I sat down sullenly. His black mood was gone. He rubbed his hands together jubilantly. Then he picked up his glass and held it high.
'Observe a ceremony,' he urged, 'and join me. I drink to the most sportsman-like killer I have ever met. I drink to the only murderer in my whole experience who ever deliberately walked up and presented me with clues.'
How I Ventured into the Club of Masks
The Boulevard de Clichy, Montmartre.
Lights spangled in broken reflections on wet pavements. A whir and honk of taxis, and the murmur of a crowd which slides past with a kind of irregular shuffling. Orchestras blare out against radios. Saucers jar and clink on marble-topped tables, in cafes whose windows are dirty, and their clientele dirtier still; but the grimy windows are dazzling with lights. Floors smell of sawdust, there are many mirrors, the beer is watered, and whiskers flourish. Out of the din, hawkers cry silk neckties at five francs, under wild gas-flares. Visiting young ladies in white wraps and pearls step carefully over the swift water of gutters. Street-walkers, graven of face, with motionless black eyes, sit before glasses of coffee, and seem to be pondering. Forlornly, a consumptive hand-organ gurgles tinkling music. Pedlars, hoarse from talking, will exhibit cardboard thingummies which crow like a rooster when you pull the string, or paper skeletons which dance the can-can when you put a match behind them. Electric signs, red and yellow, flash away with their monotonous gaiety; and the scarlet wheel of the Moulin Rouge revolves on the night sky.
The Boulevard de Clichy, Montmartre. Pivot and pulse of night life, centre of all the tiny streets on which famous night clubs cling to the hill. Rue Pigalle, rue Fontaine, rue Blanche, rue de Clichy, all revolve on a glowing hub, and startled visitors are tilted into them down cobble-stoned ways. Your brain whirls with the bang of jazz. You are drunk, or you mean to get drunk. You have a woman, or you will have one shortly. Certainly unthinking people will tell you that Paris at night has lost its lure. In Berlin, in Rome, in New York (they will say), great, shining temples of hilarity have made Paris haunts seem cheap and dingy; and this they insist on as though they were pointing out the supremacy of the electric refrigerator over a cold well-spring, and it amounts to the same thing. As though efficiency were the object in drinking, or making love or humanly acting the fool. God save you, merry gentlemen! - if this is your object, you will never enjoy the grinning, slipshod way in which Paris does things. This childish mystery, this roar, this damp smell of fresh trees and old sawdust, this do-as-you-please easiness, this splattering of coloured lights, will never turn your head; but memories will be lost to your old age.
I looked soberly on the Boulevard de Clichy that night. And yet it had got into my blood with a reckless beat. The feel of the silver key in the pocket of my white waistcoat, and the mask tucked under the waistcoat also, brought into it a cold tingle of adventure.
At the last moment Bencolin's plans had been altered. He had got from the first commissioner the blue-print (they must be on file for every place of the sort) showing the room arrangement in the Club of Masks. It had only one entrance. Its rooms, without outside windows except for a few blind ones, were ranged round a quadrangle forming an open court. In the centre of the quadrangle, like a separate house, rose an immense structure whose domed roof was of glass. This was the great promenade hall, connected with the main body by two passages - one at the front, going to the lounge, and one at the rear, connecting with the manager's office.
It will be observed that all the private rooms on the first floor open, by a single door and window, on the narrow court where the great hall rises. Also, that these rooms are reached by four doors, one at each corner of the great hall - so that the possessors of these rooms may go to them without returning to the lounge. However, those having rooms on the two floors above must reach them by a staircase in the lounge, which is indicated in the plan by a black square beside the bar. Now a look at the plan of the floor above this will show that room 18, where Galant was to meet Gina Prevost, is directly above the one numbered 2 in the drawing; and Robiquet's room 19, above the one numbered 3.
Originally it had been Bencolin's idea to plant a dictograph in room 18. But the plan alone, to say nothing of what information we had been able to receive, would make this attempt too dangerous. Wires would have to be run from the window up over the roof. Considering that the club attendants would be doubly on guard, that there were no outside windows, and that any suspicious movement in the court could not fail to be observed, this design had to be abandoned. Bencolin fumed. He had not suspected such enormous obstacles, and it was too late now to undermine the club personnel.
In the end it had been determined that I should go, and that I should in some fashion contrive to be hidden in room 18 when the two arrived. It was a ticklish job, for the whole place was unknown territory. If I were caught, it would be like being caught inside a well. I could not in any fashion communicate with the outside. Nor could I be armed. Due to the temperamental qualities of jealous wives of husbands who might, being masked, find entrance, we understood that guests were given a polite scrutiny by a number of suave bruisers in evening clothes at the door.
Had I reflected, I should have known myself for a damned fool. But the prospect was too alluring. Besides, it was too early for that thick, half-pleasant hammering to begin in the chest at the approach of danger. The clocks had hardly struck ten when I sauntered along the Boulevard de Clichy towards the Moulin Rouge, Mile Prevost's act, we had ascertained, went on at eleven o'clock, and lasted until at least eleven-fifteen; considering encores, it would likely mean five minutes more. Afterwards she would have to change her clothes before departing for the club. Therefore, if I went to the Moulin Rouge, I should be able to hear at least a few minutes of her turn and leave in plenty of time to anticipate them in number 18. On her tapped telephone wires we had heard that she would appear on the usual bill; a slip in time was impossible.
So I went up the red-carpeted stairs of the Moulin Rouge under brilliant lights; I bought my ticket, surrendered coat and top hat to the vestiaire, and wandered towards the blare of jazz. The place is no longer a theatre, though the red-curtained stage glitters with miniature revues. It is chiefly waxed dance-floor and gaudy decorations, with spotlights from the gallery tearing blue and white holes in a mist of tobacco smoke. Now it shrieked and pounded to the contortions of a Negro jazz-band, dominated by cymbals, bass-drum, and hideous brassy wails like the howling of cats. It is, I believe, designated as hot. Just why, I have never been able to understand, unless it is to be deduced from the sweating ecstasy of the players. But then an appreciation of the Negro's artistry, including his spirituals, has been denied me entirely; so I can only report that the rafters trembled, the floor shook to pounding feet, dust tickled the spotlights, every bottle rattled in the bar, a whirl of cries pulsed up from the jigging dancers; and I sat down in a loge beside the dance-floor and ordered a bottle of champagne.
The hands of my watch crawled. It grew hotter, more crowded and smoky. Cries became squeals; an Argentine band set the dancers jerking with the stamp of the tango; more ladies of the evening slid off their stools at the bar and drifted past the loges with a tentative roving eye. With every tick of the watch, I was drawing closer to the time for leaving. ... Then, when the lights dimmed and the chatter died to a hum, they announced Estelle. Just before the place became dark, I noticed a man sitting in one of the boxes far across the dance-floor. It was Captain Chaumont. He sat motionless, his elbows on the rail, staring at the stage....