Monsieur Jonquelle

by Melville Davisson Post

  “The query as to how the robber had obtained access to the Marquis’ apartment on this night now advanced itself. There is no key to these apartments except the one delivered to the tenant by the bank making the lease; and when the door is closed, it is locked from the outside—that is to say, the knob of the door does not turn on the outside; it turns only on the inside, so that it can always be opened from the inside, whether locked or not. It cannot be opened from the outside because the handle of the doorknob, as I have said, does not turn. How, then, would this robber enter the Marquis’ apartment? Again the Marquis was able to give Forneau an explanation.

  “On the evening of the robbery, it was his intention to remain in his apartment. He had dismissed his valet and the servants and was alone. Later he changed his mind and concluded to go out. Upon reflection he remembered that he did not entirely close the door; but it was a thing which did not at the moment impress him. It was his habit always, of course, to close the door, and he had closed it, but upon returning for a glove, he had left the door ajar. This he was afterward able to establish because of a trivial incident. He remembered the glitter of the electric light on the point of a gold frame at the corner of the drawing-room table. It caught his eye as he descended the steps. But it did not impress him with the fact that he had neglected entirely to close the door. It impressed him merely as an incident which he afterwards remembered, and he continued to descend.

  “It now occurred to Forneau that this robbery had been committed by some one of the hotel thieves of Paris, who were accustomed to enter any building which they were able to get into, and to search any apartment that they happened to find open. But the Marquis reminded Forneau that the person committing this robbery had brought with him a piece of paper from the basement, that mere thieves entering on the chance of finding some valuables would not have taken this precaution. Forneau recognized the wisdom of this suggestion, and he inquired of the Marquis upon what theory the investigation should proceed.

  “The Marquis now pointed out that this robbery must have been committed by some one familiar with the building, some one who knew the habits of the tenants and was in a position to await a favorable opportunity; otherwise he could not have taken advantage of this one occasion on which the door to the Marquis’ apartment happened not to be closed. This theory pleased Forneau, and he adopted every excellent suggestion which the Marquis was able to make. But he ventured to wonder from what source the thief had been able to obtain the combination to the safe, since it was known only to Madame the Marquise. The Marquis was again able to indicate a valuable suggestion. Women, he pointed out, had always the same habits. They did not trust their memories for anything that required an accuracy of numbers. The Marquise would have somewhere this memorandum written down. He suggested that Forneau make a search of her writing-table.

  “To their surprise they found the lock to the drawers of this table broken, and among some papers hastily turned over, at the back of one of these drawers, a small book with a red leather cover. On the last page, in pencil, was precisely the same memorandum which the Marquis had picked up on the slip of paper under the door— ‘the combination to the safe of the Marquise de Chantelle,’ and following the four columns of four figures. It was now clear that the robbery had been committed as the Marquis had suggested—by some one in the building who had the leisure to watch and who was familiar with the habits of the tenants. It was not certain, of course, that this person would know that the necklace was in the safe, but he would be convinced that the safe held some objects of value.

  “The problem which now presented itself was to discover what employee in the building could have written this memorandum. Forneau and the Marquis had before them the handwriting. They were familiar with the history and associates of the valet, the concierge and the older employees, and were convinced that it was not one of these persons; but there were other employees in this apartment, and the problem was how to obtain specimens of their handwriting without incurring suspicion. In his perplexity Forneau asked the opinion of the Marquis de Chantelle.

  The Marquis suggested the following clever device: The Service de la Sûreté should send an agent to the building pretending to be an official of the government concerned with certain mental tests required, in order to register citizens for the electorate. Among other tests, he should require them to write the name of the president of France and that of the premier at the close of the war. This would include the names of Millerand and Clemenceau, and by this means they could obtain the M of the word Marquise and the C of the word Chantelle, which had been written by the unknown thief upon the memorandum which contained the combination of the safe.”

  The Prefect of Police stopped. The attention of the Marquis de Chantelle seemed to have passed from the narrative to a contemplation of the opera.

  Madame Zirtenzoff was at the point of her greatest scene. Her voice filled the immense house like a silver bell, like innumerable silver bells—a quality of the human voice that no other diva had ever brought to Paris. Her youth, her alluring beauty, added to the enchantment.

  Monsieur le Marquis de Chantelle was looking at her, one hand fingering his mustache, the other turning the monocle at the end of the silk cord. The Prefect of Police did not interrupt the absorption, but he continued to speak.

  “And as it happened,” he said, “it was the ingenuity of this device suggested by the Marquis de Chantelle that enabled Forneau to locate the one who had committed the robbery. He found an employee lately taken on by the concierge because he offered to assist in cleaning the building at a lower cost. The agent from the Service de la Sûreté came to this person in the course of his interview with the employees of the building.

  “‘Monsieur,’ he said, ‘I am compelled to ask you to submit to some mental tests, but I will make them brief. Tell me the form of government under which we live and write down for me the name of the president of France and that of the premier who conducted the peace terms in the Great War, and I will give you no further annoyance.’

  “The man replied that France was a republic and wrote the name of Alexandre Millerand. But when he came to write the C in Clemenceau, he hesitated. The agent seized him at once, snapped a pair of handcuffs on him and confronted him with Forneau. He was shown the slip of paper which the Marquis had picked up in his apartment. He was told the details of the crime as he had carried it out; in his confusion, he confessed.”

  The Prefect of Police continued to speak slowly without a change of accent as if to himself.

  “The Marquis was astonished when Forneau brought the confessed thief before him; like the usual amateur, he could not realize that his methods had succeeded; he could not believe that he had been so brilliantly correct in his deductions. He was amazed. He sought to test now every item upon which he had depended, to present its weakness, its doubt; and when he found the results inevitable, he washed his hands of the affair.”

  The Prefect introduced a comment without interrupting the monotony of his discourse.

  “It was the tender, the considerate heart. The solution of a criminal mystery is a problem, but the criminal is a man to suffer!”

  He went on:

  “Monsieur le Marquis will remember the Apache’s confession: he had obtained a position in the building and had watched the Marquis’ apartment. As it happened, the night of the robbery was not the first time that the Marquis had left the door unclosed; a week before, he had left it unclosed in the afternoon. It was then that this man had gone in,—taking with him a slip of paper from the basement—broken open the Marquise’s desk and searched for the combination, which he finally found and wrote down. The search had required a very long time, and he had not time on this day to open the safe. He had taken the paper with him and waited until this night on which the Marquis had again gone out, leaving the door unlatched. Then he had opened the safe and removed the necklace. He thought that in putting the necklace into his pocket he must have pulled the slip of paper out, and b
y this means it had fallen to the floor where the Marquis had picked it up.

  “The man made no defense and waived all legal procedure. He confessed and has been sentenced to a term of imprisonment. But he refused to say what he had done with the necklace.”

  Monsieur Jonquelle closed his narrative. For some moments he had been speaking in a casual voice as to a person who did not listen; and in fact, the Marquis de Chantelle had ceased to listen. He was entirely occupied with Madame Zirtenzoff, with her divine voice in the fairyland of the magnificent stage setting.

  There was a moment of suspense.

  She was about to dance before Herod, her body proportioned like a dryad’s, supple in the nearly naked costume of the East, commanding the exclusive attention of the whole of Paris packed in the opera house.

  The Marquis de Chantelle, oblivious of Monsieur Jonquelle, was awaiting the presentation of his bouquet of orchids. They should arrive at this moment.

  He watched to see what sign Madame Zirtenzoff would give him before she swayed into the divine dance that had entranced Herod.

  Monsieur Jonquelle, watching the Marquis, took a box of cigarettes out of his pocket and slipped his thumb-nail around the stamp, but he did not open the box. He spoke suddenly to the Marquis de Chantelle; his voice was sharp, clear, and its tones arrested the man’s attention.

  “Monsieur le Marquis,” he said, “Madame Zirtenzoff will not be pleased with her bouquet of orchids.”

  The Marquis turned suddenly on him; his eyes were now contracted with an intense expression.

  “You know, Monsieur, that I have sent a bouquet of orchids to Madame Zirtenzoff?”

  “Surely, Monsieur,” replied the Prefect of Police. “I passed the boy departing with them when I entered. They were very lovely, superb, exquisite, the Mottled Butterfly! How aptly adapted is that flower to Monsieur le Marquis!”

  The Marquis continued to regard him.

  “And why, Monsieur, do you compare me with this variety of orchid?”

  “If you will tell me, Monsieur le Marquis,” replied the Prefect of Police, “why Jean Lequex refused to say where the necklace was that he had stolen, I will answer your question.”

  The hauteur in the Marquis’ voice was now distinctly audible.

  “Monsieur,” he said, “it was you who promised to tell me that.”

  “And I shall tell you,” replied Jonquelle. “Jean Lequex refused to say where the necklace was for the very good reason that he did not know where it was.”

  Monsieur Jonquelle looked the Marquis steadily in the face.

  “The agents of the Sûreté neglected to mention to Monsieur an item or two of their discoveries: the writing on the slip of paper had been made with the left hand; and the concierge, as it happened, seeing the Marquis Chantelle go out leaving his door ajar, closed it.

  “Ah, Monsieur, we have been engaged in a bit of comedy. Pardon us if we have deceived you.… It was I who conducted the investigation of your affair, disguised as Forneau; and it was the agent Forneau disguised as Jean Lequex who confessed to your robbery and took a mock sentence of imprisonment under an arrangement with the court.… We did not find, then, the thief who opened the safe to your apartment.”

  The Marquis regarded the Prefect of Police with an amazed expression, his lips parted, his eyes wide.

  “Then, Monsieur,” he stammered, “you have discovered neither the thief nor the necklace.”

  “Ah, yes,” replied Monsieur Jonquelle in the modulated voice of one who bids another adieu. “We have discovered both.”

  He took a mass of jewels out of his waistcoat pocket and handed them to the Marquis.

  “I found these in the bouquet of orchids which you were sending to Madame Zirtenzoff. May I trouble you to present them to Madame la Marquise when she shall return from America tomorrow?”

  XII.—The Girl with the Ruby

  The carriage was now hidden by the wall. And without thinking, without stopping to consider how strange my words must appear, I spoke the thing—the thing that had seemed a profound, inexplicable puzzle to me:

  “Why do you marry this Norwegian woman?”

  Tea had been served on the terrace of the villa during the formal call of the Ambassador and his daughter. And while they remained, and now that the carriage, in which they returned to the city, was a mere sound of wheels on the hard Cimiez road, I was occupied by this disturbing query.

  The old Ambassador did not concern me. He was not a factor in the problem. But why my host, at his age, after his experiences of life, with his taste refined and exacting, should at last determine to marry this big, flax-haired, silent creature of the white North, was a problem that finally forced itself into words.

  I sat beside one of the little iron tables on the terrace. The Prince Dimitri was walking slowly along the whole length of the villa on the red tile that made a band of color against the white walls. The villa looked out over the sweep of the Mediterranean. Below, hidden by the vines and olive trees, was Nice. On the left, like a white ribbon, the Corniche road ascended into a gap of the mountain on its way to Mentone. And west of it, like a mirage—like an illusion—was the ruined, abandoned, fairy city of Châteauneuf.

  I think he was the handsomest man in Europe. Middle age had merely served to refine the strength of his features. He was not poor. The upheaval of Russia had not wholly stripped him. Long before it came he had laid down a sort of partnership with Ravillon, the great jeweler on the Rue de Rivoli and the Place Messina. It was a trade that the war had not impaired. It left the prince in command of his villa, his house in Paris and an income.

  He did not stop in his measured, reflective step at my inquiry. It was only when I added the four final words that he paused and turned about to regard me.

  “Do you love her?” I said.

  “Love?” He repeated the word slowly, softly, as though it were the potent element in some magic rune.

  “Ah, no, my friend,” he said, “I do not love her.”

  From every standpoint of material interest this marriage was desirable and excellent. The Norwegian woman was a royal princess and, like the young man in the Scriptures, she had great possessions; but these considerations did not seem sufficient.

  “Then why did you arrange this marriage?” I said.

  The man came back to where I sat, his hands linked behind him, his face reflective.

  “Why does a man in peril,” he said, “protect himself with a bolted door?”

  I was profoundly astonished.

  “Peril?” I repeated. “You in peril?”

  “In the very deadliest peril, Monsieur Jonquelle,” he said.

  He went into the salon of the villa and presently returned with the most extraordinary photograph that I have ever seen. It was long and narrow, about four inches in length and perhaps an inch and a half in width. Three views of a woman’s face appeared on this photograph; both of the side views and the full view.

  The side views were upon the ends of the photograph, and the full face in the center. The photographic work was good—that is to say, it had been taken with an excellent lens by a skilled photographer; but it lacked every evidence of those artificialities with which smart photographers add illusions to the human face.

  The photographs were clear, hard and accurate, with no softening shadows. The board on which they were printed seemed ordinary and common, but the frame around this cheap board was a gold band studded with rubies. It was a wonderful frame, as beautiful as the best workmanship could make it.

  But it was not these considerations which impressed me. It was the human face that appeared in these three contrasted positions. It was the picture of a young girl, her hair simply arranged as though she had not yet escaped from the discipline of a convent.

  It was a face of exceptional beauty. One never could wish to change a line or a feature of it. Its bony structure was perfect. But there was something more than this mere structural excellence. There was the lure of an indescribable cha
rm in the face—a charm that one could not separate in the expression from a profound innocence of life. One felt that the lure of this human creature must be extraordinary to appear thus impressive in the hard, garish outlines of this photograph.

  The picture held my attention. I put it down on the table, only to take it up again. And the man watched me as one might watch in another the effect of a drug which he had amazingly experienced in himself.

  I continued to examine the photograph, and the one profound conviction that possessed me was that here, preserved on the cheap surface of a photograph board, was a woman with every quality of alluring, feminine charm; every quality that the big white, silent Northern woman amazingly lacked. And I wondered whence this strange, harsh photograph had come, and why the man before me had inclosed it in a frame of jewels and kept it as one preserves a treasure.

  The prince sat down beyond me at the table. For a time he was silent; then, suddenly, he began to speak.

  “One morning,” he said, “in the early springtime, I was idling in Ravillon’s shop on the Rue de Rivoli. We had been considering the importation of jewels. Some shipment from Amsterdam had come in and the shop was preparing for its usual summer trade with America. I had come out from the manager’s room when I saw a girl pass the door. She looked in as she passed and, after she had gone a few steps beyond, hesitated, turned about and finally came timidly into the shop.”

  He paused and got a cigarette from a tray on the table, lighted it and held it a moment in his fingers.

  “It was the girl you have just seen in the photograph. She was very plainly dressed. It was the sort of clothing that showed the evidences of gentility, I thought—and poverty. She wore a little piece of fur. It was old, and the seams of her dress had been cleaned and pressed until the fabric looked as though it would give way if an iron were again set on it.