"I don"t know. He locked me in yonder room and got away."
"Got away with the swag? Ah! Just like "The American"! He did that same trick three years ago. I remember a complaint made by one of your fraternity whom I arrested at Versailles," replied the commissary. "How did he get away?"
Adolphe pointed to where the commissary was standing, and the official, looking down, saw, to his surprise, for the first time, the rusty ring in the floor.
He bent and tried to raise it, but found it firmly secured.
"He"s gone!" he cried to the two agents in uniform, who were cyclists, wearing the flat-peaked caps with the arms of the City of Paris upon them. "Go out and scour all the streets in the neighbourhood. You may catch him yet!"
Without a second"s delay, both men dashed out to do the bidding of their superior officer.
Adolphe Carlier was left with the two agents of the Surete--both dark, shrewd little men, broad-shouldered, and short of stature,--while the commissary, who wore the b.u.t.ton of the Legion d"Honneur in his overcoat, made a tour of the apartment.
Another agent of police, in plain clothes, entered and saluted.
"Did you see anything of the fugitive, Leblanc?" asked the commissary eagerly.
"Nothing, m"sieur. I came along from the depot, but met n.o.body."
"Search this place," he said. "There is some stolen stuff hidden in this rat-hole, I expect."
"I tell you Ralph Ansell has it all," declared the man held by the two officers, who were now allowing him to bandage up his hand, prior to putting handcuffs upon his wrists. "Arrest Ansell, and you will find everything upon him."
"Do you live here?" asked the commissary.
"No. Ansell lives here with his wife."
"His wife! Where is she?"
"I don"t know. She was here at dinner-time, but now she"s gone. She"s left him."
"Why?"
"Because of his brutality." And Adolphe described the scene of the previous night.
"We must find her," said the commissary, decisively. "Perhaps she knows something. Ansell and you are the last two members of the Bonnemain gang. Am I not correct?"
"Quite, m"sieur."
"I thought I was," and the commissary smiled. "Well," he added, "your friend robbed you and threw you right into our hands. No wonder you are ready to give him away."
The commissary well knew the ways of criminals, and was also aware with what murderous hatred a man was regarded who robbed his accomplice.
"Do not discuss him, m"sieur," replied the man under arrest. "He has placed me in your hands, and I am helpless. I suppose I shall only get what I deserve," he added, in a low, pensive tone.
"You are reasonable, Carlier, and I"m glad to see it," responded the commissary in a softer tone. "Your friend is an arrant blackguard to have treated his wife as he has, and to have betrayed you because you took her part. But you surely knew how unscrupulous he was, and also that he was a most dangerous character. We know of one or two of his exploits, and I may tell you that if he is caught, there are two charges of murder against him."
"I know," replied the thief, briefly. "Though you have arrested me, I can truly say that I have never raised a knife, or fired a revolver, or attempted to take the life of any man."
"You will not be charged with any crime more serious than burglary, Carlier," replied the official. "But besides the Baron"s affair to-night, there is also the robbery at the widow"s apartment in the Rue Leonce Reynaud, the theft from the Chateau des Grandes Vignes, out at Moret in the Forest of Fontainebleau, and the safe-breaking at Thessier"s in the Boulevard des Italiens. You were in all of them, remember."
"M"sieur knows," replied Adolphe with a grim smile.
"It is my duty to know, eh?" was the rather sympathetic reply, for the commissary had quickly seen that this member of the broken Bonnemain gang, which had for years given such trouble to the Surete, was, though a criminal and outwardly a rough scoundrel of the Apache type, yet nevertheless a man possessed of better feelings than the ordinary thief.
The treatment that Carlier had received at his friend"s hands had crushed him. He did not crave for mercy, as so many criminals did when suddenly cornered and placed under arrest. He merely regarded it as a stroke of ill-luck, and with the true sportsman-like air "faced the music."
As a matter of fact, he was wondering at that moment what had become of little Mme. Ansell, and whether the efforts of the police to discover her would be successful. No doubt they would, for one cannot travel far in Paris if one is searched for by the Surete, unless one is a professional thief, and therefore knows the holes in the underworld of Parisian life in which to hide successfully.
The commissary, pointing with his stick at the movable cupboard, ordered one of the agents to search it, and then, moving from one object to another, he had everything turned upside down in search of any property which might be concealed. The cupboard and sideboard were shifted away from the wall, the chairs were examined, the pictures taken down and pulled from their frames; indeed, no stone was left unturned.
When the French police make a search, they do so with a creditable thoroughness.
Adolphe, the gyves upon his wrists, craved a cigarette, and a police-officer took one from the packet lying upon the sideboard. Then, with both hands, the prisoner lit it, and sat upon a chair watching them turn the place upside down.
In the adjoining room they investigated everything. They even cut open the mattress and searched for stolen jewellery or bank-notes.
"It"s no use, m"sieur; there is nothing here," Carlier a.s.sured the commissary. "We have not done a job for a long time."
"Are you sure that "The American" has it all?" asked the official earnestly.
"I"ve already told m"sieur," was "The Eel"s" reply. "And, further, may I crave a favour?"
"What is that?"
"To speak alone with you just for a moment. I want to tell you something--for your ear alone."
The official was instantly suspicious. But, as the prisoner was securely handcuffed, there was, he saw, no danger.
So he permitted him to pa.s.s inside the disordered bedroom, and then he closed the broken door.
CHAPTER XII.
THE FATE OF "THE AMERICAN."
"Monsieur," said Carlier, in a low, confidential voice, when they were alone, "though I may be a thief, and under arrest, I am still a son of France, am I not?"
"I suppose so," replied the commissary, rather puzzled.
"Well," said the man before him, "if you keep observation upon the Baron de Rycker, you will find that what he has lost he well deserved to lose."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that the Baron is a spy--a secret agent of Germany."