Monsieur Jonquelle (23 page)

He paused and regarded the Marquis with an expression of compliment.

“We feel, at the
Service de la Sûreté
, that if we could bring to the remaining feature of this matter the same degree of excellent acumen that was brought to its initial stages, by the Marquis
de Chantelle, we should be able to restore the necklace to the Marquise upon her return from America. She returns to-morrow, does she not? It seems a brief time for so difficult an undertaking.”

Monsieur Jonquelle smiled.

“I regret to intrude upon your pleasure, Marquis, and especially on this, the final night of Madame Zirtenzoff's triumph—amazing woman, adorable woman! One should lose no moment of her excellence.”

He paused.

“But Monsieur, I cannot adequately admire your excellent handling of this matter unless I am quite certain that I have the details of it correctly. Permit me, Monsieur, to repeat these details, and correct me, I beg of you, if I should present them with an item of inaccuracy. I was absent and I have only the memory of inferiors.”

The Prefect of Police rested his arm on the seat of the box, while the Marquis fingered his monocle idly, twisting the silk cord. He assumed an attitude of careless attention, and Monsieur Jonquelle went on:

“On the night of the eighteenth of February, Monsieur le Marquis, opening the door of his apartment at a late hour, saw a slip of paper beside the door. At the moment the Marquis gave this item no attention; it did not impress him. It was
late, the servants having retired, and the Marquis withdrew to his bedroom alone. It appears, however, that digressions of the mind occur to all of us, even to the Marquise de Chantelle, on the border of dreamland. It occurred to him that this slip of paper was a memorandum by the concierge to call the attention of the Marquis upon his arrival to some inquiry that had been made for him. The Marquis, however, did not arise at that hour to verify this impression, but in the morning when he awoke, he remembered it, and going into the drawing-room in his dressing-gown and slippers—it was before the arrival of his valet—he found the slip of paper where it had remained as though it had been slipped under the door.

“The Marquis was surprised when he came to examine this bit of paper. It contained some numbers written with a pencil, and the words in a strained, unformed hand: ‘The combination of the safe of the Marquise de Chantelle.' Monsieur turned at once to the small safe which is built into the wall of the apartment after the American fashion. He tried the combination written on the slip of paper, found it correct, opened the safe and discovered that the necklace had disappeared.”

The Prefect of Police hesitated in the narrative and addressed an inquiry.

“It is true, Monsieur,” he said, “that you did not know the combination of this safe, that the combination was known only to your wife, the Marquise, and that more than once, for example at the Café Anglais on the fourteenth of December at midnight, when any creature from the underworld of Paris might have been present, you spoke of the danger of keeping this necklace in a small private safe in the apartment when it should be deposited with a banker? But to these objections the Marquise always returned the same answer— that she alone had the combination of the safe. This is true?”

“It is true,” replied the Marquis. “But it was not discreet, as after-events have demonstrated. Perhaps by these discussions we gave information of the whereabouts of this necklace to this Apache Lequex.”

The Prefect of Police made a vague gesture and continued to speak.

“The Marquis, upon discovery of the robbery, at once notified the
Service de la Sûreté
; old Forneau and an agent arrived immediately. Upon examination of the bit of paper, it proved to be a slip bearing the name in print of Moore-Poole & Company, a firm of American brokers in Paris. Old Forneau at once suggested that the robbery must have been committed by some one from the office of these brokers, probably an American,
since the slip of paper must have come from some one employed in the establishment. But here the Marquis de Chantelle, showing an intelligence superior to that of this officer of the
Sûreté
, pointed out that no one would come on such an adventure bringing with him a piece of paper, and especially an indicatory piece of paper, upon which to set down such a memorandum. It was far more likely that the piece of paper had been acquired somewhere in the apartment.

“He then suggested that an inquiry be made to discover whether some one from this American firm of Moore-Poole & Company had not at one time occupied an apartment in the building. Forneau acted upon this suggestion and ascertained that Monsieur the Marquis was correct. He discovered a quantity of these blank printed slips in the basement of the building, where, with other rubbish, they had been retained by the concierge to kindle fire in the furnace. Thus Monsieur the Marquis at one stroke removed any suspicion that might have been attached to this firm of brokers and confined the inquiry to some one having access to the building and knowledge of it, else he would not have been in the basement where this débris from the apartments of old tenants had accumulated.

“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 by 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.