Swirling Waters Part 3

"Jimmy!" There was a note of pleasure in the young man's voice.

"The same," confirmed Jimmy Martin. He was a tubby, clean-shaven, rosy-faced little fellow of thirty odd, with an inexhaustible fund of good spirits. Everyone called him "Jimmy." Dean had known him as a reporter on a London daily paper and a fellow-member of a local dramatic society in Streatham.

"Why are you here?" asked Dean.

"Strictly on business, my gay young spark. My present owners, the _Europe Chronicle_, bless their dear hearts, want to know if La Belle Ariola"--he waved his hand towards a poster which showed chiefly a toreador hat, a pair of flas.h.i.+ng eyes, and a whirl of white draperies--"is engaged or no to the Prince of Sardinia. I find the maiden coy, not to say secretive----"

"I wish you could help me," interrupted Dean eagerly.

"If four francs seventy will do it--my worldly possessions until next pay-day----"

"No, no, this is quite different." He drew Martin outside into the street and whispered. "To-night, as I happen to know, an Englishman walking along a back street by the Place Pigalle was followed by two _apaches_."

"A week-end tripper, or somebody with a flourish at each end of his name?"

"Somebody worth while. Now I want to know particularly if anything happened."

Martin nodded in full understanding. "Come along to the office about ten to-morrow morning, and I'll tell you if anything's been fired in from the _gendarmeries_ or the hospitals. What did you say the man's name was?"

Dean shook his head.

"Imitaciong oyster?" commented Martin cheerfully. "Very well, see you to-morrow. Meanwhile, be good. Flee the giddy lure. Go home to your little bed and sleep sweet." There was seriousness under his good-natured banter. "Come along and I'll see you as far as the bullyvards."

Arthur Dean went with him, but did not return to the Grand Hotel. He found a small hotel for the night, and next morning at ten o'clock he was at the office of the _Europe Chronicle_, an important daily paper published simultaneously in Paris, Frankfort, and Florence.

Martin came out from the news room into the adjoining ante-room with a slip of "flimsy" in his hand.

"Was your man hefty with the s.h.i.+llelagh?" he asked.

"He carried a big, gold-mounted stick."

"Then here's your bird." He read out from the slip of paper: "Last night, shortly after twelve, a certain Gaspard P---- was brought to the Hopital Malesherbes suffering from a fractured skull. This morning, on recovering consciousness, he states that he was attacked without cause by a drunken Englishman, and struck over the head with a heavy stick.

His state is grave."

Dean felt a warm wave of relief. He thanked the journalist cordially and was about to leave, when the telephone bell rang sharply in the adjoining news room. The sub-editor in charge took up the receiver.

"_Ullo, ullo! C'est ici le Chronicle_," said the sub-editor, and after listening for a moment signed imperatively to Martin to come in and shut the door.

Presently Martin came out from the news room bustling with energy and took Dean by the arm. "You specified two _apaches_, didn't you?" he asked, and hurried on without waiting for an answer. "One was probably the injured innocence now at the Malesherbes and cursing those _sacres Angliches_, but the other lies low and says nuffink. That's the one that interests me. Come along in my taxi and watch me chase a story."

Stopping only to borrow fifty francs for expenses from the cas.h.i.+er's wicket, Martin hurried his friend into a taximeter cab and gave the brief direction: "Pont de Neuilly."

Three-quarters of an hour later they had reached the bridge at the end of the long avenue of the suburb of Neuilly and had dismissed the cab.

"Now for our imitaciong Sherlock Holmes," said Martin. "The 'phone message was that a man had found a fur coat and a gold-mounted stick under some bushes by the left bank of the Seine four hundred metres down stream. He was apparently some sort of workman, and explained that he had no wish to be mixed up with the police. On the other hand, he felt he had to do his duty by the civilization that provides him with a blue blouse, bread, and bock, so he 'phoned the news to us.... Wish everyone was as sensible," he added, viewing the matter from a professional standpoint.

Three hundred yards down, they began to look very carefully amongst the bushes that line the water's edge. It was not long before they came to the object of their search. Under an alder-bush they found it--a heavy fur-lined coat sodden with the river water, and a gold-mounted stick.

The maker's name had been cut out of the overcoat; its pockets were empty.

Martin held it up. "Did this belong to your man?" he asked, as though sure of the answer.

"No," answered Dean decisively.

The journalist whisked around in complete surprise and looked at him keenly. "_Sure?_"

"Positive. There was astrakhan on the collar and cuffs of the coat my man was wearing."

"And this stick?"

"It looks much the same kind, but then there are thousands of sticks like this in use."

The stout little journalist looked pathetically disappointed. For the moment he had no thought beyond the professional aspect of the matter--the unearthing of a "good story"--and the human significance of what he had found was entirely out of mind. He turned over the coat and stick in obvious perplexity, as though they ought somehow to contain the key to the puzzle if only he could see it. Then he examined the traces of footsteps on the damp earth by the water-side. There was another set of footprints beside their own--no doubt the footprints of the man who had first found the objects and 'phoned to the _Chronicle_.

"What are you going to do next?" asked the young clerk.

"Take them to the police?"

Martin looked up and down the river bank. That part of the Seine is usually deserted except for nursemaids and children and an occasional workman. At the moment there was apparently no one in sight.

"You don't know the Paris police--that's evident," returned the journalist. "They would throw fits on the floor if I were so much as to carry off a coat-b.u.t.ton. No, we must hide the coat and stick in the bushes again, and tell them to-morrow."

"Why to-morrow?"

"Twenty-four hours' start is due to my owners, bless their sensational little hearts. If nothing further comes to light, then the press steps aside and allows the law to take its course. Meanwhile to the Morgue and the Malesherbes. We'll pick up a cab on the Avenue de Neuilly.

Newspaper life, my young friend, is one dam taxi after another."

The Morgue is, of course, no longer the public peep-show that it used to be, but Martin's card procured him instant admission. On the inclined marble slabs, down which ice water gently trickles, were two ghastly white figures of women which had been waiting identification for some days. The object of their search was not at the Morgue.

They proceeded across Paris to the Hopital Malesherbes, but at the Place de l'Opera Dean asked to be put down. The journalist promised to 'phone to the Grand Hotel if anything of interest came to light, and Arthur Dean went to make his report to Lars Larssen. It was already past mid-day, and without doubt the s.h.i.+powner would be impatient to hear news.

Only stopping at a telephone call office for a few minutes, Dean hurried to his employer's suite of rooms.

"Well?" asked Lars Larssen.

"To begin at the beginning, sir, I waited last night in the Rue Laffitte until Mr Matheson came out of his office. It was not long before he appeared, and then----"

The s.h.i.+powner interrupted curtly. "I want the heart of the matter."

Dean gulped and answered: "I believe Mr Matheson has been murdered."

"Believe! Do you _know_?"

"Of course I don't know for certain, sir; but this morning I a.s.sisted at the finding of his coat and stick on the banks of the Seine."

"Sure they were his?"

"Yes, quite sure. I was with a journalist friend of mine, but I didn't let him know that I recognized the coat and stick. I thought perhaps you would like me to tell you before the matter was made public."