The Greatest Works of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes
"I suppose that the first thing to do is to take this Mr. Stephens' advice?"
"Why, of course, father! Will you, or shall I, go to the Prefecture of Police?"
"Well, Gerald, I have bethought myself of that courteous President of the French Senate who wrote me such a pleasant note when we first arrived in Paris this time. No doubt he would give me a personal introduction to the Prefect of Police."
"Why, father, that's a first rate idea! Hadn't you better go right now and get it?"
"Yes, perhaps I had; and meanwhile you can tell the poor little woman that her friend will be here on Friday."
"Yes, I will. And father? May I tell Daisy that now you agree with me about Mrs. Dampier--that you no longer believe the Poulains' story?"
"No," said Senator Burton a little sternly. "You are to say nothing of the sort, Gerald. I have only known this girl three days--I have known the Poulains nine years. Of course it's a great relief to me to learn that Mrs. Dampier's account of herself is true--so far as you've been able to ascertain such a fact in a few minutes' conversation with an unknown man over the telephone--but that does not affect my good opinion of the Poulains."
And on this the father and son parted, for the first time in their joint lives, seriously at odds the one with the other.
"Give you an introduction to our Prefect of Police? Why, certainly!"
The white-haired President of the French Senate looked curiously at the American gentleman who had sought him out at the early hour of eleven o'clock.
"You will find Monsieur Beaucourt a charming man," he went on. "I hear nothing but good of the way he does his very difficult work. He is a type to whom you are used in America, my dear Senator, but whom we perhaps too often lack in France among those who govern us. Monsieur Beaucourt is a strong man--a man who takes his own line and sticks to it. I was told only the other day that crime had greatly diminished in our city since he became Prefect. He is thoroughly trusted by his subordinates, and you can imagine what that means when one remembers that our beautiful Paris is the resort of all the international rogues of Europe. And if they tease us by their presence at ordinary times, you can imagine what it is like during an Exhibition Year!"
Chapter IX
In all French public offices there is a strange mingling of the sordid and of the magnificent.
The Paris Prefecture of Police is a huge, quadrangular building, containing an infinity of bare, and to tell the truth, shabby, airless rooms; yet when Senator Burton had handed in his card and the note from the President of the French Senate, he was taken rapidly down a long corridor, and ushered into a splendid apartment, of which the walls were hung with red velvet, and which might have been a reception room in an Italian Palace rather than the study of a French police official.
"Monsieur le Préfet will be back from déjeuner in a few minutes," said the man, softly closing the door.
The Senator looked round him with a feeling of keen interest and curiosity. After the weary, baffling hours of fruitless effort in which he had spent the last three days, it was more than pleasant to find himself at the fountainhead of reliable information.
Since the far-off days when, as a boy, he had been thrilled by the brilliant detective stories of which French writers, with the one outstanding exception of Poe, then had a monopoly, there had never faded from Senator Burton's mind that first vivid impression of the power, the might, the keen intelligence, and yes, of the unscrupulousness, of the Paris police.
But now, having penetrated into the inner shrine of this awe-inspiring organism, he naturally preferred to think of the secret autocratic powers, and of the almost uncanny insight of those to whom he was about to make appeal. Surely they would soon probe the mystery of John Dampier's disappearance.
The door opened suddenly, and the Paris Prefect of Police walked into the room. He was holding Senator Burton's card, and the letter of introduction with which that card had been accompanied, in his sinewy nervous looking hand.
Bowing, smiling, apologising with more earnestness than was necessary for the few moments the American Senator had had to await his presence, the Prefect motioned his guest to a chair.
"I am very pleased," he said in courtly tones, "to put myself at the disposal of a member of the American Senate. Ah, sir, your country is a wonderful country! In a sense, the parent of France--for was not America the first great nation to become a Republic?"
Senator Burton bowed, a little awkwardly, in response to this flowery sentiment.
He was telling himself that Monsieur Beaucourt was quite unlike the picture he had mentally formed, from youth upwards, of the Paris Prefect of Police.
There was nothing formidable, nothing for the matter of that in the least awe-inspiring, about this tired, amiable-looking man. The Prefect was also lacking in the alert, authoritative manner which the layman all the world over is apt to associate with the word "police."
Monsieur Beaucourt sat down behind his ornate buhl writing-table, and shooting out his right hand he pressed an electric bell.
With startling suddenness, a panel disappeared noiselessly into the red velvet draped wall, and in the aperture so formed a good-looking young man stood smiling.
"My secretary, Monsieur le Sénateur--my secretary, who is also my nephew."
The Senator rose and bowed.
"André? Please say that I am not to be disturbed till this gentleman's visit is concluded." The young man nodded: and then he withdrew as quickly, as silently, as he had appeared; and the panel slipped noiselessly back behind him.
"And now tell me exactly what it is that you wish me to do for you," said the Prefect, with a weary sigh, which was, however, softened by a pleasant smile. "We are not as omnipotent as our enemies make us out to be, but still we can do a good deal, and we could do a good deal more were it not for the Press! Ah, Monsieur le Sénateur, that is the only thing I do not like about your great country. Your American Press sets so bad, so very bad, an example to our poor old world!"
A thin streak of colour came into Monsieur Beaucourt's cheek, a gleam of anger sparkled in his grey eyes.
"Yes, greatly owing to the bad example set in America, and of late in England too, quite a number of misguided people nowadays go to the Press before they come to us for redress! All too soon," he shook a warning finger, "they find they have entered a mouse-trap from which escape is impossible. They rattle at the bars--but no, they are caught fast! Once they have brought those indefatigable, those indiscreet reporters on the scene, it is too late to draw back. They find all their most private affairs dragged into the light of day, and even we can do very little for them then!"
Senator Burton nodded gravely. He wished his son were there to hear these words.
"And now let us return to our muttons," said the Prefect leaning forward. "I understand from the President of the Senate that you require my help in a rather delicate and mysterious matter."
"I do not know that the matter is particularly delicate, though it is certainly mysterious," and then Senator Burton explained, in as few and clear words as possible, the business which had brought him there--the disappearance, three days before, of the English artist, John Dampier, and of the present sad plight of Dampier's wife.
Monsieur Beaucourt threw himself back in his chair. His face lit up, it lost its expression of apathetic fatigue; and his first quick questions showed him a keen and clever cross-examiner.
At once he seized on the real mystery, and that though the Senator had not made more of it than he could help. That was the discrepancy in the account given by the Poulains and by Mrs. Dampier respectively as to the lady's arrival at the hotel.
But even Monsieur Beaucourt failed to elicit