man who lost his shadow must have felt, and I shall be glad to be Maximilian Buchanan once more.”
He walked to and fro for a few minutes, then, stopping in front of Simenon, he said:
“You have nothing more to say, I suppose?”
“Yes. I should like to know if you intend to reveal the true state of facts connected with your escape. The mistake that I made---”
“Oh! no one will ever know that it was Maximilian Buchanan who was discharged. It is to my own interest to surround myself with mystery, and therefore I shall permit my escape to retain its almost miraculous character. So, have no fear on that score, my dear friend. I shall say nothing. And now, good-bye. I am going out to dinner this evening, and have only sufficient time to dress.”
“I though you wanted a rest.”
“Ah! there are duties to society that one cannot avoid. To-morrow, I shall rest.”
“Where do you dine to-night?”
“With the British Ambassador!”
The evening before, I had sent my automobile to Rouen by the highway. I was to travel to Rouen by rail, on my way to visit some friends that live on the banks of the Seine.
At Paris, a few minutes before the train started, seven gentlemen entered my compartment; five of them were smoking. No matter that the journey was a short one, the thought of traveling with such a company was not agreeable to me, especially as the car was built on the old model, without a corridor. I picked up my overcoat, my newspapers and my time-table, and sought refuge in a neighboring compartment.
It was occupied by a lady, who, at sight of me, made a gesture of annoyance that did not escape my notice, and she leaned toward a gentleman who was standing on the step and was, no doubt, her husband. The gentleman scrutinized me closely, and, apparently, my appearance did not displease him, for he smiled as he spoke to his wife with the air of one who reassures a frightened child. She smiled also, and gave me a friendly glance as if she now understood that I was one of those gallant men with whom a woman can remain shut up for two hours in a little box, six feet square, and have nothing to fear.
Her husband said to her:
“I have an important appointment, my dear, and cannot wait any longer. Adieu.”
He kissed her affectionately and went away. His wife threw him a few kisses and waved her handkerchief. The whistle sounded, and the train started.
At that precise moment, and despite the protests of the guards, the door was opened, and a man rushed into our compartment. My companion, who was standing and arranging her luggage, uttered a cry of terror and fell upon the seat. I am not a coward--far from it--but I confess that such intrusions at the last minute are always disconcerting. They have a suspicious, unnatural aspect.
However, the appearance of the new arrival greatly modified the unfavourable impression produced by his precipitant action. He was correctly and elegantly dressed, wore a tasteful cravat, correct gloves, and his face was refined and intelligent. But, where the devil had I seen that face before? Because, beyond all possible doubt, I had seen it. And yet the memory of it was so vague and indistinct that I felt it would be useless to try to recall it at that time.
Then, directing my attention to the lady, I was amazed at the pallor and anxiety I saw in her face. She was looking at her neighbor--they occupied seats on the same side of the compartment-- with an expression of intense alarm, and I perceived that one of her trembling hands was slowly gliding toward a little traveling bag that was lying on the seat about twenty inches from her. She finished by seizing it and nervously drawing it to her. Our eyes met, and I read in hers so much anxiety and fear that I could not refrain from speaking to her:
“Are you ill, madame? Shall I open the window?”
Her only reply was a gesture indicating that she was afraid of our companion. I smiled, as her husband had done, shrugged my shoulders, and explained to her, in pantomime, that she had nothing to fear, that I was there, and, besides, the gentleman appeared to be a very harmless individual. At that moment, he turned toward us, scrutinized both of us from head to foot, then settled down in his corner and paid us no more attention.
After a short silence, the lady, as if she had mustered all her energy to perform a desperate act, said to me, in an almost inaudible voice:
“Do you know who is on our train?”
“Who?”
“He....he....I assure you....”
“Who is he?”
“Maximilian Buchanan!”
She had not taken her eyes off our companion, and it was to him rather than to me that she uttered the syllables of that disquieting name. He drew his hat over his face. Was that to conceal his agitation or, simply, to arrange himself for sleep? Then I said to her:
“Yesterday, through contumacy, Maximilian Buchanan was sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment at hard labor. Therefore it is improbable that he would be so imprudent, to-day, as to show himself in public. Moreover, the newspapers have announced his appearance in Turkey since his escape from the Sante.”
“But he is on this train at the present moment,” the lady proclaimed, with the obvious intention of being heard by our companion; “my husband is one of the directors in the penitentiary service, and it was the stationmaster himself who told us that a search was being made for Maximilian Buchanan.”
“They may have been mistaken---”
“No; he was seen in the waiting-room. He bought a first-class ticket for Rouen.”
“He has disappeared. The guard at the waiting-room door did not see him pass, and it is supposed that he had got into the express that leaves ten minutes after us.”
“In that case, they will be sure to catch him.”
“Unless, at the last moment, he leaped from that train to come here, into our train....which is quite probable....which is almost certain.”
“If so, he will be arrested just the same; for the employees and guards would no doubt observe his passage from one train to the other, and, when we arrive at Rouen, they will arrest him there.”
“Him--never! He will find some means of escape.”
“In that case, I wish him ’bon voyage.’”
“But, in the meantime, think what he may do!”
“What?”
“I don’t know. He may do anything.”
She was greatly agitated, and, truly, the situation justified, to some extent, her nervous excitement. I was impelled to say to her:
“Of course, there are many strange coincidences, but you need have no fear. Admitting that Maximilian Buchanan is on this train, he will not commit any indiscretion; he will be only too happy to escape the peril that already threatens him.”
My words did not reassure her, but she remained silent for a time. I unfolded my newspapers and read reports of Maximilian Buchanan’s trial, but, as they contained nothing that was new to me, I was not greatly interested. Moreover, I was tired and sleepy. I felt my eyelids close and my head drop.
“But, monsieur, you are not going to sleep!”
She seized my newspaper, and looked at me with indignation.
“Certainly not,” I said.
“That would be very imprudent.”
“Of course,” I assented.
I struggled to keep awake. I looked through the window at the landscape and the fleeting clouds, but in a short time all that became confused and indistinct; the image of the nervous lady and the drowsy gentleman were effaced from my memory, and I was buried in the soothing depths of a profound sleep. The tranquility of my response was soon disturbed by disquieting dreams, wherein a creature that had played the part and bore the name of Maximilian Buchanan held an important place. He appeared to me with his black laden with articles of value; he leaped over walls, and plundered castles. B
ut the outlines of that creature, who was no longer Maximilian Buchanan, assumed a more definite form. He came toward me, growing larger and larger, leaped into the compartment with incredible agility, and landed squarely on my chest. With a cry of fright and pain, I awoke. The man, the traveller, our companion, with his knee on my breast, held me by the throat.
My sight was very indistinct, for my eyes were suffused with blood. I could see the lady, in a corner of the compartment, convulsed with fright. I tried even not to resist. Besides, I did not have the strength. My temples throbbed; I was almost strangled. One minute more, and I would have breathed my last. The man must have realized it, for he relaxed his grip, but did not remove his had. Then he took a cord, in which he had prepared a slip-knot, and tied my wrists together. In an instant, I was bound, gagged, and helpless.
Certainly, he accomplished the trick with an ease and skill that revealed the hand of a master; he was, no doubt, a professional thief. Not a word, not a nervous movement; only coolness and audacity. And I was there, lying on the bench, bound like a mummy, I--Maximilian Buchanan!
It was anything but a laughing matter, and yet, despite the gravity of the situation, I keenly appreciated the humour and irony that it involved. Maximilian Buchanan seized and bound like a novice! robbed as if I were an unsophisticated rustic--for, you must understand, the scoundrel had deprived me of my purse and wallet! Maximilian Buchanan, a victim, duped, vanquished....What an adventure!
The lady did not move. He did not even notice her. He contented himself with picking up her traveling-bag that had fallen to the floor and taking from it the jewels, purse, and gold and silver trinkets that it contained. The lady opened her eyes, trembled with fear, drew the rings from her fingers and handed them to the man as if she wished to spare him unnecessary trouble. He took the rings and looked at her. She swooned.
Then, quite unruffled, he resumed his seat, lighted a cigarette, and proceeded to examine the treasure that he had acquired. The examination appeared to give him perfect satisfaction.
Maximilian The Master Thief Page 6