Chapter Seven. The Peril of the Préfet.

It was a mystery of the City of Paris which engaged the trio—a secret that has never been told, though many enterprising newspapers have tried to fathom it. Here it is related for the first time.

On a gloomy mid-December morning the sensation-loving Parisians awoke to a new and eminently agreeable thrill. It was only last year and the occasion will be well remembered.

There had been trouble enough in the City of Light, which for once at any rate belied its name. A series of strikes had half-paralysed the capital. Coal and light were almost unobtainable; the public lamps remained unlit; at night the City of Pleasure was plunged in profound gloom. There were misery and wretchedness in the haunts of squalor and poverty which flanked the wealthier districts where, at a price, all things agreeable were as usual obtainable.

But the dumb underworld was becoming vocal!

“À Mort L’Assassin!” At daybreak the startling legend suddenly, and without warning, revealed itself from a thousand vantage-points to the awakening city. In crude, blazing red it flared from the hoardings—sinister, ill-omened and, above all, full of significance. Parisians alone knew.

There could be no possibility of doubt as to the individual referred to. It was, beyond question, Raoul Gregoire, the Prefect of Police, whose cold, ruthless vendetta against the dark, turbulent forces which flowed beneath the effervescent gaiety of the gay life of Paris, had earned for him the vindictive hatred of the criminal world, and had gained him his unenviable sobriquet of “Assassin!”

For months Raoul Gregoire’s life had hung by a thread. Before his appointment he had been Prefect of Finisterre. A series of efforts to “remove” him had been defeated only in the nick of time. Twice he had been badly wounded. Once a bomb had wrecked his car just after he had left it. A less courageous man would have given up the unequal contest and sought a pretext for retirement—back to the quiet, sea-beaten coast of Finisterre.

But Monsieur le Préfet was of a different mould. Stern and ruthless he was, but his courage was invincible. He remained calm and imperturbed—far more so, indeed, than many of his subordinates, who feared that the vengeance of the underworld might fall, by accident or design, upon themselves.

“Gregoire has pushed things a bit too far,” was Yvette’s verdict, as she talked over with Dick Manton and Jules the latest and most blatant challenge to the forces of the law and order. “They mean to make certain this time. I’m sure of it?”

“It certainly seems so,” Dick agreed. “But I wonder when and how it will be? That’s the point. Gregoire doesn’t show himself much in public now; he is practically living in the Prefecture, and surrounded by his agents he is far too well guarded for any attempt to be made there.”

“They will have a good chance at the Sultan’s reception,” remarked Jules reflectively. “Monsieur le Préfet will have to be in the procession—he can hardly stay away even if he wanted to. It would show the white feather.”

It was a day to which the gaiety-loving Parisians were looking forward with special interest. France’s age-long quarrel with the wild tribes of the Morocco hinterland had at length been amicably settled, and their Sultan, Ahmed Mohassib, a picturesque figure whose eccentric doings provided the gossip-loving boulevard with hundreds of good stories, was “doing” Paris as the guest of the Quai d’Orsay. It was expedient to show the barbaric ruler all the honour possible, and the following Friday was the day on which he was to pay a ceremonial visit to the Elysée. There was to be a great procession, and the Government had let the Press understand that a skilfully worked-up popular demonstration was desirable. The papers had responded nobly, and it was certain that “tout Paris” would be out to see the show.

On the occasion, at any rate, Monsieur le Préfet must be greatly in evidence. He was responsible for public order and must ride in the procession whatever the risk to himself, a plain target, for once, for the bullet or bomb of the assassin.

“To-day is Saturday,” Yvette remarked. “We really have not much time to spare between now and the twenty-second. I think I will make a few inquiries to-night. Jules had better go with me.”

Dick’s heart sank. He knew what Yvette’s “inquiries” meant—hours, perhaps days, spent in the lowest quarters of Paris, surrounded by such horrible riff-raff that if her purpose were even suspected her life would be worth hardly a moment’s purchase.

But he knew it was useless to remonstrate. Yvette had a perfect genius for “make-up,” and what was far more important, a perfect knowledge of the strange argot which served the underworld of Paris. Jules was almost as clever as Yvette. But in this particular, of course, Dick was far behind. He could not hope to sustain his part in surroundings where a single wrong word would mean instant suspicion, and probably a swift and violent death for all three.

“I wish I could go with you, Yvette,” he said wistfully, “but, alas! I know it is quite impossible.”

Yvette had many friends in the lower quarters of the Montmartre. The proprietors of many of the low buvettes of the slums—places where one could get absinthe and drugs—were secretly in her pay, and so far as they were concerned she had no fears; the traffickers trusted her because they knew their secrets were safe. And by an ingenious code system which depended upon a mere vocal inflexion of certain common words she could reveal her identity, no matter what her disguise, to those who were in her secret.

Darkness had fallen upon the city when two appalling specimens of the worst vagabondage of Paris—a man and a woman—crept silently through the market quarter towards one of Paris’s vilest haunts of villainy. They were such woebegone specimens of humanity as might have served for figures in some new “Inferno.” Bedraggled and unkempt, their hands and faces besmirched with grime, their clothes hanging in tatters, it would have been impossible for even the keenest eye to have detected the smart French girl and her usually debonair brother. So far as appearances went they were safe enough. The risk would come when they began to talk, and especially when they began to ask questions. Here a slip of the tongue might betray them. But the risk had to be taken.

The Préfet himself, quite as anxious as Dick for the safety of Yvette and Jules, had taken precautions to protect them as far as possible. Actual escort, of course, was out of the question. Both Yvette and Jules carried revolvers, but in addition Jules had concealed in the ample pockets of his villainous clothing, a tiny but delicate wireless telegraph apparatus, powerful enough upon a dry battery to send out a wireless wave which would carry a thousand yards or so.

This dainty little bit of electrical work was the invention of Dick Manton. Hardly larger than an old-fashioned watch it was operated by a hundred-volt battery which fitted into a specially made pocket, and the tiny transmitting key could be operated with one finger without arousing the slightest suspicion. Gregoire’s agents were dotted thickly around the unsavoury neighbourhood, each in touch, by means of the wireless, with every movement Yvette and Jules might make. Dick himself was not far away. How amply these precautions were justified the events of the night were to show.

For hour after hour Yvette and Jules slunk from one haunt of vice to another, always keenly on the alert, frequently helped by one or another of Yvette’s disreputable friends, but yet unable to pick up the slightest vestige of the trail of which they were in such active search.

At length their patient vigil culminated.

Plunging deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of the slums, they had penetrated at length to a tiny bar in the very lowest and most dangerous portion of the market section. The place was crowded with a mass of riff-raff at which even Yvette and Jules, accustomed as they were to such sights and sounds, could not repress a shudder.

The proprietor, as it happened, was a beetle-browed Provençal whose one redeeming feature was gratitude to Yvette. His character was utterly bad and he had been mixed up in dozens of affairs more or less disreputable. A year or two before a serious charge of which he happened to be innocent had been brought against him. Yvette had managed, with considerable trouble, to lay the real culprit by the heels, and Jules Charetier, Apache though he was, would now go through fire and water to serve her. Yvette knew that in his house she was personally far safer than she would have been in many more pretentious establishments.

Charetier raised his eyebrows when he caught the slight inflexion that instantly revealed to him Yvette’s identity. But he took no further notice beyond serving the drinks for which she had asked.

A moment later, with a significant look, he quitted the room. Yvette, with a slang caution to look after her drink for a moment, slipped into the filthy street and round the corner to the side entrance of the house. Charetier was waiting for her, and a few moments later they were seated in the man’s dingy room on the floor above the bar.

“Whatever are you doing here, mademoiselle?” Jules burst out impulsively. “This is no place, even for you!”

“Listen, Charetier,” replied the girl rapidly. “Something is brewing for next Friday. Something serious! You have seen the posters. I must find out about it. Can you tell me where any of the ‘Seven’ are to-night?”

Jules Charetier paled at the mention of “The Seven,” the powerful camarilla whose hidden influence was felt throughout the criminal underworld of Paris, London, and New York. The men who, practically without risk to themselves, were responsible for half the anarchist crimes of the three great capitals. Who they were, and their real names, not even Yvette knew. Never appearing directly themselves, they worked entirely through agents, and fighting against them, the police found themselves in a stifling fog of mystery. But, as Yvette knew, Charetier was deep in the councils of Continental Anarchism, and she knew, too, that in his hands the life of the ordinary police agent would have been worth nothing. Even for herself she was not very confident, but she had decided on a bold stroke, trusting Charetier with everything on the ground of the service she had done him.

At first the man was obdurate.

“Not even for you, my dear mademoiselle,” he said sullenly. “But, mademoiselle,” he went on earnestly, “we have been friends, therefore I implore you for your own sake to drop the matter and get away as speedily as possible. I cannot tell you anything.”

Yvette’s revolver flashed out and in an instant she had the innkeeper covered.

“Listen, Jules!” she cried imperiously. “My brother is below, and the house is surrounded. If I stamp upon the floor you will be raided instantly. And you know there are things here you would not like the police to see—they don’t know it, but you and I do! Suppose Demidoff learned that his papers had fallen into Raoul Gregoire’s hands—eh?”

For a moment Yvette thought Charetier would have risked everything and sprung at her. But it was only for a moment. Then he collapsed. It was evident he feared Demidoff, the notorious Bolshevik agent, even more than he feared the police.

“Very well, mademoiselle,” he replied, beads of perspiration standing out upon his wide white forehead and, despite his bravado, a hunted look crept into his eyes. “You might try the ‘Chat Mort.’ There will be a meeting there at three o’clock this morning. But again I implore you not to go. You cannot get in and if you did you would never come out alive.”

“In which room do they meet?” was Yvette’s only reply.

“The one at the back, looking out upon the old courtyard,” was Charetier’s reply. “I know no more than that.”

“Thanks, Charetier,” said Yvette as she rose to go.

“But, my dear mademoiselle,” implored the innkeeper, “you will not breathe—”

Yvette cut him short.

“That’s enough, Charetier,” she said in a freezing tone. “You surely know you are safe so far as I am concerned. You have done me a great service to-night and I shall not forget.” Five minutes later Yvette and Jules were hastening to the “Chat Mort,” a tavern of a gayer night-life than the one they had just quitted. It stood on the corner of two filthy slums in the Villette Quarter and at the rear was one of those tiny courtyards which so often go with old French houses—a place given over to the storage of odds and ends of flotsam and jetsam which are hardly worth the trouble of keeping, or even stealing. Only a rickety wooden fence divided it from the horrible alley deep in mud and refuse.

They realised at once that to enter the house would be impossible. It was now long past two o’clock and the street was deserted; everything was silent as the grave, and from the closely shuttered “Chat Mort” there was not a glimmer of light. To all appearances the inhabitants were soundly asleep.

But Yvette placed implicit trust in Charetier. She was sure that the mysterious meeting would be held at the appointed hour.

They crept silently to the rear of the building, cautiously forced a way through the crazy fence, and a moment later were outside the window of the room which Charetier had indicated as the meeting-place.

Crouching beneath the window they listened intently. They were safe enough except for some unforeseeable accident.

There was no sound in the room; no glimmer of light through the shutters.

Jules took from his pocket a tiny drill which speedily and silently bit a half-inch hole through the rotting woodwork of the window. Into this he thrust a plug which at the end bore an extremely delicate microphone receiver. With telephones at their ears they listened intently. Not a word would be uttered in the room without their knowledge. They could see nothing, but if anything was whispered they would certainly hear it.

The minutes dragged slowly past until just before three o’clock a slight sound caught Jules’ attention. Some one had entered the room. A moment later came the rasp of a match being struck.

Three o’clock boomed from a distant church dock. Footsteps echoed inside. The meeting was assembling!

How they longed to see into that room of mystery! But that was impossible; they must rely upon the microphone alone for all the information they could obtain. Jules’ hand sought Yvette’s wrist, and in the Morse code he tapped out with his fingers—he dared not speak—a caution to listen acutely. Their only hope of identifying the criminals was by their voices.

They could see nothing. They could not even tell how many people there were in the room. But the mutter of conversation in varying tones came dearly to their ears. It consisted mainly, as they expected, of fierce denunciation of Monsieur le Préfet of Police, whom they named “the Assassin.”

Soon it became clear that the meeting had been called solely to settle the time and place of the attack; evidently the method had been decided upon earlier. Not a single word could the listeners catch of how the attack was to be carried out, whether by bomb, or bullet, or knife. Little did they guess the secret and deadly swiftness of the anarchists’ plan.

For some time the discussion continued. Place after place was suggested and rejected upon one ground or another.

Suddenly a hard masterful voice cut across the talking.

“The Place d’Italie will be the best,” it declared. “Half the road is up there and the procession must go along the Avenue des Gobelins, close to the old villa. At that distance it will be impossible to miss. And there will be no noise and no fuss till the job is done.”

The Old Villa! Jules knew the place well—an ancient building dating back to Louis XV, solidly built, and with all the quaint architectural features of the time. Quite unsuitable for any modern purposes, its vast apartments had by degrees been turned into a queer medley of rooms which served partly as flats and partly as offices to a heterogeneous mass of tenants, many of them of more than doubtful reputation. But how any attack on Raoul Gregoire could be projected from a building which it was certain would, on the day of the procession, be packed with sightseers, Jules was at a loss to conceive.

That, however, remained to be discovered. For the moment the important thing was to capture the band of conspirators before they could make their escape.

Jules withdrew, and adjusting his portable instrument—a marvel of compactness—placed his foot against an iron lamp-post to make an earth contact, and swiftly called the Prefecture of Police by Morse.

The telephones were on his ears, and almost next second he heard the answering signal. Then he tapped out on his wireless transmitter an urgent message. A moment later he and Yvette had slipped clear of the place, and ran swiftly away. It was no part of their plan to risk recognition by any of the prisoners.

At the head of the alley they waited for about six or seven minutes, when they met Roquet, the inspector of the Sûreté, who was in charge of the detectives who were rapidly converging on the inn. To him Jules briefly explained the situation.

“We have them safely enough,” declared Roquet with a strong accent of the Midi. “Every approach has been guarded for the last hour, and no one has been allowed to pass in or out. You can now leave it to us, m’sieur.”

Yvette and Jules were glad enough to say au revoir and to hurry home for a much-needed rest. They could examine the prisoners at their leisure at the Prefecture and, if possible, identify them by their voices.

But a startling surprise awaited the detectives.

Their imperious knocking at the door of the frowsy Chat Mort at first brought no reply. A few minutes later the proprietor appeared, half-dressed and yawning drowsily as though just awakened from profound sleep. He was instantly arrested and handcuffed and the police poured into the house, revolvers drawn and ready for what they expected would be a furious combat with reckless and desperate men.

To their utter amazement the house was empty!

The room looking on to the courtyard, in which, according to Jules and Yvette, the conspirators had held their meeting, was in perfect order, apparently as it had been left the night before when the place was shut up. There was not a sign that anyone had been there for hours, not even a whiff of fresh tobacco smoke to suggest that the room had been recently occupied.

Roquet was utterly mystified. He had, with very good reason, dreamed any escape impossible. Could Jules and Yvette have been mistaken?

That, he felt, was out of the question. None the less the problem remained—where were the men? The house was speedily searched from attic to cellars, but in vain. There was not the smallest indication that any meeting had been held there!

Roquet naturally felt intensely foolish, and his embarrassment was in no way lessened by the voluble protestations of the proprietor who demanded, with every show of righteous indignation, the reason of what he was pleased to term “an outrageous domiciliary visit.” There was, of course, no charge against him, and ultimately the baffled police were compelled to release him and retire, furious and puzzled at the utter failure of what had promised to be a brilliant coup.

Three days later the mystery was solved.

From the cellar of the “Chat Mort” a narrow tunnel had been driven to an equally disreputable establishment a short distance away, and when the police had raided the house the plotters had swiftly bolted, leaving the innkeeper to drop behind them the stone slab in the cellar floor which covered the entrance to the tunnel.

The position now was grave enough, and Yvette, Jules, and Dick discussed it at length with the Préfet and his lieutenants. To all entreaties that he should stay out of the procession the Chief resolutely turned a deaf ear, and they found it impossible to shake his resolve.

Would the conspirators stick to the arrangement made at the “Chat Mort,” or would they, alarmed by the raid on the house, make an eleventh-hour change in their plans? That was the problem to be solved.

Monsieur le Préfet was living on the edge of a volcano, and all his precautions would, he feared, be of no avail against them.

Dick felt convinced they would carry out the plan arranged. It could not be imagined, he argued, that they would dream they had been overheard, and it was evident that the plan had been very carefully considered. Ultimately it was decided to relax none of the ordinary precautions, but to keep a specially close watch on the old villa in the Place d’Italie. Dick decided that, whatever the police did, he would make his own arrangements for that purpose. The sequel proved that it was well he did so.

On the night prior to the procession the police carried out a very drastic coup. Every known anarchist in Paris was arrested on some pretext or another and locked up. One by one they were briefly interrogated, while Jules and Yvette, concealed in the room behind a screen, tried to recognise any of the voices they had heard in the Chat Mort.

Fifty or sixty prisoners had been interviewed before Jules and his sister standing behind a screen heard a voice they recognised. It was that of the man who had suggested the old villa in the Place d’Italie as a suitable base for the attempt on the Préfet. None of the others could be identified, and it was evident that the worst of the miscreants were still at large.

The man whom they recognised proved to be Anton Kapok, a Hungarian of whom nothing was known except that he was in the habit of delivering violent harangues at Socialist and Anarchist meetings. But it was evident now that he was far more dangerous than the police had hitherto supposed.

Closely interrogated, he denied everything. He knew nothing, he declared, of the “Chat Mort” and had not been mixed up in any conspiracy. His Anarchist proclivities, however, he boldly admitted and declared that the police knew all there was to know about him.

To the police a search of Kapok’s room in Bellville revealed nothing more incriminating than a mass of Anarchist literature. But Dick made a discovery which they had overlooked.

Close to the ceiling, immediately above the fireplace, was suspended on two hooks what looked like a rod from which pictures might be hung. The police had, in fact, so regarded it. Dick never knew what aroused his suspicions, but something impelled him to mount a ladder and fetch the rod down. Then he made a startling discovery.

The supposed rod was nothing less than one of the wonderful blow-pipes used by some of the aboriginal tribes of South America and elsewhere to shoot their poisoned darts with which they either fought their enemies or killed dangerous animals. One of the darts, a tiny affair fashioned out of a sharp thorn with a tuft of cotton which just filled the tube, was actually in position.

Instantly Dick’s mind travelled back to the strange deaths nearly a year before of two police officials who had been specially astute in the anti-anarchist campaign. Both had been found dead in lonely streets, and in each case the only mark on the body was a tiny scratch on the cheek which no one had dreamed of connecting with their inexplicable death. As Dick gazed at the deadly blow-pipe those scratches assumed a new and sinister significance.

Carefully removing the dart, Dick hurried with it to the laboratory of Doctor Lepine, the well-known toxicologist.

Doctor Lepine smiled.

“Lucky you didn’t scratch yourself with it, Monsieur Manton,” he said in French. “It would mean almost instant death!”

He listened gravely as Dick described the death of the two police agents. The doctor had been away in England at the time and had not even heard of the circumstances. But he hurried round to the Prefecture with Dick and carefully examined the documents which dealt with the two cases and described minutely the appearance of the bodies.

“I have not the slightest doubt,” he declared, “that both men were killed with one of these darts. Every indication points to it. But as the darts were not found we must presume they were removed after death to avoid arousing suspicion. The victim would be paralysed almost instantly, and would fall and die almost on the spot where he was standing when the dart infected him. If there are any more of these accursed things in Paris it will, I fear, be a difficult matter to protect Monsieur le Préfet, for a favourable opportunity must come in the long run.”

Dick hurried back to Kapok’s room, meaning to secure the blow-pipe. To his amazement the deadly weapon had disappeared! The police agents on duty outside the room asserted that no one had entered. But an open window told its tale; some one had crept along the ledge outside, entered the room and possessed himself of the weapon.

Dick spent several anxious hours with the Préfet, Raoul Gregoire, and Inspector Roquet, arranging a plan of campaign.

Next morning found him crouched in an upper window of a locked room in a house facing the old villa in the Place d’Italie. Close at hand lay a powerful pneumatic gun, a weapon perfected by Jules and almost as deadly and efficient as a rifle. He was haunted by a sickening sense of foreboding. Against every evidence of his reason and senses he felt convinced that it was from that old villa that danger threatened Gregoire.

Yet he was bound to admit that his fears seemed absurd. The old house opposite was packed with sightseers, but there was a detective in every room close to the window. Even the garrets had been searched. It was obvious that they had not been entered for months.

Yet Dick could not shake off the uncanny feeling which haunted him.

At last the head of the procession came in sight, with the blare of military bands and a crash of cheers from the thousands of spectators lining the streets. But Dick had no eyes for the show. His whole attention was riveted on the building before him.

The Sultan Ahmed Mohassib, of Morocco, in his white burnous with many decorations, passed amid a hurricane of cheers. Glancing along the procession Dick saw the Préfet—a soldierly figure sitting erect in his car. In a few moments he would be abreast of the villa.

Suddenly Dick’s eye was caught by a flash of light. Glancing quickly upward he saw to his amazement that the window of a garret facing him—a room which had already been searched—had suddenly opened. Only the chance reflection of the sun upon the glass had attracted his attention to the swift movement.

As Raoul Gregoire passed, a dark rod, clutched in a hand which rested on the grimy windowsill, projected itself from the window. It wavered for a moment, then steadied itself and pointed downward.

Instantly Dick fired.

The hand disappeared with a jerk, while the rod slid forward and fell over to the ground!

Wild with excitement Dick dashed down into the street. It was utterly impossible to force his way through the cheering crowd and he could only watch Monsieur le Préfet in a fever of anxiety.

It was soon dear that Raoul Gregoire was untouched. Evidently the would-be assassin, if he had indeed dispatched one of the poisoned darts, had missed his aim.

Five minutes later Dick and half a dozen detectives were in the garret of the old villa. But they were too late. The bird had flown, badly hurt to judge by the blood which stained the floor. But on the window-sill lay three little poisoned darts ready for use.

A glance at the open skylight in the low roof was enough. In a moment they were out on the roof of the adjoining house.

A few yards away was a rope ladder hooked over the parapet and dangling to the exterior fire-escape leading from the roof of a big drapery store only ten feet below. The miscreant himself had vanished.

The would-be murderer, it was clear, must have climbed the fire-escape during the darkness of the previous night, and lain hidden on the roofs till the procession came along. After the garret had been searched, he had slipped down with impunity while every one was excitedly watching the procession.

They never caught him. But when Gregoire returned to the Prefecture a poisoned dart was found sticking in the upholstery of his car, close to his head. Had it been a bare half-inch lower down it would, no doubt, have struck him with fatal result. Dick’s lightning shot had spoilt the miscreant’s aim and saved the Préfet’s life.

The incident is one of the secrets of the life of official Paris and led to the Préfet’s resignation a month later, an occurrence which filled all France with dismay and was the cause of much conjecture and speculation.

Raoul Gregoire has returned to the provinces and is now Préfet of the Department of the Alpes-Maritimes an appointment which he much prefers.