Chapter XX

I MUST confess," remarked Monsieur Lefevre, as he sat with Mr. Stapleton and Duvall over their after dinner cigars the following evening, "that while the case as a whole appears simple enough to me, there are one or two points that I fail to understand."

"There are a great many that I fail to understand," exclaimed the banker, chewing reflectively on his cigar. "However, now that the boy is safe at home, it really makes very little difference."

"On the contrary, Mr. Stapleton," remarked Duvall, "it makes a great deal of difference. For instance, I understand that you have discharged the nurse, Mary Lanahan."

"Yes. You say that she is quite innocent of any part in the kidnapping of my boy; but the fact remains that I don't trust her. I am informed that she was married to that fellow, Valentin, this afternoon."

Duvall smiled. "That was quite to be expected."

"At one time," said Mr. Stapleton, "you believed this fellow Valentin to have been concerned in the plot."

"Yes. That is true. My early investigations of the matter showed me at once that there was some understanding between these two, something which they were endeavoring to conceal. I did not at first understand the motive which actuated them. I thought it was guilt. In reality, it was love. Therefore I am not surprised to learn of their marriage." He gazed critically at his cigar for a time, in silence.

"As matters have turned out, gentlemen," he resumed, after a few moments, "there is no cause for anything but congratulation on all hands. The child is recovered, the criminals are under arrest, the money—the hundred thousand dollars you paid out, Mr. Stapleton—was found on the kidnapper's person and returned to you."

"Exactly. Nothing could be more satisfactory all around."

"And yet," went on the detective, "I have never before taken part in a case in which I have done so little, in which I have been so uniformly unsuccessful."

Mr. Stapleton raised his hand. "My dear Duvall," he began, "but for you, we should have been nowhere."

"You are wrong, my friend. Had I kept out of the case altogether, your son would have been returned to you just the same. It is true that the men who kidnapped him would not have been caught, and your money would not have been returned to you; but the prime object which you sought, the recovery of your child, would have been realized in any event."

"That is true," remarked the Prefect; "but, from the standpoint of the police, it is the detection and capture of the criminal that is desired, not the buying of him off. By insisting on that, Mr. Stapleton, you rendered our work extremely difficult."

"So difficult, indeed," said Duvall, earnestly, "that but for the energy, the courage, the wit of a woman, all our plans would have failed. I refer to my wife. It is to her that all the credit in this affair is due."

"By all means!" said Mr. Stapleton. "I could not fail to realize, when she told her story at dinner tonight, how much Mrs. Stapleton and myself owe her. I shall have something to say on the subject of our debt, as soon as the ladies rejoin us. But tell us, Mr. Duvall, a little more about the case, as you now understand it. I confess that I am becoming more and more interested. What, for instance, was the mystery, if indeed there was any, connected with the box of gold-tipped cigarettes?"

Duvall smiled. "That, my dear sir, is in fact the crux, the starting point, of the whole affair." He settled back in his chair comfortably. "Otherwise the case was simple enough. Certain scoundrels steal a child, hold it for ransom, and frighten the parents into paying over a large sum. Nothing unusual in that. A clever scheme or two for turning the money over, and returning the child—simple, yet perfect enough to defy all attempts to foil them.

"The real mystery lay in the utter absence of any clues which would throw light on the actual stealing of the child. In this respect the case was unique. A trusted nurse swears that the child has disappeared in broad daylight, without the slightest knowledge of how it was accomplished. Here we have a case so simple, so devoid of incident of any sort, that we are baffled at the very start by the impossibility of the thing. Yet the nurse is a woman of good reputation, honest, clearly telling what she believes to be the truth.

"But a single clue existed upon which I could build the least semblance of a case. I refer to the half-smoked cigarette with the gold tip, which I discovered in the grass at the scene of the crime. Without that apparently trivial clue, the criminals would in all probability never have been captured at all."

"But," exclaimed Mr. Stapleton, "I don't see how you make that out."

"Nor I," observed the Prefect.

"No. I suppose not. And yet, it is simple enough. That half-smoked cigarette and nothing else is the basic reason for the arrest of the three men now in your hands."

Monsieur Lefevre smiled. "Be good enough," he said, "to explain."

"Very well, I will. But first, let me indicate to you my course of reasoning. When I originally found the cigarette, I regarded it as of very small value, from the standpoint of evidence. It happened to be lying in the grass at the point where the crime occurred; but during the week or more which had elapsed between the stealing of the boy and my examination of the ground, a hundred people might have walked over the spot. I took it, because I realized that it might have a bearing on the case, and I have learned to discard no clue, however trifling it may appear, until it has been proven valueless.

"Now to go back to the cigarette, I observed at once that it was of American make, yet of such small size as to have been either used by a woman, or by a man of rather effeminate taste.

"Now if the cigarette had been used by a woman, it meant one of two things. Either it was used by Mary Lanahan herself, in which case it apparently proved nothing, or by some other woman who was there with her, and who might have had a hand in the kidnapping.

"On the other hand, if used by a man, it pointed clearly to the chauffeur, Valentin, for several reasons. He was a friend, a former lover, of the nurse. He had been discharged by Mr. Stapleton for dishonesty. He was, I had reason to know, of rather a weak and effeminate type. The cigarette was of American make, and he had but recently come from America. These things pointed to Valentin. The fact that the nurse was in love with him would cause her to shield him. I determined to try the matter out at once.

"As soon as I returned to the house, therefore, I confronted her, and asked her if Valentin smoked gold-tipped cigarettes. I did this, not because I expected to get any reply of value, but because I wished to observe her manner, her face, when I flung the question at her.

"She was greatly startled. She denied that Valentin smoked. Fifteen minutes later, she sent him a message to destroy the cigarettes.

"I at once concluded that they were working together, and were both guilty, a conclusion in which, however much I was justified by the evidence, I was quite wrong.

"Then came the attempt on the part of someone—the man with the black beard, I am told—to steal the cigarettes from Valentin. I learned that the man was followed to Mr. Stapleton's house.

"This at once threw a new light upon the matter, although I will admit a confusing one. Someone else, besides the nurse, desired the box of cigarettes removed as evidence; someone, in fact, who belonged to, or had friends in, the house. Who could this be? I could think of no one, outside of Mary Lanahan herself, but the chauffeur, François."

"Why did you first suspect him?" asked Mr. Stapleton.

"Because he was the only person, besides the nurse, who was present at the time of the kidnapping. I did not abandon my suspicions of either the nurse or Valentin. I fully believed that they knew a great deal more about the affair than they admitted. But I became convinced that François, too, was in the thing. He had testified that he was asleep when the affair occurred. I concluded at once that he was lying.

"At the first opportunity, therefore, I made a thorough search of his room, and found the box of cigarettes hidden in a clock on his mantel."

"Ha! I did not know that," exclaimed the Prefect. "What were they doing there?"

"I concluded that the fellow with the black beard who stole them from Valentin, in order to prevent their use as evidence against him, turned them over to François for a definite purpose."

"And that purpose was?"

"Their use in subsequent crimes of a similar nature."

Mr. Stapleton and the Prefect gazed at Duvall in bewilderment. "Explain yourself, my friend," exclaimed the latter. "I confess I do not understand what you are talking about. Who, may I ask, really smoked the cigarette, the remains of which you found in the grass?"

"Mary Lanahan," said the detective, with a smile.

"The nurse! Name of a dog! Then I fail to see that the matter is of the slightest importance one way or the other."

"On the contrary, Monsieur, it is of the greatest importance. May I ask whether you are, by any chance, familiar with the properties of an Eastern drug, made from hemp, and generally known as hashish?"

The Prefect sat up suddenly, and clapped his hands to his knees. "Mon Dieu!" he exclaimed. "Now I begin to understand."

"More than I do," said Mr. Stapleton.

"The cigarettes were drugged, that is all," went on Duvall. "The men who planned this thing went to work very carefully. They ascertained, through François, that Mary Lanahan was in the habit, no doubt on the sly, of using cigarettes. I discovered the fact, myself, before I left New York. They also learned that she smoked the same brand as Mrs. Stapleton herself used. No doubt she helped herself from Mrs. Stapleton's supply. They therefore secured, also through François, a box of these cigarettes, and had them heavily drugged with hashish. The box of drugged cigarettes was substituted, later on, for her own."

"But," exclaimed Mr. Stapleton, "how could Mary Lanahan swear that she turned away but a moment—that no one came near her?"

"When Mary Lanahan testified that, she believed that she was telling the truth. The hashish had simply destroyed her conception of the passage of time."

"Is that its effect?"

"Yes. It produces a delightful languor, a stupor in which all realization of the passage of time ceases. Sometimes, to those who use the drug, it may apparently require hours to walk a few yards. To make a momentary movement of the hand may seem to take many minutes. On the other hand, in the stupor which the drug induces, hours may be spent in the contemplation of a flower, a bit of scenery, the page of a book, without any realization on the part of the user that more than a few seconds have elapsed. That is what happened to Mary Lanahan. She inhaled a few puffs of the cigarette, heavily charged with the drug; without knowing, of course, of its presence. She probably passed at once into a state of stupor which may have extended over fifteen minutes or more. She was not unconscious. She sat upon the grass, looking off toward the distant sky, in a waking dream, not unlike a trance, in which all the world about her—the world of sound, of movement—had simply ceased to exist. She was to all intents and purposes unconscious of what was going on about her. The kidnapper, whom I strongly suspect to be François, merely strolled up behind her, picked up the boy, and walked off with him."

The detective's listeners looked at him in astonishment. Presently Mr. Stapleton spoke. "Why do you think it was François?" he asked.

"Oh, for many reasons. Had he, on approaching, found the nurse not sufficiently under the influence of the drug, he could have pretended to wish to speak to her, on some trivial matter. Again, the child would go away with him of course without making an outcry, which he would probably not have done, with a stranger. There are other reasons. He no doubt took the boy to the road, and handed him to his confederates, passing in another car. The affair occurred, you will remember, in a little frequented part of the Bois.

"The subsequent actions of Mary Lanahan are a trifle difficult to account for; but I suppose them to have been as follows: On slowly coming out of her stupor, and realizing that the boy was gone, she was terribly frightened. It had seemed to her but a moment since she turned away. She fears that the cigarette has made her drowsy—she has heard that they sometimes contain opium. She thinks she may have dozed off; but is not willing to admit it. Especially does she not want her employers to know that she uses cigarettes. She fears that such knowledge would cost her her place. It is not until later that she begins to suspect the cigarettes."

"When is that?" inquired Lefevre.

"Several days later, when she is supposed to have been poisoned. She was with Valentin at the time; although, on account of Mr. Stapleton's dislike for him, she feared to admit it. She smokes another of the cigarettes, while sitting on a bench with him, in the Champs Élysées. Suddenly she is taken ill—a frequent result of hashish, when taken in excessive doses, or by one otherwise nervously upset. Valentin takes the box, puts her into a cab, and goes to his room, where he leaves the cigarettes. No doubt, as she begins to feel ill, she discusses with him the possibility of the cigarettes having been poisoned. It is for that reason that she gives them to him.

"Her sudden message to Valentin to destroy them arose from a fear that I would discover the part which they had played in the boy's loss. This would, she knew, not only cost her her place, but would make her, in a way, responsible for the entire affair. She feared Mr. Stapleton's wrath, and therefore both she and Valentin remained dumb, so far as the cigarettes were concerned.

"They both, however, were all this time doing their best to find the child. Her message to Valentin, that she was suspicious of François, telling Valentin to watch him, arose no doubt from a realization that the box of drugged cigarettes had been substituted for her own by the chauffeur.

"Valentin, acting on her advice, does watch François, as his presence clinging to the rear of the latter's car the other night has proved. He tells me, today, that François did not take his car to the garage that night at all. The men there who so testified lied, at his request, supposing it merely an excuse to cover a joy ride.

"François, not wishing that the drugged cigarettes should remain in the nurse's hands as evidence against him, evidently made an attempt to recover them, discovered that she had turned them over to Valentin, and, being watched himself, sent word of the matter to his confederate, the fellow who went about in the black beard. He must have been admitted to Mr. Stapleton's house that night by François himself.

"I came to the conclusion, early in the course of my investigations, that the cigarette, the end of which I had found in the Bois, had been smoked by Mary Lanahan, and I so told Mr. Stapleton."

The banker nodded. "Yes," he said; "but you did not then say anything about the hashish."

"I was not certain of it. I intended to have the fragment I had found analyzed. When I discovered the cigarettes in François' room, you will remember that I took one of them. I smoked that cigarette, before going to bed that night. It produced exactly the sensations that Mary Lanahan must have felt. I floated away in the land of dreams for over half an hour, and came to with no recollection whatever of the passage of time. It is a remarkable drug, but an extremely dangerous one.

"After that, the case became simple enough. I knew at once, beyond any question, that François was one of the kidnappers. My plans last night would have worked perfectly, but for the chauffeur's accidental discovery of me, hiding in the closet. Had that not happened, the boy would have been returned, according to program, and François I had safely in my hands."

"But we wouldn't have got the others," laughed the Prefect. "You must thank your wife for that. Vernet has told me how the kidnappers outwitted you at the Avenue Malakoff. The car from which the signal apparently was made contained a well known stockbroker, who knew nothing of the matter at all. He merely happened to be passing the Avenue Malakoff at the precise moment when the signal was given to François."

"You are mistaken, Monsieur," observed the detective, quietly. "The signal was undoubtedly made from that car; not by Monsieur Lemaitre, I will admit, but by his chauffeur. He has admitted to Vernet that a stranger paid him fifty francs to do so, on the plea that it was some signal to a woman. The man knows nothing of the affair, beyond that."

As he finished speaking, there was a ripple of laughter from the hall, and Mrs. Stapleton, Madame Lefevre, and Grace came in.

"We have been debating a most important question," said Mrs. Stapleton, with an assumption of extreme gravity, "and we beg that you, Monsieur Lefevre, will be so good as to decide it."

"What is this question so grave, Madame," inquired the Prefect, rising, with a smile. "I am all impatience to hear it."

"The question is this, Monsieur Lefevre: Which deserves the greater credit for the recovery of my boy—Mr. Duvall, or his charming wife?"

The Prefect stepped forward, placed one hand affectionately upon Duvall's shoulder, and with the other grasped Grace by the arm.

"The question you propound, Madame," he said, looking from the detective to his wife with a smile, "is easily answered. The credit belongs equally to both. And that, my children, is as it should be. This affair, so happily terminated, has taught me one important lesson. It is this: The husband and the wife should never be in opposition to each other. They must work together always, not only in matters of this sort, but in all the affairs of life. I attempted a risky experiment in allowing these two dear friends of mine to attack this case from opposite sides. But for some very excellent strokes of luck, it might have resulted most unhappily for all concerned. Hereafter, should Monsieur Duvall and his wife serve me, it must be together, or not at all." He turned to Grace. "I feel that I owe you both a great debt, my child, for having once again so rudely interrupted the course of your honeymoon. What reparation can I make? Ask of me what you will."

"Anything?" inquired Grace, laughing.

"Anything." The Prefect bowed gallantly.

"Then I demand your promise, Monsieur, to visit us at our place in Maryland, before the end of the year."

"That," exclaimed the Prefect, as he bent and kissed her hand, "would be the most delightful way of paying a debt that I could possibly imagine."