CHAPTER XII
A STROKE OF GENIUS
The American detective Tom Bob was no ordinary man. The very first day after his arrival he had signalized his presence and drawn public attention to himself in a manner at once original and redounding greatly to his credit. Within a few hours of landing on French soil he had shown his mettle by the arrest of a dangerous malefactor, a professional criminal, “Beauty Boy,” the apache. The same day he had adroitly escaped an abominable attempt on his life, and, to crown all, in the course of a series of interviews accorded to the reporters of the different newspapers, he had, in direct contradiction to the generally received opinion, stoutly maintained that the ex-journalist Fandor, the bosom friend of the man Juve, now incarcerated in the prison of La Santé, was a very honest man, the last person to have committed the crimes imputed to him.
For several days, in fact up to the time Tom Bob had come to divert the public curiosity, the Inspectors of the Criminal Investigation Bureau had carried out the most minute investigations at the house where the bank messenger’s murder was supposed, if not to have been committed, at any rate to have been planned and prepared. For whole days together police-officers in plain clothes pursued careful inquiries, questioning the inmates, even going so far as to collect evidence as to the past life and antecedents of each of the tenants.
True, no actual trace had been found of the unfortunate employé of the Comptoir National, but the uniform button discovered in the garret where M. Moche had with such misplaced generosity, as he said himself, given a charitable asylum to Fandor made it reasonable to conclude, without any undue pressing of the evidence, that the collector had disappeared not of his own free will and initiative, but simply because he had been first robbed and then murdered. Was the same assassin also responsible for the death of the police-officers? Was Fandor the author of both crimes? Many members of the Department were inclined to think he was, though others hesitated to commit themselves to any definite opinion.
At any rate, there was one certainty, one sure fact, that delighted the inmates of No. 125 Rue Saint-Fargeau, to wit, that the police, diverted from the old line of scent and henceforth mainly preoccupied to discover the assassin of Désiré Ferrand, were more or less relaxing in their embarrassing attentions, and no longer exercised the same constant and careful surveillance over the scene of the first tragedy.
At an early hour one morning, three or four days after Tom Bob’s arrival in Paris, old Moche, looking just as dubious and dirty as usual, reached his office in the Rue Saint-Fargeau, where he had not been for several days—not that this was a matter to cause the concierge any surprise, M. Moche being habitually a decidedly intermittent occupier of his rooms. The old man seemed in jovial spirits. With little, quick steps he mounted the stairs, whistling a tune; then inserting a key in the lock, he entered his flat. But the old brigand, a cautious man ever since his adventure with Paulet and Nini, took good care to double lock the door again behind him. Changing his long frock-coat for a short jacket, and planting on top of the wig that covered his bald pate a velvet skull-cap in place of his silk-hat, the old fellow set to work to sort out the numerous letters that had arrived by post. To tell the truth, he did not take the trouble to open them, for he knew by merely glancing at the address what each contained, to wit, nothing whatever—a sheet of blank paper or a cutting from an old newspaper. The fact is, Moche was in a better position than anyone to know beforehand the contents of each of his letters, inasmuch as, being desirous of putting the concierge off the scent and impressing him by the voluminous correspondence intended for him, the old man had the habit of every day addressing a dozen letters and prospectuses to himself! It was a dodge to make people believe he really followed the profession of a business agent and could boast a numerous clientèle.
This time, however, in sorting his letters, Moche put one aside; this particular one he did not recognize, and discontinuing his scrutiny, he tore open the envelope in feverish haste. It was written on good paper—evidently from a correspondent of importance. M. Moche read:
“Sir—I have to inform you that I have just arrived in Paris and propose to call on Wednesday morning at your office. You obliged me some time ago by a loan of money; I now intend to discharge the debt. I am therefore coming to repay you ...”
“Ha, ha!” laughed Père Moche, “a pleasant surprise to come! for once a debtor writes to say he is going to pay up without any need to twist his tail. Well, the exception proves the rule; all the same I rather doubt what it all means.”
Then he jumped to the fourth page and examined the signature.