Apparently the pair did not see him. They walked down the street, talking earnestly. Bailey shook off his numbed surprise, and followed them. A question kept hammering in his brain. What was Denise doing with the Beau? What possible connection could his little sweetheart have with the most notorious criminal in Europe?
III
Bailey could have arrested Nash then and there, but the human instinct to find out what Denise was doing with this man overrode his first impulse to take the fellow into custody. They were in no hurry, made no effort at concealment, and Bailey, sheltered by the flowing stream of pedestrians, kept within easy reach of them.
At length they turned into the Place Moreau. It was market day, and even though late in the afternoon, the square was crowded. Sabots clattered on the cobble-stones; hogs squealed, ducks squawked; red-faced peasant women shouted prices for their fish and fowl and vegetables. Here wandered a steel helmeted poilu or a brown Tommy, there a pigeon-chested gendarme, flecks of color in the dull mass.
As Bailey started to cross the square three men stepped in his path. They were Parisians, of Montmartre or the outer boulevards. The cut of their clothes, a swagger from the hips and an unhealthy color proved that. They stopped him effectively without apparently attempting such a thing.
“Hello, American,” whined one. “We desire only the small courtesy of a match.”
“I’m in a hurry,” Bailey snapped, thrusting the spokesman to one side. “Get out of the way.”
Every bit of color fled from the apache’s face; his lips tightened into a white gash, and there was such malignant hatred in his eyes that Bailey’s hand involuntarily reached toward his hip. If ever murder was written in? a human expression it was there in the Frenchman’s. Then the agent laughed, reached over and grasped the fellow’s wrist and twisted it until he howled with pain. The others, being cowards at heart, surged back. Bailey hurried across the square. But in the moment the Parisians had engaged his attention, Nash and Denise had disappeared.
Bailey was not a man to cry over spilt milk, but he was thoroughly disgusted at the turn affairs had taken. Much as he wanted to allow Nash further liberty so that he could discover the relationship between him and Denise it had become imperative to get the man under lock and key.
He telephoned to Captain Goulet, the prefect. It was Bailey’s plan to have a drag-net thrown around the city in the event of Nash’s attempting to slip out, and also to have the Place Moreau quarter thoroughly searched at once.
“Yes?” came Captain Goulet’s voice over the wire.
“This is Bailey.”
“Oh, Monsieur Bailey, I have the most—”
“Just a moment, Captain. You remember that I identified the man who was murdered on the Marseilles express as Beau Nash. Shortly after leaving your office I saw Nash on the street, but he gave me the slip—”
“You—you saw Nash on the street?” asked the captain thickly. “Oh, mon Dieu! This matter is getting beyond our mortal bonds.”
“What do you mean?”
“The body of the man you identified as Nash has disappeared from the table in the mortuary!”
Bailey sucked in his breath In a gasp of surprise.
“Disappeared?”
“Of a certainty.”
“And I saw Nash in the street five minutes afterward. I wonder—”
“Did you—did you notice his throat, monsieur?”
“He wore a muffler,” said Bailey impatiently, “wrapped in two or three folds around his neck.”
“Then it was him,” wailed the prefect. “I fear nothing human, monsieur, but this has gotten beyond our realm. The man who lay on this table was as dead as Pontius Pilate—to that I’ll swear. Yet he disappears from my mortuary, and you meet him on the street. What can one do against a cadaver, monsieur?”
“Nonsense. Have all the stations and wharves watched, and send a dozen men down here to search the neighborhood, Dead or alive, we’re going to get Beau Nash. And I think that he will be able to tell us a few things to clear up the mystery of the Marseilles express. Will you do as I ask?”
“At once, monsieur.”
Bailey thoughtfully hung up the receiver, and walked again into the Place Moreau.
The shadows had lengthened. The hucksters in the square were packing up their stands and wares. In ten minutes more the place would be deserted, and then the police would come down like the historic Assyrian wolves—probably with as small success.
Looking up from his musings, Bailey saw Denise step out of a taverne on the farther side of the square. She looked around cautiously. Then, having reconnoitered the ground to her evident satisfaction, she went back into the house. Bailey ran across the street, shifting his revolver from his hip pocket to the side one of his coat.
The entrance from which Denise had looked did not lead through the café, but directly up a flight of stairs to the second floor. Its door was unlocked, and the agent pushed it open and went in.
No one there.
With his hand on the butt of his weapon, Bailey went up. Under his cautious step the ratty old stairway squeaked like an unoiled hinge. The place was dark as a well, and rank with the thousand odors of a cheap restaurant. Somewhere above lay the key to the most puzzling mystery that Bailey had ever investigated.
At the head of the second flight a gas jet burned blue in the foul air. Within the arc of its sickly radiance the portal of a room swung slightly ajar. He tiptoed forward, and urged the door open an inch or more. Every muscle in his body was tensed for the possible struggle.
Peering into the room, he caught the darker hulk of a bed in the gloom. From the arrangement of the bed-clothing it looked as though someone were sprawled on it. But, strain his ears as he might, Bailey could not hear that person breathing.
Moving with the greatest caution, the agent slipped through the door. A gas light, turned very low, was burning. His pistol clutched in his right hand, Bailey stretched out his left, and turned on the gas full blast.
There on the, bed, its head slewed around until the throat-gash yawned like some horrid mouth, lay the body of the man who had been killed on the Marseilles express!
IV
Bailey went cold to the tips of his fingers at the horror of it. He was used to ghastly scenes, but none had ever affected him as did the lonely figure on the disordered bed. If it wasn’t Nash, who was it, and why had he been brought from his slab in the mortuary to this place?
The agent stepped toward the bed, and then a strong hand reached over his shoulder and tore away the pistol. Another was clapped over his mouth. So quickly was the attack made that before Bailey could shout or struggle he was on his back, his own handcuffs on his wrists, and a gag between his teeth.
The apache who had accosted him in the square grinned down at him.
“Ah, vieux cochon,” he snorted, “you are the trapped and not the trapper now. Of course, you understand that we are going to kill you. But first, by order of Monsieur Nash, I am to explain some things to you. He thought it a shame that you should die without first touching the edges of this mystery. Look.”
He walked to the bed, and Bailey’s sidelong glance followed him.
“This man’s name is not unfamiliar to you, monsieur,” said the apache. “It is John Sheppard, known as a cousin to Monsieur the Beau. The resemblance between the two is strong, but you will grant that the make-up is yet the work of a master-hand. The nose, see, it has been filled out with paraffin. The hair and mustache are dyed. This bluish scar at the angle of the jaw has been made with an electric needle.”
Of course, Bailey knew of Johnny Sheppard, who had been almost a% notorious in his sphere as the Beau was in his. It was more than probable that Sheppard had consented to this disguise to throw the police off his cousin’s track. It accounted, anyway, for the widely varying reports of Nash’s whereabouts that had come to the agent’s ears.