The pig-headed masquer stood confessed.
A less imaginative man than Aristide would have immediately acquainted the police with his discovery. But Aristide had been insulted. A dull, mechanical bureaucrat who tried to discover crime with a tape-measure had dared to talk contemptuously of his intelligence! On his wooden head should be poured the vials of his contempt.
"_Tron de l"air!_" cried Aristide--a Provencal oath which he only used on sublime occasions--"It is I who will discover the thief and make the whole lot of you the laughing-stock of Perpignan."
So did my versatile friend, joyously confident in his powers, start on his glorious career as a private detective.
"Madame Coquereau," said he, that evening, while she was dealing a hand at piquet, "what would you say if I solved this mystery and brought the scoundrel to justice?"
"To say that you would have more sense than the police, would be a poor compliment," said the old lady.
Stephanie raised cloistral eyes from her embroidery frame. She sat in a distant corner of the formal room discreetly lit by a shaded lamp.
"You have a clue, Monsieur?" she asked with adorable timidity.
Aristide tapped his forehead with his forefinger. "All is there, Mademoiselle."
They exchanged a glance--the first they had exchanged--while Madame Coquereau was frowning at her cards; and Aristide interpreted the glance as the promise of supreme reward for great deeds accomplished.
The mayor returned early from the cafe, a dejected man. The loss of his hundred and twenty pounds weighed heavily on his mind. He kissed his mother sorrowfully on the cheek, his niece on the brow, held out a drooping hand to Aristide, and, subsiding into a stiff imitation Louis XVI chair, rested his elbows on its unconsoling arms and hid his face in his hands.
"My poor uncle! You suffer so much?" breathed Stephanie, in divine compa.s.sion.
"Little Saint!" murmured Aristide devoutly, as he declared four aces and three queens.
The Mayor moved his head sympathetically. He was suffering from the sharpest pain in his pocket he had felt for many a day. Madame Coquereau"s attention wandered from the cards.
"_Dis donc_, Fernand," she said sharply. "Why are you not wearing your ring?"
The Mayor looked up.
"_Maman_," said he, "it is stolen."
"Your beautiful ring?" cried Aristide.
The Mayor"s ring, which he usually wore, was a remarkable personal adornment. It consisted in a couple of snakes in old gold clenching an enormous topaz between their heads. Only a Mayor could have worn it with decency.
"You did not tell me, Fernand," rasped the old lady. "You did not mention it to me as being one of the stolen objects."
The Mayor rose wearily. "It was to avoid giving you pain, _maman_. I know what a value you set upon the ring of my good Aunt Philomene."
"And now it is lost," said Madame Coquereau, throwing down her cards. "A ring that belonged to a saint. Yes, Monsieur Pujol, a saint, though she was my sister. A ring that had been blessed by His Holiness the Pope----"
"But, _maman_," expostulated the Mayor, "that was an imagination of Aunt Philomene. Just because she went to Rome and had an audience like anyone else----"
"Silence, impious atheist that you are!" cried the old lady. "I tell you it was blessed by His Holiness--and when I tell you a thing it is true.
That is the son of to-day. He will call his mother a liar as soon as look at her. It was a ring beyond price. A ring such as there are few in the world. And instead of taking care of this precious heirloom, he goes and locks it away in a safe. Ah! you fill me with shame. Monsieur Pujol, I am sorry I can play no more, I must retire. Stephanie, will you accompany me?"
And gathering up Stephanie like a bunch of snowdrops, the yellow, galvanized iron old lady swept out of the room.
The Mayor looked at Aristide and moved his arms dejectedly.
"Such are women," said he.
"My own mother nearly broke her heart because I would not become a priest," said Aristide.
"I wish I were a Turk," said the Mayor.
"I, too," said Aristide.
He took pouch and papers and rolled a cigarette.
"If there is a man living who can say he has not felt like that at least once in his life he ought to be exhibited at a fair."
"How well you understand me, my good Pujol," said Monsieur Coquereau.
The next few days pa.s.sed busily for Aristide. He devoted every spare hour to his new task. He scrutinized every inch of ground between the study window and the wall; he drew radiating lines from the point of the wall whence the miscreant had started homeward and succeeded in finding more confetti. He cross-examined every purveyor of pierrot shoes and pig"s heads in Perpignan. His researches soon came to the ears of the police, still tracing the mysterious Jose Puegas. A certain good-humoured brigadier whose Catalan French Aristide found difficult to understand, but with whom he had formed a derisory kind of friendship, urged him to desist from the hopeless task.
"_Jamais de la vie!_" he cried--"The honour of Aristide Pujol is at stake."
The thing became an obsession. Not only his honour but his future was at stake. If he discovered the thief, he would be the most talked of person in Perpignan. He would know how to improve his position. He would rise to dizzy heights. Perpignan-Ville de Plaisir would acclaim him as its saviour. The Government would decorate him. And finally, both the Mayor and Madame Coquereau would place the blushing and adorable Mademoiselle Stephanie in his arms and her two hundred and fifty thousand francs dowry in his pocket. Never before had so dazzling a prize shimmered before him in the near distance.
On the last Sat.u.r.day night of the Carnival, there was a special _corso_ for the populace in the Avenue des Plantanes, the long splendid Avenue of plane trees just outside the Porte Notre Dame, which is the special glory of Perpignan. The masquers danced to three or four bands. They threw confetti and _serpentins_. They rode hobby-horses and beat each other with bladders. They joined in bands of youths and maidens and whirled down the Avenue in Bacchic madness. It was a _corso blanc_, and everyone wore white--chiefly modifications of Pierrot costume--and everyone was masked. Chinese lanterns hung from the trees and in festoons around the bandstands and darted about in the hands of the revellers. Above, great standard electric lamps shed their white glare upon the eddying throng casting a myriad of grotesque shadows. Shouts and laughter and music filled the air.
Aristide in a hideous red mask and with a bag of confetti under his arm, plunged with enthusiasm into the revelry. To enjoy yourself you only had to throw your arm round a girl"s waist and swing her off wildly to the beat of the music. If you wanted to let her go you did so; if not, you talked in the squeaky voice that is the recognized etiquette of the carnival. On the other hand any girl could catch you in her grip and sweep you along with her. Your mad career generally ended in a crowd and a free fight of confetti. There was one fair masquer, however, to whom Aristide became peculiarly attracted. Her movements were free, her figure dainty and her repartee, below her mask, more than usually piquant.
"This hurly-burly," said he, drawing her into a quiet eddy of the stream, "is no place for the communion of two twin souls."
"_Beau masque_," said she, "I perceive that you are a man of much sensibility."
"Shall we find a spot where we can mingle the overflow of our exquisite natures?"
"As you like."
"_Allons! Hop!_" cried he, and seizing her round the waist danced through the masquers to the very far end of the Avenue.
"There is a sequestered spot round here," he said.
They turned. The sequestered spot, a seat beneath a plane tree, with a lonesome arc-lamp shining full upon it, was occupied.
"It"s a pity!" said the fair unknown.
But Aristide said nothing. He stared. On the seat reposed an amorous couple. The lady wore a white domino and a black mask. The cavalier, whose arm was around the lady"s waist, wore a pig"s head, and a clown or Pierrot"s dress.
Aristide"s eyes fell upon the shoes. On one of them the pompon was missing.
The lady"s left hand tenderly patted the cardboard snout of her lover.
The fierce light of the arc lamp caught the hand and revealed, on the fourth finger, a topaz ring, the topaz held in its place by two snakes"