various parts of Paris, including the Fifteenth and Sixteenth. Probably also the Twelfth and Twentieth. Seems to have done a good deal of night work. Also to have been embittered by his dismissal. What?”
The way Saillard pronounced that last word gave Lec?ur renewed hope.
“Sergeant Loubet? Yes, I remember the name, though I never actually came across him. Three years ago! You wouldn’t know where he lived, I suppose? Somewhere near Les Halles?”
Three years ago. No, it wouldn’t do. and Lec?ur’s heart sank again. You could hardly expect a man to bottle up his resentments for three years and then suddenly start hitting back.
“Have you any idea what became of him? No, of course not. And it’s not a good day for finding out.”
He hung up and looked thoughtfully at Lec?ur. When he spoke, it was as though he was addressing an equal.
“Did you hear? Sergeant Loubet. He was constantly getting into trouble and was shifted three or four times before being finally dismissed. Drink. That was his trouble. He took his dismissal very hard. Guillaume can’t say for certain what has become of him, but he thinks he joined a private detective agency. If you’d like to have a try —”
Lec?ur set to work. He had little hope of succeeding, but it was better to do something than sit watching for the little lamps in the street-plan. He began with the agencies of the most doubtful reputation, refusing to believe that a person such as Loubet would readily find a job with a reputable firm. Most of the offices were shut, and he had to ring up their proprietors at home.
“Don’t know him. You’d better try Tisserand in the Boulevard Saint-Martin. He’s the one who takes all the riffraff.”
But Tisserand, a firm that specialized in shadowings, was no good, either.
“Don’t speak to me of that good-for-nothing. It’s a good two months or more since I chucked him out, in spite of his threatening to blackmail me. If he ever shows up at my office again, I’ll throw him down the stairs.”
“What sort of job did he have?”
“Night work. Watching blocks of flats.”
“Did he drink much?”
“He wasn’t often sober. I don’t know how he managed it, but he always knew where to get free drinks. Blackmail again, I suppose.”
“Can you give me his address?”
“Twenty-seven bis. Rue du Pas-de-la-Mule.”
“Does he have a telephone?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve never had the slightest desire to ring him up. Is that all? Can I go back to my game of bridge?”
The Inspector had already snatched up the telephone directory and was looking for Loubet’s number. He rang up himself. There was now a tacit understanding between him and Lec?ur. They shared the same hope, the same trembling eagerness, while Olivier, realizing that something important was going on, came and stood near them.
Without being invited, Andre did something he wouldn’t have dreamed of doing that morning. He picked up the second earphone to listen in. The bell rang in the flat in the Rue du Pas-de-la-Mule. It rang for a long time, as though the place was deserted, and his anxiety was becoming acute when at last it stopped and a voice answered.
Thank Heaven! It was a woman’s voice, an elderly one. “Is that you at last? Where are you?”
“Hallo! This isn’t your husband here. Madame.”
“Has he met with an accident?”
From the hopefulness of her tone, it sounded as though she had long been expecting one and wouldn’t be sorry when it happened.
“It is Madame Loubet I’m speaking to, isn’t it?”
“Who else would it be?”
“Your husband’s not at home?”
“First of all, who are you?”
“Inspector Saillard.”
“ What do you want him for?”
The Inspector put his hand over the mouthpiece to say to Lec?ur: “Get through to Janvier. Tell him to dash round there as quick as he can.”
“Didn’t your husband come home this morning?”
“You ought to know! I thought the police knew everything!”
“Does it often happen?”
“That’s his business, isn’t it?”
No doubt she hated her drunkard of a husband, but now that he was threatened she was ready to stand up for him.
“I suppose you know he no longer belongs to the police force.”
“Perhaps he found a cleaner job.”
“When did he stop working for the Agence Argus?”
“What’s that? What are you getting at?”
“I assure you, Madame, your husband was dismissed from the Agence Argus over two months ago.”
“You’re lying.”
“Which means that for these last two months he’s been going off to work every evening.”
“Where else would he be going? To the Folies Bergere?”
“Have you any idea why he hasn’t come back today? He hasn’t telephoned, has he?”
She must have been afraid of saying the wrong thing, for she rang off without another word.
When the Inspector put his receiver down, he turned round to see Lec?ur standing behind him, looking away. In a shaky voice, the latter said:
“Janvier’s on his way now.”
He was treated as an equal. He knew it wouldn’t last, that tomorrow, sitting at his switchboard, he would be once more but a small cog in the huge wheel.
The others simply didn’t count—not even his brother, whose timid eyes darted from one to the other uncomprehendingly, wondering why, if his boy’s life was in danger, they talked so much instead of doing something.
Twice he had to pluck at Andre’s sleeve to get a word in edgewise.
“Let me go and look for him myself,” he begged.
What could he do? The hunt had widened now. A description of ex-Sergeant Loubet had been passed to all police stations and patrols.
It was no longer only a boy of ten who was being looked for, but also a man of fifty-eight, probably the worse for drink, dressed in a black overcoat with a velvet collar and an old grey-felt hat, a man who knew his Paris like the palm of his hand, and who was acquainted with the police.
Janvier had returned, looking fresher than the men there in spite of his night’s vigil.
“She tried to slam the door in my face, but I’d taken the precaution of sticking my foot in. She doesn’t know anything. She says he’s been handing over his pay every month.”
“That’s why he had to steal. He didn’t need big sums. In fact, he wouldn’t have known what to do with them. What’s she like?”
“Small and dark, with piercing eyes. Her hair’s dyed a sort of blue. She must have eczema or something of the sort—she wears mittens.”
“Did you get a photo of him?”
“There was one on the dining-room sideboard. She wouldn’t give it to me, so I just took it.”
A heavy-built, florid man, with bulging eyes, who in his youth had probably been the village beau and had conserved an air of stupid arrogance. The photograph was some years old. No doubt he looked quite different now.
“She didn’t give you any idea where he was likely to be, did she?”
“As far as I could make out, except at night, when he was supposed to be at work, she kept him pretty well
