A Gentleman's Gentleman/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
AT THE MAISON D'OR
A week after this talk I left the Hôtel de Lille and took a lodging in a little house in the Rue Dupin. It was the first time in my life that ever I'd set to work to hunt a man, and I knew at the beginning of it that I had a stiff job before me. Notwithstanding the light way we had taken Michel Grey's disappearance, seven days had passed and no living soul had heard a word of him. He had gone like a light in a wind, and had left neither letter nor message. While some were bold enough to say that Nicolas Steele could have told the tale, most people were deceived by the pains my master took to trace the missing man. None the less, it was not hidden from me that the police were watching him, and that any minute he might be face to face with the greatest peril of his life.
My object in moving from the hotel to the Rue Dupin was a simple one. Jonathan Grey, the father of the missing man, had walked into the trap we had set for him like a child into a sweetstuff-shop. His answer to his daughter's cable was immediate. "Offer the reward," he said, and we had offered it. That is to say, we had printed a thousand bills and had burned them.
"Once get those bills about Paris," said I to Sir Nicolas, "and your man's here in a couple of hours. That don't suit us when ten thousand dollars are at stake—not by a long way. If Michel Grey is to be found at all, I'm going to find him, and to bank half the reward in my name. The other half is yours by every right."
"I've nothing to say against that," exclaimed he; "it's what I was thinking of myself. But ye don't tell me who's to claim the money, and all the world knowing that you're my servant. You don't forget that we're dealing with Yankees?"
"I forget nothing, sir," said I, "and that's what takes me to the Rue Dupin. The man who will claim the reward is my friend, Jim Pascoe"
"What! Jim Pascoe, the tout?"
"No other. If there's any thing in Paris that's new to him, I should be glad to hear of it. He'll do the job for a hundred pounds, and gladly."
"Ye don't fear to trust him?"
"Fear!" replied I, "why, I know enough about Jim Pascoe to buy a dozen men."
This was a true word, and half an hour after it was spoken I was seated with Jim in the little bit of a cabin in the Rue Dupin, where I told him the tale. Jim was a man who got his living the best way he could, but chiefly at Auteuil and Longchamps, and in being father-in-law to the English mugs who want to "do" Paris. If any one could say what bad become of Michel Grey, he was the man; and I'd hardly got the words out of my lips when he jumped down my throat with his theory.
"Bigg," says he, "your man's in a drug-den—and what's more, he's in a private drug-den. It's a wonder his people haven't had any note for money before this—that is, if Grey hasn't a banking account of his own in Paris."
"I don't follow you there," says I. "What do you mean by a private drug-den?"
"Why, a place where they dose 'em and bleed 'em at the same time. Such shops are cheap this way. They trap a man with cash, aud make it pleasant for him so long as his money lasts, then they knock him on the head or leave him to skip the golden gutter. You couldn't have named a worse job. I doubt that you'll ever set eyes on Grey again, if you live to be a hundred."
This was a facer! I'd thought all along that the American was laid by the heels in some opium-shop, but that we should have any difficulty in getting him out was a fact that never entered my head.
"Then you don't take the thing on, Jim?" said I.
"Oh, I'm not saying that!" cried he; "but it's worth more than a hundred. I'm like to have my head cracked before I'm out of it."
"I'll make it two hundred and fifty," said I, "and not a penny more."
"You're on," says he. " And now for a word about the chap's duds. What was he wearing when last you saw him?"
I gave him a full account of Michel Grey and his clothes, and he went away. Twenty-four hours after I got a line from him:
"Come up to the Rue de la Loire. I have found your man."
You may imagine that I didn't lose much time in doing as he asked me. While I couldn't really believe that the thing was to end in the simple way his letter made out, none the less the fact that we stood a good chance now of putting our hands on the ten thousand dollars came home to me.
"Bigg," said I, "you'll be set up for a twelve-month, and Sir Nicolas 'll be off to New York to marry a Yankee—that is, if he doesn't close on that pretty bit of goods up at the Hôtel de Lille. Was there ever such a town?"
I found Jim sitting on a dirty bed in a dirty little house near the boulevard end of the street he had named. He didn't look at all hopeful, as I expected he would, and the cigar that he held in his hand had gone out.
Well," says he, "you got my letter?"
"Why should I be here if I hadn't?" says I.
"Ah, true!" he went on; "and I may as well tell you at once—I believe your man's at the Maison d'Or, up in Montmartre."
"How did you find that out?" I asked.
"I traced him by his stick," said he; "an orange-wood cane, with a globe of silver and a little map of the world on the top of it. Is that it?"
"The same," cried I.
"And he wore a hat of black felt, large beyond usual?"
"He did that."
"Then he's at the Maison d'Or; and how we're to get him out, God knows."
"Why, what's the difficulty?"
"I don't like the house," says he, shifting his eyes curiously.
"But what's the matter with it?"
"Oh, there's nothing the matter with it—except that a good many who go in never come out again. I've no fancy for that myself."
"Jim," says I, "you haven't got the heart of a rabbit. What nonsense you're talking! Take me up to the shop, and let me have a look at it."
"I was going to suggest that," says he. "It 'll be dark in an hour, and no one to tread on our heels. I know the woman who keeps the cabaret at the back of the place. It was from the top of a shed in her garden that I looked down into the lower rooms."
"Why not knock at the door at once and have done with it?" says I.
"It would be worth more than your life or mine to do that," cried he. "All the neighborhood knows it. There's not a man that would venture in."
"Then what makes you think that this Grey is there?"
"He was two days at an opium-den in the Rue d'Oran, which is not a stone's- throw off, and was last seen at the cabaret I speak of. He was then with the man who runs the Maison d'Or. Folks knew him from my description of his hat and stick. I guessed at once that I should hear of him in a drug-shop. That's what took me to the Rue d'Oran."
"You're friends with the woman who runs this beer-shop, did you say?"
"The best possible, though I wouldn't walk with her in the Bois—not for choice, leastwise."
"Then let's get up there at once. If Grey is in the shop, the closer the eye we keep on it the better."
He assented to this, and we went off together in a closed cab. It was then almost full dusk, and threatening for a wet night. In fact, we hadn't got to the top of the Rue du Faubourg when the rain began to pelt down in earnest, the people scuttling into the cafés, and the water flooding the gutters. When at last our rickety old cab began to lumber up the slopes of Montmartre, the lamps in the streets were dancing before a stiff west wind, and the sky above us was black as ink. Where we'd got to, I couldn't for the life of me tell; but by and by Jim stopped the driver before a third-rate drinking-den, and we stepped out in a dirty street, where the mud was almost up to our ankles.
"This is the place," said he; while it rained so fast that the water began to run off his hat. "Jam your tile over your eyes, and follow me. You will want a twenty-franc piece to shut the old woman's mouth. After that, it's easy."
He led the way into a bit of a bar, where four or five shabby customers were drinking beer and talking to women who matched them down to the ankles. But we weren't there more than a moment, for after a word in French lingo to the chap who served the drink, we passed on to a small parlor which overlooked a bit of a yard. Here a squat little woman, who didn't appear to have washed her face for a fortnight, was in talk with a girl who had a guitar in her hand—a poor, bespangled, squalid-looking wretch, who made her living, I don't doubt, by capering about before the scum in the bar. They left off when we came in, and then Jim fell to parleying with the woman, and a fine noise they made of it.
"She thinks you're a nark," said he to me in the middle of it. "Give us the twenty-franc piece, and see if that will cool her."
I handed him over the money, and they got to work again. This time the woman took it different; and when I'd whispered to him to promise her twenty francs more when we were through, she left off talking of a sudden, and led us down some dark stairs to a stinking kitchen where I wouldn't have housed a dog. Two minutes after we were out in the back yard, and she had left us.
"Now," said Jim, "we're the better for wanting her, though she's a wonderful woman when you take her right. The fact is, she's just as crazy as the others about that house yonder, and is half afeared of having any thing to do with us. But she's lent me the steps, and that's all I care a crack about."
It was raining cats and dogs now, and bitter cold, but we were both excited by what we'd come to do, and didn't feel it more than the touch of a feather. For my part, I'd thought little of the danger up to that time, but when I stood out in that dark yard and looked up to the black shape of a windowless and prison-like house, I must say that I got a shiver through me.
"Jim," said I, "two's not many for a job like this. Did you bring your pistol?"
"I did so," he whispered. "You don't find me going far without it in Paris. Will you go first, or shall I?"
"You go," said I, "since you know the way. I'm on your heels—though what you're to see through that wall I'd like to learn."
"There's windows on the lower story," cried he; "but keep your mouth shut, and tread light."
Saying this, he went up the steps, and I followed him. I have made it plain, I think, that the cabaret or beer-shop, or whatever you like to call it, stood back to back with the house we'd come to enquire about. There was only a yard and a high wall between them; but at the end of this yard, and jammed up against the wall, was a shed for lumber, so built that when you set the steps on its roof you could put your fingers on the top of the bricks above and haul yourself up. It didn't take Jim and I a minute to do this; and once astride the wall, we had our first view of the Maison d'Or.
I must say, and I always have said, that there was something uncanny in the very look of that house. Its heavy, blackened shape seemed to rise up like the shape of a dead-house or a prison. Many of its lower windows were heavily barred with iron bars. The paved yard around it was reeking with filth and rubbish. No sound, no light came out of it. It was just a great mass of brick-work looming up in the darkness, and I could understand easily enough how all the wild tales about it had come to be told. Sitting there, astride on the wall, and peering at such casements as faced the back of the cabaret, I should not have been a bit surprised if I'd have seen some inhuman thing stalking the yard below me. My heart was in my mouth—my nerves twitched like a woman's. And Jim was not a whit better.
"Do you make any thing of it?" he whispered, after we'd been on the wall a minute or two.
"The devil a bit!" said I.
"It ain't exactly a palace of varieties, is it?" he continued presently; "but Grey's in there, right enough. It was through that mite of a window on your left that I got a sight of the place last night. There was a light there then. I don't fancy we'll do much to-night."
"Nor me neither," said I, for I was right down scared, and that's the fact of it.
"Shall we try again to-morrow night?" said he, and I could see he was in a hurry to be off.
"We might as well, for all the good we're doing," said I; and with that I turned to put my foot on the steps again. A moment later I saw a thing which fairly took my breath away.
The window which was dark had suddenly become light. A man with a lamp in his hand passed it, and following him with quick steps was no other than my master, Nicolas Steele.
"Good God!" said I, half aloud, in spite of myself. "What are you doing in there?" and then, as I'm a man, I began to tremble. But Jim had already turned on me.
"Bigg," cried he, "you're playing me double! What's Nicolas Steele doing in there?"
"Ask me another," said I. "It's a thing I can't tell you."
"But I can!" said he, and he was angry too. "He's gone to get Grey out and claim the money."
"Jim, shut your mouth," said I, "and don't make him out the biggest fool alive!"
"You're playing me false!" cried he, raising his voice sillily.
"No such thing," said I. "And look here—I'll prove it. I'm going in after him."
"You are!" exclaimed he. "Then I'll say 'Good-evening' to you."
"Jim," said I, "don't you see it may be a matter of life or death with him? Help me in this, and I'll give you another hundred."
"Help you—how can I help you?"
"I'll tell you in a word. Run into the beer-shop there, and bring all the men you can find to these leads. Promise them twenty francs apiece to shout when I call to them. They'll do it quick enough if you say the police are with us on the other side."
"But you, yourself?"
"I'm going to throw these steps across the gap there, and force that window. After that, I'm trusting to bluff."
"You take your life in your hands," said he.
"Don't you trouble about that. You get the men. Quick's the word for this job."
He didn't wait for any more, but tumbled down to the shed again, and when I had waited five minutes and had seen him come out with half a dozen loafers at his tail, I dragged the steps up to the top of the wall, and then used them to bridge the gap which lay between the little window and myself. Luckily, the sill was old and broad; and though the window itself was not more than three feet square, it was unbarred. At any other time, I might have been a bit giddy clambering across that gap, for there was a drop of near twenty feet below me, but there were too many things running in my head to let me think of that, and half a minute hadn't gone before I had forced the window with my pocket-knife and dropped into a narrow passage on the second floor of the Maison d'Or.
Ten seconds, perhaps, I stood to assure myself that I was all right. Then I drew my revolver, and putting it to the full cock, I began to look about me. It was plain in a minute that I was in a passage with doors opening down one side of it. The glimmer of a light showed at the far end; but elsewhere it was all dark, and, what was more, strangely silent. The air itself was heavy, like the air of a bakehouse. I had to gasp for my breath; there was a choking sensation in my throat which nearly made me faint. Stinking fumes, like the fumes of stale opium, filled all the corridor and seemed to exude from the rooms. I staggered under the power of them, and had to bite my lips to prevent myself coughing.
So far as furniture went, there was little that I could see in the passage. A heavy carpet was soft to the feet, and thick curtains, made of some soft stuff, were hung over the openings to the doors. Yet what appeared more curious than any thing was the queer silence in the place. While I stood there, half choking for my breath, and half hidden behind one of the thickest of the curtains, I didn't hear so much as a creak of a door or the fall of a foot. The house might have been a dead-house with spectres for tenants.
You may ask me, fairly enough, what I had meant to do when I crossed the gap and forced my way into this queer place. I can only answer that I know no more than the dead. What I did was done on impulse. It was only when I stood in the passage, and heard my heart beating like a machine, that I began to think what a fool I had made of myself. And I must have stood there five minutes, afraid to go on, afraid to go back, when all of a sudden some one else decided for me. A door opened not two yards away, and out walked Sir Nicolas Steele and a little Frenchman. They were talking together angrily; and they went straight down the passage and turned the corner where the light was.
Though the door of the room from which they had come had only been open for a moment, I had seen a sight strange enough to have upset a stronger man than me. In a great Eastern-like room, all lit up with queer-colored lanterns, and having a fountain of water splashing in the middle of it, some twenty men were lying on little beds. Most of them looked to me to be dead with sleep, but one was raving, with his face buried in his pillow, while another seemed to be crawling on his hands and knees to the water which bubbled under the dome. The door was only open a second, as I say, but the view behind it gave me a shiver, and the shiver was still on me when, treading like a cat, I followed my master down the passage and came within a yard of him at the corner of it.
I was now near by the light, but curtains, hung crosswise in the passage, hid me well enough. I could see from my place that Sir Nicolas was arguing with the Frenchman at the top of a little flight of iron stairs. When they had talked for about a minute the Frenchman pointed to a door at the bottom of the flight, and my master made a step downward as though to reach the door. But his foot was hardly on the stairs when something happened which sent me as stiff as a corpse, and drew from me a cry which might have come from a madman. The stairs which I had seen a minute before I saw no longer. They had swung away under my master's touch, and with another cry joined to mine, he went headlong down to the floor below.
What happened in the next few minutes I can hardly tell. I remember, perfectly, that the Frenchman stood for a minute glaring at me, and hissing words between his teeth. Then he pressed a knob on the railings at his side, and the staircase swung back into its place.
So astonished was I to see such a thing that I never thought of the danger to myself. All that I could do was to stand and stare like one bewitched, and I don't believe that I had moved foot or hand when the man closed with me, and we went rolling over and over on the floor together. Strong man as I am, I don't think that I have ever been so near to death as I was that night. Now up, now down, with the cold sweat on my forehead, and the devil's fingers tearing the flesh out of my neck, I halloed to Jim to help me, and fought the Frenchman through. When I had done with him at last, I was covered with blood—but it was Jim who pulled me to my feet, Jim and Michel Grey, who stood, half-dressed, in the passage.
The noise and din which followed this business is not to be described by any man like me. While I stood half-blinded, and with roaring sounds in my ears, gendarmes seemed to be filling all the Maison d'Or. But I had my wits about me, and I turned to Jim.
"Get Grey out," said I, "and take him in a cab to the Hôtel de Lille. We'll lose the reward if you don't. Tell him his father's there. I'm after Sir Nicolas."
"Is he here?" he asked, as he went to do what I bid him.
"God knows whether he is alive or dead," said I; and with that I called to the gendarmes and showed them the swinging staircase.
Five minutes after, we were down in a filthy cellar, standing over the motionless body of my master. But his groans told us that he lived, and when lights were brought we knew to what he owed his life. He had fallen on the dead body of another victim of the Maison d'Or.
••••••
Well, that's the story of the phantom staircase, though there are some things left you might like to know. How did Sir Nicolas Steele come to the shop, for instance? Why, it appeared that after they had got Grey in the house—which was one of the largest and one of the lowest dens in Paris—they'd kept him drunk with the drug, in the hope that he'd add more money to what they'd robbed him of. On the day Jim and I set out for the cabaret, Grey had sent a messenger down to the Hôtel de Lille to get some of his traps and things. Sir Nicolas came across this messenger, and bribed the whole tale out of him. After that, he didn't want to lose a minute tracing the man, and he went straight off to Montmartre, leaving word at the police-station of what he'd done. The police had long been watching the shop, and when they heard that an Englishman was going there, they sent gendarmes after him—and lucky, too, or this story would not have been written.
How Sir Nicolas was so foolish as to stand between us and the chance of a reward, I only learned when he came to consciousness, nine days after we took him off the dead man's body in the cellar.
"And didn't I begin to be afraid of the whole thing?" said he. "Sure, the police were watching me night and day just as if I was a murderer. Reward or no reward, I was glad to have done with it."
And that was the truth, though old Jonathan Grey, after he'd heard what the police had to say, paid over every shilling of the money he'd promised, and gave me a hundred more for myself. But he was out of Paris while my master lay unconscious, and though Dora Grey cried enough for three, her studies in painting closed on the spot.
The Maison d'Or is pulled down now. I've no doubt myself that many a good man walked down those steps to his death. A more cunning trap you couldn't find. The whole flight of steps swung on a hinge at the top, and was caught at the bottom by a bit of the landing which projected, and which a spring held in its place. And it was a better weapon for a rogue than any knife or pistol.