The New Black Mask (No 6)

Translated by Harold J. Salemson

This marks the first publication in English of “The Man Behind the Looking Glass.” The story was published as “La cage d’Emile” in Simenon’s Les Dossiers de l’Agence “O” (Paris: Gallimard, 1943).

I

In which young lady swoons in the arms of sturdy Torrence, and in which we learn of the strange chain of command at the Agency.

Eleven A.M. The viscous fog to which Paris awakened is the kind you can tell won’t dissipate all day. The young lady has had her taxi stop in the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, and dashes briskly into the Cité Bergère. There must be a rehearsal going on at the Palace Theater, for two or three dozen showgirls and chorines are pacing back and forth on the sidewalk outside.

Directly across from the stage door of the famous musical-revue theater, a hairdresser’s shop, its facade painted a gaudy purple: “Chez Adolphe.”

To the right, a small door, a dark corridor, a stairway with no concierge to stop you. An enamel nameplate, these words in black on white: “Agency O, Third Floor Left.”

The greatest of stage stars have gone through the portals across the street, and famous politicians, princes of royal lineage, and multimillionaires have been familiars of the Palace backstage.

How many of these same personalities, on mornings like this one, also sneaked in here, collars turned up, hats hiding their faces, up the stairs to Agency O?

At the third floor, the young lady stops for a moment and takes a mirror from her handbag. But not to check on her makeup. On the contrary, as she looks at herself, her face takes on an even more haunted expression.

She rings. A slow step is heard inside. The door is opened by a most unprepossessing clerk. The waiting room looks tacky. A newspaper on a small table. No doubt the clerk was just reading it.

“I would like to see the manager,” she says excitedly. “Would you please tell him it’s terribly important...”

And she dabs at her eyes with her handkerchief. The clerk must have seen many more like her, for he turns without hurry toward an inside door, disappears, comes back a little later, and just motions to her.

The next minute, the girl goes into the office of Joseph Torrence, a former inspector of Paris’ Criminal Division, now manager of Agency O, one of the most famous private detective agencies in the world.

“Please come in, mademoiselle,” he says. “Have a seat.”

Nothing could look more ordinary than this office in which so many terrifying secrets have been revealed. Nothing could be more reassuring than big old Torrence, an easygoing giant of a man in his late forties, looking very well groomed and well fed.

The window that looks out on the Cité Bergère has opaque panes. The walls are lined with bookshelves and files. Behind the mahogany desk, within Torrence’s easy reach, the kind of safe you might find in any business office anywhere.

“Excuse me, monsieur, if I seem a little nervous. You will understand, as soon as I fill you in... We’re all alone here, aren’t we?... I have just arrived from La Rochelle. All that happened there was just...”

She has not sat down. She paces back and forth. She folds and unfolds her handkerchief, obviously racked by the most extreme agitation, while Torrence methodically goes on filling his pipe.

At that point, a door opens. A tall redheaded young man, who seems to have grown too fast so that his suit has become too small on him, enters the room, notices who is there, apologizes, and says, “Oh, excuse me, boss.”

“Well, what is it, Emile?”

“Nothing, monsieur. I just — I forgot something...”

He grabs something, a file folder of some sort, which he has taken from one of the shelves, and disappears so awkwardly that he bumps into the doorjamb.

“Please go on, mademoiselle,” Torrence says.

“I don’t remember where I was... Let’s see. It was all so tragic, so terribly unexpected... My poor father—”

“Maybe you better start by telling me who you are.”

“Denise. Denise Etrillard, from La Rochelle. My father is the lawyer Etrillard. He’ll be in to see you this afternoon. He left shortly after me. But I was so afraid I thought I’d better—”

Right behind Torrence’s very ordinary office, there is another, smaller, darker office, filled with the most astonishing variety of things. The young redhead whom the boss addressed as Emile has sat down there at a common unpainted deal table. He bends down. He turns on a sort of switch and immediately he can hear clearly everything being said in the next room.

Facing him, a peephole. From the other side, no one would suspect the existence of this peephole, for it looks like a plain little mirror set in among the bookshelves.

Impassive, his eyes unmoving behind their big tortoiseshell glasses, an unlighted cigarette dangling from his lips, Emile is listening and watching, somewhat like the railway switchmen one sometimes sees perched up in their glass cages.

The young lady says, “Denise Etrillard. My father is the lawyer Etrillard...”

Displaying no reaction, Emile has pulled a heavy directory to him. He looks through the list of lawyers, to the letter E — Etienne... Etriveau... But no Etrillard?

He goes on watching and listening. This time, he is looking through a telephone directory, at the section covering the city of La Rochelle. There he finds an Etrillard, or rather, a Widow Etrillard, fishmonger...

The other side of the looking glass, the voice goes on:

“I really don’t feel up to giving you any complicated explanations right now. My father, who will be here by four o’clock at the latest, will be able to explain it to you much better than I can. It’s so terribly unexpected. The only thing I would ask of you, in the meantime, is for you to put away in a safe place the documents I was able to rescue...”

Emile grabs the phone in front of him on the desk. It rings in Torrence’s office. Torrence picks it up and listens.

“Ask her what time she got into town,” Emile is saying.

During this time, the young lady has taken from her handbag an impressive yellow envelope that looks even more important because of the five red wax seals that close it.

“Did you just arrive in Paris?” Torrence asks her.

“Yes, I hopped into the first available taxi and came right here. It was my father who told me—”

“Told you to come and see us?”

“We were just quietly sitting there, last night, when we suddenly heard noises in his office. My father reached for his gun... In the darkness, there was a man, but he was able to get away through the French door My father immediately understood that someone was trying to get their hands on these documents... But he couldn’t leave La Rochelle just like that, without notice. So, as he was afraid they might come back again, he entrusted this envelope to me When he explains the whole thing to you, you’ll understand why I am so nervous about it, so terrified. The people who are after us are absolutely ruthless...”

During this time, redheaded Emile has kept right on going about his business like an obedient office clerk. After looking through the Directory of Lawyers of France and the telephone directory for the Department of Charente-Inférieure, he is now looking through the combined schedule of French railroads, without, however, taking his eyes off the girl more than a few seconds at a time.

Really quite good-looking, the young lady. She is dressed exactly the way a provincial young lady of good family should dress. Her gray tailored suit is cut to a perfect fit. Her hat is fashionable without being trendy. She is wearing pearl-gray suede gloves.

But there is one detail that Torrence is unable to see, because he is too close to her and it is difficult to examine as carefully as one would like a person who is talking to you.

Whereas Emile, at his microscope, as he likes to call his peephole...

If, as she has just said, she left La Rochelle in a hurry, if she sat up in the train a good part of the night, if she has only just arrived in Paris and taken a taxi from the railroad station directly here to the Cité Bergère, how does it happen that her suit, so simple and so absolutely proper, still has such neat creases in it, especially the creases in the sleeves that come from packing a jacket in a valise or trunk?

La Rochelle. Let’s see, La Rochelle to Paris-Gare d’Orsay... Well, the only train she might have come in on got to Paris at 6:43 in the morning.

“All I’m asking,” she tells Torrence again, “is for you to put this document safely away in your safe until my father gets here. I beg you to do this for me, monsieur. He will explain it all to you. And I am sure that after that you won’t refuse to help us.”

She lies well. She is even very convincing. She paces back and forth. Is the nervousness she is displaying part of the act, too?

“Well, if you can assure me that your father will be here this afternoon,” Torrence grudgingly assents. “But I would still like to have an address for you in Paris. Are you stopping at a hotel?”

“Not yet. I’ll go and register at one now. I wanted to get here before anything else.”

“What hotel will you go to?”

“Why — the Hôtel d’Orsay. Yes, right there at the railroad station. You’ll keep this document safely for me, won’t you? I imagine it will be safe, as long as you keep it locked up, won’t it? No one would dare go after your safe, would they?”

She tries a pale little smile.

“No, no one would dare indeed, mademoiselle. And just to reassure you, I’m going to put this envelope in the safe right now, before your eyes.”

That good old giant of a Torrence gets up, takes a small key out of his pocket, and opens the safe. Automatically, the girl follows him toward it.

“If you only knew how relieved I am to finally see these papers in a safe place!” she says. “The honor, the whole life of an entire family is at stake...”

While Torrence conscientiously closes the safe again, Emile picks up the intercom once more, but this time he rings the desk of the clerk who is sitting reading his paper in the waiting room. Their conversation is short, if in fact it can be called a conversation. It consists of just one interjection of Emile’s: “Get your hat!”

At the same time, the young readhead wrinkles his brow. The safe once closed, Denise has leaned falteringly against Torrence’s desk, murmuring:

“Oh, I beg your pardon! I’ve been able to hold it all in until now... But it was such a nervous strain... Now that my job is almost done, I— I—”

“Are you ill?” Torrence is worried.

“I don’t know. I—”

“Watch out!”

She has slumped into his arms. Her eyes are half-closed. She is gasping for breath, fighting off the fainting spell that is coming over her.

Torrence wants to call for help. She stops him.

“No. Excuse me, please... It’s really nothing. Just a silly moment of weakness...”

She tries to smile at him, with a poor little smile that touches the heart of thick old Torrence.

“You’ll be here at four o’clock, won’t you?” she asks. “I’ll come in with my father. He’ll tell you the whole story. I am certain now that you won’t refuse to help us out.”

She is standing in the middle of the office. She bends down.

“My glove,” she says. “Good-bye, monsieur, I can assure you—”

Barbet the clerk, whom they call by that name because the unruly hairs on his face are reminiscent of the bird so named, gets up to show her out the front door. As soon as she is out in the stairway, he dons a greenish derby hat, familiar to everyone in the Cité Bergère, puts on his topcoat and, going out through a different doorway, gets down to the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre before she does.

As for Torrence, he has turned toward the looking glass and merely winks. Emile leaves his own office and goes into the boss’s.

“Well, what do you think of that young thing?”

To which the clerk with the suit that no longer fits him fires back in a tone that admits of no contradiction: “I think you are a damned fool!”

Anyone who ever set foot inside Agency O, anyone who in difficult or threatening circumstances ever called on the famous detective Torrence for help would be more than a little surprised if they could see him, shamefaced, head down, mumbling in confusion at the young man whom he introduces on some occasions as his clerk, on others as his photographer, and sometimes as his chauffeur.

It is true that Emile has now changed. Of course, his suit hasn’t gotten any bigger or any less tight. His hair is still just as flamingly red, and he still has freckles around his nose and nearsighted eyes behind the tortoiseshell glasses.

Nevertheless, he no longer looks quite so young. Twenty-five? Thirty-five? It would take a pretty smart fellow to say. His voice is dry, cutting.

“What did you have in the left-hand pocket of your jacket?” he asks.

Torrence checks his pockets.

“Oh, my Lord!”

“ ‘My Lord,’ indeed! If you think a young girl falls into your arms because she can’t resist you...”

“But, she was...”

Torrence is crestfallen, appalled, humiliated.

“I beg your pardon, Boss. She finally had me feeling sorry for her. I’m just a damned fool, you’re absolutely right. As for what she swiped from me... well, it’s a catastrophe. We have to run after her. We have to find her, no matter what—”

“Barbet is tailing her.”

In spite of being used to it, Torrence can’t help being amazed, once again.

“The handkerchief, wasn’t it?” Emile asks.

“Yes. You remember. I put it carefully away in an old envelope. I was figuring, this afternoon—”

“Open the safe, fast, you fool!”

“You want me... to open the—”

“Hurry, goddamn it!”

Torrence does as he is told. Despite his height and his girth, he is just a small boy when facing the thin young man with the glasses.

“Haven’t you caught on yet?” Emile asks him.

“Caught on to what?”

“Take that envelope out of the safe. Put it on your desk. No, better still, put it on the floor. That’s safer...”

Oh, come on! This time, the boss is really overdoing it. Torrence can’t see how an envelope that may at most have a dozen or so sheets of paper in it can... It’s true that there are small-sized bombs, but none as small as that, surely...

“I just hope she doesn’t give Barbet the slip,” Emile comments.

That beats all. Torrence is bug-eyed. Give Barbet the slip, indeed! As if anyone has ever succeeded in ditching Barbet!

“Do you remember, Torrence,” says Emile, “the definition of a good corporal? Big, strong, and stupid. Well, if things go on like this, I’m afraid you’ll be making corporal soon!”

“What can I say to that?”

“Nothing. Just tell me what we did this morning.”

“The insurance company phoned at eight o’clock, to put us on the trail of—”

“How many times has that happened in the last six months?”

“I’d have to check my calendar for that. Maybe twelve or thirteen times—”

“And what did we find each time we got to the site?”

“Nothing.”

“What you mean is, we found a jewelry shop that had been burglarized. Always the same modus operandi A man lets himself get locked into the building the night before. A man who laughs at locksmiths however smart they may be, and knows how to outfox every burglar alarm ever invented. Who does a neat, flawless job. Up to now, what kind of traces has he left?”

Torrence looks like a schoolboy who hasn’t done his homework, his forehead turning every shade of red.

“No trace at all.”

“And what about this morning, at the jewelry shop in the Rue Tronchet?”

“We found a handkerchief.”

“Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

Torrence slams his fist painfully down on the top of his desk.

“What a fool I am! A damned fool! A goddamned fool!”

“Don’t you smell anything?”

Torrence sniffs. His broad trencherman’s nostrils beat the air like the wings of a bird.

“I don’t smell a thing.”

Two or three times already, Emile has looked over at the phone, with a worried expression on his face.

“I just hope Barbet...”

For six months now, Agency O has come up empty-handed. Six months during which the largest of the insurance companies specializing in insuring jewelry has called in the Agency, the police having gotten nowhere. And during that period, thirteen burglaries. Without a trace. Without the tiniest clue.

And this morning... Torrence and redheaded Emile, lugging heavy photographic equipment with them, had gotten to the spot at the same time the police got there. There was a crowd outside the window of the jewelry shop.

“Boss, I’m sorry,” Emile had called out. “Could you lend me a hand reloading the camera?”

Torrence came over. Emile whispered to him:

“Under my foot... a handkerchief... Be careful.”

Torrence, doing as he was told, dropped something and, bending down to pick it up, grabbed the handkerchief. A little later, when no one was watching him, he slipped it into an envelope and put the envelope into his pocket.

Who could have seen what he was doing? Someone who was outside the shop perhaps, in the mob, among the two or three hundred gapers.

In the taxi, coming back to the Cité Bergère, they had taken a look at the handkerchief. In the corner, there was a laundry mark.

Emile said, “Now we’ve got them. This afternoon, Torrence, start making the rounds of Paris laundries...”

The phone rings.

“Hello... Yes... Where? At the Four Sergeants? Well, then you have lunch, too, old man. What else can I tell you? If, by any chance, you make the mistake of letting her get away...”

Then he explains to Torrence:

“Your young lady from La Rochelle is right now sitting in the Restaurant of the Four Sergeants, at the Place de la Bastille, and she just ordered lunch... Don’t you still smell anything?”

“I think I’m catching a cold, boss.”

“But that shouldn’t keep you from seeing...”

On the floor, a thin wisp of smoke is coming up from the yellow envelope. Torrence wants to rush and grab it.

“Just let it go, Old Man,” Emile says. “It’s just as I thought.”

“You thought the envelope was going to burn up?”

“If not, there was no reason for her to be so insistent that we lock it away inside our safe.”

“I must admit—”

“—that you don’t understand. Well, it’s not so hard to figure out. Someone saw you pick up the handkerchief and slip it into your pocket. Someone immediately understood that we finally had a clue, and since the reputation of Agency O is rather well established, someone got scared. What time did we get back to the office, Torrence?”

“At ten-thirty.”

“And at eleven, in walks this Denise. Where could the handkerchief be at that time? Either it had remained in your pocket, or else you had put it on your desk, or, even better, being a cautious man, you had temporarily locked it away in the safe. Look...”

This time, a small flame is licking out of the envelope, and then, in a few moments, it has burned up with all the papers that were in it.

“There you have it! If that envelope had stayed in our safe, by now everything in the safe would have been destroyed by the flames. A little trick that chemistry students learn. You dip some blotting paper into a certain kind of chemical solution, and after a given amount of time in contact with the air, it bursts into flame.

“While the young lady from La Rochelle was spinning her tale for you, and you were falling for her line, she was pacing back and forth in your office and taking in every last detail.

“You opened the safe, and she leaned forward and looked right into it. She didn’t see the envelope with the handkerchief.

“There was a very good likelihood that the thing was still in your pocket. So she had to put on another little act, playing the damsel in distress who faints and hangs on to the shoulders of her nice fat savior.”

“I’m not so fat as all that,” Torrence protests.

“Nevertheless, she succeeded in doing it, and while she was in your arms she got the handkerchief back, and if that brute of a Barbet is unlucky enough to lose her...”

He takes down his topcoat and hat.

“I’d better go look into this myself.”

“You want me with you, Boss?” asks poor cowed old Torrence, looking like a whipped dog.

And yet, throughout the world he is considered one of the greatest of detectives.

II

In which grape scissors are used for something other than cutting grapes, and in which a rum punch suddenly finds itself put to an unexpected use.

All the customers have left, one group after another. The restaurant is practically empty. Now it just smells of stale cooking, wine, and coffee.

Over in a corner, near the door, Emile has dismissed Barbet, after having taken his meal with him, a most copious meal, in fact, for they were serving snails, and he consumed two dozen of them. It is unbelievable how Emile, long and lean as he is, can do away with food, especially the heaviest kind, the hardest to digest, the kind that scares off the strongest of stomachs.

“Go back to the office,” he told Barbet. “Tell the boss I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

Did he overeat? Or was the half-bottle of Bordeaux getting to him? He made sure to order a black filtered coffee. But, of course, he counteracted that with a shot of the house’s best cognac.

Across the room from him, the young lady from La Rochelle has taken a gold cigarette case out of her bag and lighted an Egyptian cigarette. They are looking at each other, across the empty restaurant between them. There is still a bit of sawdust left on the floor. The help have started straightening things, sweeping up, changing tablecloths, but the two of them still sit there, getting in the way, and it is already 3:00 P.M.

When he got there, Emile did not try to pull any tricks. He just went straight over to Barbet, who was sitting in his corner, trying to hide behind his newspaper.

“How are you?” he asked. “How did she get here?”

“Taxi. Too bad!” Barbet sighed, for, had the girl taken the Métro or a bus, or even just walked a short way on the street, he would have been able to find out what was in her handbag.

Barbet, under an earlier name that was well known to the police blotter, was once a renowned pickpocket He even ran a school over near the Porte Clignancourt in Montmartre, using a dummy with bells on that the pupils had to frisk without making them tinkle.

But now he had gone straight. Why? Well, that was nobody’s business but Emile’s and his own.

“Did she make any phone calls? Did she meet with anyone?”

“No. Except that she did go down to the ladies’ room. I followed her to the door. But I couldn’t decently go in there with her.”

She was looking at them, and Emile was sure she had recognized him. Considering that she barely got a glimpse of him at the Cité Bergère office, she was surely the one who was in the crowd earlier this morning outside the Rue Tronchet jeweler’s.

Oh, well! There are some people with whom there’s no point in playing games.

“You can take off, Barbet.”

Now she and he are alone in the restaurant, separated by the breadth of the room, and at times it might almost seem they are smiling at each other.

So much so that one of the waitresses, getting impatient, says to her partner: “I wonder why they’re beating around the bush like that so much. Why can’t they just decide and go to it, for goodness’ sake! They’ll end up that way anyhow...”

At 3:10, Emile asks, with a sort of shyness he almost always displays in public, an exaggerated politeness that goes well with his looks: “Would you be kind enough to let me have another cognac, please, mademoiselle?”

Across from him, the girl who claims to have come from La Rochelle, calls out in turn: “Would you please bring me some grapes? And a rum punch!”

“Flaming?”

“Of course, flaming.”

She is served the grapes with a pair of slightly curved scissors. The waitress strikes a match to light the rum, which lies in a dark layer at the top of the glass.

Then the girl, deliberately, after taking a good look at Emile, withdraws a handkerchief from her handbag, cuts a corner of it off with the scissors, and places that bit of material in the flaming alcohol.

“What are you doing?” the waitress sputters.

“Nothing. Just a recipe of my own.”

And she smiles at Emile, with a come-on smile. Emile gets up and walks across the restaurant.

“Do you mind?” he asks.

“Please do,” she replies. “Mademoiselle, bring monsieur’s glass over to my table.”

And a moment later, in the kitchen, the waitress is all smiles. “See? What did I tell you? Putting on such airs! And they end up the same way as any other two! Why the hell don’t they go ahead and do it? Just get out of here! Do whatever they want, as long as they let me get on with my polishing...”

“I do not believe that we have had the honor of being introduced to one another, have we?” she says.

And so saying, she blows a mouthful of smoke in his face. He, on the other hand, has turned his face slightly away, out of consideration, for he is thinking of those two dozen snails that were literally bathing in garlic.

“Unless, of course,” he replies, “you really are the daughter of the lawyer from La Rochelle.”

She laughs. Relaxes. Oh, well! She also realizes that she is no longer dealing with Torrence, and that this is no time for playing games.

“Not too much damage to your safe?”

“The envelope was taken out in time.”

“Was your boss, Torrence, the one who figured it out?”

“Monsieur Torrence,” he answers in an elocutionary tone, as if reading from an advertising brochure, “is a man who sees all, knows all, and thinks of everything.”

“But still is not sharp enough to know when his pockets are being picked. You know, I’m beginning to think that maybe you were hidden someplace in that room, and that maybe you are the one who... But let’s get down to the business at hand. Are you planning to stay here all afternoon?”

“I don’t especially relish the idea.”

“Let’s lay our cards on the table, shall we? First, it was your bearded little sidekick who started tailing me. You came to spell him. From what I’ve heard about Agency O and the cases it has successfully solved, I know it would be childish for me to consider ditching you through a house with two exits or by changing trains on the Metro. You lost the first round, but you’ve come right back in the second.”

“I don’t understand,” he mumbles, all innocence, the picture of the man who gets slapped.

“You had the handkerchief. I got it back. Incidentally, I don’t mind giving you what’s left of it. The laundry mark is gone in my drink. So, now you are in charge of tailing me. And by the same token, I can’t go anywhere at all. Some fun!”

“To tell the truth,” he sighs, “I don’t find that so distasteful.”

“Maybe you don’t,” says she. “Mademoiselle! My bill, please!”

“Both together?”

“I should say not! Monsieur can settle his own.”

What would Torrence say if he saw her like this? No longer the young lady at all, or at least one heck of a sophisticated young lady. And yet, still with what might be called a kind of distinction, something or other one rarely comes across among people the police, or even private detectives, usually deal with.

“You never more talkative than this?” she asks.

“Never.”

“Too bad. We’re keeping these waitresses from finishing their jobs. Settle your bill and let’s get out! I suppose it doesn’t matter to you which way we go? That being the case, let’s walk down toward the Seine. It’s quieter there.”

They do not know that their waitress has just lost her bet. She bet her cronies that they would see the couple head straight for the first hot-sheet hotel of the Rue de la Bastille. Instead of which, they are walking quietly off along Boulevard Henri-IV.

“What you would like to find out, come hell or high water,” she says, “is where I’m going, where I came from, and who I was working for this morning, eh? That’s it, isn’t it? You followed me. You’ll go right on dogging my footsteps. And for my part, I am determined not to give you any information; in other words, not to go back home and not to have any contact with any of the people I know.”

She turns toward him, irritated, and then bursts out, “But why the devil don’t you light your cigarette?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Just an old habit. I never light it.”

She had thought this would be an easy one, and yet she has never met so impassive a fellow as this tall redheaded young man who follows her around with such exceptional determination.

“Well then, why do you keep it in your mouth?”

“I don’t know. If it really bothers you...”

“Why do you try to pass yourself off as detective Torrence’s photographer?”

“I beg your pardon. What do you mean, pass myself off?”

“Don’t try to kid me. This morning, you were strapped up with a big camera. You were pretending to take pictures. But you forgot to take the cap off your lens...”

He smiles and acknowledges the point.

“One for you.”

“What do you do at that agency?”

“I work there.”

“And you’re most certainly underpaid.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you wear ready-made suits that shrink when it rains.”

They have reached the Ile St.-Louis. She sighs.

“I wonder what I’ll do with you. Not to mention the fact that I’d sure like a chance to change my clothes.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“Why do you say you don’t doubt it?”

“Because you put that suit on in a hurry, at the last minute, so that you didn’t get to take the creases out of the sleeves. You usually dress more carefully than that, more luxuriously, I imagine, because you didn’t change your stockings, and you’re wearing stockings that go for a hundred and ten francs a pair. A little high for the daughter of a provincial lawyer.”

“You an expert in stockings?”

He lowers his eyes and blushes.

“At any rate,” he says, “your accomplice or accomplices are expecting you, and they’re beginning to be worried. I wonder how you’ll be able to get a reassuring message to them, with me on your tail. You’ll also finally have to find a place to sleep. You’ll have to—”

“Happy prospect!”

“Yes, I was just thinking the same thing.”

They automatically watch a string of barges that a tug is dragging upstream.

“Moreover,” Emile goes on, with his congenital humility, “if you don’t sleep in your own bed, we’ll know it by tomorrow...”

She shudders, looks at him, and says, “Fill me in on that.”

“Considering the point we’ve gotten to, it would be gauche of me to turn down such a request. Just follow my reasoning for a moment. If the handkerchief that was lost at the jewelry store during the burglary was sufficiently damning evidence to move you to do what you did this morning—”

“Oh, hurry up! It’s freezing out here.”

“I was saying, there are two kinds of laundry marks. Those that are made for private customers; they’re not very compromising. But modern laundries have a very huge clientele. That’s why they use special markings for the laundry from the large hotels—”

“That’s stupid!” she cuts in.

“Just the same, it made you turn pale! Anyway, I suppose that you and your accomplice or accomplices live at some hotel, probably one of the large hotels. The laundry mark would have put us on your trail. Now it’s just part of a punch that nobody, I hope, will try to drink! I say, if you don’t mind — on account of those snails that I ate — would you object to stopping at this little bar to have a beer at the counter?”

She follows him condescendingly.

“Two draft beers!”

“That still hasn’t clued me in on why, if I don’t sleep in my own bed tonight—”

“Well, you saw that I sent my colleague away.”

“The one who looks like a duck-hunting dog?”

“That’s right. He, and a few others, will now undertake a bit of real deep research. Tomorrow morning we will have the names and descriptions of all the women in your age group registered in any Paris hotels who did not spend the night in their own rooms. To your health!... Patron, how much do I owe you?”

“I asked you a question a little while ago.”

“Did you? I don’t remember it.”

They are again walking along the river.

“How much do you make, working for Agency O? What would you say to—”

“That would depend on how much you have on you.”

Taking him at his word, she opens her bag. They are at the tip of the island, where you can look up at the Cathedral of Notre Dame. The fog has lightened.

“If I were to give you—”

She counts the bills. Thirty... forty...

“—Fifty thousand francs?”

She is beside herself with joy. No way that this poorly dressed young man, who looks like an impoverished clerk, can refuse such a fortune.

“All you have to do is miss the subway train I get on...”

“But then,” he answers calmly, “you won’t have any cash on you. No, you won’t! Fifty thousand francs is all that you have in your purse. What if you don’t meet up with your accomplice? What if he got scared, and has already taken to the hills?”

She can’t keep from smiling slightly.

“You turning me down? Isn’t it enough?”

“It’s too much and not enough. I’m not very good at figures. The job you pulled off last night brought you some eight hundred thousand francs’ worth of jewels. The one last month, on the Rue de la Paix, two million. The one on the Boulevard Poissonnière—”

“I’m asking you one last time: YES OR NO?”

Then, falling all over himself with gallantry, he whispers, “I’m just enjoying your company too much.”

“You’ll be sorry.”

She pretends no longer to pay any attention to him. She crosses the bridge, hails a taxi. He climbs in right behind her, without waiting for an invitation. The cab stops in front of a fancy boutique on the Rue St.-Honoré.

“I don’t imagine you expect to—”

“Oh, I love women’s clothing,” he assures her.

He follows her from department to department. When she reaches the cashier’s desk, the salesgirl asks:

“Where should we send the purchases?”

And she gets a sudden bright idea and blurts out, “Just give them to my husband’s valet here.”

Shoes. Silk stockings. From time to time, she looks sarcastically over toward him, but he is not the least bit fazed and hangs on to the packages, except when he has to wipe off the lenses of his spectacles.

“Haven’t you had enough yet?” she demands.

“Oh, it doesn’t bother me. It’s just that the taxi won’t be able to hold it all.”

Five P.M. Six P.M. The taxi driver, when they have him wait at a particularly crowded intersection, looks daggers at them and follows them to the door of the store.

“What hotel? Well, let’s see. Hôtel du Louvre.”

And, at the hotel, she asks for a room. Emile keeps behind her.

“Twin beds?”

“No. A single. Just for me,” she replies.

“And for you, monsieur?”

“Nothing for me,” Emile mumbles.

She is exasperated. Up in the room, the packages piled up on the bed, she is almost livid with fury.

“How long are you going to go on like this?”

“I think it would be best if we went down to the bar for a cocktail. They have an excellent American bar in this hotel,” Emile replies.

“Oh, now you’re an expert on bars, are you?”

“Just as much as on silk stockings, Mrs. Baxter.”

That is the name under which she registered at the hotel.

“And even more of an expert on jewel thieves. You are really making a mistake in not coming to join me for a Manhattan.”

She follows him, flabbergasted. It is hard to picture the self-effacing Monsieur Emile in an American bar, yet he seems completely at his ease there, even correcting the bartender on the proportions for the cocktail.

“As you can see, my little lady.”

“I forbid you to call me ‘my little lady.’ ”

“As you can see, my good friend.”

She opens her mouth as if to protest again, but she realizes she’ll never have the last word with him. Even if he were slapped in the face till he was red as a lobster, trampled on, cursed out ferociously, he would never lose any of his cool or his strange self-assurance, the latter all the stranger for being accompanied by such amazing apparent modesty.

“You are young,” he goes on.

“What about you?”

“Me? Oh, if you only knew! Anyway, you have selected the toughest trade to follow, the one that on the surface pays the biggest dividends, to be sure, when you consider the value of the jewels. But what risks you run!... And besides, how much can you get for stolen jewelry from even the most honest of fences, if there are any? It’s so tough a trade that only a few of the rare specialists ever make a go of it, and the police are on to all their ways of operating...”

“Do you mean that last night’s burglary—”

“Last night’s burglary and the twelve jobs before it here in Paris during the last few months... well, I would have sworn to you, until just a few days ago, that they had to be the work of Baldhead Teddy... Bartender! Let us have another round, please!”

“Why do you say you would have sworn they were, until just a few days ago?”

“Well, because I — no, excuse me, my boss, Monsieur Torrence, who is a most extraordinary man in his own way, was smart enough to contact the New York police and found out that Baldhead Teddy was still in jail. The answer just got to us yesterday. But there’s no doubt about it.”

“Do you have any proof that I’m not Baldhead Teddy, or an accomplice of his?” she sneers.

“Baldhead Teddy, little girl—”

“Before, you called me your little lady.”

“Yes, and I might even get to just calling you ‘little one’! Now, drink up. Baldhead Teddy, as I was saying, never worked with any accomplice, either male or female. The only jewel thieves that ever got away with it, the ones that might be considered of international stature, have always worked alone. But Baldhead Teddy carried that policy to an extreme of perfection.”

She laughs, icily.

“You sound like a schoolteacher.”

“A country schoolteacher, right?”

At times, she can no longer be sure. There is about him such a strange mixture of humility and pride, of authority and modesty. And his eyes...

“What do you think,” he asks, “is the most dangerous time for a jewel thief?”

“You seem to know more about it than I do.”

“It’s when he sells the jewels. All valuable jewels have an identity, a description by which they can be traced wherever they go. That is why Baldhead Teddy never went in for pinch-penny jobs. When he pulls a heist, it’s on a grand scale. For three months, or maybe six, he robs the jewelry stores of just one city, say, Paris, London, Buenos Aires, or Rome. He does a neat job, quickly completed, and always done in the same modus operandi. But just as long as he stays in the country he is in, he makes sure never to flog a single one of the stolen jewels.

“Baldhead Teddy, in his way, is a wholesaler. He has enough capital to be able to hold on for a while, as the common saying goes. When he’s accumulated enough loot, he disappears. No more trace of him around. The international police forces are all alerted to his possible resurfacing, but no dice.

“He makes his sale very far away, say, on another continent, and much, much later. Baldhead Teddy then has enough on hand to be able to live peacefully for several years. I would bet that somewhere in the world he is known under a different name, honored and respected, perhaps even the mayor of his town or village.

“And then, when he starts running out of money, he makes plans for a new campaign. He takes a six- or twelve-months’ leave of absence...”

Emile downs his drink and orders some more.

“So!” he concludes, “if the American police did not vouch to me — oh! I mean, didn’t vouch to my boss, former Inspector Torrence — that Baldhead Teddy is currently behind bars, well, I for one would swear that—”

At that moment, something unusual happens. The young woman puts her hand on his wrist, and questions him:

“Just who are you?”

“Don’t you think I should be the one who is asking you that? You know I’m just a legman at Agency O.”

“Well, if the legmen are all like you, I wonder what the boss would be like.”

“So do I.”

“But, then, if you are the boss, why do you try to pass yourself off as—”

“Look, at the point we’ve reached — and I’ve now drunk three Manhattans, not to mention two cognacs at the Four Sergeants and that beer in the café on the lie St.-Louis — at this point, I might as well confess that this is my own modus operandi. If, this morning, I had been the one who had interviewed you—”

“I would not have felt at ease with you.”

“Perhaps so. Or else, I might not have felt at ease. As you know, I’m really quite shy, and—”

“And me trying to buy you off with fifty thousand francs!”

“Do you have any idea where we might go to have dinner? I saw that you bought an evening gown. You’re really lucky to be such a perfect model size. But if we are going to dress, I’ll have to take you home with me, and you’ll have to wait with Mother while I—”

“Tell me, Monsieur Emile.”

“What?”

“If you could, would you send me to prison?”

The young woman’s lower lip is trembling. She feels she looks her very best. She can see her reflection in a mirror, between the bottles behind the bar. Her eyes are shining, her lips alive. And isn’t her companion, sitting next to her, showing just a bit of interest in her?

She is awaiting his answer, her fingers tensed. It comes at her like a pebble.

“Without batting an eye.”

“Don’t you have any heart at all?”

“My father, mademoiselle, was killed by... Never mind, it’s not the kind of story to tell here. I might add something more, if you think it would help keep you from doing something foolish. In case you were to attempt to ditch me, I wouldn’t be afraid to shoot you in the leg — and a very beautiful leg it is. That’s how convinced I am that you were involved in the burglaries that—”

“Pig!” she hisses at him as she kicks him in the shin.

“And now,” he asks, “are we dressing for dinner or not? Do I phone Mother to tell her to get my tuxedo ready, or do I—”

“You certainly don’t expect to stay in my room while I change, I hope.”

“Unfortunately, that’s just what I do intend. But, if you wish, I can be closed off in a corner near the door, behind a screen.”

Five minutes later, they are in the hotel elevator, on the way up to suite 125.

III

In which Torrence makes a discovery and in which a certain young lady suddenly turns as talkative as any detective could hope.

“Mother, while I’m dressing, will you please be good enough to keep an eye on mademoiselle,” Emile says, “and make sure she does not go out or communicate with anyone.”

It is a comfortable apartment, as middle-class as can be, on the Boulevard Raspail. Emile’s mother is as tiny as he is tall, and it is a sure thing that her hair, now gray, was never red. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, her son has put his gun in her hand. She acts as if she doesn’t know it is there. She smiles to her young lady guest and treats her with utter politeness, without the slightest trace of irony.

“Please have a seat, mademoiselle. Can I get you something to drink? So, it seems you are a friend of Emile’s...”

Five minutes later, the latter is ready, and he kisses his mother on both cheeks, takes the gun back from her, and sticks it in his pocket.

“Now, if you’re ready, we can go out to supper,” he says.

Not much later, they are inside The Pelican, on the Rue de Clichy in Montmartre, where there are already couples dancing among the tables to the strains of a Cuban band. Emile has lost none of his shy look, yet he orders their supper like a connoisseur.

“Would you ask the gentleman over there to come over and talk to me?” he asks a waiter.

The gentleman is Torrence, also dressed in a tuxedo, his shirtfront overly starched, looking very flushed, at a small table the other side of the dance floor.

“Will you excuse me, mademoiselle?” Emile says to her, without ever taking his eyes off the girl. He and Torrence stand talking a few feet away.

“I followed your instructions,” Torrence tells him. “I started with the better hotels that aren’t too luxurious. I showed the doormen and concierges our picture of the little bird. At the sixth hotel, the Majestic, on Avenue Friedland, it was met with surprise.

“ ‘I thought that she was up in her room,’ the concierge told me.

“He phoned the room.

“ ‘Strange!’ he said. ‘Now I see that her brother has gone out, too. He should be back any time now, I think.’ ”

And Torrence goes on.

“I asked them to call together the whole staff that worked that floor. The couple are registered as Dolly and James Morrison, of Philadelphia. The girl was in room 45 and her brother in room 47. The rooms have a communicating door between them. As far as I could find out, James Morrison keeps very irregular hours, didn’t come home to sleep last night, and they haven’t seen him since.”

“Any luggage?” Emile asks.

“I didn’t dare ask that, in front of the whole staff. So I took room 43, telling them that I had my own personal valet with me.”

His wink clearly informs Emile that the valet in question is none other than the hirsute Barbet, and that the latter, right now, is probably very busy riffling through the two adjoining rooms.

“As soon as you hear something, let me know,” Emile tells him. “Here or elsewhere. If we leave The Pelican, I’ll leave a message for you.”

“Excuse me, Miss Morrison,” he says as he comes back to their table. “A few instructions I had to give to my boss, as you can see. How is the caviar? Is it good and fresh?”

She does not seem particularly taken aback by the new information about her he has just acquired. On the other hand, her eyes bug open when he adds, “Torrence expects to have a really good talk with your brother James tonight.”

“Does he?”

“At the moment, one of our friends has taken James in tow. Torrence is going to join them, and I have no doubt your brother will gladly come across with the information we want.”

She looks down into her plate. She sighs. “Poor Jim!”

“Yes, it may be a little tough on him, indeed. Would you like a little more caviar? Some lemon on it?”

“Listen to me, Monsieur Emile.”

She is nervous and edgy.

“I never expected you to get to the bottom of this so fast. I can’t understand how my brother could have been so careless as to... Oh, well, let me ask you a question first. Just how are you involved in this case?”

“One of the largest insurance companies, which has been a client of ours for a long time, has hired Agency O to get back the jewels stolen in the thirteen jewel robberies that have taken place in the last few months.”

“Nothing more than that?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that, since you don’t actually belong to the police, you are under no obligation to turn anyone over to them, are you?”

Dancers passing near them, couples having supper at other tables could have no idea of the tenor of this conversation being carried on with pursed lips.

“My brother is a jackass,” the girl goes on. “I was sure he would end up getting us in trouble. Just this morning, I had to take it on myself to keep that marked handkerchief from remaining in your hands.”

“How about a dance?” Emile asks, to his companion’s great amazement.

But what is more amazing is that he is a most accomplished dancer. They continue their conversation on the dance floor which is bathed in orange spotlights, and the girl has the feeling that her escort is hugging her to him more insistently than the occasion demands.

“You weren’t completely off the mark before, Monsieur Emile, when you talked about Baldhead Teddy. You thought you saw his fine hand in these jobs, and there’s a good reason for that. I am Baldhead Teddy’s daughter. Jim is my twin brother. Until now, our father has always kept us outside his acquisitive activities.”

They go back to their table and champagne is served.

“Where we were living is of no importance. But you must know that Jim and I were raised and lived like the son and daughter of a very good family. Recently, our father was arrested in the States. This was the first time the police had ever been able to nab him. And that was only through an unusual set of circumstances. Jim and I thought that if we could just get together some money, we might probably be able to get Dad out of prison. So we came to Paris, and—”

“And you carried on right in your father’s footsteps,” Emile chimes in.

She smiles weakly.

“You can see that we didn’t really get away with it Jim had to go and lose his handkerchief on the last job. I saw you through the shop window. I wanted to...”

Her eyes have misted over. Her lips tremble a little; she takes a sip of champagne.

“I don’t hold it against you,” she goes on. “Each of us is just doing their job, right? What does scare me is to think of Jim going to jail. He’s such a delicate boy. When we were kids, I was always the tomboy of the two, and he was more like a girl. What was that?”

“Nothing. I didn’t say anything.”

“That’s why I asked you that question about the police before. Even if he is really arrested, Jim won’t be able to tell you where the jewels are, because I’m the one who is in charge of hiding them. If you promise me that you will let him go, I’ll turn them over to you. You will have accomplished your mission, and I can promise you on my end that, this very night, Jim and I will be out of the country.”

She has stretched her hand out across the table and is touching Emile’s.

“Be nice,” she whispers, with a very engaging little moue.

He does not withdraw his hand from hers. He is embarrassed and, as on any such occasion, he ends up by slowly, punctiliously, wiping off the lenses of his spectacles.

“Are the jewels at the Majestic?” he asks, after clearing his throat.

“You don’t beat around the bush, do you? If I answer you, how do I know that you’ll keep your promise?”

“Excuse me! I haven’t promised anything yet.”

“Are you refusing then? Do you think you are going to get Jim to talk? You don’t know him, believe me. He is more stubborn and obstinate than a woman, and besides... What time is it, anyway?”

“Eleven-thirty.”

Well, well! Why does this fact seem to make her even more nervous than before? Could this be the time that her brother James should be coming back to the Majestic, or else...

“Would you like to dance this number?” he asks.

“No, thanks. I’m getting a bit weary. Besides the fact that I’m concerned about my brother and that... Would you pour me another glass of champagne?”

Her hand is trembling nervously. Emile is holding the bottle in his. He leans across the table. The last thing he sees is the look in the girl’s eyes, which he is very close to, and it seems to him that they are sparkling with ironic enjoyment.

He does not have long to think about that. At that very instant, the room is plunged into darkness. Waiters can be heard scurrying about. Couples are bumping into one another and laughing about it.

“Don’t move, mesdames and messieurs. Don’t panic. Just a moment’s patience, please. We merely blew a fuse.”

Emile tries to grab hold of his companion, but his hand meets nothing but air. He gets up and walks straight ahead, toward the door and the stairway, but there are people who unintentionally stand in his way, and when he tries to shove some of them aside, they protest.

“Where does that one think he’s going?”

“What a brute!”

The lights go on again. Dolly is nowhere to be seen. Come to think of it, is she really Dolly, or Denise, or some other name? Emile goes down to the cloakroom.

“Did you by any chance see a young lady who—”

“You mean the one who just stepped outside because she was feeling faint? I wanted to give her her coat, but she said no, she was just going out for a few breaths of air.”

No trace of Denise-Dolly outside either, naturally. Emile, bareheaded, in his tuxedo, is standing on the virtually deserted sidewalk, near the blinking sign of the Casino de Paris, when a taxi pulls up. Torrence comes out of it.

“Where did he go?” he demands.

Emile knits his brow. Wondering what has gotten into Torrence.

“Did you let him get away, Boss? You know what we discovered going through the baggage? That the brother and sister are one and the same person! Only one of them — a man, obviously.”

“Or a woman,” Emile replies.

“At any rate, a very sharp article.”

“That’s what comes from behaving with modesty,” sighs the redheaded young man. “While she was changing her clothes at the hotel, I stayed primly behind my screen. That gave her time to write a little note. Once she got here, she probably slipped it to the maître d’ or one of the waiters, with a hefty bill attached to it ‘Please turn out all the lights, for just a moment, at exactly eleven-thirty.’ And that was when she asked me to pour her some more champagne, so I would have the bottle in my hand.”

Torrence makes no comment. Perhaps he is not totally unhappy to see that even his strange boss could fall into such a simple trap. At long last, he presumes to ask, “Are you sure she didn’t pick your pockets?”

IV

In which Torrence is upset by his boss’s lack of activity and in which the latter nevertheless finally does give some orders.

Three A.M. at the Cité Bergère. Torrence has boiled some water on an electric hot plate and made them coffee. Emile is lying on his back, stretched out on a narrow couch, just staring at the ceiling.

“What I don’t get, if you want me to tell you how I really feel about it,” Torrence finally says, “is that you’re not even going over to the Majestic to have a look-see. I admit that Barbet doesn’t often overlook any kind of clue. And I’ve been over everything myself, too...”

Emile does not react. Impossible to tell whether he even hears Torrence’s voice. It would almost seem he doesn’t.

“In a word, where do we stand now? We just know that the burglar, whether a man or a woman—”

“A woman,” Emile cuts in dolefully.

He does not feel he can add that when they were dancing, a few hours before, he held her so tightly in his arms that he had no doubt at all that she was a woman.

“Okay, if that’s the way you want it. As I was saying, we have the proof that the jewel robberies were committed by a woman, that this woman had registered at the Hôtel Majestic under the name of Dolly Morrison as well as her brother James, which must have been a very practical arrangement. Because that way she could sometimes go out as a young woman and at other times as a young man. No one, in a hotel the size of the Majestic, would think of being surprised that they never saw the two of them together. As for knowing whether she is really the daughter of Baldhead Teddy — well, whatever she is, she slipped through our fingers. There is just one question left, the only one that still matters: Where did she hide the jewels? Because we can be sure that she will eventually go wherever the jewels are. We have the Majestic under surveillance. There was nothing to be found in either of their rooms. And she didn’t deposit anything in any of the hotel safes, either.”

Emile comes back in a dreamy voice:

“You certainly are talkative, Torrence, for a policeman.”

“And you are certainly apathetic! I’m beginning to wonder whether you realize that time is going by. It’s true that I’ve given the police the picture of our sweet little crook, and right now they have every railroad station and every seaport covered.”

“Listen, Torrence, if you go on beating your gums like that, I’m going to go and lie outside on the landing.”

Now, let’s see... Inasmuch as... Because of Torrence’s volubility, Emile has to keep starting his reasoning over from the beginning. Inasmuch as this woman has committed thirteen jewelry-shop burglaries; inasmuch as she can afford two rooms in a large Paris hotel; inasmuch as none of the jewels has been sold; inasmuch as they quite apparently are nowhere in the hotel...

“Give me a cup of coffee, will you, Torrence?”

What was it that Baldhead Teddy did in such a case? This is something we don’t know, for he never discussed his modus operandi with anyone. But one thing at least Emile is sure the girl was not lying about: She really is the daughter of Baldhead Teddy. And she may very well have undertaken this series of burglaries to amass enough money to buy her father’s way out of jail.

It all makes sense. It has the ring of truth...

Very well! Then, now she is in Paris. She pulls off her first job successfully, the one on Boulevard de Strasbourg. Then the burglaries follow one another, on an almost weekly basis.

What does she do with her loot? That is the main question.

What does she do with the jewels until she has gotten together enough of them to meet her needs, so she can go abroad and sell them?

As if he were himself following his boss’s train of thought, Torrence announces while preparing another pot of coffee: “She must have another pad someplace in Paris.”

“I would lay money she doesn’t.”

Why? First of all, because she is too smart for that. And also because she is using the modus operandi that her father, who was caught only once during a whole long career, perfected with the utmost care.

And besides, even though Baldhead Teddy has been in prison for several months now, the police in the States have not yet come up with any of the jewels he stole!

For another thing, at her room in the Majestic, they found a valise with a secret compartment in the bottom, and in it a full set of burglar’s tools. If the girl had any other Parisian home, she would probably have left that compromising equipment there.

“Would you mind sitting down instead of walking back and forth like a bear in a circus?”

“I’m just trying to keep from falling asleep,” Torrence groans. “If we have to spend the whole night here...”

Now, let’s start all over again. This time, Emile does his thinking in the first person. He becomes the girl in question. He becomes the jewel thief. He has just pulled off his first successful job. He has the jewels in his pocket. They are not very cumbersome. He has taken only the most valuable stones, preferably only diamonds...

What will he do with them?

A large wrinkle creases his forehead. He is still staring at the same spot on the ceiling as if it were an obsession.

Necessarily, indispensably, these jewels must remain in a safe place for weeks on end, if not for months...

Necessarily, indispensably, if by any accident I am arrested, or followed, or if my whereabouts are discovered...

He feels he is getting close to the truth. Yes, he’s got it! She may come under suspicion; she may be tailed; her luggage may be searched; but what matters is that no proof against her can ever be found.

“Do you get it now, my little Torrence?”

Little Torrence, towering at six feet two over his skinny boss, looks at him wide-eyed.

“Do I get what?”

“How many branch post offices are there in Paris?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a hundred.”

“What time is it?”

“Four-thirty in the morning.”

“Would it upset you very much to have to wake up the Superintendent of the Criminal Division? You know he’d never turn down a request from a former associate of Inspector Maigret’s. Ask him to lend us for an hour, later this morning, just as many men as he can spare. You can’t imagine how urgent it is that this be done right away. The post offices open at eight o’clock, don’t they? Well, at each one of them... Yes, that’s it, I knew you understood. Let each man have a picture — just the head — no clothes. No, I don’t think I want any more coffee. Now, I’m going to get me some shut-eye, in the meantime...”

Paris begins to come to life. The fog has turned liquid, changed into a fine, freezing rain. The streets seem lacquered with it. A man who is still grumpy and sleepy at that very moment appears at each of the branch post offices, which the clerks have just opened.

“Criminal Division. Could you tell me whether recently a person that looks like this photograph...?”

Emile is snoring. One would never imagine that so skinny a young man could sleep so noisily. It is just before nine o’clock when Torrence shakes him awake.

“Boss!... Boss!...”

“Where?” Emile asks, immediately in command of his senses.

“Dunkerque. Hôtel Franco-Belge.”

“Quick. The phone!”

“The hotel?”

“Yes, the hotel, and also the Dunkerque police. Get a move on!”

They are both still dressed in last night’s tuxedos. The shirtfronts have lost their stiffness, and their beards have grown out. Torrence, moreover, has scattered ashes from his pipe over everything. The place smells like the morning after an all-night party, with dirty cups and bits of croissants lying around on the desks.

“Hello, operator, would you please connect me with number 180 in Dunkerque. And right after that, with number 243. Yes. Priority. Official business.”

Emile has gone back into his little office. He really is a directory freak. Let’s see, Dunkerque... It was eleven-thirty when she got out of The Pelican. Okay. No train to Dunkerque before 6:30 A.M. So, she couldn’t have gotten there yet by train.

On the other hand, what if she had gone by car? He checks the mileage on a road map, and does some quick mental arithmetic.

The phone rings.

“Boss! It’s the Hôtel Franco-Belge.”

“Hello! Is this the manager’s office? You say the manager isn’t there yet? You’re the cashier? This is the police speaking...”

No need to specify it’s just a private detective agency.

“Listen, madame. During the last few weeks, you must have received several small packets addressed to one of your guests, a Madame Olry, didn’t you?”

The cashier repeats the name.

“Madame Olry? Wait a minute, I’ll have to ask. I don’t handle the mail... Jean! Has there been any mail to hold for a Madame Olry?... What? What was that?... Yes, monsieur. You’re right. It seems she is a lady who writes to us from abroad and asks us to hold her mail for her here... Jean! Where did the lady’s letters come from?... Just a minute, monsieur... What was that, Jean? From Bern, Switzerland?”

And then her voice comes back stronger on the phone.

“From Bern, monsieur. It seems that several small mail packets have arrived for her... Just a moment, madame... Jean, would you please take care of madame?”

Intuition or what? Emile goes pale.

“Please don’t hang up! Madame! Cashier!... Tell me, weren’t you just talking to a woman guest of the hotel?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“A woman who just drove up by car?”

“Just a minute. I’ll look and see... Yes, monsieur, there is a car outside the door. It’s a Paris taxi...”

“Please don’t talk so loud, madame, for the love of God! And don’t talk so much! Just listen to what I am saying. You must not let that woman get away. She is probably going to ask you for the mail you are holding for Madame Olry. It is absolutely imperative that you—”

“You think she is Madame Olry?”

“What a fathead!” Emile shouts, in a rage.

The cashier, who has no idea what this is all about, sticks her foot into it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Of course, she immediately turns to the woman across the counter from her and asks,

“You are Madame Olry, aren’t you? I just have someone on the line, who is—”

“Shut up, for heaven’s sake!”

“What? I can’t hear what you’re saying.”

“Of course not! What is your new arrival doing now?”

“Wait a minute. I’ll call her back. Madame! Say, there, madame!... What in the world?... Jean, run after that lady and ask her if she... Hello? Are you still there on the line? Would you believe it? The lady has got back into her car... Yes, Jean?... You say the cab has left?... Hello! The cab has driven away, monsieur. Tell me, what am I supposed to do now? If someone comes to collect the packages, what am I to do?”

“Where are they?”

“I don’t know. Probably over in a desk drawer, where we keep the hold-for-arrival mail. We get a lot of that.”

“Madame, you are to lock those packets in your safe immediately. You are not to deliver them to anyone. Do you hear? Not to anyone. If the lady comes back... But I have no fear of that. After what she heard, she’s not likely to come back. No, she surely won’t come back, madame. Good-bye, madame.”

When he hangs up, his eyes look wild. He wipes his brow. He slumps down on a chair.

“If I could only put my hands on that jackass of a cashier!”

And Torrence, who has understood none of it, asks, “What’s going on?”

“We had her in our grasp! While I was on that phone, she was there in the lobby of that hotel. She had just come in from Paris, by taxi! A few seconds more and she would have claimed the mail that was being held for her. All we had to do was have the cops come in and pinch her. I knew I wasn’t on the wrong track, that I couldn’t possibly be on the wrong track. It just had to be a hotel near the border. Do you get it, Torrence? Simple as how-do-you-do. After each burglary, the jewels went off in a small packet, not even by registered mail, addressed to one Madame Olry. They went to a hotel right near the Belgian border. That way, in case of any misstep...”

He takes a cigarette from his case, but as usual, he forgets to light it. He is calming down, little by little. He even ends up breaking into a smile.

“She really must have wondered how I was able to...”

It was at one and the same time an agreeable and an exasperating feeling: the feeling of having struggled against someone who was very strong, of having met one’s match.

And, in this case, nobody lost!

To be sure, Emile had located the jewels, and that was all that the insurance companies wanted. But then Dolly... Was she Dolly?... Or was she Denise?... In a word, the girl, by now, had had time to make it across the border.

He would probably never see her again.

How would she remember him?

How would he remember her?

“What do I do now, Boss?” Torrence wants to know.

“You’d better phone the insurance company. Ask them to have someone go to Dunkerque with you. You will tell them that... well, that last night, thanks to your personal modus operandi and the unparalleled organization of Agency O, you discovered—”

“The head of the Criminal Division will want to know what became of the girl.”

“Well, just tell him the truth. Tell him you haven’t the foggiest!”

At that moment, the doorbell rings. Barbet is still staking out the Majestic, so he isn’t there to answer. Emile himself goes to open the door, forgetting that he is still wearing his tuxedo.

“You want to see the boss? Who shall I say is calling? Just have a seat. I’ll go in and see if he is free.”