Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  She showed me the plan of the apartment. It was on the second floor. The windows of the main room faced the Comptoir d’Escompte. The stairway led to the street, the servants’ stairs to Rougemont Place. Rougemont Place is closed at one end by an iron grille, with double doors, which are left open most of the night. It is continued by Bergère Place, which meets it at a right angle, and which has two gates, one opening on the street where the Comptoir d’Escompte is, the other on the rue du Faubourg-Montmartre. All of these are details that we would probably not need. The apartment was empty. On the ground floor, a small shop, where a clerk stayed during the day. A circular staircase led directly from the shop to the apartment above. Durin had prepared a key for the shop-door. Helena drew it from the bag.

  A few yards away, on the other side of the street, was a hotel, where we would stop. From a window in the hotel, we would watch for the moment to begin operations. When the time came, we would step into the shop. There would be nothing to do there. Abraham did not sell over the counter. The treasures he dealt in were locked in a safe upstairs. “In twenty minutes,” said Helena, “we will have cleaned the place out.” And she replaced the papers and key in the bag.

  “One thing I don’t understand,” she added, “is why Durin” (sometimes she called him Douglas and sometimes Durin, for she knew that that name sounded more natural to me) “wrote on the plans operate between noon and 2:00 P. M. Why in the broad daylight? Because the clerk would be at lunch? But the clerk doesn’t stay there at night. We’ll be undisturbed at night.”

  “I agree with you,” I said. “You can’t do it in daylight.”

  “Well, let’s stop at the hotel and we’ll see. But first, we’ve got to make a getaway from here without paying our bill. I’ve only got one five-hundred-franc note left, and I am not anxious to give it up. You’ll see how simple it is. (Oh, the simplicity of this life!) You look out for the car, and take down this bag and the suitcase. If nobody says anything to you, go right out; but probably they’ll stop you. In that case, you will say: ‘Take the bill up to Madame, who is in her apartment.’ Meanwhile, I’ll slip out through the bathroom, leaving an empty hand-bag, a pair of gloves, my powder-case, etc on the table in my room. I’ll join you in the car when you start. The clerk will still be waiting upstairs for me to come back for my gloves. And if anything goes wrong, don’t get flustered. I’ll simply say: ‘I thought Monsieur had paid,’ and we’ll find some other means. But it always works. At Deauville, Mr. Hooker may be dunned, but he will answer: ‘I thought Madame had paid,’ and we will pay with Abraham’s money. Never worry about a hotel bill, there is always some way of settling it. And some other time I will teach you how to touch the manager for a loan. There are a dozen different ways of doing it. Durin used to have a little catechism that I had to learn by heart, when he was teaching me. And now it is I who am teaching you. How funny life is!”

  Our adventure the next night, however, was not so funny. I still feel myself grow hot when I think of it. And it enraged me to see Helena laugh as she looked back on it. What a depth of cruelty there was in her! She threw me time and again into the water to teach me to swim, and watched my struggles with delight. The more I floundered, the more she enjoyed it, though when it was all over, she rewarded me with a kiss and a compliment. But often I discovered I hated her, when I suspected that, if I should drown, it would add the final touch to her pleasure. I realized that I knew her less and less. She appeared to trust me completely, and to give me her full confidence, but I always felt that I was only partially admitted to her thoughts.

  Did she love me or not? Certainly she didn’t hate me, as I hated her, for example, whenever I stopped, for five minutes, loving her. She would not do me that much honor. But was it really love? Or did it amuse her to have a worshiper and pupil?

  But I had better get back to my story. We left Dieppe amid the smiles and bows of all the servants, who are probably still waiting for their tips.

  That night we were installed in a little hotel a few yards from Rougemont Place. Why not in the Place itself? Because the janitor slept in a room which opened on Abraham’s service stairway. By ten o’clock we were ready. I took the car to the boulevard and left it in front of the Théâtre des Nouveautés, where we would pick it up later. Then I went back to our room; the street was deserted now, but it would not be at two o’clock in the morning.

  “Let’s get this done,” said Helena, and once more we started out. In the pocket of her cloak she carried our tools.

  I went ahead to the corner of the rue Rougemont and looked over the ground. Meanwhile Helena opened the shop door without trouble. Not a person in sight, not a policeman. I joined her. A taxi rattled down the street, but without paying any attention to us; we might have been going into our own house. The door to the main stairway was closed: what security! Once more I laughed at the notions people have of this trade.

  The stream of light shot out from the dark lantern and traveled over an empty room. Always the same. It had been amusing at first, but it was beginning to grow monotonous now. We slipped up the circular staircase to the second floor, and entered the room where the safe stood.

  Instantly we both stopped; we felt that someone was in the room. The sound of breathing? Perhaps. Or perhaps nothing.... There does not need to be any noise for one to realize that somebody is in the room. I had felt it as quickly as Helena herself. And, like her, my fingers tightened over the pliers I was holding.

  We had closed the dark lanterns at the first moment of suspicion. Suddenly Helena’s flared out again. There was no danger of our being seen. The shaft of light moved like a curious eye, leaving us in the darkness behind it. A bed... ah, somebody in it! The covers piled in a huddle down the center.... Helena stepped towards the bed, tossed back the covers, and revealed... a little mass of trembling fear. You could hardly have called it a boy; it was merely a cowering lump of flesh. We felt so sorry for him that we tried to reassure him. We patted him on the shoulder and vowed that we would do him no harm, if he would keep quiet. He began to breathe again and promised to be good; his body trembled and his teeth chattered.

  Leaving him on the bed, we attacked the safe. It was a longer job than we had expected. Abraham’s safe was not to be taken lightly. Behind us, the clerk groaned: “What will the boss say? What will the boss say?”

  Without pausing in her work (I was holding the light for her) Helen questioned the poor lad. “It’s my fault,” he moaned, “and it’ll be the end of me. I should have taken the jewels to the Comptoir d’Escompte, the way I do every evening.”

  We understood then why Durin had given orders to operate between noon and two o’clock, while the clerk was at lunch and the jewels in the safe. At night, the safe was usually empty. Before closing the shop, each evening, the clerk, who was a nephew of Abraham’s, took the jewels across the street and left them in the box at the bank. But this evening he had been kept at the office by a visit from a customer. Finding that the bank was already closed, when the customer left, he had decided to sleep in the apartment with the jewels.

  We tried to cheer him up with a few jokes, and went at our work again with fresh pleasure. This time, at least, we would not draw a blank! And in our absorption, we forgot the clerk....

  We had just about finished when we heard cries from below that roused the whole street: “Thief! Thief!”

  Helena dashed to the window. Two policemen were coming on a run from the rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière. The bed was empty: our young clerk had not been so scared as he had pretended. I looked helplessly around the room; Helena sized up the situation in a glance. Our retreat was cut off in the direction of the street. She hurried towards the service stairway, calling to me to follow her. Valuable time was lost in hunting for the door, which was not in the kitchen where we had expected to find it but through a small closet. Thank God, here it was! We plunged down the stairs.

  Helena was still in the lead. Suddenly a light, and a lumbering shadow, appeared below us. It wa
s the janitor, hurrying up three steps at a time. Helena caught his upturned face with the heel of her hand, sent him sprawling, and leaped over him. I followed in turn. The man struggled to his feet, fell again, and moaned. A sprained ankle had saved us.... But he, too, took up the cry: “Thief! Thief!”

  Fortunately, the door into Rougemont Place was not locked. We pushed it open and stepped into the dark. The air was full of cries, and half-visible figures ran past us.

  “Don’t run, whatever you do,” whispered Helena. Taking my arm, she forced her calmness on me. A policeman was running ahead of us, and we followed him without haste. More policemen, coming towards us this time! We turned to the right, and passing under an arch found ourselves at the stage door of the Théâtre des Nouveautés, where a group of actors and chorus were getting a breath of air during an intermission. Helena quietly edged me into the midst of them, and no one paid the slightest attention to us. We climbed an iron stairway and came out in the wings. Here Helena left me to wait for her, and disappeared into the theater. A moment later she returned with two tickets, and we were ushered to seats in the fourth row. Helena asked for a program and handed the usher two francs. And this was how it happened that we witnessed the last two acts of “Not on the Lips!” But the truth is, I was in no state to appreciate the musical comedy. Helena, on the contrary, seemed absorbed in watching the stage, and lost no chance to applaud.

  During the next intermission, we remained in our seats. In a whisper I asked Helena what would have happened if the door on Rougemont Place had been locked.

  “Forget about that, Ruddy,” she said. “We should have gone back up and escaped by the roof. You have no idea what fun it is scrambling over roofs.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  After a pause I mustered up courage to suggest that we had better leave the theater and get out of this dangerous neighborhood as quickly as possible. She replied that I was a fool and that it was precisely because the neighborhood was dangerous that it was better not to go out in it. “Anyway,” she added, “everything works out for the best, for having failed in our scheme, we have the consolation of seeing a good show. We’ll go out when everybody else does, but separately. The police are looking for a man and a woman. But that man and woman will not meet again until they reach Deauville. I’ll go back in the car. You pay no attention to me, and take the train to Le Havre. I’ll look for you at Deauville tomorrow evening. Now, let me enjoy the show.”

  We carried out her plans without a hitch. When I was settled alone in the train for Le Havre — a night local, alas! — I felt like a wanderer in a maze who had lost the one thread that could guide him out. It was not the woman I loved that I missed at that moment, but the woman of experience who was initiating me in my new career. I had grown so accustomed to having her take the initiative in these exploits that without her I could foresee only disaster. But, as it turned out, I did myself an injustice. I was not so stupid as I thought. And even now I cannot recall the events that followed without a certain pride, for I extricated myself without help from situations where many would certainly have been lost. I still remember the next few weeks without bitterness — even that day at Le Havre, which was far from being unworthy of the illustrious Mr. Flow himself.

  Speaking of Mr. Flow, here is what I read in the paper the next morning when I stepped out on the station platform:

  The famous Mr. Flow is active! The public already knows that the story of his drowning in the wreck of the Britannic was the product of his own imagination. There can now be no doubt that he is once more in our midst. According to the latest reports, he is hovering between Paris and Deauville. If we may believe the inspector at Petit-Jean, it was Mr. Flow who recently broke into the villa, The Elms, rented for the season by Sir Archibald Skarlett. It was also he who attempted to steal Lady Skarlett’s jewels at the Royal Hotel. The inspector assures us that he recognized the method of opening safes, which can only be carried out with a tool invented by Mr. Flow himself. This tool has done him good service in days gone by, but may end by causing his ruin. As in the past, Mr. Flow is again operating with a woman companion. Has he been rejoined by his former accomplice, or has he gained a new recruit? If it were anyone else, we should probably soon know; but in any case, we are warned. Hotels, casinos, and gambling concessions will do well to be on their guard.

  There followed a column and a half of Mr. Flow’s history, describing his incredible escapes and the many tricks he had played on the police. On the next page, among “last minute news,” was the following wire from Paris:

  The notorious Mr. Flow and his companion attempted an important job last night which was almost a success. With their famous safe-drill, they had partly cut through a vault of Abraham Moritz, jeweler, in Rougemont Place, when the alarm was given by a clerk, and the pair escaped by the service stairs. The gates of Rougemont Place and Bergère Place were both closed at once, and the burglars seemed caught in a mousetrap. Police and detectives searched for them all night. It was learned later at Headquarters that during that time the burglars had been quietly watching a popular musical comedy, in the fourth row of the orchestra, at the Théâtre des Nouveautés, having entered the theater by the stage door. We are on the trace of the Man of a Hundred Faces!

  CHAPTER X

  THUS I HAD become Mr. Flow himself. I was now The Man of a Hundred Faces! Certainly no one could say that I was not looking after my client’s interests. In his cozy little cell in Paris, he was protected from all suspicion.

  At first I felt no pride at this transformation. To tell the truth, I was crushed under the weight of my new reputation. But as I passed through the station and strolled along the terrace cafés, I overheard enough comments about myself to inspire me with a tingling vanity. Housekeepers paused on their doorsteps, broom in one hand and newspaper in the other, to marvel at my deeds and speculate as to what had become of me. And all of them were frank in expressing their admiration for me.

  The story of our going to the theater delighted them more than anything else. “Can you imagine that? While the police were looking all over for them, they were at ‘Not on the Lips’! He’s a card, that man Flow. I’d give a lot to know him!”

  Everywhere I went, it was the same tune. After a while I caught myself looking about with a fatuous smile of acknowledgment, as if I had just landed from a trans-Atlantic flight and was being received by the populace. I, who had every reason for wishing to slip unnoticed through the crowd, deliberately brushed elbows with all I passed. I could hardly keep myself from calling out: “Here is Mr. Flow! I am the man who fooled the cleverest police in the world!” But they would not have believed me. “Quit your kidding! You, Mr. Flow? You’re crazy....”

  I crossed the square in front of the theater, and made my way to the Hotel Tortoni, having decided to wait quietly, in a hotel room, until the night tide, when I could catch the boat to Trouville. I registered at the hotel without baggage or even a coat. (I had thought it wiser to leave my raincoat at the check-room in the station, for fear its fashionable cut might have been noticed at the Théâtre des Nouveautés.) I paid for my room in advance, saying that my bags would be brought up later; and bolting the door, dropped on the bed. I fell sound asleep almost at once, and slept until two o’clock. Then, after taking a bath, I had some lunch sent up to my room, and once more felt like a fighting-cock.

  Strangely enough, all anxiety had vanished. I had not only taken on the reputation of Mr. Flow, but his personality had entered into me: I had the fullest confidence that I should be able to get myself out of any situation that might arise.

  I sent for the papers, and enjoyed a certain pleasure in reading of my exploits, which occupied the front page. The time passed quickly. The boat was to leave at nine. At eight I went downstairs, smoking my pipe, to take a stroll along the harbor. The shop windows were lighting up, and I avoided the rue de Paris, which is the most frequented and the most carefully watched. Following the side streets, I reached the neighborhoo
d of the docks and sat down peacefully, in the shadow, at a terrace café.

  It was a quiet, lovely evening. A gentle breeze from the north ruffled the water and promised a pleasant crossing. By ten o’clock I would be with Helena at the Royal Hotel. Deauville now appeared to me as a refuge where I could be secure. There Helena was Lady Skarlett and I was the friend of Lady Skarlett, vouched for by Sir Archibald. I was an important personage. It was unthinkable that Mr. Arthur Hooker could have anything to do with the burglar of Rougemont Place.

  I had reached this point in my reflections and had just tossed a coin on the table for my drink, when I felt a hand drop on my shoulder. It was a disagreeable surprise, to say the least, and I gave a slight start. But any honest man might have shown the same repugnance at an unexpected familiarity.

  After all, it might be some acquaintance from Deauville who was also waiting for the boat and had recognized me. These thoughts passed through my mind in the flash of an eye.

  But it was not a friend from Deauville. It was a detective. He showed me his card in the palm of his hand, and had the impudence to ask for my papers.

  At once I recalled Helena’s instructions to remain calm and gain time.

  “I am afraid you are making a mistake,” I said. “You don’t realize to whom you are speaking.”

  “That’s what I wish to know, sir.”

  “I am stopping at the Hotel Tortoni. My papers are there.”

  “Then let’s go to the Tortoni.”

  “That is just what I was going to suggest.”

  We walked side by side without a word except to agree that it was a delightful evening. I had ten minutes to lay my plans, and though I was a little shaky, I was by no means incapable of thinking.

  You would be surprised to know, however, that I was chiefly preoccupied in wondering what the good people of Le Havre, who had been so full of admiration for me that morning, would think the next day if I let myself be nabbed so stupidly.