The Closing Net/Part 2/Chapter 1
PART TWO
CHAPTER I
UNDER COVER
Let me tell you, my friend, that when I started out on my stalk for Chu-Chu le Tondeur, or Chu-Chu the Shearer as his name would be in English, I was about the most discouraged man in France. To have to slip back into the underworld just when I had begun to make good at earning a clean, honest living was bad enough, but what took the heart clean out of me was the knowledge that the woman who had saved me from penal servitude and started in to make a man of me should think that I had broken my word to her and gone back to the old graft.
This was what really hurt, though I must say it was this that put an edge on me, too. I don't say that I should have felt any scruples at the idea of assassinating Chu-Chu after what had happened between us, but I doubt if I should have had the same savage impatience to do for him if it hadn't been for Edith. Although I had been a thief for thirty years I had never been a danger to society except where its pocketbook was concerned. I had always worked unarmed, and had never hurt anybody—except for a few bruises, perhaps, in a scuffle to getaway. In the same way I had always managed to keep clear of trouble with people in the underworld, and even when I escaped from Cayenne I had spared a couple of devilish guards that I had every reason of killing and might just as well as not have settled. No sir; I was never a bloodthirsty man.
But Chu-Chu was. Chu-Chu was wolf or weasel, snake or tiger, according to the hunting-ground and the game he was out for. He had seldom pulled off a big job without leaving blood in his wake, and his reputation as a killer was so bad that even the swells of his own mob were afraid of him, and he usually had to work alone. In Ivan's big organisation of European thieves there were a good many hard, desperate people, yet I do not believe that there was a single one who would have dared to hold Chu-Chu up at the point of a gun in the presence of Ivan himself, as I had done, and prove him a liar to his chief, to say nothing of depriving him of gems worth a fortune. That alone was plenty to set Chu-Chu on my trail, to say nothing of my having tried to kill him in his motor on the road to Boulogne.
So here we were, each out for the other's pelt. The odds were a bit with me, I thought, and for a variety of reasons. In the first place, I was more of a cosmopolitan and less of a pronounced type, and therefore able to play easily the rôle of Frenchman, Englishman, or American. Then I had no little mannerisms, while Chu-Chu was known to his associates as "the man who smiles," and had a trick of smiling slightly to himself. His figure was average, as far as one could see through his clothes, and his physical strength was said to be phenomenal, while his face was an uncommon one for its prominent bony structures. Chu-Chu's features suggested a Spanish or possibly Basque origin, with high cheek bones, red-lipped mouth, the upper lip dropping to a point in the middle, and suggesting to me the beak of a snapping turtle, while his nose was long and acquisitive—a nose like the late King Leopold's.
Another thing in my favour was the fact that there was little danger of my being drawn into imprudence by such a hatred as Chu-Chu must have felt for me. There are certain human beings who are affected by the sight of an enemy just as you might expect a wild bull to be. It sends the blood to their heads and makes them a bit crazy, and even if they are able to control their actions their looks are apt to give them away. Chu-Chu was rather of this sort, I was inclined to think, and though he could be as acute as a fox when on the job, it wasn't unlikely that he d make some sort of a break once he thought that I was in his neighbourhood.
But what seemed to me by long odds the best card in my fist was the tip that Ivan had given me as we parted. Said Ivan: "Look out for an Oriental type of person with one nostril larger than the other. He is Chu-Chu's familiar. Some people say that he is Chu-Chu's brain."
Well, the stalk was on, and here I was out in the forest of St. Germain hidden in a clump of bay and laurel, rigging myself out like a prédicateur, or wandering preacher. I knew the part to perfection, for there had been one of these chaps doing missionary work at Cayenne, and several times I had talked with him and learned all about the fraternity. The costume, as well as the rôle, was ideal for my business. A man might wear anything under the long black soutane, and the round black hat had a wide brim that shielded the face by the least bend of the head. Another thing that helped was the fact that these preachers often wear shaded goggles, having formed the habit out in the colonies. It's a great point in favour of a man disguised to have his eyes screened. There are fine subtle lines of expression around a man's eyes that are almost impossible to control at all times.
Well, sir, I stuck a little hand-mirror in the crotch of a bush and got to work. The skin was brown enough as a consequence of the Cayenne health resort and of being so much on the road in motors. Then I ran the clippers over my head.
All rigged out, and with a tweed knickerbocker suit underneath the long black soutane, a grimy black valise in one hand and a big cotton umbrella in the other, I walked over to St. Germain and bought a third-class ticket for Paris. My plan was to get a little room up in Passy, giving it out to any neighbours who might be curious that I was studying English. Then as soon as I was settled I would get to work to locate Chu-Chu; and this might be a hard job, or, again, it might not, depending on how much he was afraid of me.
It was possible that Chu-Chu, trusting to his reputation as the most dangerous man in Europe when it came to the settling of a score, might think that I had lost my nerve and skipped the country. But, considering the fact that I had made such a good try for him on the road to Boulogne, the chances were that he would be convinced that my heart was in my work, and would get under cover himself.
It might seem on the face of it like a pretty hopeless sort of job, combing a big city for a man whom I'd only seen three times in my life, and who was pretty sure to be in some sort of disguise. But there was one thing that I thought would help me out. Chu-Chu knew that Léontine Petrovski had taken a fancy to me, and he would never believe that any such woman as Léontine would have to call twice to a man. Her looks and the wonderful alluringness of her were the talk of Paris, and when Léontine walked into a swell restaurant even the musicians got mixed in their notes. Chu-Chu would be pretty sure that I would be hanging about Léontine, and it was somewhere in her neighbourhood that he would try to pick up my trail; and it was while he was trying to nose it out that I counted on crossing his.
It was a funny situation, each of us shadowing Léontine's house, trying to get wind of the other. But the more I turned it over in my mind the more convinced I grew that the quickest way to find my man would be to keep a constant watch on the little house in Passy. There was also the chance of falling on Chu-Chu possibly going to see Léontine on professional business.
All this being so, I took a room in a little hotel just off the Rue de Passy, telling the patronne that I was perfecting my English in one of the many schools in the neighbourhood. There was a little café almost opposite Léontine's house, and I found that by sitting back in a particular corner I could look out under the low awning in front and keep a constant watch without being observed from the street. So there I went every day at noon, for it would have attracted attention if I had spent the entire day there, and after a very good little lunch I would get out a copy of Dickens and a pocket dictionary and spend the most of the afternoon reading and looking out of the window. The personnel of the establishment used to hold me up to the other clients as a very model of industry and perseverance.
Most of these other clients were cabmen, fiacre and taxi drivers. Like all of that class of French working people, they were quiet, orderly, good-natured fellows, full of good-humoured banter and amusing stories in connection with their trade. The second day that I was having déjeuner there one of the taxi drivers, who had just finished his meal, and was about to crank his motor, was hailed by Léontine's butler. I saw Léontine, more superb-looking than ever, come out, get in, and whirl away.
It occurred to me, of course, that for all I knew she might be going even then to keep a rendezvous with Chu-Chu; and it occurred to me also that if the Shearer came to Léontine's house even while I was on the look-out it might not do me a particle of good, as he would be pretty sure to come and go in a taxi, probably cleverly disguised. A good many people came to and went from Léontine's—some in handsome private limousines, others in taxi-autos, and still others in taxicabs or afoot. In the first week of my watching I recognised several members of Ivan's mob, and once Ivan himself.
But for all the folk that came and went I was convinced, at the end of two weeks watching, that Chu-Chu had not got past me. For all I knew he might be, and very likely was, watching the house from some point not far from where I was stationed. I began to be afraid that we might be alternating watches, he perhaps going on duty at night. I did a good deal of night work myself, dining at the same little restaurant and sitting behind the screen of dwarf orange-trees in tubs, usually to see Léontine and Kharkoff roll away at about half-past seven in the big six-cylinder car that I myself had sold to the Prince. They dined out and went to the play or the opera almost every night, although it was now midsummer, and most of the chic people were at the springs or beaches.
It was tiresome work watching there for a sign of Chu-Chu, but the two proverbs or maxims of which I have always most admired the truth are "It's dogged as does it," and " Everything comes to him who waits." Personally I believe that there is some sort of compelling, cohesive force given off from the person or animal that sits down and quietly waits and wishes for his prey. That force goes out in time to draw the desired object, especially when the wishing is done conscientiously and without any let-up. So I sat there and waited and watched and read "Pickwick Papers" and "Oliver Twist" and "Dombey and Son," and picked up the dictionary when I happened to think of it. Most of the cab drivers said a word to me when they came in, and I had the general reputation of being an inoffensive and deeply erudite young preacher.
Then one hot day, when the little "terrace"—as they call the strip of sidewalk enclosed by dwarf oranges—was crowded, and even the inner room was well filled, a freshly-painted, saucy little auto-taxi drew up to the curb, and down from the driver's seat stepped a very pretty, smartly-costumed chauffeuse. Just at this time the Prefecture had decided to issue permits to women, and quite a number of enterprising young persons started in to compete with the men. They have since practically disappeared, the profession not being adapted to the sex, due perhaps to the ladies insisting on the feminine prerogative of changing their minds when meeting somebody on the road.
There was nothing indecisive about this good-looking chauffeuse. The lunching drivers were watching her, and I heard a murmur run through the room: "Look, there she is—the Countess Rosalie!"
"The Countess Rosalie?" I asked of a chauffeur at a table opposite. "That is her sobriquet?"
"Not at all," he answered. "The title is her own. She met with misfortune, and preferred to support herself driving a taxi to pinning feathers on hats. Everybody knows her. Between us, she is the only woman in Paris who can really drive."
Whatever else may have been said about her, the Countess Rosalie was nice to look at. Her glossy chestnut hair was coifed as snugly as she could twist it under her little visored cap, and the trim, pretty figure, mature yet with supple, girlish lines, was displayed charmingly and modestly in the costume of light Indian khaki. The skirt was short, and showed her small, gracefully rounded ankles and dainty feet, which told of good blood somewhere, and as she came across the sidewalk she began to draw off her little kid gauntlets, smiling, red-lipped, bright hazel eyes dancing as she replied with a charming mixture of friendliness and sauciness to the good-natured greetings from the crowd at déjeuner. It may be true that some of the remarks were a bit free but not one was the least bit offensive so far as any deeper intention went. All hands "tutoyéd " her, I noticed, which was quite permissible, as here in France there is a sort of esprit de corps between members of the same craft of manual labour, who use between themselves the familiar "thee" and "thou."
Nobody scored anything on the Countess Rosalie. She gave them all as good as they sent, and was a pretty sight doing it, with her red cheeks, even white teeth, and saucy pouting lips. She was not a little woman, but her daintiness gave one that impression. I noticed, though, that when one of the older chauffeurs got up to look at the carburetter of her car, which she said was flooding all the time, she was rather the taller of the two, although he looked a fair-sized man.
The tables outside were filled, so she came inside, where the seat opposite me appealed to her as the most desirable because it was next to the window.
"Monsieur will permit me to sit here?" she asked, with a smile and about as keen a look as I ever got from any pair of eyes. It wasn't a hard look, but just to size me up and form an idea of how much of a fool or knave lived under that black soutane.
"Pray do so, madame," I answered. "It is not too hot here by the window."
She thanked me, and sat down. I picked up my book, and I could feel her bright eyes searching me as I read. French is like a mother-tongue to me, having spoken scarcely any English until my old nurse, Tante Fi-Fi, died, and I was sent to the asylum. Besides, I had done a good deal of work in France—not housebreaking, you understand, but con graft at the big resorts like Aix-les-Bains and Dinard and Trouville. For all of his acuteness at home there is no such sucker as the travelling American, especially if you strike him when he's a bit lonely and has had his leg pulled by Europeans, and thinks that the American language with an Ohio accent is a guarantee of good faith. Mind you, I'd never done any mean little tricks like nicking his leather with his letter of credit and a few hundred francs, or accepting his invitation to do Montmartre at his expense and then going through him when he was filled up with the mixture of wormwood, logwood, and carbonated white wine called champagne. But I had once sold an American millionaire an original Rembrandt, which an Italian acquaintance of mine painted during the week that I was showing my friend the Louvre and a few other places. Even the United States Customs let him pay duty on it as an original, and the picture is now the pride of his part of the State. My Venetian friend and I shared up a hundred thousand francs between us, and all hands were satisfied.
But making an American think that I was the last living descendant of the Condé family and convincing an alert Parisienne that I was an Alsatian predicateur were two very different things. So I kept on reading, while my pretty companion ordered her déjeuner and went ahead with her meal. But all the time I could feel her bright, curious eyes fixed on me, investigating every detail of my face and costume.
Presently from across the street I heard a motor slowing down, and glanced across to see a taxi pulling up in front of Léontine's house. A slender, well-dressed man, with black hair and a thin black moustache, stepped quickly out, rang the bell of the garden door, and was let in a moment later by Léontine's maître d'hôtel. But I scarcely noticed him, for something had caught my eyes and drawn them to the driver of the taxi.
This chauffeur was apparently a man past middle age, and seemed altogether of the new type that has now become so common to this class. He looked to be of medium size and weight, was costumed in the usual uniform, and wore a closely-cropped moustache of iron-grey. His face was rather high-featured, the nose aquiline, and the eyes dark and overhung by bushy, grizzled eyebrows.
There was absolutely nothing about the fellow to hold my attention, but for some reason I was unable to take my eyes off him. He reminded me of somebody quite impossible for me to place, and as I stared through the window at him I had that disagreeable sensation of being utterly baffled in memory. Almost as if he felt the force of the mental effort I was making, he shot a quick look in my direction, but the awning was low, and I was sitting back in the shadow, and all that he could see was the crowded tables on the terrace. Yet something in that sudden glance of his had set my heart to thumping in a way that was mighty disagreeable.
But it was no use. I couldn't for the life of me place him, so I picked up my book again. As I did so my eyes fell on the pretty face opposite. The Countess Rosalie's fork was poised half-way between her plate and her red lips, and the piece of melon on it was quite forgotten. Her face had a look of intense and startled curiosity. Seeing that I had noticed it, she recovered herself, popped the melon into her pink mouth, and looked down at her plate.
I leaned forward. "Madame was about to say something?" I asked suavely; for I knew that my face must have startled her, and I did not care to have it leak out that I was spying on the little house in the garden.
"Oh, no, monsieur!" she answered, slightly confused.
"We missionaries," said I, with a smile, "sometimes carry in our minds the pictures of things that one would wish to forget. Now and then some passing thought or something we may read recalls them, and at such moments the emotion awakened may reveal itself. You were startled at the expression of my face?"
She nodded. "That is true," she admitted. "When I sat down opposite you your look was that of a studious priest. Then all at once you laid down the book and looked through the window with the mouth and eyes of an apache about to strike. Oh, monsieur!"
She drew back, checking a little frightened gasp. While she was speaking I had looked through the window again, and as I did so the chauffeur in the taxi across the street leaned forward as if to examine something at his feet. In that second I recognised him for Chu-Chu le Tondeur; the contour of the bony outline of the face, the poise of the head on the body, the tightening of the sleeve over the muscular arm. There could be no doubt.
And yet it was an amazing thing, and the instant that he had recovered his upright position I could have sworn that my vision had played me a trick, due perhaps to my one constant idea. Chu-Chu's brows were thin and straight and black, his nose was long but low-bridged, his eyes were rather light in shade, his chin pointed. Also he was a more trimly-built man, less full in the paunch. I was almost baffled.
But the woman opposite was looking at me as if she wanted to get up and bolt, and that would never do. I smiled at her and wondered at the fascinated look in her eyes. But I didn't wonder long, for in my business I couldn't afford to miss a single trick. The glimpse that the Countess Rosalie had got of the criminal, the assassin, looking out of the eyes of the studious young preacher, had frightened and startled her, but it had aroused her curiosity. I saw the chance of securing a valuable pal.
"Madame," said I, with a reassuring smile, "what was it that you thought you saw in my face?"
She gave a nervous little laugh. "Something terrible," she answered, and glanced over her shoulder at the sun-flooded street. There was nothing but the gardens and shuttered houses opposite, and the grizzled taxi driver drowsing on his seat.
"You are right," I answered with another smile and a little shrug. "It was something terrible, because it was jealousy. There is nothing more terrible than jealousy, you know."
Her eyes opened very wide. "But you are a priest," she said.
"I will tell you something," I said, leaning toward her and dropping my voice. "You have surprised a secret while sitting here, and I do not want you to say to any of these others that you caught me glaring at that house in the garden across the street. But it is because of the woman who lives there that I have become a prédicateur"
The interest that every Frenchwoman always lends to a love story flamed up in her face.
"And the man for whom the taxi is waiting is your enemy?" she half-whispered.
"I wish him no ill," I answered, "but I must find out where he goes after leaving here. You have almost finished your déjeuner, have you not? May I engage your services for the afternoon?"
She hesitated for an instant, then nodded.
"You want me to follow him?"
"Yes, but without his discovering that he is being followed. That may be difficult, as it is very possible that he will be on the look-out."
"But why should he be on the look-out?" asked the Countess Rosalie. Her pretty face was flushed and eager, and as she spoke she beckoned to the garçon and settled her bill. I had already paid my own. We both looked out of the window at the taxi diagonally opposite. The top was up, as was the case with most of the others, for the sun was directly overhead and very hot. Chu-Chu had pulled a newspaper from his pocket and appeared to be reading.
"He may expect to be followed," I answered, "because the woman whom he is visiting is suspected of being a Nihilist. So far the police have never disturbed her because she is under the protection of Prince Kharkoff"
"It is Léontine Petrovski?" she asked breathlessly.
"Yes," I answered.
"And she is the woman whom you love?"
"I love her no longer."
"But you are jealous of her. It comes to the same thing. I understand. You wish to be revenged, and so you want to find out more about this man. Isn't that true?"
"To some extent," I answered. "But I will tell you another thing. The chauffeur is a friend of the man who is in La Petrovski's house. I could learn more, perhaps, from watching him than from watching the other. If you are free"
"Look!" she interrupted, and dropped her hand on my sleeve.
For Léontine's garden door had swung open, and out came Léontine herself, followed by the dark man whom I recognised from Ivan's description as Chu-Chu's manservant, or pal, or whatever he was. Chu-Chu, with a quick sidelong glance, got down to start his motor.
"Come, then," said the Countess Rosalie, loud enough for those about us to hear. "I will set you on your way."
"You are very kind," I answered, and followed her to the door. Under the awning I waited for an instant while she said a word of thanks to the man who had regulated her carburetter. The pause gave Chu-Chu time to turn and start down the street toward the Chaussée de la Muette.