The Frightened Chameleon: A Case for Superintendent Anthony Slade, page 1
The Frightened
Chameleon
Leonard Gribble
© Leonard Gribble 1951*
*Indicates the year of first publication.
To
A certain habitué of a certain café on the Left Bank,
who is remembered with some affection by
the author as "The Lonely Man
of Montparnasse."
THE STORY:
Superintendent Anthony Slade, of Scotland Yard, arrives in Paris to enquire into the strange disappearance of a man using a false name. He stays to solve one of the most baffling cases of his career.
In company with Inspector Henri Duval of the Paris Sûreté, he journeys across Europe on the trail of a man it is not humanly possible to find. In a Swiss sanatorium he meets a person whose very existence is a secret kept from the world, and back in Paris with Duval he learns why Charles Gentian, the financial freebooter known as the Chameleon, was frightened.
This new novel featuring the author's popular detective adds another triumph of detection to Slade's already notable record. More than 1,500,000 copies of Slade novels have been sold and they have been translated into ten languages.
All the characters in this book are purely imaginary and have no relation whatsoever to any living person or persons.
CONTENTS
I
The Man with the Hare Lip
II
A Peculiar Disappearance.
III
Food for Speculation
IV
The Housekeeper
V
A Matter of Principle
VI
The Butcher's Story
VII
The Fourth Victim
VIII
A New Lead
IX
A Question of Geography
X
Farling's Friend
XI
Confession
XII
The Racket
XIII
New Links
XIV
International Hustle
XV
The Swiss Doctor
XVI
A Secret Shared
XVII
What's in a Name?
XVIII
A Woman's Defiance
XIX
The Plot
XX
Bedside Evidence
XXI
A Matter of Cleanliness.
XXII
A Fresh Angle
XXIII
A Choice of Impossibilities
XXIV
The Narrowing Circle
XXV
Off the Record
CHAPTER I
THE MAN WITH THE HARE LIP
THE lift gate clanged and the young man in purple and gold uniform pushed over the contact lever. The lift rose, rattling a little. As it passed the first floor the attendant's brown eyes swivelled to the face of the thickset man in the corner of the climbing cage. The eyes under bushy brows were half closed, fixed in gaze. Bunches of puffy tanned flesh were pulled down over them, lending the face with its full chin and pursed full lips a heavy expression. The man might have been a Levantine. Under his well-cut grey suit with a quiet pin stripe fleshy shoulders thrust. Thick thighs pushed against the knife creases of the trousers. In the brown fingers of the left hand was grasped a forgotten cigar, from which a feathery line of blue smoke rose lazily.
The lift attendant was aware of the fragrance of the burning cigar, as he was aware of the hare lip disfiguring the face that might have suggested strength had the expression been somewhat less intense and brooding, or of the large diamond winking on the third finger of the right hand, or of the bright beads of perspiration that clung against the hairline of the man's receding forehead. He was aware of these details, but he was watching the half-closed eyes, expecting some sign of recognition. None was given.
He felt baffled, perplexed. As the lift rose beyond the second floor he knew the other would say nothing. He debated whether he should break the silence, and decided against it.
Do nothing, say nothing.
The instructions had been simple, explicit. He had said he understood them.
Would he remember?
At the time it had seemed a foolish question. He had smiled when he gave his assurance that he would remember. Indeed, how could he forget?
He shivered, and with an effort withdrew his gaze from the face of the man with the hare lip, the man who chose not to see him and not to speak.
Perhaps, after all, this was a test.
He plucked up heart at the thought, and a sparkle of interest kindled in his deep brown eyes. His hand moved over the contact lever and the lift came to a shuddering pause. He bent his body and threw back the gate.
"Troisième étage, m'sieur," he said, and stepped outside and to one side.
The man with the hare lip pushed the smouldering cigar into the corner of his mouth and left the lift without saying a word. He walked heavily, with no spring in his legs, and the bunches of flesh were still rolled down over his eyes, like badly fixed window-shades.
He turned a corner of the cream and gold corridor and his footsteps died. The lift attendant stood for some seconds staring in the direction in which the other had disappeared. He turned and stepped back into his glass and steel cage and sent it rattling back to the ground floor. As the lift shuddered to a stop and he threw open the door his glance focused briefly on the clock above the palms by the ornate entrance to the restaurant.
The time was 7.45 and the restaurant was busy. Victor Orloff's violin was leading the orchestra. The revolving door brought fresh waves of patrons from the boulevards.
"Michel—un moment!"
The summons came from the hard-faced man at the reception desk. The lift attendant braced himself and tried to force all thought of the man with the hare lip from his mind. It was not easy.
For an hour life became a series of oscillations in a vertical plane, and for fifty minutes of that hour he succeeded in forgetting the man with the hare lip. When he was relieved by the night lift attendant a few minutes before nine o'clock he was smiling, the creases had gone from between his eyes, and he could even contemplate the martinet at the reception desk without bitterness.
But that was the way Suzette always made him feel. Perhaps that was what being in love meant. He didn't know. He only knew that being in love with Suzette made him feel less anxious about things that filled him with anxiety. Things and people.
When he thought of people he thought of the man with the hare lip who had maintained an unbroken silence.
He left the hotel by the staff entrance and collected his ramshackle Renault from the garage two streets away where his cousin worked.
"Picking up Suzette?" asked his cousin when he appeared.
His cousin was nearly ten years older and lived in an apartment with a stout wife and two children with the bluest eyes in Paris.
"Yes. I must hurry or I shall be late, and it looks like rain."
"It won't rain," said his cousin. "How about some petrol? You don't want to run your tank dry in the Bois and have to walk back. Even if it doesn't rain," he added.
"Give me fifteen litres, Paul."
Paul Bonnard spun the dial of his petrol gauge, hesitated.
"Super?" he asked.
"Yes."
The petrol splashed noisily into the tank of the aged Renault. Paul Bonnard held up the hose and drained it. He took a grubby thousand-franc note from his cousin.
"Don't they ever tip with clean money in your hotel, Michel?" he asked.
Michel wasn't listening. He dropped his change in his pocket and turned to the car.
"Good night, Paul."
"Good night, Michel. Give Suzette a kiss for me."
That was Paul's brand of humour.
Michel drove away. He made for the Champs-Elysées, dodged between the traffic circling the Place de l'Etoile, and opened up along the Avenue de la Grande Armée. Suzette was waiting for him at their old meeting-place. She looked lovely to his eyes as she stood under a tree with the soft dusk falling around her like a diaphanous cloak. There was a spring in her step as she ran forward to greet him, and as he turned for the Bois with her at his side she was leaning against him and for another brief spell the man with the hare lip was forgotten. Michel was happy. He allowed his tongue to wag, as will a young man happy in the company of his girl. He talked about everything and nothing, and occasionally Suzette made cooing sounds of assent.
They parked on a strip of climbing road and watched the moon sail over Longchamps racecourse. It was like having a world to themselves, a world of ineffable beauty, for in the faintly mauve mist that stole from the trees of the Bois the racecourse was like a strange land of faery, its grandstand translated into a palace of enchantment as it caught and held the soft moonlight.
"What's the matter, Michel?"
Only when Suzette spoke in a bated whisper did he realize that they had been quiet for a long spell. He was tired of trying to pretend nothing had happened, and yet he knew he would go on pretending. It was madness. But what else could he do?
It was a question that required no answer.
"Nothing, Suzette."
She moved away from him and sat with her slim shoulders pressed against the car door. He could not see her face clearly in th
It was so easily, so terribly easy for her to say with love beating in her throat, "But you can trust me, Michel. We love each other."
Yes, he could trust her, with his life, with all the lives he would ever live. But not with this. This was more than life. This was something that would enable them to get married.
"Michel."
"Yes?"
"Something is the matter."
There was no reproach in her voice, no sadness that he had lied to her, just the quiet gloom of knowing a truth that could hurt even though the wound would never show.
"I've a bit of a headache, if that's what you mean, cherie."
"That isn't what I mean."
No, that wasn't what she meant. It wasn't what he meant. But he couldn't tell her. He couldn't. He closed his eyes and could still see the faery palace that was an illusion and the white dotted lines that were the rails marking the course. He found himself holding his breath and listening, and fancied he could hear the beat of galloping hooves. He could hear no cries, no excited shouts, only the drumming of the hooves.
He opened his eyes and saw Suzette's gloved hand beating a rhythmic tattoo on the side of the dashboard panel.
"I thought you loved me, Michel."
"I do, Suzette, I do."
"Then why don't you tell me what's the matter?"
Female logic. Because he loved her he had to make her miserable, maybe even spoil their love.
"I told you, nothing is the matter."
"That's what you said. Least, you said it was a bit of a headache, if that's what I meant. And I said it wasn't what I meant."
Female logic that could be ruthless. He knew he couldn't stand up to her. At the same time he couldn't tell her. How could she understand that he was afraid because someone had promised him a million francs? He had committed no crime, done nothing, and he was to receive a million francs, and he was filled with a fear that made his head swim and brought a strange sickness to his stomach that was like the cramps.
A million francs. A rich man might lose such a sum in a single night's card-playing. But to him it was a fortune. It meant he and Suzette could be married and set up a home of their own. A better home than Paul Bonnard and his stout Norman wife shared with their blue-eyed youngsters. A better home than he shared with his parents over the butcher's shop. A real home. That was why he couldn't tell her. He had given his promise, a promise that was worth a million francs.
"Michel, you aren't listening."
She was not angry, but there was a sharp note in her voice that hurt like an unexpected barb in his flesh.
"I'm listening," he said miserably, only the words were muffled so that he did not share his misery.
"Then why are you behaving like this? I must say you can be strange when you choose, Michel. Not every girl would be as patient as I am."
Maybe, after all, she had the power to hurt him with words. He didn't want to think it could be true. In the darkness she was a stranger to him, and yet so close he could feel her breath on the back of his hand. That seemed odd.
But he knew the power of words had deserted him. He could not argue. He could only plead, and the realization added to his mute misery.
"Please, Suzette."
She squirmed down in the seat beside him, and her toe rapped at the uncarpeted floorboards.
"Oh, you make me tired sometimes, Michel. I don't understand you at all. Give me a cigarette."
He gave her a cigarette and smoked with her in silence, but the enchantment of the moonlit night was gone, and he knew it would not return, even as a memory. He could see the deserted racecourse, vast and empty of life and even meaning, and he wondered why he had come, why he always came to this place that could look so sad and dreadfully neglected.
Suzette threw the glowing butt of her cigarette into the road.
"Take me home," she said, and her tone hurt him more than his own harsh thoughts about himself.
The old engine broke into noisy life and he turned back towards Paris.
"I'll get out here," she said when he reached the end of the street where she lodged.
She held her cheek for him to kiss but did not kiss him. She was letting him know that she was displeased with him.
"Suzette," he said, and wondered if she had heard, because her high heels were clip-clopping away across the pavement and she did not turn her head. He sat and watched her as she passed across the light from a shop window. Trim little figure, chin up, stepping out, resolute, displeased—she was gone.
As he started up the car again he found that the cramps had gone from his stomach. He felt tired. That was all. Perhaps that is why he drove like a tired man. He parked the car in the garage where the butcher kept his van, locked up, and started to climb the stairs to the rather drab apartment that was his parents' home.
"Come in, Michel," said his father's voice before he had taken off his coat. "We've been waiting for you."
He went into the living-room and stared at the stranger. He was a heavily built man of medium height, dressed in dark clothes, with a close-cropped dark moustache shading his upper lip. There was a small brown iron mark on one of the points of his soft collar, which was crushed by the weight of his thick neck.
His mother was sitting across the room, with a basket of knitting and mending in her lap. Usually she sat up at the table, where the stranger now sat. Perhaps that was how he came to notice the broad lanes of silver in her bowed head. He felt shocked.
"You work at the Hôtel de Bourbon."
"Yes."
He saw the book held in his father's large red hands bend.
"Michel," said his father, in the tone of one explaining a self-evident fact to a child, "you should know this is Inspector Duval of the Sûreté."
He said nothing. He waited for the plain-clothes man to speak or act. Inspector Duval did both. He took something from his pocket and held it out, and he said, "You've seen this before?"
There it was in the inspector's thick stubby fingers. The same envelope with the purple seal and the used Swiss stamps in the corner and the broad pen strokes through the printed name.
His promise, a promise worth a million francs. He felt cheated, and didn't know how or why. He thought of Suzette's clip-clopping heels on the solid pavement, and suddenly it was more than he could bear, because everything seemed so pointless and her impatience had not been deserved.
He closed his eyes against the unshaded light in the middle of the room. The shock of discovery was like an electric current coursing through his body. His lashes were moist.
He almost ran from the room.
Inspector Duval rapped the envelope against his palm. The mother said quietly, "You must give him time, inspector. Michel is a very sensitive young man."
But she did not look up from the clicking needles driven by her relentless fingers.
CHAPTER II
A PECULIAR DISAPPEARANCE
"SO you see, m'sieur, I cannot tell you whether you will be able to complete your mission or not. Perhaps after all you are on—what is it you English call it?—ah, yes, the wild-geese chase."
Inspector Henri Duval sat back in his office in a rather draughty block of the Quai des Orfèvres and studied the facial contour of his visitor. Superintendent Anthony Slade had arrived a few hours before by air from London. His visit had followed a personal telephone call from Scotland Yard to the office of the headquarters of the Sûreté Générale.
"Perhaps I am, inspector," said Slade, stroking his chin thoughtfully, "but somehow I don't think so."
The Englishman was a well-set-up individual who filled his chair. His brown hair was brushed straight back, and his clean-shaven face revealed a strong chin and sharp chiselled nose under a broad forehead and two clear grey eyes spaced well apart. There were lines in the forehead, but they were not etched deep. There were also lines at the sides of the resolute mouth, but the sharp-eyed Frenchman had already observed that they disappeared when his guest smiled. And there was a quality about Anthony Slade's smile that won the other's regard. Inspector Duval considered himself something of an expert in the matter of smiles. He could quickly discover the spurious and readily assess the genuine.
