Mlle. Fouchette Part 64

He waited and listened. Not a sound.

"Mademoiselle! Ah, ca! He is gone long ago!"

Still not a stir. Perhaps she was asleep,--or, maybe,--why, she would smother in that place!

He kicked the door impatiently. He got down upon his breast and put his ear to the crevice below. If she were prostrated he might hear her breathing.

All was silence.

This closet door was the merest sheathing, flush with the wall and covered with the same paper, after the fashion of the ancient Parisian appartements, and had nothing tangible to the grasp save the key, which was now on the inside. Jean tried to jostle this out of place by inserting other keys, but unsuccessfully.

"Sacre!" he cried, in despair; "but we'll see!"

And he hastily brought a combination poker and stove-lifter from the kitchen, and, inserting the sharp end in the crack near the lock, gave the improvised "jimmy" a vigorous wrench. The light wood-work flew in splinters.

At the same moment the interior of the closet was thus suddenly exposed to the uninterrupted view.

Jean recoiled in astonishment that was almost terror. If he had been confronted with the suspended corpse of Mlle. Fouchette he could have scarcely been more startled.

For Mlle. Fouchette was not there!

The cold sweat started out of him. He felt among his clothes,--pa.s.sed his hand over the three remaining walls. They appeared solid enough.

"Que diable! but where is she, then?" he muttered.

He was dazed,--rendered incapable of reasoning. He went around vaguely examining his rooms, peering behind curtains and even moving bits of furniture, as if Mlle. Fouchette were the elusive collar-b.u.t.ton and might have rolled out of sight somewhere among the furniture.

"Peste! this is astonishing!"

All of this time there was the lock with the key on the inside.

Without being a spiritualist, Jean felt that n.o.body but spirits could come out of a room leaving the doors locked and the keys on the inside. But for that lock, he might have even set it down to optical illusion and have persuaded himself that perhaps she had really never entered that place at all.

As Jean Marot was not wholly given to illusions or superst.i.tions, he logically concluded that there was some other outlet to that closet.

"And why such a thing as that?" he asked himself. What could it be for? Was it a trap? Perhaps it was a police souriciere? He remembered the warning of Benoit.

Jean hesitated,--quite naturally, since he was up to the tricks of the political police. If this were a trap, why, Mlle. Fouchette must have known all about it! Yet that would be impossible.

Then he thought of M. de Beauchamp, and his brow cleared. Whatever the arrangement, it could have never been designed with regard to the present occupant of the appartement,--and M. de Beauchamp had escaped.

He lighted a cigarette and took a turn or two up and down,--a habit of his when lost in thought.

"Ah! it is a door of love!" he concluded. "Yes; that is all. Well, we shall find out about that pretty soon."

The more he thought of the handsome, G.o.dlike artist who had so mysteriously fled, why, the more he recalled Mlle. Fouchette's confusion on a certain evening when he first called on her, and her recent disinclination to discuss his disappearance. He was now certain that this mysterious exit emptied into her room. He smiled at his own sagacity. His philosophy found the same expression of the cabman of Rue Monge,--

"Toujours de meme, ces femmes-la!"

He laughed at the trick she had played him; he would show her how quickly he had reached its solution. He went outside and tapped gently on her door.

No reply.

He tried the lock, but it was unyielding. Examination by the light of a match showed no key on the inside.

"Eh bien! I will go by the same route," he said, returning to his room.

He brought a lighted candle to bear on the magical closet. It proved to be, as stated, the ordinary blind closet of the ancient Parisian houses, the depth of the wall's thickness and about three feet wide; the door being flush with the wall and covered with the same paper, the opening was unnoticeable to the casual view.

All Parisian doors close with a snap-lock, and a key is indispensable.

This knowledge is acquired by the foreigner after leaving his key on the inside a few times and hunting up a locksmith after midnight.

The back of these closets, which are used for cupboards as well as receptacles for clothing, abuts on the adjoining room, quite often, in a thin sheathing of lath and plaster, which, being covered with the wall-paper, is concealed from the neighboring eyes, but through which a listener may be constantly informed as to what is going on next door.

A superficial survey of the place having developed no unusual characteristics, Jean took down all of his clothing and emptied the closet of its contents to the last old shoe.

With the candle to a.s.sist him, he then carefully examined the rear wall.

CHAPTER XVIII

Mlle. Fouchette had her reasons for not wishing to meet Inspector Loup anywhere or at any time. These reasons were especially sound, considering this particular time and place.

And that the knock on Jean's door was that of Inspector Loup she had no more doubt than if she had been confronted by that official in person.

Therefore her flight.

The visit of Inspector Loup had the same effect upon Mlle. Fouchette that the unexpected appearance of the general of an army might have upon a sleepy picket-guard or a man off post. Inspector Loup was to her a sort of human monster--a moral devil-fish--that not even the cleverest could escape if he chose to reach out for them.

Mlle. Fouchette had been seized by the tentacles of Inspector Loup in her infancy, as has been seen, and from that moment had become the creature of his imperial will,--had, in fact, finally become one of the myriad infinitesimal tentacles herself, subservient to the master-mind. Whatever scruples she had imbibed from the society of the Rendez-Vous pour Cochers had been dissipated by the Jesuit sisters of Le Bon Pasteur. In the select circle of the vagabonds of the Porte de Charenton and robbers of the wood of Vincennes the police agent was execrated, and the secret informer, or spy, was deemed the most despicable of human creatures and worthy only of a violent death; whereas the good Mother Superieure of Le Bon Pasteur encouraged the tale-bearer and rewarded the informer with her favor and the a.s.surance of the Divine blessing. Even the good Sister Agnes--now already a kind of shadowy memory--had taught the waif that spying out and reporting to the const.i.tuted authorities was commendable and honorable.

And to do Mlle. Fouchette full justice she so profited by these religious teachings that she was enabled to impart valuable inside information to Inspector Loup's branch of the government concerning the royalist plottings at Le Bon Pasteur. The importance of these revelations Mlle. Fouchette herself did not understand, but that it was of great value to the ministry--as possibly corroborating other facts of a similar nature in their possession--was evidenced by the transfer of Mlle. Fouchette's name to a special list of secret agents at the Ministry, with liberty to make special reports over the head of Monsieur l'Inspecteur himself.

From that moment the latter official watched Mlle. Fouchette with a vigilant eye; for under the spy system agents were employed to watch and report the actions of other agents. This held good from the top of the Secret Service down,--reminding one of the vermin of Hudibras that--

"had fleas to bite 'em, And these same fleas had lesser fleas, So on ad infinitum."

In Mlle. Fouchette the government had found one of the lesser fleas, but none the less sharp, shrewd, active, and unconscionable.

Up to a quite recent period.

Mlle. Fouchette's reports to the Prefecture had latterly betrayed a laxity of interest that invited official attention, if they did not call down upon her the official censure.

The girl was conscious of this. Half sullen, half defiant, she was struggling under the weight of the new views of life recently acquired. Like the rest of the intelligent world, whose wisdom chiefly consists in unlearning what it has already learned, Mlle. Fouchette was somewhat confused at the rapidity with which old ideas went to pieces and new ideas crowded upon her mind.

Because--well, because of Jean Marot.