Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 783
she repeated. “And I will give my life... My left hand... My eyesight even. To save my husband from one moment’s inconvenience. Understand that you are up against a desperate woman who has had the very cup of heaven snatched from her lips.”
The Commissaire had once or twice interrupted with a word or two. He had raised his hands in protest; he had looked from her to the Commissioner and from the Commissioner back to her. Now he half rose from his chair and exclaimed with every evidence of deep feeling.
“Madame, will you allow me to assure you on the honour of a gentleman and the credit of the régime I am honoured to serve that if I am witholding any information you have only to tell me of its nature and I will at once prosecute any enquiry you direct. If you wish to communicate with my honoured chief I am ready to put you into communication at once. I deprecate his being troubled for he is overwhelmed with duties. But I have his directions that, if Monsieur your husband should not have returned before your anxiety should become insupportable and if you desired it I was, in spite of the desperately engrossing nature of his preoccupations, to put you into communication with him at once. But I beg you to accept the assurance that all that he could do I am in the position to do and that you have only to command to be obeyed.”
He had his hand lying along the receiver of his telephone: Cassie was looking for instruction at Penkethman. That enormous fellow raised one of his heavy hands, motioning to the Commissaire to desist from using his instrument. To Cassie he said:
“You must of course accept the assurances of this gentleman. And what in fact is this information? It escapes me for the moment.”
She sank exhausted into her chair. She exclaimed faintly: “I don’t know. Perhaps I’m... I don’t know... Remember today... This evening... When I was up the tree... Financially... Don’t you see?”
He suddenly nodded his head and exclaimed:
“Yes, naturally. The return of the notes...”
Her impatience became so extreme that she bounced in her chair. She exclaimed:
“Oh angels and ministers of grace, I don’t want to spoil your home-run... But couldn’t you ask where the jitney-guy did his gold-digging?”
The Commissaire said:
“If you desire a private conference....” And he waved his hand towards the door.” I will of course absent myself.” The Commissioner shook his head.
“Madame,” he said, “only wants to ask you where the taxi-driver found the book and envelope of notes that he returned.”
The Commissaire’s face expressed bewilderment and then illumination.
“Your English is admirable,” the Commissioner said. “But the American lingua franca is beyond most of us. It takes me all I know to guess that a jitney-guy is a taxi-driver and that gold-digging signifies finding bank-notes in a cab.” The Commissaire was expressing his sense of the well-known picturesqueness of the American language when Cassie burst out:
“That does not help us with the taxi-cab.... Doesn’t it all turn on that?”
“A taxi-driver,” Penkethman explained, “returned to Madame here, a parcel containing a book and some French notes that Mr Walter Leroy had left...”
“But no,” the Commissaire interrupted, “wasn’t it Madame herself who left them?”
Penkethman shook his head but, as usually happened, before he could speak Cassie had burst in:
“Walter left in the morning, carrying the book and having my Express cheques and money of his own he was going to change. He was going to give the book to a friend. The taxi-man brought back the book and the money, changed into French notes....”
The Commissaire emitted again his long, noiseless whistle of astonished enlightment.
“Then that,” he said, “obviously would give us the latest news of the husband of Madame.” He touched the button on his desk. “Unless,” he began, “it had already quitted the possession of the husband of Madame and had been left by a third...”
“Tell us,” he interrupted himself to say to a grey sergeant who had entered, “all that is known of the parcel belonging to Madame Cassandre Mathaire that was left in a taxi-cab and was restored to her.... I know next to nothing about it....”
“It happened,” the Sergeant had the air of grumbling, “whilst Monsieur the Commissaire was taking his siesta...
“Who,” the Commissaire said, “is more aware of that than I. I have had no sleep for three days.... And scarcely have my eyelids closed than ‘b-r-r-r’ goes my telephone and the excellent Levy, my secretary and assistant, is informing me that a wallet with money belonging to Mme Mathaire has been found in a taxi and restored. I damn, naturally, the eyes of M. Levy and tell him to use his senses. He is aware that Madame is the object of the special injunctions for her comfort of Monsieur the Grand Chamberlain and that he must have the objects restored to her at once by the most sure agent that is at his disposal. Dillon or Potin, if possible, so that no possible mistake may be made....”
“In effect,” the Commissioner said drily, “it was the great Dillon himself. Dressed up like a common flick.”
“He was about to go on another job,” the Commissaire explained, “but I told Levy to detach him for the moment on the business of Madame.... And having thus proved my zeal in Madame’s service I turn once more on my side and in a moment am in very distant climes.” He added: “Continue, Sergeant,” and appeared to lose himself in thought.
The Sergeant grumbled:
“That taxi-man is a lunatic. He is of opinion that that envelope which he had the scrupulosity not to open contained the two and a half millions of the Gros Lot — the National Lottery. If he has been here once he has been here twenty times... To ask for the recompense.... Every time after he has driven a passenger he has returned here. And clamoured and clamoured...”
Cassie, with her hand on her heart, asked excitedly where the man had found the notes, and at what hour. The whole thing might turn upon that.
“That I do not know too well,” the Sergeant grumbled, “On one of the Grands Boulevards, I think.... At some hour in the afternoon... But he is there outside.... If M. le Commissaire will permit....”
A red-eyed, dishevelled man in a chauffeur’s peaked cap was, a minute later pouring out his grievances so fast that it was difficult to get out of him anything but objurgations. His Russian accent rendered him almost incomprehensible and his fear of the Commissaire converted his voice into a long stutter....
Apparently he had picked up a fare — a” jeune homme quelconque,” with a mouth and two eyes and neither dark nor fair. The young man had not seemed like a foreigner except that he had demanded to be driven to the American Express Company. In the rue Scribe. It had been in the rue de Rivoli, level with the church of St Germain l’Auxerrois that some sort of “flic” had stopped the cab for the young man. In the rue Scribe the young man had entered the offices of the firm named and, shortly afterwards had emerged and had told the chauffeur to drive him to 12 rue d’Annam. But it had been impossible to get so far north. At every street leaving the Boulevards they had been turned back. It had appeared that the young man had authority to proceed; but no officer would face the responsibility of letting him penetrate into a quarter where fighting was in progress. Finally the young man had said to go to the corner of the Place de l’Opéra and had there alighted — in front of the Café de la Paix. He had been rather slow in paying his fare, having difficulty with his change and, before he had finished a young woman had jumped into the cab and had called to the driver to go quick like the wind to the Gare St Lazare. There had been a struggle of people to get into the cab, because there were few taxis on the streets. But she had got in. Then, at the Gare St Lazare she had shown the driver the packet that she had found and had recommended him to take it quickly to the address in the book. At that address Madame could not be found, so the driver had gone at once to the Commissariat.
He began a long wrangle — as to having received no reward and as to having been treated with indignity by the police of the poste. He was, he said, a prince in his own country and now that a prince reigned over Paris he should be treated with respect by all the dirty flics. The envelope that he had not opened out of scrupulosity had no doubt contained the five millions of the chief prize of the National Lottery. He was therefore entitled to five hundred thousand.
The Commissaire listened to him with his serious politeness but finally, after a sign to the old Sergeant, he was bustled out of the room leaving behind him a trail of alcohol and Russian obscenities. Cassie had sprung from her chair and was walking up and down behind Penkethman.
The Commissaire said:
“You were right, Madame. It appears that I was concealing very important information. But I must beg you to consider that this is a a time of great upset and I could not myself foresee the importance of a find in a taxi when I was informed that the loser was yourself and the matter was dealt with by a subordinate. But let us now act with the greatest possible speed.” He touched again his little button on the table top and continued to Cassie: “Madame has without doubt a photograph of Monsieur? Madame will lend it to me for tonight for the purposes of an immediate enquiry?”
Cassie surrendered with an extreme reluctance a small snap-shot that she had in a bill-fold in her hand-bag. A commonplace, dark man with a little moustache was in the room. He was ordered peremptorily to betake himself with all speed to the Café de la Paix, to interrogate all the waiters, the maître d’hôtel and the managers, as to whether they had seen the original of the snap-shot and if so to find what manner of man might have kept him company and where they might be supposed to have gone. A notice with a reproduction of the photograph was to be posted at all the police-stations ordering all persons who should have seen the subject of the photograph, and particularly any taxi-man who should have taken him up as a fare at or near the Café de la Paix, to report at once to the nearest police poste. Equally, the lady who had taken the cab from the Café to the Gare St Lazare was ordered to report and any private householder who should have given shelter to a possibly wounded man resembling the man wanted.
The commissaire rubbed his thin hands together with a new energy.
“You shall see, Madame,” he said, “now that we have data upon which to work the affair shall move with extreme rapidity. I would beseech you now to go home and take some rest. Be sure the morning will bring you news.”
PART II
CHAPTER 7
THE morning, however, brought no news; the police had heard nothing; Walter Leroy had not been near Norman White with whom they communicated on the telephone. They had talked till dawn, a fuse having blown out, by the light of a single candle in the immense, ghostly studio. There had been nothing Cassie could believe in; there had been nothing of which she could take hold. Then Cassie had gone to bed in her gallery; Penkethman had slept on the divan below.
Cassie, listening to his occasional, light, beginnings of a snore had gone over and over again through every detail of the case that she could call to mind. She seemed to be surrounded by scepticisms.... She disbelieved in the police, in the concierge, in the taxi-driver. Even in Penkethman himself. There were times when she believed that they were all in one vast conspiracy. But what? And for what conceivable purpose?
There were times when she believed that Walter had really been kidnapped by traffickers in dope; there were times when she was almost ready to believe that he himself had trafficked in drugs and had been arrested by Penkethman’s agents.... Or the police might have arrested him as a Communist agent. But why, in that case, should they maintain such a secrecy about it. Or why should Penkethman stick to her like a leech. Really like a leech!
She had tried to get him to leave the studio partly because she thought he needed good rest, at other times because she could not trust him. Her instinct, that is to say, insisted on her trusting him without any limit but her intellect said that he was a preposterous and unreliable hobgoblin. What was he doing there? He persisted that he would not let her out of his sight. He said that he considered her to be in danger. From the traffickers in dope or in White Slaves. Or “from even more redoubtable....” He had stopped his sentence there and she could not get him to complete it. It was as if on certain sides she could turn him round her little finger; on others he was an immovable lump.
From what he let drop — no doubt intentionally — and from what she was certain of from intuition she gathered that he knew more than he told her. Or rather he had theories that he did not impart to her.... After infinite worrying on her part he let out that he did not believe that Walter was dead. He said that she might be sure that he would show infinitely more signs of distress than he had hitherto — and less of anxiety. There was no doubt that he was extremely anxious, with, in spite of his self control, at least a point of nervousness. As if he listened for sounds.
As far as she could make out he was completely sceptical about the police but he said that when the Commissaire had pledged his personal word that he thought it was she who had left the notes in the taxi-cab she could believe him. He could have done without pledging his personal honour and would not have pledged it so if he needed to say what he did not believe.
But even in the police there were depths beyond depths. The Commissaire was not a very high functionary; his superiors might well use him, particularly in a matter that had international bearings, without in the least enlightening him as to what he was doing.... You might even, if you liked, suspect the taxi-driver. On the face of him he appeared a perfectly genuine White Russian — but even at that he might be a refugee who was in the power of the higher police and was playing a comedy that suited them.... So that there was nothing they could know — except that Walter was not there.
She gathered that he thought it unlikely that Walter had been arrested as a Communist. If he had they would probably have been quite open about it. Of course the international aspect of the affair might worry them. They might not like to signalise the opening of the new reign by arresting the subjects of a friendly Power. But the American Government did not like Communists — and particularly American Communists. They would welcome their arrest wherever they happened to be. Then...
But it was all insupportably bewildering. Penkethman said that Frenchmen like M. de la Penthièvre did not take American middle class Communists like Walter very seriously. M. de la Penthièvre had even said, one evening on the Bourgogne, that if he had had a son like Walter, he would have wanted him to be a little “politically irregular.”... That had been his phrase, “politically irregular,” meaning something like “sowing his wild oats.”... The French, Mr Penkethman said, believed that it was a good thing if a young man of birth and breeding was a little wild — in the matter of mistresses or politics. It meant that he would not go off the handle at forty, which was the real “dangerous age” for men....
That made it all the more unlikely that Walter had been arrested as a political offender.... But, if he were not a political offender, why was he being detained? So he was probably not being detained by the police. Then by whom? Dope-merchants? Souteneurs?... A former mistress? Former schoolfellows?... She did not believe Walter was of that sort.... Penkethman had let out a curious fact. Apparently, according to him, Walter had never lived with another woman. Because he had been afraid of going mad like his father — the man who retired from time to time, voluntarily, to an asylum because he felt that fits of insanity were coming on him.
But how did Penkethman know these things? He had avowedly set detectives on the house in Greenwich Village where Walter had lived with the bacteriologist for sole friend. But sleuths cannot tell you what goes on inside a man’s mind. They could not know that Walter would be afraid of going goofy if he slept with a woman.... Then how did Penkethman know that?... It gave her infinite satisfaction to think that that was true. But how did Penkethman know it?
He lay twenty feet down below her, snoring very slightly every twenty minutes.... But why, in the name of Paradise, should he be there? A great, fat, enormous, clumsy, active, obtuse, sympathetic, stupid, diabolically penetrating lump of flesh and intellect.... She was certain that he did not... oh, cherish evil designs against her. But then, what?
The dawn began, almost invisibly, to point out the long lines of the studio window. She said to herself:
“Beautify it all.... This fellow, Walter Leroy... What is he to me?”
He was good, honourable, courageous, stupid according to the standard set by women with their quivering intuitions.... Like any cop at any street corner.... He smiled.... Oh, when he smiled your stomach turned over inside you.... And he had been incorrigibly virtuous.... Apparently because he was afraid of collecting inherited phalernæ in a paternal belfry.... But she refused to believe that.... She had had to lead him on.... She, Cassandra Mathers, great granddaughter of Brigham Young.... Damn the fellow, damn the fellow.... Damn.... The livid dawn... the pale dawn with the saffron fingers.... Showing the leaded lines of the dusty studio windows....
He had resisted her because he was afraid of bringing her into danger.... Resisted Cassandra Mathers, great granddaughter of Brigham Young; ten times great-granddaughter of Cotton Mather.... But you must be less than a man to resist Circe.... And in that very bed — the dawn showing the pallid lines of the apartment house with all the windows... Oh, when I forget thee Walter the King, may my right hand... paint like... Gilbert West... No White... Benjamin... West....
Next day they treated her, at the Embassy, like a whore.
A completely unimpressed young man, obviously from Cincinnati, had listened in a marble hall to her tale of the disappearance of Walter. He had turned her over to a less immaculate man with red hair on the Consular side of the building. He had kept her waiting for three quarters of an hour whilst he chatted with a young woman at a desk adjoining his own, in an immense hall slightly less marbled than those on the Embassy side. Then he had said that if “we” had to take up the tracing of every American citizen who disappeared on his first night in Paris they would need a staff as large as the U. S. Army and Navy together. Did she suppose they were really there to look after Americans who chose to make beasts of themselves?
