The long arm of Fantômas, page 32
But Juve with superb audacity, an admirable effrontery, commanded:
“Silence, all of you, and don’t budge! if it is Fantômas alone they are after, Fantômas will defend himself alone, if it is all of us they are looking for, Fantômas will be at your head to defend you and triumph over our enemies; hush, do not speak, do not stir!”
Slowly Juve pushed through the throng and made for the door of the cellar. He tried to open it; it was locked fast!
“The key,” he demanded. The “Beadle” advanced grumbling: “Here it is,” he said, “what to do now?”
“Open,” ordered the inspector.
“You are leaving us, Fantômas?” he was asked.
“I am keeping guard over you,” replied Juve boldly.
Then he left the cellar, but did not go away. Between him and the apaches now stood the heavy door secured by an outside bolt the officer had shot with his own hands.
Juve stood there listening; a posse of men was surrounding the house.
End of Chapter
Chapter 27
Juve’s Bag
An hour or so before these events, while it was still night, the police-officers on duty at the head Commissariat office at Alfort were roused from the peaceful doze they were indulging in by the unexpected arrival of an individual who seemed breathless and exhausted as if he had been running a great distance.
“The Commissary?” he demanded.
The sergeant shrugged his shoulders.
“You may be very sure he’s not here.”
“And his deputy?”
“He’s away too, of course.”
“Who is in command here then?”
The sergeant indicated himself.
“Well, if you must know, I am; who are you? what do you want?”
Curtly, in measured tones, the man explained:
“Who am I! I am Tom Bob, American detective, specially known of late days at the Prefecture of Police and in the city for his war against Fantômas!”
The sergeant nodded and saluted; he had heard tell of Tom Bob and recognized the foreign police-officer from the numerous descriptions and portraits he had read and seen of him.
“What can I do to serve you?” he asked.
Tom Bob told him: “You can arrest Fantômas!... at this moment he is close by with his gang of apaches round him; they are all gathered, he and his confederates, in a deserted house, at the far end of the military road, right hand side after the second cross-roads.”
“I can see the shanty from here,” announced the sergeant, “a wretched hovel it is; but who is it tells us ...?”
Tom Bob informed him curtly:
“I tell you, that is sufficient!... how many men have you?”
“Eight.”
“That’s not enough.”
The sergeant was getting alarmed: “I can ask for more from the Charenton office!”
“That’s the thing.”
The sergeant got into communication by telephone with his colleague at the neighbouring police post.
“There are fifteen over yonder,” he informed Tom Bob.
“They must all come,” declared the detective, “Fantômas’ band counts at least a round dozen ruffians.”
The detective’s requirements were transmitted from the Alfort office, and the fifteen Charenton officers promised to be there in a quarter of an hour. The gallant sergeant was greatly excited by the coming events; to avoid all doubt and make sure he was covered by his superiors, he asked:
“Monsieur Bob, shall you be coming with us?”
“Undoubtedly!” replied the American detective. But the sergeant was not satisfied yet.
“I have a great mind,” he announced, “to go and inform the Commissary, he lives close by.”
“You should have done that long ago!” Tom Bob said rebukingly.
Then, while the sergeant was issuing his orders, the detective sat down in the public office, lit a cigarette, and did not vouchsafe another word.
Before coming thus rudely to disturb the peace and quietness of the Alfort Commissariat, Tom Bob had been wandering up and down most part of the night in perplexity. On quitting the Palais de Justice, leaving Fuselier to make the best of his absurd plight, that ambiguous individual had realized one fact quite clearly, viz., that the magistrate had looked at him in a way that was decidedly disquieting. An extraordinary thing for him, Tom Bob’s face had blanched somewhat under the magistrate’s questioning look, but he quickly recovered his customary coolness. Stepping out on to the Boulevard du Palais, quite empty and deserted at this late hour, he hailed a passing taxi and offered the driver a handsome tip to drive him as far as the first houses of Alfort.
There the detective quitted his conveyance and plunged into the darkness of the silent lanes of the sleeping village. He entered a deserted house; and strange to say, a few moments later, it was not Tom Bob who reappeared, but Père Moche—Moche with his wig, his spectacles, his big nose, as soft and flabby as an indiarubber ball, and his red whiskers. It was Moche who was now making his way slowly and deliberately towards the building where two days before he had gone to bury the strong box containing his money and where, without his knowing it, he had imprisoned Fandor when he double locked the door behind him on his departure. It was Moche who, hidden near by, watched his friends the apaches one after another approach the house to which he knew that Juve, mistaken for Fantômas, had been brought. It was Moche who, as time went by and he sat watching how matters were going, fell to rubbing his hands in self-congratulation.
“No need,” he thought to himself, “to go myself; I should only be risking the same fate as Juve. Now, what is happening?... it is three o’clock in the morning, Juve is on his defence at this very moment, they are demanding their pay, and he cannot give it them;... I know my fine fellows—in ten minutes my sweet friend, the police-inspector, will be put to death, doomed as a Fantômas at once traitor and perjurer!”
Père Moche rose and set off at a run for the more central parts of the city. Suddenly he snatched away his wig and spectacles, pulled off his false nose and red whiskers—and, extraordinary to relate, instead of the old usurer’s ill-omened face appeared the keen, refined countenance of the American Tom Bob. In a ringing voice the latter cried in defiance of men and gods:
“Goodbyee, old Moche, goodbyee, Tom Bob, I thank you both for lending me your fascinating personalities and enabling me thus to triumph over my opponents. Fantômas, my boy, you’ve worked to some purpose!”
Could anyone have overheard this extraordinary soliloquy, he would assuredly have been struck with sheer amazement, for if at a pinch sundry persons had come to suppose that Père Moche bore so close an affinity with Fantômas that possibly he was Fantômas himself, none could ever think that the detective, who had come to France under official sanction with the express object of hunting down the brigand, was in fact none other than that same notorious, ever evasive criminal, now better assured than ever against capture, seeing he was actually giving chase to himself.
Fantômas stood, a solitary figure in the far-stretching plain, thinking.
“I cannot rest satisfied,” he muttered, “till I see Juve lying dead—as dead as a man can be! I must also,” he went on, “for a few hours more keep up my rôle of Tom Bob; I shall score yet another success if by one triumphant cast of the net I contrive that the French police shall arrest the whole gang of my confederates ... I should say Fantômas’ confederates!”
Then it was that, calculating his time almost to a minute, the atrocious scoundrel had given the alarm at the Alfort police-post.
Dawn was breaking fast. The officers from Charenton had joined the Alfort contingent and the united force was hurrying, Tom Bob and the Commissary at their head, towards the extremity of the military road where the mysterious house stood. The sergeant was issuing his instructions.
“You will surround the building,” he ordered his men; “you will draw in the circle more and more, but taking cover to avoid accidents; have your revolvers out, the brigands lurking there are terrible fellows; at the first suspicious movement, fire without a moment’s hesitation.”
Meantime Tom Bob, quite unruffled, was explaining to the Commissary:
“You know what happened yesterday—Fantômas released from prison, carried off by the apaches, tried by the villains, doomed and perhaps executed?...”
But Tom Bob broke off short with a cry of terror. On the threshold of the ill-omened house, at the opening of the stairs giving entrance to the cellar, stood a man motionless, with folded arms.
“Fantômas!” exclaimed Tom Bob. But the Commissary set him right at once.
“No, no! it is Juve,” he cried, “Juve! Yes, we heard aright; the papers that gave the news yesterday spoke the truth, Juve is innocent and a free man”—and the Commissary sprang forward towards the Inspector of the Criminal Bureau.
“Juve, Juve,” he questioned, “what are you doing here? What are you waiting for?”
The officer replied deliberately, in a quiet voice, perfectly calm and collected:
“Why, my dear Commissary, it was you I was waiting for!”
“The brigands,” went on the official excitedly, “Fantômas’ accomplices—where are they?”
Juve pointed a finger at the door against which he leant.
“They are there,” he said, “inside there; it only remains for us to have them out one by one; how many men have you with you?”
“Twenty-three,” the Commissary informed him.
After thinking a moment, “Yes, that is sufficient,” Juve declared, “we can get to work.”
The Commissary, a worthy fellow, once a subordinate under the friendly Inspector at the Criminal Bureau, could not refrain, despite the critical conditions of the moment, from expressing his delight.
“Juve, my dear Juve,” he cried, “what a blessed thing! Your innocence is acknowledged at last; I am so glad, so very glad!...”
But the good man never finished his congratulations. For some minutes ominous sounds had been heard coming from the cellar, and now a fearful yell broke out and a hailstorm of bullets, fired at point blank range from inside, pitted and pierced the door, fortunately a thick, heavy one. Nevertheless Juve was struck by two or three projectiles, spent balls luckily, otherwise the inspector would have been shot dead. He stepped back a pace or two.
“That spoils our game!” he muttered simply, “I suppose our fine fellows have found out at last that the Fantômas they held prisoner was no other than Juve, the police-officer!”
“Sir,” demanded the Commissary, consulting the Inspector with enhanced respect in face of the new danger, “how must we proceed now?”
Juve cast a rapid glance round the house. “We must parley with them to begin with,” he declared—and in a voice he made big and authoritative, he challenged the apaches.
“You are taken!” he announced in peremptory tones, “surrender!”
The shouts redoubled, mingled with oaths of the most appalling profanity. The Commissary, all for making a quick end, suggested:
“For my part, I should make no bones about shooting them all down through the grated windows, if five minutes from now they haven’t given in their submission.”
But Juve was biting his lip, a prey to excruciating anxiety. At all costs firing must be avoided, the ruffians induced to surrender and a fight prevented; doubtless Juve did not care a straw for the lives of the monsters who had come so near killing him, but he knew that among them was one, the least hair of whose head was sacred to him! But would the apaches give in, or must they be mastered by force or famine? Either solution was equally repugnant to Juve, always swayed by the same motive.
Meanwhile a crowd of the honest, hard-working inhabitants of Alfort, risen early as is their wont, had gathered round, naturally all agog with curiosity to see this quite unusual display of police activity round the old building that had always borne something of an evil reputation. The police, on being questioned, had not hesitated to say it was a matter of a gang of dangerous apaches they had just brought to bay. The louder the clamour of oaths and threats that rose from the cellar, the more excited and angry and impatient grew the crowd.
“Smoke ‘em out!” rose the cry, and fists were shaken fiercely at the wild beasts’ lair, as they remembered how in all the honest, hard-working population of Alfort there was hardly a soul but had suffered from the depredations and atrocities of the ill-omened gang, or at any rate, of similar gangs of marauders ... They had them at their mercy, why not make an end? Already, in spite of the constables’ efforts to keep order, the crowd was kindling round the walls dry vine shoots and wisps of straw: through the low grated window someone threw in a lighted brand.
Juve began to tremble, and once more addressed the apaches:
“Come now, don’t go trying to be too clever; surrender, I tell you!”
Then the “Beadle” spoke out in the name of all. In a quavering voice, a coward in face of the instant danger, the fellow whined:
“We’re going to give in, Juve; only protect us from the crowd, those dogs might easy tear us to pieces.”
Juve made no show of insolent triumph. At a nod from him to the Commissary, a double line of officers, revolvers in hand, formed up either side of the entrance, while four men stood ready in the doorway to clap on the bracelets as the ruffians came out. A minute or two earlier the Commissary had caught sight of an army forage-wagon going by, and had requisitioned it to serve as an impromptu “Black Maria” for the conveyance of the sinister crew Juve had so opportunely arrested.
Juve held the heavy door of the cellar ajar. “One by one!” he ordered—and the apaches obeyed. “Bull’s-eye” was the first to present himself, wearing a hang-dog look and offering his wrists docilely for the handcuffs to be adjusted; behind him appeared “Big Ernestine,” with hard-featured face and rouged cheeks, casting black looks of furious defiance at the crowd that jeered at the street-walker and her tattered finery; next came the “Gasman’s” turn, a tall skeleton with enormous hands; then the “Beadle,” shivering with fear; Paulet, paler than ever, his features drawn and distorted almost beyond recognition in sheer terror of the scaffold; then Mère Toulouche, alone and utterly callous, who the moment she was outside, began to harangue Juve, the police-officers, the Commissary, chuckling and grinning in hideous mockery.
All submitted to the same fate with a remarkable docility. But when the officers prepared to deal with the last of the unfortunates issuing from the cellar in this ignominious fashion and were going to slip on the bracelets, Juve threw himself impetuously before them.
“No, oh no!” he cried, “not that one, you shall not pinion him! leave him to me, I will see to him; for, look you, this is the man who saved my life, Fandor!”—and to the amazement of all, Juve and Fandor fell into one another’s arms in a long-drawn embrace.
For Tom Bob, he had vanished long before this!
End of Chapter
Chapter 28
The Decoy
It was broad daylight by this time and the morning, still a trifle chilly, gave promise of a very fine day. The tragic scenes just enacted had had, thanks to the radiant beams of the rising sun, an almost cheerful setting. As the forage-wagon, now transformed into a “Black Maria,” was driving off, loaded up with the sinister crew so opportunely captured by Juve, the latter rubbed his hands, a customary mark of inward satisfaction with that officer.
“Good work Fandor!” he said—”and none too soon, neither! I was beginning to despair.”
Fandor wagged his head sententiously.
“We should never despair, Juve; but all the same, like you, I confess this morning has held some surprise for us. I was just eating my heart out down in that cellar; I thought one time neither you nor I would ever see the light of day again!...”
But Juve was lost in a brown study. With head cast down and hands clasped behind his back, he paced a few steps in the direction taken by the army vehicle carrying the gang of apaches.
“We are going to the police-station?” Fandor asked.
“To the station? no! We have something better to do.”
Fandor stood with folded arms, fixing a look of interrogation on his companion’s face.
“You are leaving all those fellows in the lurch?” he inquired.
“I am not leaving them in the lurch, Fandor! We shall catch up with them again before long; now at once, if need be. Only we have more pressing business. Never forget, my boy, that all those fellows are really and truly only supers. What we want now is to come upon the leading actor.”
Fandor smiled: “The leader, Fantômas, eh? But I take it, Juve, that now, like me, you are no longer in ignorance who it is? Moche strikes me ...”
Juve laughed too, a hearty laugh of triumph. After the terrible hours the gallant inspector had spent in his prison, after the depressing times he had known when everybody accused him of being Fantômas, he was at last nearing the final victory, the rehabilitation of his character, the arrest of the real culprits! It was in fact barely a few hours since M. Fuselier and his colleagues had recognized the fact that he was really Juve, and yet with marvellous skill and coolness, owing more to his own amazing boldness than to circumstances, he had succeeded in wresting the mask from a gang of the most dangerous criminals, accomplices of the ever-elusive arch-criminal himself; nay more, he had pushed his investigations so far that the actual identity of Fantômas hardly admitted of further doubt for him, that he could feel confident the arrest of the Lord of Terror was now only a question of hours.
Taking Fandor by the shoulder, Juve spoke softly:
“Egad! yes, I know who Fantômas is! I even know twice over who he is!”
“Twice over? Juve, what do you mean?”
“You don’t understand me, Fandor? Come now, you accuse Moche, don’t you? You do this, by reason of the part he played with these apaches? and you are in the right. But there’s more to follow. For Fantômas to be Moche was not enough; that travesty held good only for his confederates. Fantômas, to dupe all Paris as he did, believe me, was someone else into the bargain, someone I suspect, astounding as the thing may sound. And it is of this suspicion, Fandor, we must now establish strict, undoubted, undisputable proof.”
