The Case of the Climbing Rat: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 3

  Just before he left for that holiday, Travers thought seriously of ringing Gallois and spending a day or so with him in Paris. To smile at the remembrance of an absent friend is undoubtedly a sign of considerable affection. Gallois had smiled when Charles had mentioned Travers, and now Travers was smiling to himself as he hooked off his glasses and gently polished them. It would be fine to see Gallois again—Gallois in repose, his sad Semitic cast of countenance, the big brooding eyes, the slow and almost shambling gait. Gallois in action—the quick weaving movements of his sensitive fingers, and the voluble flow of his English, which rarely failed for a word and somehow contrived to be more expressive than Travers’s own. Gallois, absurdly grateful, prodigiously generous, a showman perhaps and a poseur, but only more likeable to those who knew the warmth and genuineness beneath the veneer of flamboyance and assertion.

  Yes, thought Travers, it would be good to see Gallois again, but it should be in Paris with Bernice, on the way home. Paris and Gallois were in a way the same thing. Paris was his milieu, and it was only there that one saw him, as it were, in full blossoming. And he was an authority On all that the city had of the rare and unusual, the things no tourist saw or was told to see, and Travers nodded to himself as he thought of a day or two in Paris, or perhaps even a week, with Gallois as mentor and guide.

  The car was shipped at Folkestone and on that Saturday evening when Gallois finished with the conference at Nîmes, Travers arrived at Aix-en-Provence. He was proposing to revisit all his old haunts along the coast, and early on the Sunday he was through Toulon, and well before lunch had arrived at Furolles. Then all at once he was wondering somewhat amusedly why there should be all the hurry. So he parked the car in the open-air garage of what looked a promising hotel and booked a room for the night.

  He had been through Furolles before, but so quickly as never really to have noticed the town, or the countryside, and now he was liking the look of everything. He liked the wooded bastion of hills that sheltered the town from the north. There was a charm and a kind of comfort in the curve of its bay, and something attractive in the sandy stretch that constituted its plage.

  A gay, colourful town, it looked, and far less cosmopolitan than most, though it was crowded that Sunday with cars that overflowed the municipal park and lined the streets. Perhaps it was usual, he thought, for the district to spend its chief holiday in the little town, and the beach, as he could see, was crowded with sun-bathers, and innumerable heads were bobbing about in the sea.

  At lunch he commented on the fact to the waiter.

  “But it isn’t every Sunday there are so many people,” the waiter said. “Everybody comes to-day because of the circus.”

  “The circus?” said Travers. Every Frenchman, as he knew, loves a circus. “Is it a good one?”

  The waiter began to pour out eulogies. The circus had come from Hyères, where he had a friend who had seen it.

  It was superb, marvellous, stupendous. There was a troupe of trapeze artists who were very definitely formidable. Off went the waiter to attend to other tables, but he was a good waiter and saw that his client was interested, and whenever he came back it was to give some news that he had evidently been gleaning. The Coast was lucky to have the opportunity of seeing a circus of such high class. It was in Italian ownership, and had been in Paris, and now was making its way home by easy stages, which was why one had the good luck to see it at Furolles. The next day it was going to Carliens; indeed, he thought it was staying there for two days at least.

  Very near the end of the meal he actually produced some literature which Travers took to the lounge to read over his coffee. The Grand Cirque Pertini was the name. The programme seemed to have the usual constituents, but the interesting thing was that it appeared to have all of them. If everything was there, as the programme announced, then the show was likely to be an uncommonly varied one. There were, for instance, horses with Cossack riders, a star equestrienne, jugglers, performing dogs, a strong man, a boxing kangaroo, the usual clowns, and—billed as the star attraction—the Helmont troupe, trapezists, according to the programme, undoubtedly the most original and daring in the whole world.

  “It looks good, this circus of yours,” Travers said to the waiter. “It is possible for you to book me a seat?”

  “But certainly,” the waiter told him. “There are all prices. What would m’sieu wish?”

  Travers picked the best seat, a ringside one, at the amazingly cheap price of fifteen francs.

  The matinèe was billed as from three o’clock to six, though doubtless it would be over long before. Travers, basing his experience on an intensive acquaintance with French cinemas, guessed also that it would begin a good deal late, and it was almost three o’clock when he left the hotel, but as he made his way to the meadow that lay between the beach and the foothills he found himself one of a dense crowd. All along the coast and even from the village among the hills, people must have been attracted by the fame of that circus, and as the show-ground was neared Travers found himself tightly wedged, yet the perfectly colossal tent was capable of holding them all, if only just. Travers found his seat, and a good one it was. As he squeezed his way along be trod somewhat heavily on the toe of a prosperous-looking, spade-bearded Frenchman, and at once was apologizing profusely. The seat turned out to be next to the Frenchman’s and he found he had let himself in for something.

  “You are English?” the Frenchman said, in that tongue. When one has the clothes that Travers was wearing, and the face and the accent, there is no particular point in denying it.

  “Ago, a good many years, I am in England, for three years,” the Frenchman said, and began telling Travers all about Highgate and the perfumery shop in Bond Street. Then happily the band struck up, and while they played Travers was able to be deeply interested in the programme. The species of overture ended, and then just as the Frenchman was beginning again, tumultuous applause announced the entrance of the Ringmaster. He looked something of an Italian, but whatever he was, Travers was unable to follow in its entirety the announcement he was so fervently making. Then at last he was bowing, and as new applause died away in came half a dozen clowns, and on their heels the horses and their Cossack riders.

  An hour later when the entr’acte arrived, Travers could not help expressing his amazement.

  “It is extraordinary,” he said in his careful French to his neighbour. “I never saw a circus that was better, and I have seen a good many in my time. It must cost a fortune to run.”

  The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders and waved a hand at the vast crowded tent.

  “There is what you call plenty money, oh? Everywhere they have people like this. Always they are immense and what you call enthusiastic.”

  “They certainly deserve it,” Travers told him. As for enthusiastic, the crowd certainly was that. There was no trouble whatever about getting volunteers for the strong man to hoist above his head, and one local character, with more assurance than discretion, tried a round with the boxing kangaroo and retreated very much the worse for wear, amid laughter time threatened to tear the roof. Then just before the trapezists—the last act and the high-light of the show—came the performing dogs, and the audience fairly rocked in helpless laughter when one of the animals committed a perfectly necessary indiscretion with all that insouciance of which the French, dogs and all, are so gracefully capable.

  Off went the dogs, and the laughter died as the Ringmaster began making his last announcement. Except that it was something to do with the act that was to follow Travers understood very little, but the crowd seemed curiously impressed with the importance and even solemnity of the occasion. There was a hush as they awaited the entry of the trapezists, and even the clowns had ceased their antics and had withdrawn in a body to the side of the ring.

  But something seemed to have gone wrong. The Ringmaster looked round, then looked again, but more anxiously, and still nothing was happening. He waited for a moment, then made his way out as if to inquire. There
was a rustle among the crowd and a murmur of voices, but it was not until another minute that he came back.

  “What’s he saying?” asked Travers.

  “In a minute they come,” the Frenchman told him.

  But it was another two minutes before a fanfare from the band announced that the trapezists were appearing. The man was slim and of medium height, but the two young women were broad-hipped and compact of build, and the figures of all three had a litheness and an extraordinary grace. All wore white tights, with black masks that completely covered their faces. In the case of the man the whole head was covered, but the hair of the women was visible, and each was a brunette.

  “The famous Troupe Helmont,” announced Travers’s neighbour, still in English and as if he himself was responsible.

  “Why are they masked?”

  The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders, thought over his English words, then explained in French. There was something mysterious about the artists. Some said this and some said that but he himself believed the rumour that they were Germans and anti-Nazis, who refused to go back to Germany, so that if they revealed their identity it might be dangerous. Travers took a quick look at the programme. The three performers were billed as Jules, Berthe and Jeanne Helmont, and Helmont he rather thought was an Alsatian name.

  By slow graceful stages, by rope and trapeze, the women drew themselves up to a platform high in the roof of the tent. Then Jules bowed and also slowly drew himself up by the hanging rope. The muscles rippled as hand rose effortlessly over hand, and when at last he reached his platform the crowd could not keep back a cheer.

  Then as he stood there, wiping his hands, an attendant came in, a tiny cage in his hand. He stopped at the foot of the rope, opened the cage, and out came a little white rat. The crowd gaped, and then as the attendant stopped almost to the ground, and with one hand grasped the rope and made it taut, the voice of Jules came from high up in the roof. What he really called Travers could not quite catch, but it sounded like, “Viens, Auguste, viens!”

  Auguste came. Before Travers was aware he was running up the rope. For a moment he was lost against a white section of the canvas and then all at once there was a “Hoop-là!” and there he was on the shoulder of Jules and the crowd was roaring.

  As for the actual performance Travers had seen nothing more graceful, more rhythmic, or more exquisitely timed. There were moments when he was afraid to look as a figure flashed in a swallow-dive across the height of that roof, and it was only when the shout of the crowd announced a safety and some new perfection of finish that he would venture to look up again. The amazing thing was that all the time Auguste—the little white rat—crouched on the shoulders of Jules and hurtled with him backwards and forwards across the terrifying space.

  The last hair-raising somersaults were made and down the trapezists came, and bowed and bowed to the deafening applause. But Auguste was not there. Apparently for him a special and personal descent was being reserved. In came the attendant to steady the rope. Jules snapped his fingers and looked upwards, and there was Auguste beginning the downward trip. Into his little cage he went, the attendant raised it and bowed, and the applause and laughter were the most tremendous of the day.

  Out blared the band again, round the ring went the clowns, and the whole crowd rose to its feet as the canvases were whipped back to make a score of new exits. Travers stayed on for a moment till the first rush should be over, then caught up with his neighbour again. The Frenchman glanced back at him over his shoulder.

  “It was good, the circus?”

  “Very good indeed,” Travers told him in English. “I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. They were superb, those artists.”

  “In London you do not see like them, no?”

  Travers smiled and shook his head. What he was thinking was that, marvellous and even uncanny as the Helmont troupe had been, it was Auguste who had really stolen the show.

  CHAPTER III

  AUGUSTE IS TEMPERAMENTAL

  AFTER breakfast on the Monday morning, Travers began thinking out the preliminaries of his campaign against Gustave Rionne. What he decided was that he would put up at some other Carliens hotel, and then find the whereabouts of the Hôtel du Sud. Practically every hotel was open to non-residents, so he could probably have a meal there, chat with the waiter and ultimately have a look at Rionne. As for the rest there was no particular hurry. The main thing was to get some definite impression of the precise kind of scoundrel the man was.

  It was quite early when he started out on that short journey of twenty kilometres. About half-way to Carliens, the now ageing, but still highly efficient, Rolls was overtaken by that very autobus in which Gallois was sitting. The Hôtel de France was recommended to Gallois by the conductor of the autobus, but Travers had to use his own judgment. Finally he chose the Hôtel Royal, where he was shown a charming room that overlooked the pines and sea.

  Carliens was many times the size of Furolles, but for a holiday Travers would have chosen the smaller place every time. Carliens was modern and the least bit raucous. If Furolles was a water-colour, then Carliens was a particularly gaudy poster. It had a dozen fine hotels, mostly white and new; its beach, seen from the hotel window, was a patchwork of sun umbrellas, brilliant roofed bathing-sheds and huts and shining kiosks. Even the trim palms that lined the too spotless front seemed somehow new, and when he looked back from the quiet hills he was irresistibly reminded of Brighton.

  It was eleven o’clock when he came out to the street in a brilliant sun and what was still left of the morning cool. As he made his way to the office of the local Syndicat d’Initiative he had some personal evidence of the up-to-dateness of the place, when ahead of him he saw a man levelling a camera. Travers spotted what he was at once. He looked quite a youngish fellow, in spite of his natty imperial, and he gave a charming smile as he handed the card. Travers, rarely impatient of his fellow men, smiled too as he took it, and a few yards on he read it. The card was actually printed in five languages: French, English, German, Italian, and Dutch, and the English version read:

  JAQUES LEBRUN

  SPECIALIST IN EVERY KIND OF PHOTOGRAPHY

  INFORMS YOU THAT THIS PHOTOGRAPH OF YOU CAN

  BE SEEN AT 10, RUE DES ALPES

  AT EXACTLY ONE HOUR FROM NOW

  Not only that: there was a neat little map, showing exactly how to arrive at the Rue des Alpes. Travers had to smile again. Monsieur Lebrun certainly deserved to get on.

  At the Syndicat d’Initiative Travers was given local and district maps and guides and was patiently shown the precise whereabouts of the Hôtel du Sud. It was in what was called the old town at the far end of the beach, so Travers walked back beneath the palms along the fine new road that skirted the bay, and he passed within twenty yards of the chair in which at that moment Gallois was lolling at his ease. A moment or two and he came across another unusual specimen of modernity and a not unamusing one, which was a new public lavatory obviously for the use of bathers and reserved for men. But it was not of the usual type—the iron surround with even the knees of its users visible—but a long, if narrow, wholly covered-in affair with porcelain walls, running water and chromium-plated metal work. There were also four closets with automatic entry on deposit of a franc. Travers, always insatiably curious, invested that sum for the sake of a look inside. The whole thing he decided would have been a credit to any municipality. But, as he amusedly assured himself, none too well patronized, for the beach was fairly well crowded and his inspection had taken the best part of five minutes, and the fine new lavatory had been used only by one small boy, and he obviously English.

  At the kiosk he bought a paper and read to pass the time till well after noon. It took no more than a couple of minutes to find the Hôtel du Sud, but when he saw it, he had something of a shock. It was very small, and very frowsty, and yet, as he knew, its looks might belie it. It might be one of those unpretentious places known only to the initiated, with fine cooking of the country and
a cellar as good as the best. But the menu in the window gave no promise of that. Lunch was twelve francs, wine included, and the choice as uninspiring as he had ever seen.

  So strong a physical repulsion was he feeling to the place that he had to screw up his courage to the point of entering. A waiter pounced on him at once and ushered him into a dining-room—a tiny affair that looked over the road. There were about eight tables and only one occupied, by a family of obvious provincials, consisting of father, mother and two boys.

  “You have rooms here?” Travers asked the waiter.

  “Yes,” he said, “but they are all occupied.”

  “There are several rooms?”

  The waiter shrugged his shoulders. Four rooms only, he said, and exhibited the menu. Travers ordered a different wine and sat down to lunch. The seat he had chosen had its back to the door, and facing him, slightly sideways, was a mirror. A young couple entered, and then, as Travers judged from the manner of the waiter, an elderly man who was certainly a guest. In the mirror Travers studied him carefully. He looked the professional type, if somewhat down at heel. He was of medium height, spare in build, with a head that was almost white and a head entirely bald. There was something supercilious in the way he looked round at his fellow feeders as if he found his environment beneath him, and did not trouble a couple of sous who knew it. But he had no quarrel with his food, for he ate quickly and noisily, napkin tucked well into his collar, and he had no time whatever for talk.

  Travers, making his meal deliberately leisurely, watched the room through the mirror. The complement of four rooms of residents was completed, and another table was taken by three young men. They were talking about the circus. Then the table with the two boys and their parents began talking about the circus too. They were going to the afternoon performance and the boys seemed particularly interested in the boxing kangaroo and Auguste, the little white rat.