'I want the dead woman's address. We shall have to notify' her relations that we are taking the body for an autopsy.'
'Durrand,' the other said, whimsically, and clapped him on the shoulder, 'your common-sense bluntness is delightful. I am sure Mademoiselle Martel's father would appreciate hearing the news broken to him in that way. No, no. I - or Captain Chaumont here - will attend to that. But be sure to let me know about the surgeon's findings on that wound. I don't think you'll discover a weapon. ... Ah, here we are! Well?'
The policeman appeared again, his cap in his hands.
'I looked at the body, monsieur,' he answered. 'I am positive that the dead woman is not the one I saw outside the museum to-night.'
Durrand and Bencolin exchanged glances. The latter asked:
'Can you give us any description of the one you saw ?'
'It is hard.' The man made gestures. 'Nothing distinctive, you understand. I think she was well dressed. I think she was a blonde, about medium size.. ..'
Durrand gave his hat a pull down on his head. 'Great God!' he said. 'How many women are there around here? We just finish getting a description of one - from the mask - and here we find a
'Why, yes, monsieur,' the policeman replied, hesitating again. 'I believe she wore a fur neckpiece and a little brown hat.'
After a long pause, during which Chaumont put his hands to his head, Bencolin bowed politely to Mile Augustin.
'The myth,' he said, 'has come to life. I bid you goodnight, mademoiselle.'
Bencolin, Chaumont, and I went out into the cool darkness of the street.
Knowing Bencolin of old, I knew, that the mere fact of the time being past one in the morning would not prevent him from routing out any person he wanted to speak with; not out of a desire to hurry, but because night and day were the same to him. He took his sleep where he found it, when he did not forget it altogether. In any case which absorbed him, he neither noticed the hour nor allowed anybody else to notice it. So when we left the museum he said, briskly:
'If you care to accompany us, Captain, Jeff and I are on a most interesting errand. First, though, I suggest a cup of coffee. I want information. So far, Captain, you are the only one who can tell me.. ..'
'Oh, I'll come,' Chaumont assented, gloomily. 'Anything to keep from going home and going to bed. That's what I can't face. I want to stay up all night.' He looked round with vigour. 'Lead on.'
Bencolin's car was parked at the corner of the Boulevard Montmartre. Near it a late cafe yawned with a dingily lit window. The pavement tables had not yet been taken in, though the pale street was deserted and a wind rattled shrewdly at the awning. Bundled into our coats, we sat down at one of the tables. Far down the boulevard was that empty glimmer, that high nimbus which shimmers round Paris by night: distantly you could hear a singing drone of traffic, pierced by the fiat quack of taxis. Dead leaves scurried in ghostly rustlings across the pavement. Nervousness had strung us all to a high pitch. When the waiter brought our glasses of hot coffee, laced with brandy, I gulped at mine greedily.
Chaumont had his coat collar turned up. He shivered.
'I am getting tired,' he said, with a sudden change of mood. 'Whom are we going to see? This weather ... '
'The man we are going to see is called Etienne Galant,' Bencolin replied. 'That is one of his names, anyhow. By the way, Jeff, you saw him to-night; he is the man I pointed out to you first in the night club. What did you think of him?'
I remembered. But the impression was almost lost in the welter of terrors which had swept over us since; I retained only a memory of green lights, horribly like those of the museum, playing over grotesque eyes and a crooked smile. 'Etienne Galant, Avenue Montaigne.' He lived in my own street, which is not occupied by those whose incomes are small. His name was known to Inspector Durrand; he seemed to have lurked over the evening, bogey fashion, from the first. I nodded.
'Who is he?'
Bencolin frowned. 'Etienne Galant, Jeff, is a very, very dangerous man. Beyond that I am not prepared to say anything just yet, except that he is in some fashion connected with to-night's events.' He pushed his coffee-glass back and forth on the table, his eyes a blank. 'I know that both of you are impatient at this working in the dark; but I promise you that if we can find him at home you will understand a great deal about to-night. You may understand it all.
He was silent a moment. A yellow leaf fluttered down under the bright lights of the awning, and trembled on the table. The cold wind crept round my ankles.
'There are Mademoiselle MarteFs parents to be notified,' Bencolin said, slowly.
‘I know. I know. It's the devil. Do you think,' Chaumont hesitated, 'we'd better telephone . .. ?'
'No. Better wait until morning. It's too late a story for to-morrow morning's newspapers, and they won't see it there. I know her father; I can spare you the duty, if you wish. .. . It's incredible!' He spoke with great intensity. 'Both girls of high family. Most people, yes. But those . .'
'What arc you hinting at?' Chaumont demanded.
'A trap,' said Bencolin. 'I don't know. My wits are fuddled. And yet I would stake my reputation that I have not misread the signs. ... I want information. Talk, Captain ! - tell me about these girls, about your fiancee and Claudine Martel.'
'But what do you want to know ?'
'Anything, everything! I'll pick out the important parts. Just talk.'
Chaumont stared straight ahead. 'Odette,' he said, in a low, thick, tense voice, 'was the loveliest...'
'Oh, damn it, I don't want that!' Bencolin so rarely lost his easy suavity, as he had lost it several times tonight, that I looked at him in surprise. He was almost biting his nails. 'Spare me the lover's point of view, please. Tell me something about her. What was she like? Who were her friends?'
Faced with the necessity for a definite answer, Chaumont groped after words. He looked at the lights in the awning, at his glass, at the leaves; he seemed to be trying to call back images, and he was slightly bewildered.
'Why ... why, she has the sweetest...' That, he decided, wouldn't do; and he checked himself, flushing. 'She lives with her mother. Her mother's a widow. She liked the house, and the gardens, and singing - yes, she was very fond of singing! And she was afraid of spiders ; she nearly had a fit when she saw them. And she reads a lot...,'
He went on in bold and clumsy outline, mixing his past and present tenses, hurrying back into his memory with jumbled, pathetic eagerness. Little incidents - Odette cutting flowers in a bright garden, Odette sliding down a hayrick, laughing - emerged to show a good-humoured, simple, and very happy girl. Behind his account of the solemn, earnest love-affair, I saw the girl in the photograph: the lovely face, the cloudy, dark hair, the small chin, the eyes which had looked at nothing save coloured picture-books. Oh, yes! All monstrously earnest, these two; their plans, their letters, under the supervision of a mother who (I gathered from Chaumont's description) was quite a woman of the world.
'She liked my being a soldier,' Chaumont told us eagerly. 'Though I'm not - much. After Saint-Cyr I was sent out, and I saw some fighting against the Riffs; but then my family got uneasy. Pah! They had me transferred to the post at Morocco. White-flannel stuff! I'm not like that. But Odette was pleased, and so —'
'I see,' Bencolin interposed, gently. 'And her friends?'
'Well, she didn't go out much. She didn't like it,' Chaumont asserted, with pride. 'There used to be three girls
