Sherlock Holmes and the Boulevard Assassin (7 page)

We descended into the street. ‘You recognize your surroundings?’ asked Georges.

Holmes looked round quickly. ‘The Halle aux Vins, I think? We are at no great distance from our
pension
. My thanks, Monsieur.’

‘I regret that I cannot take you further,’ said Georges with a bow.

‘No matter.’

‘It has been a pleasure to serve you, Messieurs.’

Holmes bowed in his turn. ‘The service was faultless.’ He stretched, like any cat. ‘It is good to taste some fresh air, is it not, Henri?’

‘It is indeed,’ said I.

Holmes took out a cigarette and lit it in a leisurely fashion. Georges remained, immobile, by the side of the carriage. I could see the badly concealed frustration on Holmes’ face. ‘Well,’ said he at last, when it was obvious that Georges had not the least intention of moving before we did, ‘we must bid you good night.’ He tipped his hat to the coachman, bowed again to Georges, and set off down the road. At the turning he glanced back. I did the same, and saw that Georges still stood there, unmoving.

‘Suspicious devil!’ said I. ‘He evidently thinks we would follow him!’

‘And he is right!’ said Holmes with a laugh. ‘It would have been unforgivable to have neglected so elementary a clue. But these men are not fools – Georges has been told not to return if there is the slightest suspicion that we are following. Still, we may console ourselves with the fact that we know something of Constantine – that he is well to do; that he lives on the Right Bank; and that his house is perhaps not too far from the Place de l’Etoile.’

‘Well, that certainly narrows it down quite considerably!’ said I.

‘And we know his name – unless it is an alias, which I strongly suspect will prove to be the case. Still, Dubuque or Lefevre may find that out for us.’

We reached the
pension
and Holmes leaned over the little counter, and whispered to the proprietor, ‘I was told to ask for “Marcel”.’

The fellow shrugged indifferently. ‘Monsieur Marcel, he is in your room.’

‘Indeed?’ Holmes ran up the stairs, and then stopped. He put a finger to his lips, then produced his revolver from his pocket, indicating that I should do the same. Although we had no cartridges between us, I think that we looked a fine pair of rascals as Holmes pushed open the door and strode inside.

Lefevre, or Marcel, or whatever his real name may have been, was sitting unconcerned in our best chair. I have to say that I should probably never have recognized him, were I not expecting to see him, for – although he was not in Holmes’s league in the matter of disguise – he had altered his appearance quite considerably, and now looked like a man of leisure, a man about town.

‘You’ve come up in the world!’ said I.

‘Ah, Dame Fortune, she ’as smile upon me, no?’ said Lefevre in his villainous English, adding in French, ‘But how delighted I am to see you, my good friends! I assure you, I have searched every edition of the newspapers most anxiously, expecting at any moment to hear news that two bodies have been found in the river! Tell me, have you met with the same good luck as I myself ?’

‘We have,’ said Holmes. ‘Do you know anything of a Monsieur Constantine, around sixty years of age, with something of an aristocratic bearing, but of humble origins? He is the governor of some private bank, but I cannot tell you just which. And his house is on the Right Bank.’

‘Near the Place de l’Etoile, or so we believe,’ I added.

Lefevre shrugged. ‘The name means nothing, I fear. But I shall look into it, you may be sure. You have, I take it, infiltrated this gang?’

Holmes nodded. ‘We are to remain here,’ said he, ‘and wait for this Constantine, or one of his fellows, rather, to get in touch. I have no clue as to what they propose to do with us, but I shall keep you informed. Do you stay here still?’

‘I have given up my room here, delightful though it was. But the proprietor can always reach me. You may trust him, for he – well, let us say, he knows who his friends are.’ Lefevre stood up. ‘I shall find out what there is to know about this Constantine, you may rely on me.’ He bowed to us, and left.

I was tired out. The excitement of the previous evening, and the strain of the day – for, although we had done nothing all day, the waiting had tired me more than any amount of action – conspired to make me seek my bed, and I was asleep almost before my head touched the pillow.

When I awoke, the daylight was streaming in through the open shutters, and Holmes was already up, dressed and shaved. We went downstairs, and set off for the nearest café. As we went along, I noticed an ordinary-looking man emerge from a doorway and wander along behind us.

‘I believe we are being followed!’ I told Holmes in an undertone.

‘I spotted him,’ he answered. ‘It is probably just a customary precaution.’

‘Ah, but on the part of whom?’ I wanted to know.

We reached our café and ordered coffee and rolls. The man whom I had seen earlier, and suspected of following us, came over to our table, and leaned over to us.

‘Monsieur Jean-Paul, I believe?’ said Holmes.

A quick shake of the head answered him. ‘No, but Jean-Paul has sent me. When you have finished, Messieurs, if you would follow me?’

Holmes quickly drank his coffee. ‘Ready, Henri?’

‘Perhaps another
croissant
? Oh, very well.’ And I followed them outside.

Our guide led us along the road for a hundred yards, then turned into a narrow alley. A couple more turnings took us into ever narrower and ever grimier courts, until our guide halted before a door whose peeling paint was only held in place by a thick coating of greasy dirt. ‘Messieurs?’ and he stood back to let us enter.

SEVEN

I followed Holmes into a tiny
bistro
, very dirty and with a thick pall of smoke in the air which set me coughing. A dozen men and women, all as dirty as the place itself – or dirtier – were seated around greasy tables, and as we entered they regarded us with lacklustre eyes, before going back to whatever conversations we had momentarily interrupted. Our guide followed us inside, and nodded his head to show that we were to follow him. He led the way through the little room, pushed open a door in the far side, and took us down a short passage before opening a second door, and motioning us inside.

The room we entered was even smaller than the main bar, and even smokier – perhaps that was as well, for the fumes did serve to obscure the more deep-seated grime which, I felt certain, lurked beneath the shoddy furnishings. The place looked for all the world like some thieves’ kitchen straight out of Dickens. Five or six men stood or sat around the room, all smoking, and none of them looking like the sort of man you would meet in the club – or would want to meet in a dark alleyway, for that matter.

One of the fellows stood up, and lounged over to us. ‘Jean-Paul,’ said he briefly, by way of introduction.

‘Pierre, and this is Henri,’ said Holmes.

Jean-Paul looked us up and down in an insolent fashion. He gestured at Holmes’s shoes. ‘We do sometimes need the services of a gigolo,’ he said with a leer.

‘I shall do my best to measure up,’ said Holmes calmly.

The fellow stared at me in my turn, then gave a dismissive shrug. ‘And as for Henri here – well, we always need more brawn.’

‘My experience of women – ’ I began hotly, but Jean-Paul silenced me with a rude gesture.

‘You are not here to discuss women,
mon
ami
, but to take orders from me,’ he told me.

‘Well, I am ready enough for that!’ said I. ‘What orders have you? Command me, and you’ll see soon enough what I can do!’

He looked at me with a touch more favour than he had shown thus far. ‘You are ready to join us?’ he asked.

‘That is what we are waiting for – the reason we are here,’ I said, while Holmes stifled a yawn, as if he were being kept waiting unnecessarily.

Jean-Paul inclined his head. ‘Fine words,’ said he. ‘We shall see if you can live up to them.’ He reached into a pocket, and handed Holmes and myself a silk scarf apiece. ‘You know what these are for?’ he asked.

Holmes shook his head, whilst I strove to think of the French word for
thuggee
.

Jean-Paul sighed, and demonstrated how to knot the scarf so that it looked for all the world like an ordinary article of apparel whilst round the neck, but could be drawn up quickly over the mouth and jaw so as to form an impromptu mask. ‘Got that?’ he asked us. ‘Right! Come along!’ and he pushed past me, and led the way through the
bistro
and into the alley.

‘Where are we going?’ I wanted to know, but Jean-Paul did not reply until we had reached a fairly busy road. He halted in a doorway, and nodded across the street, where a little post office stood.

‘You are armed?’ asked Jean-Paul.

I showed him my revolver, under cover of my jacket, and Holmes did the same.

‘Loaded?’ asked Jean-Paul.

‘Not mine.’

‘Nor mine.’

Jean-Paul handed us two cartridges each. ‘Try not to shoot anyone, unless you have to,’ he told us.

‘And suppose we need to shoot more than twice?’ I wanted to know.

Jean-Paul used a rude expression which was intended to convey the sense that such a prospect did not bother him too much, if, indeed, at all, then led the way across the road. He pulled up his scarf to hide his face, and Holmes and I did the same.

Jean-Paul shoved open the door of the post office, and waved his revolver in the air. ‘Keep quiet, all of you!’ he roared to the astonished customers and clerks. And to Holmes and me, ‘Don’t just stand there! Help yourselves, you numskulls!’

I saw Holmes taking cash from a drawer. It was not my part to spoil the performance, I thought, and accordingly I too pulled open the nearest drawer, and grabbed whatever was in there.

Jean-Paul, standing at the door, shouted, ‘Quickly! The police!’

Holmes ran to the door, and I followed him. As we reached the door, one of the customers, an elderly and respectable businessman, made as if to attack us with his rolled-up umbrella. I fired a shot over the man’s head; while Holmes – a better marksman than I – shot the umbrella out of his very hand! The elderly gentleman made use, I regret to say, of some very ungentlemanly language as he rubbed his arm.

Jean-Paul looked round as we fired, then set off at a run down the street, with Holmes and me hard on his heels. We attracted some odd looks, but there was no attempt at pursuit that I could see. Jean-Paul turned into an alley, and slowed down. He pulled the scarf from his face, and adjusted it, so that he looked as respectable as was possible. He grinned happily at us. ‘That wasn’t half bad, was it?’ said he.

‘You could have warned us what you planned!’ I grumbled.

‘Ah, but I wanted to know how you would react to the unexpected!’

‘I saw no police, either!’ I told him.

‘Well, it was time to go anyway! You didn’t do half bad, I must say.’ And he led us back to the little
bistro
. The back room was empty – the others were evidently out on business, as it were – and the smoke was starting to clear.

‘Now,’ said Jean-Paul, lighting a cigarette, ‘let’s see what we have.’ He cast a critical eye over Holmes’ booty. ‘Cash, is it? Big notes, too! That’s not half bad! And a handful of
mandats
. Well, we can make use of those. And good old Henri here has got – yes, I see it’s a sheaf of stamps. Two-centime stamps.’

‘I could have done better had I had more warning!’ said I. ‘Anyway, you can use these when you next write a letter!’

‘
Merde
, so I could!’ said Jean-Paul with a great roar of laughter. ‘That is, if anyone had ever bothered to teach me to write!’

‘Oh,’ said I. ‘Please forgive me – I could not have known – look here, Jean-Paul, if ever you need to write to anyone, just say the word.’

Jean-Paul looked at me intently. ‘Would you? I have often wished – my old mother, you know – in the country – she worries about me – and I did promise – but, well – ’

‘Any time,’ said I, embarrassed at this entirely unsuspected show of emotion. ‘Just tell me what you want to say, and – well – we have plenty of stamps, anyway!’

To my horror, Jean-Paul grabbed me. I thought for a moment that he intended to kiss me, but he settled for a hug like the embrace of a grizzly bear. ‘You’re a good fellow, Henri,’ he told me. ‘And you’re not half bad either, Pierre. Let’s have a drink!’

‘Shall I ask the owner for a bottle of red wine?’ I asked.

Jean-Paul made a rude noise. ‘That dishwater?’ I paraphrase slightly; he did not actually say ‘dishwater’ – he was something of a rough diamond, though his heart was undoubtedly in the right place – but ‘dishwater’ conveys the general meaning of what he did say. ‘No,’ said he, ‘I have some good stuff here,’ and he took a bottle from a tall cupboard, and poured us each a generous measure.

As I say, his heart was in the right place, but if that was his ‘good stuff,’ I dread to think what the bad might have tasted like. Jean-Paul had evidently acquired a liking for it, though, and he helped himself to another glass.

‘And then perhaps we ought to think about dividing the spoils?’ suggested Holmes, waving a hand at the loot spread out before us.

‘Ah.’ Jean-Paul looked as nearly embarrassed as was possible for him. ‘The thing is – I know that you took all the risks, and all that sort of thing – but – well, that isn’t the way it works with us. Everything goes into the kitty, you see, and the lads – me, too – we get a regular wage at the end of each week.’

Holmes looked astonished at this. ‘But then one might just as well be working in a factory, or behind a desk!’

‘No, no,’ said Jean-Paul. ‘It’s not that bad, I assure you. You can work your own hours, more or less; so that if you really want a regular job, you might take one, and do this part-time, as it were. And then there’s the bonuses.’

‘Bonuses?’

‘If there’s a big job, you see – you get a bonus, according to how much work you put in to it, how much risk you took, that sort of thing.’

‘A proper fixed scale!’ I muttered.

‘You have it,’ said Jean-Paul. ‘And I can tell you that those kind of big jobs come up pretty frequently – far more often than you or I alone could manage. The chief sees to that. So you get a bit extra, even though you may not have to do any work! Not half bad, is it?’

‘The chief ? You mean Monsieur Constantine?’ said Holmes.

Jean-Paul looked round anxiously, even though the place was deserted. ‘We don’t bandy names around too much in here,’ said he. ‘Most of the lads prefer a nickname, in fact.’ He glanced at Holmes’s shoes. ‘I think we’ll have to call you “The Fancy Man”.’

Holmes gave a mirthless grin. ‘I knifed the last man who made a slighting remark about these shoes,’ he said.

Jean-Paul looked at him with a new respect. ‘No offence,’ said he hastily. ‘Have another drink! No, I see it’s empty – never mind, we’ll try another bottle,’ and he reached up into the cupboard as he spoke. ‘Now, about this money – I’m told you’re both down on your luck just at the moment, so I’ll give you a small advance.’ He picked some notes from the heap that lay in front of him, and handed them to us. ‘Mind, now! This is nothing more than an advance, and it’ll be deducted from this week’s wages – I may not read or write as well as you fellows, but I can reckon up all right! Well, that’s settled. Drink up, and we’ll have another!’

‘You were saying about Monsieur Constant – about “the chief”, that is to say?’ asked Holmes casually, accepting another glass.

‘No, no. He – the man you mentioned, he isn’t the chief,’ said Jean-Paul, refilling his glass.

‘No?’

Jean-Paul shook his tousled head. ‘Not a bit of it! Just a glorified foreman, same as me, if the truth be known. The chief, he’s another thing altogether – you wouldn’t want to cross him, I can tell you! Not that you’d want to cross the other one either, but the chief, he’s worse.’ He glanced around the empty room yet again, and grew confidential. ‘Known him for years, me. From the very start.’ He glanced round again. ‘In the old days, we called him “The Boulevard Assassin”. But nobody dares call him that now, I can tell you!’

‘And why did anyone call him that?’ asked Holmes in an off-hand tone. ‘It seems even more droll than “The Fancy Man”, when all is said and done!’

‘You wouldn’t think that if you knew him,’ said Jean-Paul. ‘As for the name – why, he’s a man about town, a
boulevardier
, a real gent. Coat of arms, and all that, one has no doubt. But a killer, too, and there’s certainly no two ways about that. I’ve caught a glimpse of him two or three times – no more than that, in all these years! – but he was always muffled up, a scarf round his chops so you couldn’t see his face properly, but you could see his eyes.’ He shuddered. ‘Weird, dead eyes. No – what’s the word? – no emotion. Like those things – what do you call ’em? With dead eyes?’

‘Camel?’ I suggested. ‘They have strange eyes – ’

‘A camel?
Merde
,
non
! A shark! That’s what I meant to tell you – eyes just like a shark! And he’d rip your belly open just as easy, too.’ He lowered his voice yet further. ‘They say he’s killed a dozen men – maybe two dozen – with his own hands! Well, you’ll say the dogs always exaggerate, and that’s true, they’ll say anything – but, with him, I could believe it.’

‘But you never saw his face?’ asked Holmes casually. ‘You do not know his name, let us say?’

The thought seemed to horrify Jean-Paul. He took a long pull at his glass before answering. ‘Not I! If I had seen him, or could guess his name, I tell you, I wouldn’t be around to talk about it! He is a man who guards his privacy, I can tell you! And he knows everything! Indeed, I think he must be in league with the devil – that is, if he is not the very devil himself ! You can be sure that he will take a look at you – but you’ll never see him!’

‘What, he visits here? And in disguise?’ asked Holmes.

Jean-Paul shrugged. ‘Maybe. Who knows? All I can tell you is, he knows everything that goes on here.’

‘And he runs the whole show?’ asked Holmes. ‘For all the world as if it were his own little business? A private army?’

‘It is, isn’t it?’ Jean-Paul looked round again before continuing, ‘Don’t kid yourselves, though! There’s a lot more to it than this den of cheap crooks! Plans, big plans – that’s what the chief’s got, big plans. Why, I shouldn’t be surprised if one day he wasn’t – wasn’t – ’

‘President?’ suggested Holmes.

‘And why not? Look at Napoleon! He started off an ordinary soldier, didn’t he? Took over the whole of Europe – and would’ve taken over the rest, if he hadn’t had the devil’s own bad luck!’

‘This chief of yours – ours, that is – he sees himself as another Napoleon, does he?’ said Holmes dreamily. ‘I’m surprised he didn’t make a move when the President was assassinated a couple of weeks ago.’