Despite the vast judicial arsenal provided by the Scoundrel Laws of 1893, the Sûreté and the Paris police seemed at a technological disadvantage in trying to arrest bandits moving at fairly rapid speeds in automobiles. Gendarmerie posts and most police stations in Paris did not yet have telephones. In 1909, a member of the General Council of the département of Seine-et-Oise had suggested that gendarmerie brigades be equipped with telephones. The state had balked at sharing the cost of Alexander Graham Bell’s invention with départements and towns. Only nine of the ninety-two gendarmerie brigades in Seine-et-Oise, which then covered a considerable part of the region of Paris beyond the walls of the capital, had phones. Now officials announced that beginning April 1 the central police office in each of the twenty arrondissements of Paris would be equipped with a telephone. The minister of the interior assured legislators that the police of Paris would soon have eight new automobiles that could match those now being stolen by the Bonnot Gang, and that they would be equipped with weapons.
Prefect of Police Lépine demanded funds to pay off informers, whom Guichard sent into action. While the police scrambled, the press criticized them for their failures. They mocked Xavier Guichard’s preferred nickname of “Guichard-Coeur de lion.”9 And L’Humanité published a poem that poked fun at Guichard and, here, Lépine:
The Ballade of the Fantome Bandits
Lépine, illustrious waster of time.
Ah! What disgrace and what grief,
If in this uncertain chase,
Guichard arrives dead last!
It’s you, the most famous captain!
But where are Bonnot and Garnier?10
The police seemed inadequately organized, and they lacked coordination between sectors. Police offices, despite the recent call for funds to back the Bonnot investigations, were strapped for cash. Salaries for policemen remained low, even as the cost of living continued to rise. Agents earned between six and twelve francs per day. On one occasion, seemingly reliable information had two suspects dining in a Montmartre restaurant. Two police agents were sent there, but they did not have the twelve to fifteen francs necessary to order lunch there so that they could better observe their prey. While they stood outside, the suspects slipped out of the eatery by another door.11
Following his flirtation with the young Russian woman in Brussels when he and Victor Kibaltchiche were inseparable friends, Raymond Callemin had come to believe that falling in love was incompatible with true anarchism and, if anything, he had become a misogynist.12 But now Raymond had become infatuated with Louise Dieudonné, and they were staying together with Pierre Jourdan on rue de la Tour-d’Auvergne in a quartier populaire in the ninth arrondissement, just below Montmartre. Jourdan, who had a sizable police record, now sold textiles for furniture in markets in the Paris region, notably that of Levallois-Perret three days a week. He knew many anarchists in and around Paris, probably including Carouy and Simentoff. The director of the market in Neuilly told the police that Jourdan was honest but that “the old redhead” who accompanied him “would not inspire me with confidence.”13
The “old redhead” was Louise Clément, born in Marseille and formerly married to someone called Hutteaux. She was considerably older than Jourdan, who sometimes introduced her as his mother.
Louise Clément Hutteaux was a former midwife who had given up her profession because she could not bear bringing babies into such an unjust world. She accompanied her lover Jourdan as he sold cloth at markets in the near suburbs. Although he had paid the rent for one lodging, they had been booted out because people kept coming and going, disturbing other residents.
While living with Jourdan, Raymond and Louise Dieudonné went on walks and attended several classical music concerts. One day they realized that they were being followed. Louise assured Raymond that the man was too well dressed to be a policeman, suggesting that it might be one of her former lovers. Callemin relaxed. The man, wearing his ever-present glasses and with his rose-colored young face, “gave the impression of a friendly tourist out for a stroll.”
On April 6, undercover police followed Louise Clément Hutteaux from a bar on boulevard Saint-Michel to the place where she and Jourdan lived in Montmartre. The concierge said that the couple had come there recently and announced that their profession was in sales and they traveled frequently. The police showed the concierge photos of Bonnot, Garnier, Valet, and Callemin, and she recognized Raymond la Science, who had been staying there for a fortnight. Waiting for the right moment to make their move, the police continued to watch the building.14
The next morning, April 7, Raymond la Science was arrested as he was carrying a bicycle down the stairs. He resisted, but he had no time to use the two loaded Browning pistols in his pocket. When asked why he was carrying loaded pistols, Raymond retorted with his usual cynicism, “The streets are not very safe!” Taken to jail, he recognized the man who had been following him the evening before. He asked a guard about him. It was Jouin. Callemin told the police, “It is too bad that you took me by surprise before my pistols had the chance to speak!”15
A search of that apartment turned up a tan leather suitcase that Jourdan claimed belonged to a friend. Another suitcase, which Louise Clément Hutteaux had purchased for Callemin at Bon Marché on April 4 and which contained clothes for him, had been seized at Gare Saint-Lazare. Jourdan said Callemin had given him the revolver, although it seemed more likely that it was the other way around. Indeed, the Browning pistol had been sold to Jourdan the previous January 21 for eighty-five francs. A gray overcoat was also there, seemingly belonging to Callemin “because of his small size.”16
The arrest of Raymond “la Science” Callemin.
Interrogated by the juge d’instruction Gilbert, Callemin claimed not to have been at Montgeron, and he refused to say where he had been on the day of the now-famous holdup on rue Ordener. Gilbert insisted that he clearly had participated in both attacks. Raymond sarcastically retorted, “I observe that you admirably make deductions!” He refused to say where he had bought his pistol, and he explained the sizable sum he had been carrying as having been won at the racetrack. Callemin denied knowing Garnier, Bonnot, or Valet—he claimed to know only Carouy. When Gilbert returned to the subject of Montgeron and Chantilly, informing Callemin that Marie la Belge (femme Schoofs) had related that her lover Garnier had placed Raymond in both places, Callemin replied, “I have nothing to respond to the calumnies of a woman paid to denounce me!”17
André Soudy holding a rifle during the reconstruction of the Bonnot Gang’s holdup of the Société Générale in Chantilly.
On April 11, juge d’instruction Gilbert ordered a confrontation between André Soudy and witnesses present outside the Société Générale in Chantilly who had identified him as “l’homme à la carabine” who had shouted “Caltez, caltez, ou je vous canarde.” The director of the Société Générale’s branch formally identified Soudy, who was then given an unloaded rifle and told to repeat “Caltez, caltez, ou je vous canarde.” Soudy insisted that the banker was in error, but the damage was done.18 The Parisian press soon knew that he had lived in what Le Petit Parisien referred to as the “phalanstery” that L’Anarchie had established the past summer in Romainville. Once more, this seemed to link Victor and Rirette to the Bonnot Gang. Le Matin, now that all three were in prison, was quick to denounce the Belgian connection, or “Belgian Trio,” of Callemin, Carouy, and Victor Kibaltchiche.19
Bonnot, Valet, Garnier, and Monier dit Simentoff were still at large, but the police were closing in. Still, each burglary or robbery brought assertions in the press that the Bonnot Gang was responsible. In Belgium, the manager of a railroad station, thinking he recognized members of the Bonnot Gang, fired shots in the direction of a group of travelers. The Titanic went down in the Atlantic Ocean on the night of April 14, drowning more than fifteen hundred passengers, but the Bonnot Gang stole the headlines.20
Chapter 16
ANTOINE GAUZY’S VARIETY STORE
T
he Corsican anarchist Pierre Cardi, thirty-seven years old, emerged as a person of interest in the search for Jules Bonnot. It was Cardi, of course, who had probably first suggested the Société Générale, located across the street from his old wine shop, as a dandy potential target for a big heist. Cardi had published several articles in L’Anarchie and founded “La Chaîne,” a short-lived newspaper that he claimed to be “the response to the sycophants of bourgeois order, [which is] maintained by the sword, prison, and the guillotine.” The infamous “anarchist millionaire” Alfred Pierre Fromentin had subsidized Cardi’s store, as he had earlier Cardi’s brothel at 46 rue Lamartine, a house purchased by Fromentin.1
Cardi had tried to sell some stolen securities, including some of those lifted from the Société Générale in the daring heist, but now needed another source of income. He now lived with his mistress in Alfortville, a suburb southeast of Paris. Invariably wearing a velvet suit, he opened a store selling “novelties” in Alfortville. Pierre Fromentin subsidized the store, paying the 130 francs annual rent. Cardi’s wife, meanwhile, washed clothes there.
Cardi seemed a likely person to offer hospitality to Jules Bonnot, whom the police suspected would be running out of possibilities.2 So on April 17, police followed Cardi from Alfortville to a store on rue de Paris, in the quartier of Petit-Ivry in Ivry-sur-Seine, about five hundred meters beyond the southeastern walls of Paris. The shabby houses that lined the rue de Paris were barely in better shape than the shacks that stood even closer to the fortifications and gate into Paris, where the lowest of prostitutes went about their work (“A girl from the fortifications! That says it all!”). Petty criminals would go out to the edge of Paris to count up their take.3
The shabby shop Cardi visited on rue de Paris, the “Halle populaire d’Ivry—nouveautés et confection—vêtements du travail” was quite similar to his store in Alfortville. Yet an anonymous letter to the police had signaled the store as suspect. The store offered cheap clothes, ribbons, and other inexpensive items. It was owned by Antoine Gauzy, another anarchist to whom Fromentin had advanced money so that he could start up the business. Thus Gauzy, like Cardi, had been subsidized by the anarchist millionaire.
As police discretely observed the comings and goings of customers and visitors, they recognized Monier dit Simentoff, the illegalist who had been at Romainville, suspected of having been involved in burglaries around Paris and in the Gard in the south. Monier had been seen several times in the offices of Lorulot’s L’Idée Libre, as well as at an anarchist bookstore. Police watched Monier’s every move, following him to his mistress’s apartment on rue Cloys, which parallels rue Ordener. He had been working at the Halle Populaire and returned to Gauzy’s store on April 18. Monier had taken a liking to Marie Besse, a sixteen-year-old who worked in Gauzy’s shop and who had worked for six months for Pierre Cardi. The young woman had become influenced by anarchist ideas and had left her family to work for Cardi.
That day, Monier disappeared into the crowds going down the stairs; the police lost track of him. But Jouin knew well that he would return to the Halle Populaire, where he could easily be arrested. Still, his principal goal was to find Jules Bonnot. Police observed Monier as he went to several textile shops on boulevard Sebastopol to order goods for Gauzy’s store. He then met up with Cardi at Châtelet, already one of the capital’s busiest Métro stations. The police lost track of Monier when he disappeared into the crowds going down the stairs. On April 21, police followed Lorulot, Jeanne Bélardi, and Monier out to Levallois-Perret. There they lost them.4
At six in the morning of April 24, Jouin and his agents burst into Monier’s room as he slept in a small hotel at 129 boulevard Ménilmontant in Belleville. They were on him before he could grab the Mauser pistol under his pillow or the Browning loaded with eight cartridges by the chimney across from the door. The police found letters Monier was writing Cardi, a military record book (livret) in the name of a printer from Marseille, an electoral card of a resident of Levallois-Perret, a hundred francs, and also a sweet note Marie Besse had written him. When police asked for Monier’s identity card, he refused, but added that if they were arresting him, they must surely know who he was. And they did.5
Something the police found in Monier’s room when he was arrested suggested that Jules Bonnot might well be staying above anarchist Antoine Gauzy’s store.6 The police had done their homework on Gauzy.
The anarchist Antoine Gauzy was small, thirty-four years old, and had been born in Nîmes, the accent of which he retained. His father was employed by the town hall. In 1902 Gauzy had married Anna Uni, seven years younger, known as Nelly, whom he had met in their hometown and who shared his anarchist convictions. The couple then moved to Paris, where Gauzy worked delivering barrels of wine for a wholesale merchant in Charenton. His boss there had no complaints about him. Gauzy then found work in a foundry, but with four to five hundred workers there, no one remembered him and his foreman had recently passed away. Someone at the company told the police that it was quite possible that he might have been injured at work and thus left, “because in this industry there are injuries almost every day.” Then Gauzy took a job in a yeast factory in Maisons- Alfort, earning seven and a half francs a day until there was no more work to be had there. Gauzy then managed in April 1910 to start up the “store of novelties,” the Halle Populaire.
Gauzy and his wife lived above the store with their two children—a third had died of meningitis several years earlier—and frequented causerie populaires in the fifth and thirteenth arrondissements. Neither had ever been arrested yet police knew that anarchists frequented the store, especially Monier.7
When the police questioned Monier about Bonnot and his ties to Gauzy, he refused to provide any information. But it now seemed certain that Jules Bonnot might well be staying above Gauzy’s store. The question remained whether Gauzy knew of the identity of his temporary lodger. The police learned that a family of Russian immigrants lived in an apartment above the store, but that they were on vacation. Was the apartment empty?
At 10:15 in the morning April 24, a few hours after they had arrested and questioned Monier, Jouin and the policemen entered Gauzy’s store. They came upon Cardi and Gauzy in the back of the store. Gauzy’s wife and children were away in Nîmes, where the couple still had family. Jouin showed Gauzy a police photo of Monier dit Simentoff and asked if he knew him. Gauzy readily admitted that he worked in the store, but that he had not seen him for eight days, which was clearly not true. They also pulled out a photo of Bonnot. Did Gauzy know him? Not at all, came the reply. Was there someone living in the apartment above? Not at all, he replied. It is empty.8
Jouin and two officers, Inspector Colmar and Inspector Prosper Robert, followed Gauzy up to the second floor and unlocked and opened the door of a room. It was indeed empty. They then opened the door to a darkened second room with the curtains drawn.
Suddenly, a man hidden behind the door jumped on Jouin, who, armed only with a cane, grabbed him by the throat. Inspector Colmar tried to help but in struggle the canes of Jouin and inspector Colmar were broken, leaving them without means of defense. Inspector Prosper Robert pushed away Gauzy, whom he was guarding, and also jumped on their attacker—Jules Bonnot.
The bandit had a Browning and managed to fire five times. Colmar was wounded in the chest, emitting “Adieu, my old friend Robert, it’s all over for me” (“je suis foutu”). A bullet hit Jouin directly in the head and he fell dead. Bonnot lay motionless on the floor, as if he too was dead. Robert helped Colmar downstairs, and returned in time to see Bonnot jump up and escape through a window, bumping into and threatening a neighbor lady who, hearing the commotion, had stepped onto an exterior landing. Without a weapon, Robert could do nothing but watch as Bonnot jumped onto the roof of a garden shed and down into a courtyard, quickly climbed a wall, and disappeared.
Gauzy made a break for it, but was caught by policemen and struck by people outside, coming close to being lynched by a small crowd that had qui
ckly assembled. The crowd watched as police arrived at the scene, carted off the gravely wounded Colmar, and collected the body of Jouin. Gauzy was taken in for questioning.
The body of Louis Jouin.
After shooting dead Deputy Security Chief Louis Jouin, Jules Bonnot escapes from the apartment above Antoine Gauzy’s variety store.
As he is led to jail, Antoine Gauzy is confronted by a hostile Parisian crowd.
Xavier Guichard was furious and needed answers. Although he later denied it, he struck Gauzy in the face while policemen were holding him in Guichard’s office. He warned Gauzy that his store would be closed and his children forced to beg in order to survive, telling him that his wife was pretty enough to be a whore. Gauzy categorically denied knowing that he had lodged Bonnot, falling back on the anarchist insistence on solidarity and the droit d’asile. When Gauzy was interrogated, he admitted only that he had met Monier in Nîmes two years earlier “as a propagandist for revolutionary ideas.” Some journalists supported him. Anatole France and Octave Mirabeau signed a petition in his favor. Yet others told stories about Antoine Gauzy’s store being frequented by “men and women appearing very suspect.”9
Nelly Gauzy was stopped by the police after returning from Nîmes. Now she learned of what had transpired and the arrest of her husband. Nelly claimed that she did not know under what conditions Monier had been hired. She also insisted that she had never seen Bonnot and had no idea if her husband knew Cardi and the Besse girl, although she had worked in the store for four or five months.10
With no revelations from Gauzy or his wife forthcoming, and a high-ranking officer dead and another wounded, the public wanted answers. Guichard, Gilbert, and other top officials launched a vast police operation and decided that the police officials would carry pistols, not merely canes. After all, as the bandits demonstrated, it was easy enough to get guns in Paris, with virtually no control of their sale. The two break-ins to arms stores had provided the Bonnot Gang with a daunting arsenal.11
Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits Page 19