“You thought the envelope was going to burn up?”
“If not, there was no reason for her to be so insistent that we lock it away inside our safe.”
“I must admit—”
“—that you don’t understand. Well, it’s not so hard to figure out. Someone saw you pick up the handkerchief and slip it into your pocket. Someone immediately understood that we finally had a clue, and since the reputation of Agency O is rather well established, someone got scared. What time did we get back to the office, Torrence?”
“At ten-thirty.”
“And at eleven, in walks this Denise. Where could the handkerchief be at that time? Either it had remained in your pocket, or else you had put it on your desk, or, even better, being a cautious man, you had temporarily locked it away in the safe. Look...”
This time, a small flame is licking out of the envelope, and then, in a few moments, it has burned up with all the papers that were in it.
“There you have it! If that envelope had stayed in our safe, by now everything in the safe would have been destroyed by the flames. A little trick that chemistry students learn. You dip some blotting paper into a certain kind of chemical solution, and after a given amount of time in contact with the air, it bursts into flame.
“While the young lady from La Rochelle was spinning her tale for you, and you were falling for her line, she was pacing back and forth in your office and taking in every last detail.
“You opened the safe, and she leaned forward and looked right into it. She didn’t see the envelope with the handkerchief.
“There was a very good likelihood that the thing was still in your pocket. So she had to put on another little act, playing the damsel in distress who faints and hangs on to the shoulders of her nice fat savior.”
“I’m not so fat as all that,” Torrence protests.
“Nevertheless, she succeeded in doing it, and while she was in your arms she got the handkerchief back, and if that brute of a Barbet is unlucky enough to lose her...”
He takes down his topcoat and hat.
“I’d better go look into this myself.”
“You want me with you, Boss?” asks poor cowed old Torrence, looking like a whipped dog.
And yet, throughout the world he is considered one of the greatest of detectives.
II
In which grape scissors are used for something other than cutting grapes, and in which a rum punch suddenly finds itself put to an unexpected use.
All the customers have left, one group after another. The restaurant is practically empty. Now it just smells of stale cooking, wine, and coffee.
Over in a corner, near the door, Emile has dismissed Barbet, after having taken his meal with him, a most copious meal, in fact, for they were serving snails, and he consumed two dozen of them. It is unbelievable how Emile, long and lean as he is, can do away with food, especially the heaviest kind, the hardest to digest, the kind that scares off the strongest of stomachs.
“Go back to the office,” he told Barbet. “Tell the boss I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
Did he overeat? Or was the half-bottle of Bordeaux getting to him? He made sure to order a black filtered coffee. But, of course, he counteracted that with a shot of the house’s best cognac.
Across the room from him, the young lady from La Rochelle has taken a gold cigarette case out of her bag and lighted an Egyptian cigarette. They are looking at each other, across the empty restaurant between them. There is still a bit of sawdust left on the floor. The help have started straightening things, sweeping up, changing tablecloths, but the two of them still sit there, getting in the way, and it is already 3:00 P.M.
When he got there, Emile did not try to pull any tricks. He just went straight over to Barbet, who was sitting in his corner, trying to hide behind his newspaper.
“How are you?” he asked. “How did she get here?”
“Taxi. Too bad!” Barbet sighed, for, had the girl taken the Métro or a bus, or even just walked a short way on the street, he would have been able to find out what was in her handbag.
Barbet, under an earlier name that was well known to the police blotter, was once a renowned pickpocket He even ran a school over near the Porte Clignancourt in Montmartre, using a dummy with bells on that the pupils had to frisk without making them tinkle.
But now he had gone straight. Why? Well, that was nobody’s business but Emile’s and his own.
“Did she make any phone calls? Did she meet with anyone?”
“No. Except that she did go down to the ladies’ room. I followed her to the door. But I couldn’t decently go in there with her.”
She was looking at them, and Emile was sure she had recognized him. Considering that she barely got a glimpse of him at the Cité Bergère office, she was surely the one who was in the crowd earlier this morning outside the Rue Tronchet jeweler’s.
Oh, well! There are some people with whom there’s no point in playing games.
“You can take off, Barbet.”
Now she and he are alone in the restaurant, separated by the breadth of the room, and at times it might almost seem they are smiling at each other.
So much so that one of the waitresses, getting impatient, says to her partner: “I wonder why they’re beating around the bush like that so much. Why can’t they just decide and go to it, for goodness’ sake! They’ll end up that way anyhow...”
At 3:10, Emile asks, with a sort of shyness he almost always displays in public, an exaggerated politeness that goes well with his looks: “Would you be kind enough to let me have another cognac, please, mademoiselle?”
Across from him, the girl who claims to have come from La Rochelle, calls out in turn: “Would you please bring me some grapes? And a rum punch!”
“Flaming?”
“Of course, flaming.”
She is served the grapes with a pair of slightly curved scissors. The waitress strikes a match to light the rum, which lies in a dark layer at the top of the glass.
Then the girl, deliberately, after taking a good look at Emile, withdraws a handkerchief from her handbag, cuts a corner of it off with the scissors, and places that bit of material in the flaming alcohol.
“What are you doing?” the waitress sputters.
“Nothing. Just a recipe of my own.”
And she smiles at Emile, with a come-on smile. Emile gets up and walks across the restaurant.
“Do you mind?” he asks.
“Please do,” she replies. “Mademoiselle, bring monsieur’s glass over to my table.”
And a moment later, in the kitchen, the waitress is all smiles. “See? What did I tell you? Putting on such airs! And they end up the same way as any other two! Why the hell don’t they go ahead and do it? Just get out of here! Do whatever they want, as long as they let me get on with my polishing...”
“I do not believe that we have had the honor of being introduced to one another, have we?” she says.
And so saying, she blows a mouthful of smoke in his face. He, on the other hand, has turned his face slightly away, out of consideration, for he is thinking of those two dozen snails that were literally bathing in garlic.
“Unless, of course,” he replies, “you really are the daughter of the lawyer from La Rochelle.”
She laughs. Relaxes. Oh, well! She also realizes that she is no longer dealing with Torrence, and that this is no time for playing games.
“Not too much damage to your safe?”
“The envelope was taken out in time.”
“Was your boss, Torrence, the one who figured it out?”