3.
I woke with the consciousness of violent wordy warfare carried on around me. I was lying on the ground, and the first things I saw were three or four pairs of feet standing close together. Gradually out of the confused hubbub a few sentences struck my reawakened senses.
“The man is drunk.”
“I won’t have him inside the house.”
“I tell you this is a respectable house.” This from a shrill feminine voice. “We’ve never had the law inside our doors before.”
By this time I had succeeded in raising myself on my elbow, and, by the dim light of a hanging lamp somewhere down the passage, I was pretty well able to take stock of my surroundings.
The half-dozen bedroom candlesticks on a table up against the wall, the row of keys hanging on hooks fixed to a board above, the glass partition with the words “Concierge” and “Réception” painted across it, all told me that this was one of those small, mostly squalid and disreputable lodging houses or hotels in which this quarter of Paris still abounds.
The two gendarmes who had been running after me were arguing the matter of my presence here with the proprietor of the place and with the concierge.
I struggled to my feet. Whereupon for the space of a solid two minutes I had to bear as calmly as I could the abuse and vituperation which the feminine proprietor of this “respectable house” chose to hurl at my unfortunate head. After which I obtained a hearing from the bewildered minions of the law. To them I gave as brief and succinct a narrative as I could of the events of the past three days. The theft of Carissimo—the disappearance of Theodore—my meeting him a while ago, with the dog under his arm—his second disappearance, this time within the doorway of this “respectable abode,” and finally the blow which alone had prevented me from running the abominable thief to earth.
The gendarmes at first were incredulous. I could see that they were still under the belief that my excitement was due to over-indulgence in alcoholic liquor, whilst Madame the proprietress called me an abominable liar for daring to suggest that she harboured thieves within her doors. Then suddenly, as if in vindication of my character, there came from a floor above the sound of a loud, shrill bark.
“Carissimo!” I cried triumphantly. Then I added in a rapid whisper, “Mme. la Comtesse de Nolé is rich. She spoke of a big reward for the recovery of her pet.”
These happy words had the effect of stimulating the zeal of the gendarmes. Madame the proprietress grew somewhat confused and incoherent, and finally blurted it out that one of her lodgers—a highly respectable gentleman—did keep a dog, but that there was no crime in that surely.
“One of your lodgers?” queried the representative of the law. “When did he come?”
“About three days ago,” she replied sullenly.
“What room does he occupy?”
“Number twenty-five on the third floor.”
“He came with his dog?” I interposed quickly, “a spaniel?”
“Yes.”
“And your lodger, is he an ugly, slouchy creature—with hooked nose, bleary eyes and shaggy yellow hair?”
But to this she vouchsafed no reply.
Already the matter had passed out of my hands. One of the gendarmes prepared to go upstairs and bade me follow him, whilst he ordered his comrade to remain below and on no account to allow anyone to enter or leave the house. The proprietress and concierge were warned that if they interfered with the due execution of the law they would be severely dealt with; after which we went upstairs.
For a while, as we ascended, we could hear the dog barking furiously, then, presently, just as we reached the upper landing, we heard a loud curse, a scramble, and then a piteous whine quickly smothered.
My very heart stood still. The next moment, however, the gendarme had kicked open the door of No. 25, and I followed him into the room. The place looked dirty and squalid in the extreme—just the sort of place I should have expected Theodore to haunt. It was almost bare save for a table in the centre, a couple of rickety chairs, a broken-down bedstead and an iron stove in the corner. On the table a tallow candle was spluttering and throwing a very feeble circle of light around.
At first glance I thought that the room was empty, then suddenly I heard another violent expletive and became aware of a man sitting close beside the iron stove. He turned to stare at us as we entered, but to my surprise it was not Theodore’s ugly face which confronted us. The man sitting there alone in the room where I had expected to see Theodore and Carissimo had a shaggy beard of an undoubted ginger hue. He had on a blue blouse and a peaked cap; beneath his cap his lank hair protruded more decided in colour even than his beard. His head was sunk between his shoulders, and right across his face, from the left eyebrow over the cheek and as far as his ear, he had a hideous crimson scar, which told up vividly against the ghastly pallor of his face.
But there was no sign of Theodore!
At first my friend the gendarme was quite urbane. He asked very politely to see Monsieur’s pet dog. Monsieur denied all knowledge of a dog, which denial only tended to establish his own guilt and the veracity of mine own narrative. The gendarme thereupon became more peremptory and the man promptly lost his temper.
I, in the meanwhile, was glancing round the room and soon spied a wall cupboard which had obviously been deliberately screened by the bedstead. While my companion was bringing the whole majesty of the law to bear upon the miscreant’s denegations I calmly dragged the bedstead aside and opened the cupboard door.
An ejaculation from my quivering throat brought the gendarme to my side. Crouching in the dark recess of the wall cupboard was Carissimo—not dead, thank goodness! but literally shaking with terror. I pulled him out as gently as I could, for he was so frightened that he growled and snapped viciously at me. I handed him to the gendarme, for by the side of Carissimo I had seen something which literally froze my blood within my veins. It was Theodore’s hat and coat, which he had been wearing when I chased him to this house of mystery and of ill-fame, and wrapped together with it was a rag all smeared with blood, whilst the same hideous stains were now distinctly visible on the door of the cupboard itself.
I turned to the gendarme, who at once confronted the abominable malefactor with the obvious proofs of a horrible crime. But the depraved wretch stood by, Sir, perfectly calm and with a cynicism in his whole bearing which I had never before seen equalled!
“I know nothing about that coat,” he asserted with a shrug of the shoulders, “nor about the dog.”
The gendarme by this time was purple with fury.
“Not know anything about the dog?” he exclaimed in a voice choked with righteous indignation. “Why, he . . . he barked!”
But this indisputable fact in no way disconcerted the miscreant.
“I heard a dog yapping,” he said with consummate impudence, “but I thought he was in the next room. No wonder,” he added coolly, “since he was in a wall cupboard.”
“A wall cupboard,” the gendarme rejoined triumphantly, “situated in the very room which you occupy at this moment.”
“That is a mistake, my friend,” the cynical wretch retorted, undaunted. “I do not occupy this room. I do not lodge in this hotel at all.”
“Then how came you to be here?”
“I came on a visit to a friend who happened to be out when I arrived. I found a pleasant fire here, and I sat down to warm myself. Your noisy and unwarranted irruption into this room has so bewildered me that I no longer know whether I am standing on my head or on my heels.”
“We’ll show you soon enough what you are standing on, my fine fellow,” the gendarme riposted with breezy, cheerfulness. “Allons!”
I must say that the pampered minion of the law arose splendidly to the occasion. He seized the miscreant by the arm and took him downstairs, there to confront him with the proprietress of the establishment, while I—with marvellous presence of mind—took possession of Carissimo and hid him as best I could beneath my coat.
In the hall below a surprise and a disappointment were in store for me. I had reached the bottom of the stairs when the shrill feminine accents of Mme. the proprietress struck unpleasantly on my ear.
“No! no! I tell you!” she was saying. “This man is not my lodger. He never came here with a dog. There,” she added volubly, and pointing an unwashed finger at Carissimo who was struggling and growling in my arms, “there is the dog. A gentleman brought him with him last Wednesday, when he inquired if he could have a room here for a few nights. Number twenty-five happened to be vacant, and I have no objection to dogs. I let the gentleman have the room, and he paid me twenty sous in advance when he took possession and told me he would keep the room three nights.”
“The gentleman? What gentleman?” the gendarme queried, rather inanely I thought.
“My lodger,” the woman replied. “He is out for the moment, but he will be back presently I make no doubt. The dog is his. . . .”
“What is he like?” the minion of the law queried abruptly.
“Who? the dog?” she retorted impudently.
“No, no! Your lodger.”
Once more the unwashed finger went up and pointed straight at me.
“He described him well enough just now; thin and slouchy in his ways. He has lank, yellow hair, a nose perpetually crimson—with the cold no doubt—and pale, watery eyes. . . .”
“Theodore,” I exclaimed mentally.
Bewildered, the gendarme pointed to his prisoner.
“But this man . . . ?” he queried.
“Why,” the proprietress replied. “I have seen Monsieur twice, or was it three times? He would visit number twenty-five now and then.”
I will not weary you with further accounts of the close examination to which the representative of the law subjected the personnel of the squalid hotel. The concierge and the man of all work did indeed confirm what the proprietress said, and whilst my friend the gendarme —puzzled and floundering—was scratching his head in complete bewilderment, I thought that the opportunity had come for me to slip quietly out by the still open door and make my way as fast as I could to the sumptuous abode in the Faubourg St. Germain, where the gratitude of Mme. de Nolé, together with five thousand francs, were even now awaiting me.
After Madame the proprietress had identified Carissimo, I had once more carefully concealed him under my coat. I was ready to seize my opportunity, after which I would be free to deal with the matter of Theodore’s amazing disappearance. Unfortunately just at this moment the little brute gave a yap, and the minion of the law at once interposed and took possession of him.
“The dog belongs to the police now, Sir,” he said sternly.
The fatuous jobbernowl wanted his share of the reward, you see.