“You can recognize his face?”
Clandine shook his head.
“No one could be sure of Zemba’s face. He shows it seldom; and he has changed it often.”
“His finger prints?”
“We have records that we believe are his.”
“But you are not certain?”
“We are certain of one point only.” The prefect smiled wisely as he spoke. “Of one point that will betray Gaspard Zemba. A mark which he can never efface.” Clandine held up his left hand and tapped the third finger. “This finger. It is missing from Zemba’s hand, from the lower knuckle upward.
“He, himself, has made light of the fact. In the underworld, Zemba has used that hand as a signal. Shown as a token, it has rallied Apaches to his aid. Here, in Paris, we have been flaunted with the jest: ‘What is more powerful than the hand of the law?’
“The answer is: ‘The lost finger of Gaspard Zemba’; and at times, the answer has appeared to be a true one. But to-day, that lost finger shall betray the man whom we seek. Come, Monsieur Delka. We shall examine every passenger who has left this train.”
THE Gare du Nord was in a high state of commotion. Police and agents were everywhere. The passengers from the Golden Arrow had been segregated into special rooms, where they stood in huddled groups, under the cover of loaded guns.
So great had been the hubbub that the news had escaped. Earlier, it had been known that the law had concentrated upon the Gare du Nord; but at last an explanation had been gained. It was an astounding one.
“Gaspard Zemba! It is he whom they seek!”
“He has slain a man aboard the Fleche d’Or!”
“Zemba is among the passengers. They have trapped him; the law has gained him at last!”
“Ah, non! This Zemba is one grand fox—”
“You forget his missing finger—”
“Zemba has long lacked that finger, yet the fact has not availed the law!”
Such were the comments passed among excited Parisians who chanced to be in the Gare du Nord at six o’clock that dusk-ridden afternoon. The excitement had spread to the ticket windows and information booths. No one could talk of anything else but Zemba.
A tall, keen-eyed stranger had arrived in the depot during the confusion. Hawk-faced of countenance, he had the manner of an American, although no observer could have positively picked his nationality. For one thing, this arrival understood French perfectly; for he caught every comment that concerned Gaspard Zemba and the report of the death aboard the Golden Arrow.
Stepping quietly to an information booth, this tall arrival gave full proof of his mastery of the French language when he attracted the attention of a clerk and forced the fellow to heed a query.
“At what hour does Le Train Bleu leave for Cannes?”
“Ah, monsieur,” bowed the clerk, politely. “Le Train Bleu is the Mediterranean Express. One must board it at the Gare de Lyon.”
“I know that it departs from that station. But there are cars that connect with it from here.”
“For through passengers only, monsieur. They come from Calais, attached to the Fleche d’Or. One cannot board them here at the Gare du Nord. Besides, they have departed, seven minutes ago; to circle about Paris by the Ceinture Railway.”
The tall inquirer was looking at the clock. It was six o’clock, “eighteen o’clock” according to the twenty-four-hour standard of the French railways. The information clerk made another statement.
“The blue cars left here at seventeen fifty-three,” he said. “They will reach the Gare de Lyon at eighteen thirty-five. But there is no need for haste, monsieur. Le Train Bleu itself will not depart from the Gare de Lyon until nineteen-fifty.”
WHEN the clerk looked up from the time-table that he was consulting, the tall stranger had gone. The clerk grunted something about the impatience of Americans. He would have had more to say, had he followed the tall inquirer. Outside the terminus, the hawk-faced personage had boarded a taxicab on the Boulevard Magenta. He was ordering the driver to take him to the Gare de Lyon, on the Boulevard Diderot.
Possibly he had doubted the clerk’s information; yet there seemed to be another reason for his haste. The soft laugh that came from the tall stranger’s lips was indication that he had an unusual purpose in his desire to reach the Gare de Lyon before the blue cars arrived there from the Gare du Nord.
Moreover, the stranger performed a significant action within the gloom of his cab. He had been carrying a compact briefcase. From it, he was removing blackened garments. A cloak slipped over his shoulders; a slouch hat settled on his head. Automatics clicked when they went beneath the rider’s cloak. The briefcase, flattened, then folded in beltlike fashion, also disappeared from view.
The American from the Gare du Nord was The Shadow. A strange being who hunted down criminals in all parts of the world, he had left his New York habitat to deal with crime in Paris.
Somehow, The Shadow had gained news of trouble brewing at the Gare du Nord. At that station, he had found the law in charge. He had left the Northern Station to their handling and was choosing the Gare de Lyon as his own destination.
There was a reason for The Shadow’s choice; and it lay aboard the three blue cars that had been shunted from the Gare du Nord. While The Shadow was riding direct by cab between two depots, the blue-cars were slowly circling just within the eastern fortifications of Paris, along the tracks of the Ceinture Railway.
Forgotten ever since their removal from the Golden Arrow, these sleepers had a laborious route to follow. Past the outskirts of the Bois de Vincennes, they would reach the River Seine; then be shunted backward into the Gare de Lyon.
IN one sleeping car, thick dusk filled the vacancy of an unoccupied compartment. The only glow that reached the unlighted interior was from the illumination of the city which the car was skirting.
The lights of Paris were sufficient to vaguely reveal a man who entered the compartment. He was attired in the showy uniform of a railway guard, with straight-brimmed cap and white gloves.
Beside the window, the guard doffed his uniform. He was wearing street clothes beneath, so the change proved a quick one. The man’s head was too high above the floor for his face to be revealed; but the man’s hands showed in the window light. When his gloves came off, the dim glow revealed that the third finger of the guard’s left hand was absent.
Drawing a sheet of wrapping paper from a ledge of the sleeping compartment, the man chuckled harshly as he formed a package to hold his discarded uniform. The cars had reached the Seine and were stopped upon a bridge that crossed the river. As the man completed his making of the bundle, the sleepers started their backing roll along the tracks into the Gare de Lyon.
FIVE minutes later, the blue cars jolted to a stop in the terminus. They were on the tracks of the Paris, Lyons and Mediterranean Railways. It was twenty-five minutes of seven. The blue cars would depart as a portion of the Mediterranean Express, at ten minutes of eight. Meanwhile, passengers were leaving the cars for a stroll.
The transformed guard was among them. He was the same guard whom Delka had seen at the Gare du Nord; the one who had jostled Boris Danyar. He was also the guard who had boarded the blue cars at the final moment.
He was no longer a railway guard; he looked like a passenger and the only clue to his actual identity was hidden by the package that he held tightly tucked beneath his left arm.
No one could see what was in that package; nor could eyes observe the hand that the package hid. Hence no one could discern the absence of a third finger, the mark that would have told the truth about this bold arrival. The man from the blue sleeper was the much-sought master crook of Paris, Gaspard Zemba!