Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.
And this was followed by a sentence in French addressed to hotel thieves and adventurers of every nation:
Let all persons who walk about my stores at night take warning.
CHAPTER IV
THE COMMISSARY’S IDEA
HIS STORES! HIS stores! Bella Nissa has become Hardigras’s stores!
As poor M. Supia was returning to his rooms more cast down than ever, he encountered on his way the charming Antoinette, who already knew what had happened.
“Well, godfather, do you think it proper for Hardigras to call Bella Nissa his stores?” she asked.
He swooped down on her, menacingly; but the chit spun on her heels and slipped away. She, too, now, was furious and rapped out at him from the door: “I shan’t tell you now what my idea was.”
In the course of the morning M. Supia was summoned to the police office. He found there M. Bezaudin and MM. Souques and Ordinal, the two detective inspectors.
Both detectives were lean and gaunt, dressed in somewhat dusty clothes too tight for them. They were singularly alike. Devoted to one thing only — their profession — they thought wholly of their work; in other words, they were suspicious, crafty, reticent, looking at the worst side of life. When big game was left to them they followed up the trail with a quiet intensity which knew no pause until they brought back their quarry, gasping, in the clutch of the handcuffs.
Possessed of courage, moreover, which had withstood every test, they bore the marks of many scars. What differentiated one from the other was that while M. Ordinal occasionally spoke, M. Souques was invariably silent. He believed in the written word; and he accepted no orders which were not in writing. That was his system. M. Souques had the greatest contempt for M. Ordinal, and M. Ordinal loathed M. Souques. This ill-will arose from the fact that each one robbed the other of some honor that might have accrued to him, in the pursuit of a man. Nevertheless their experience of the night before brought them together in a common bond — their feeling of rage against Hardigras.
Hardigras, perhaps, had saved their lives. They would never forgive him for it. They bore him a grudge for shooting down two criminals whom they regarded as their property — the two hotel thieves. In short they were in a state of mind so closely resembling that of M. Hyacinthe Supia’s, that all three were soon in complete accord. M. Bezaudin, on the other hand, was more smiling than ever. He found himself relieved of two dangerous visitors. That was the main thing; and his first words left no doubt of his gratitude to Hardigras on that account.
“Well,” he began, when M. Supia was shown in, “your Hardigras did us a very great service last night.”
This far too airy greeting mightily displeased M. Supia, “Did you a service, perhaps,” growled M. Supia taking a seat. “Rut as far as I am concerned I take note that Hardigras is particularly anxious to be the only one to rob me. This is a privilege that he does not choose to share with anyone else.”
He threw upon the table the strip of calico which bore Hardigras’s cynical explanation of his courageous act.
“All this is not very serious,” returned M. Bezaudin, shrugging his shoulders, “and cannot make you forget how he prevented your stores from being burnt down and saved the lives of these two gentlemen.”
Here M. Ordinal looked up and abruptly interrupted M. Bezaudin.
“Pardon, Monsieur,” he said in a thin, harsh, somewhat disagreeable voice, “this is not the first time our lives have been in danger. Rut believe me, we have never needed the services of a professional thief to get us out of a difficulty.”
“I am quite sure of that,” assented M. Bezaudin good-humoredly. “All the same you cannot deny, either of you, that after what happened last night you owe Hardigras some gratitude.”
“Gratitude for what?” asked M. Ordinal, even more harshly. “I suppose you mean because he has debarred us, owing to this incident, from the professional satisfaction of arresting two thieves upon whom we already had our hands.”
“And who were on the point of shooting you.”
“Or missing us. That is a daily risk in our business.”
M. Souques made an approving motion of his head.
“A smart piece of work, in truth, on the part of your Hardigras!” went on M. Ordinal. “Those gentlemen will perhaps die in hospital without the opportunity of turning informers. Henceforward this is a matter between Hardigras and us. We shan’t leave Nice until we have arrested him. That’s our last word.”
M. Ordinal turned to M. Souques who in silence fumbled in his pocket and drew forth a pair of handcuffs. He had no need for speech. His meaning was clear. Thereupon M. Bezaudin laughed openly at them.
“Well, gentlemen, do as you please, but allow me to say that up to now you have not been any cleverer than the others.”
M. Hyacinthe Supia had listened to the two detectives with marked approval and now turned brusquely to the Commissary, in a tone devoid of all courtesy:
“But if you are not going to arrest Hardigras what are you going to do?”
“Nothing,” returned M. Bezaudin. “I shall do nothing. I shall leave the matter to you. I had an idea of my own; but let’s drop the subject.”
“Excuse me,” returned M. Supia. “The other day you said: ‘Don’t let’s arrest his accomplices,’ and to-day you say: ‘Don’t let’s arrest Hardigras.’ I am entitled to know what your idea is since you seem to consider that your main duty is to avoid arresting anyone.”
“Arrest Hardigras! Arrest Hardigras! Hang it all, I am not the man to prevent you.”
“What is your idea, Monsieur? These two gentlemen and myself are very keen on knowing,” persisted M. Supia in increasingly hostile tones.
But MM. Ordinal and Souques seated side by side gazed blankly at the ceiling to show how far from the Commissary they were in thought.
Observing that his idea was of so little importance in their eyes, M. Bezaudin, who though he was a philosopher was no less a man — in other words was not without a certain pride — decided to tell them.
“Well, this is my idea — I think we are taking the wrong course with Hardigras.”
“What do you mean?” asked M. Supia, becoming more and more suspicious.
“I mean that instead of hunting him down as you have done up to the present...”
“You would, perhaps, come to terms with him?”
“A man in my position, M. Supia, does not come to terms with a man like Hardigras.”
“I am very glad to hear you say so.”
“But that is a consideration a man like you would perhaps be wrong to reject in present circumstances.”
“Oh, you don’t say so! I am to make terms with the scoundrel.”
“Come, I say, that is using very strong language.... Scoundrel!... He did not behave as a scoundrel last night, and I want no further proof of that than the daily increasing sympathy of the crowd for him.”
“The sympathy of the crowd?” yelped M. Supia. “What crowd do you mean?”
“Oh, not a particularly brilliant crowd, I admit, but not a vicious crowd either I assure you. The crowd that loves a good laugh and a practical joke and is pleased to see the Commissary outwitted. I know it, and you too know it, for it represents the more substantial part of your customers at your stores.... Well, it is the complicity of this crowd that I look upon as formidable.... And I believe that if one gave Hardigras to understand that the jest has lasted long enough....”
“You call it a jest!” gasped M. Supia.
In his indignation he turned for support to the two detectives, but they continued to gaze imperturbably at the ceiling on which Hardigras had not as yet written anything!
“Let me develop my theory, if you don’t mind, M. Supia,” went on the Commissary. “Afterwards — well, you may do as you please. If you were to say to Hardigras: ‘We are quite willing to overlook everything, and you can go and get yourself hanged elsewhere, but on one condition: you must restore ev
erything that you have...—”
“Stolen, Monsieur, stolen. I like to call a thing by its right name.”
“Yes, ‘everything that you have stolen from Bella Nissa stores.’”
“Then you wish to bargain with Hardigras?”
“There’s no question of bargaining with him. The point is to get rid of him as soon as possible on the best terms. Let him know that you will not proceed to extremities against him if he will restore the things — as far as he can now — and I am sure he won’t hesitate.”
“Through whom would you make this proposal, seeing that you have been unable to discover the room in which he lives and entertains his friends at my expense?”
“Look here, I am convinced that your night watchmen — the four gentlemen whom Hardigras compelled to drink your champagne and liquors — will be only too pleased to render Hardigras this little service in return for a night which they will not soon forget. Will you allow me to say a word to them on the subject, in your presence?”
“What an awful disgrace,” moaned M. Supia, as he dropped into a seat. “Still, have a try.... In one way or another, as you say, we must put an end to it.”
The Commissary rang for his secretary, said a word to him, and almost at once the four night watchmen were shown in. Bouta, Aiguardente, Tantifla, and Pistafun seemed more prosperous and jovial than ever. They declared that they had never felt so well since taking what they called: Hardigras’s medicine.
In the presence of the Commissary they assumed an air of consternation.
“If it depended on me alone,” said M. Bezaudin in his loudest voice, “I should have offered you, some twenty-four hours ago, hospitality which would have been a great change from that which you enjoyed with your friend, Hardigras.”
“Hardigras is no friend of ours,” interrupted Tony Bouta. “Otherwise, governor, we should be ill with high living, but to speak the truth we’ve no fault to find with him.”
“Come, come, don’t talk such nonsense if you please,” said the Commissary. “I know all there is to be known about you, and I should have taken you before the magistrates had I not given way to M. Supia, here present, who chooses to consider that you allowed yourself to be lured into drinking more liquor than was good for you, though you cannot have been ignorant where it came from.”
“What about Hippolyte Morelli? Did he know where it came from? How about him?”
“We are not discussing M. Morelli. He is a man above suspicion.”
“Yes, he will be whitewashed, but it will be the penal settlement for us, and why, I ask, seeing that we were forced to open our gizzards?”
“Hold your tongue, Tony Bouta, and listen to what M. Supia says. Where I see in all this an aggravation of your offense, he contrives to find some excuse for you. Well, you must show your gratitude to him.”
“Our gratitude,” groaned Aiguardente. “What must we do to show our gratitude?”
“Gentlemen, I don’t ask you to show us the rooms where Hardigras’s stores his plunder...
“May I be paralyzed if I have the least idea!” said Tony Bouta with uplifted hand. “But if ever I hear a whisper of it I will tell you or may the devil take me.”
“As for me,” protested Tantifla, “may I die of consumption if I have any suspicion where Hardigras hangs out.”
“May I never eat cod stew again,” declared Aiguardente, “never touch another glass of brandy, never have any luck at bowls if I know anything of his family or home.”
“Well, we don’t want to be disagreeable, governor,” added Pistafun, “but we don’t know Hardigras from Adam. You must not take us for what we are not. We were carried before him tied up like sausages and my legs still have shooting pains in them. If we told you anything else it would be lies.”
“I don’t ask you to tell me because I know where the rooms are!” said M. Bezaudin in his grand manner. “This very morning Hardigras would be in the New Prison had not M. Hyacinthe Supia in his boundless generosity come and entreated me to spare a man who had saved his stores from fire and destruction and, at the risk of his life, preserved for the state two of its most useful servants.”
As he spoke he turned to Ordinal and Souques, no longer contemplating the ceiling but gazing fixedly at the tips of their boots.
“Of course,” went on the Commissary, “these gentlemen cannot any more than I can make terms with a man so greatly in the wrong as Hardigras — a man whose criminal whims have placed him beyond the pale of decent society.
But it is within the province of the one who alone has been wronged to listen to the voice of mercy. Therefore I say to you — you who are ignorant of Hardigras’s whereabouts but may by chance meet him — it would be well perhaps to let him know that M. Hyacinthe Supia is ready to spare him, in short to withdraw the charge against him if he will restore forthwith the articles that have disappeared from Bella Nissa through his agency — a fact which he cannot deny since all his thefts have been avowed by his own signature....
“Let him know, too, that when he has restored the things, it will be in his best interests to decamp before the police can lay their hands on him, for if I happen to come upon him I shall, as you say, send him and his accomplices to the penal settlement. Do you follow me, gentlemen?”
“I say steady, steady on Monsieur,” said Pistafun. “You are making a great fuss about a thing that’s no business of ours. But though we can’t help you we may all the same express our opinion.”
“Go on, Pistafun.”
“Well, our opinion is that this devil of a Hardigras will never return the furniture.”
“Never,” echoed the others, shaking their heads gloomily.
“And what makes you say that?”
“He is too fond of it. He takes too great care of it,” returned Pistafun. “If you only knew how well the things are kept — not a speck of dust on ’em — it’s a pleasure to see ’em! Particularly his wardrobes. He has them everywhere — in the dining-room, the drawing-room, the bedroom and even the kitchen. And the floors — linoleum such as has never been seen in a palace. What do you expect? He takes a pride in his home this man.... And then his casseroles from the biggest in which you could cook enough grub for a feast down to the tiniest one which looks as if made for a doll. No, no. It’s no good asking the impossible. If I, Pistafun, were by chance to run up against him and knew it was Hardigras, for he did not take off his mask before us — well, if I were to say to him: ‘Hardigras, humor the worthy M. Supia by giving him back his furniture,’ do you know what he would say? ‘Pistafun, you go to the devil.’ No, no, governor, ask some one else, or rather do the job without talking about it, seeing you know where his hiding-place is. You have no need of us, hang it all.”
The Commissary had grown red in the face, his stratagem had failed miserably. He folded his arms, turned to M. Supia, and said in an indignant voice.
“You see what comes of your making offers to Hardigras! Well, M. Supia, we can’t listen to you any longer.” — M. Supia had not uttered a word— “Nothing can now stop me. It’s war to the knife. Hardigras must go to prison. That’s my last word.”
On leaving the police office, M. Supia was joined by the two detectives.
“Now that the Commissary has given us a free hand we shall lose no time,” said M. Ordinal. “But you must leave things to us. We have obtained from the Municipal Library maps and documents bearing upon the old town, the castle, and the underground outlets to the Paillon valley. These will help us in our search of certain vaults which undoubtedly adjoin your stores and which Hardigras is using as a retreat. Don’t worry about anything. We shall disappear. Should the thefts continue, don’t make a public fuss about them. On the contrary arrange matters so that no one hears anything about them. Have patience — that’s all we ask. Leave everything to us.”
M. Supia listened to this advice with a somewhat lugubrious expression. Nevertheless as these two men were his last hope he had no wish to discourage them.
Th
ree days sped by during which Hardigras showed some moderation. M. Supia, sick of the whole thing, grew accustomed to his petty larcenies. But on the fourth day, M. Morelli, now entirely recovered from his terrible adventure, came to him and reported that a magnificent silver plated dinner service had vanished. Meantime nothing was heard of the two detectives, and there seemed no reason why things should not continue indefinitely in this way. Thus M. Supia once more paid a visit to the Commissary of Police.
He found him in a state of alarm. The authorities in Paris had begun to express surprise at the long absence and persistent silence of the two men. Explanations were demanded from the chief at Nice, who was at a loss. The Commissary was aware of the last conversation between the detectives and M. Supia. But, like M. Supia, he considered that the matter was being drawn out beyond all reasonable expectation. During the last two days his men had been set to work, but had reported nothing that was worthy of attention. In the bars and country inns where the light wine and brandy of the country unloosed tongues, the Commissary’s men variously disguised, pricked up their ears and listened to no purpose to the idle chatter of the company. In the table d’hôte restaurants where the bachelor employees of Bella Nissa took their meals, not only was no allusion made to the disappearance of the two detectives, but Hardigras’s name was no longer mentioned. They were aware that many of them were under suspicion of aiding and abetting the jovial cracksman’s disappearance and for some days they had known how to hold their tongues. Finally, if Ordinal and Souques had not left Nice or if they had not been made away with, certain police officers, who knew them intimately, would have discovered their trail however well they may have disguised themselves. But not — there was nothing. After all, Hardigras may have been capable of doing a wicked as well as a good deed. After saving their lives, knowing that he had made but two new enemies pledged to send him to the penal settlement, he may have rid himself of them without a scruple of remorse.
M. Supia returned home wrapped in thought; for he had derived no consolation from his visit to the Commissary. For some time now life in his family had been far from agreeable; and possibly there were reasons apart from Hardigras’s practical jokes for this absence of cheerfulness.
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 406