Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 36, No. 4, October 20, 1928

“Now, listen, young lady — I want you to arrange to get together all of this junk you have or can find and let me look at it and perhaps bring a friend of mine along who is in a way better qualified than I to pass on the stones. You can surely have no objection to that. He is as dumb as an oyster when it comes to talking.”

Without waiting for her to answer and realizing this was a good time to press the point, “You arrange to do what I say as soon as possible. And then — it may be I will want you to show me how to outwit the customs officials on the United States end of this proposition. You understand?”

“Perfectly,” answered the girl quick as a flash. The possession of the money cash in hand had put her in an excellent humor. Money after all does talk.

The Mysterious Theft

“There is no time like the present. Meet me — let me see—” She paused an instant as though debating something in her mind. “Meet me — at my apartment, No. 10 Rue de Poitiers. Ask the conceirge to show you my suite.

“And — if agreeable to you, monsieur, let us make the hour — midnight. That will be easy to remember. Midnight sharp. We will have a little trip to make. I will furnish the automobile.”

“Agreed,” I replied, “and it is all right for me to bring my friend the jewel expert and connoisseur?”

“As you will, monsieur,” smiled the girl. “You have trusted me. I shall now proceed to trust you — to the limit. But remember — in these purchases you make of me no one must know of the transactions but you.

“For you must know, my friend, the authorities, the office of the Sûreté Gencrale of France and of the Préfet of Police of Paris, they are all what we may call — extremely — nosey.”

We walked together to mademoiselle’s quarters on rue de Poitiers where I left her. As soon as I was safely around a corner on rue du Bac I signaled Hobbs, using the same thin, shrill whistle made with tongue and teeth he knew so well — and difficult to place for one unaccustomed to it.

When Hobbs joined me I gave him certain instructions for the night’s work, which he was to pass on to the boy Pierre and the rest of my operatives. I then drove directly to M. Payon’s home on rue Merceau and showed him the bracelet.

“Mon Dieu!” exclaimed the police official, “it is the identical bracelet that was stolen from the Comtesse Eandres a fortnight ago. The theft occured under the most mysterious circumstances at a ball given at the Belgian embassy. Monsieur, I have the honor to salute you as clever. Consider myself and staff under your orders.”

It was then quickly arranged between us that he should pose as the jewel expert and connoisseur on the trip mademoiselle had said we would be called upon to make. The chauffeur would be one of his picked men. After some further discussion as to details, we arranged to meet at Mlle. Bizot’s apartment at midnight.

A Dangerous Den

Exactly on the stroke of the hour M. Payon and myself ascended in the lift to the girl’s apartment and rapped on the door. It was opened by the old hag. The girl was dressed ready to go out. She was apparently at her ease in the presence of M. Payon who looked the part he was prepared to play and nothing more than that.

He was a small, dark, wiry little man with a Vandyke beard and glasses, quite scholarly in appearance. I introduced him as M. Potin. I was known to her as Frederic Chapman.

The girl wore a light tan, short outer coat, trimmed with beaver, and a jaunty cap to match, all distinctly à la mode. She carried a hand bag which I surmised contained a pistol.

As we started downstairs she unbuttoned her coat and snapped the bag onto a neat leather belt she wore around the waist of her suit, which was apparently of a very dark-blue cheviot. She looked stunning, to say the least. We were ready to start, and as we stepped into the private limousine which evidently belonged to her she gave her chauffeur an address that astounded me for a moment.

“François’s place on the Marne — you know.”

“Oui — oui — mademoiselle,” replied the chauffeur quickly, snapping to a salute.

François’s place on the Marne, in the edge of the forest of Vincennes, was the very Apache hangout to which I had recently sent Hobbs for possible information. A dangerous den of murderous and thieving rogues — one of the toughest caldrons of iniquity to be found within the realms of crookdom!

Ready for Action

A veritable canakin of the barbarous, half civilized, untamable Apache; and yet François — bullet-headed, beady-eyed, serpent-faced François — had sworn he was my friend when I had saved him once from the all-devouring maw of the criminal law machine in France.

By one thirty o’clock M. Payon and myself sat opposite Mlle. Jeanne Bizot at a table in a back room of François’s dive on the Marne. A door, now closed, opened into the main room of the café.