True Crime & Murder Mysteries Collection. Moffett Cleveland

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СКАЧАТЬ a free agent, you can persist in this course, but if you do——"

      He paused as if to check too vehement an utterance, and M. Paul caught a threatening gleam in his eyes that he long remembered.

      "Why?"

      "If you do, you will be thwarted at every turn, you will be made to suffer in ways you do not dream of, through those who are dear to you, through your dog, through your mother——"

      "You dare—" cried Coquenil.

      "We dare anything," flashed the stranger. "I'm daring something now, am I not? Don't you suppose I know what you are thinking? Well, I take the risk because—because you are intelligent."

      There was something almost captivating in the very arrogance and recklessness of this audacious stranger. Never in all his experience had Coquenil known a criminal or a person directly associated with crime, as this man must be, to boldly confront the powers of justice. Undoubtedly, the fellow realized his danger, yet he deliberately faced it. What plan could he have for getting away once his message was delivered? It must be practically delivered already, there was nothing more to say, he had offered a bribe and made a threat. A few words now for the answer, the refusal, the defiance, and—then what? Surely this brusque individual did not imagine that he, Coquenil, would be simple enough to let him go now that he had him in his power? But wait! Was that true, was this man in his power?

      As if answering the thought, the stranger said: "It is hopeless for you to struggle against our knowledge and our resources, quite hopeless. We have, for example, the fullest information about you and your life down to the smallest detail."

      "Yes?" answered Coquenil, and a twinkle of humor shone in his eyes. "What's the name of my old servant?"

      "Melanie."

      "What's the name of the canary bird I gave her last week?"

      "It isn't a canary bird, it's a bullfinch. And its name is Pete."

      "Not bad, not at all bad," muttered the other, and the twinkle in his eyes faded.

      "We know the important things, too, all that concerns you, from your forced resignation two years ago down to your talk yesterday with the girl at Notre-Dame. So how can you fight us? How can you shadow people who shadow you? Who watch your actions from day to day, from hour to hour? Who know exactly the moment when you are weak and unprepared, as I know now that you are unarmed because you left that pistol with Papa Tignol."

      For a moment Coquenil was silent, and then: "Here's your money," he said, returning the envelope.

      "Then you refuse?"

      "I refuse."

      "Stubborn fellow! And unbelieving! You doubt our power against you. Come, I will give you a glimpse of it, just the briefest glimpse. Suppose you try to arrest me. You have been thinking of it, now act. I'm a suspicious character, I ought to be investigated. Well, do your duty. I might point out that such an arrest would accomplish absolutely nothing, for you haven't the slightest evidence against me and can get none, but I waive that point because I want to show you that, even in so simple an effort against us as this, you would inevitably fail."

      The man's impudence was passing all bounds. "You mean that I cannot arrest you?" menaced Coquenil.

      "Precisely. I mean that with all your cleverness and with a distinct advantage in position, here on the Champs Elysées with policemen all about us, you cannot arrest me."

      "We'll see about that," answered M. Paul, a grim purpose showing in his deep-set eyes.

      "I say this in no spirit of bravado," continued the other with irritating insolence, "but so that you may remember my words and this warning when I am gone." Then, with a final fling of defiance: "This is the first time you have seen me, M. Coquenil, and you will probably never see me again, but you will hear from me. Now blow your whistle!"

      Coquenil was puzzled. If this was a bluff, it was the maddest, most incomprehensible bluff that a criminal ever made. But if it was not a bluff? Could there be a hidden purpose here? Was the man deliberately making some subtle move in the game he was playing? The detective paused to think. They had come down the Champs Elysées, past the Ansonia, and were nearing the Rond Point, the best guarded part of Paris, where the shrill summons of his police call would be answered almost instantly. And yet he hesitated.

      "There is no hurry, I suppose," said the detective. "I'd like to ask a question or two."

      "As many as you please."

      With all the strength of his mind and memory Coquenil was studying his adversary. That beard? Could it be false? And the swarthy tone of the skin which he noticed now in the improving light, was that natural? If not natural, then wonderfully imitated. And the hands, the arms? He had watched these from the first, noting every movement, particularly the left hand and the left arm, but he had detected nothing significant; the man used his hands like anyone else, he carried a cane in the right hand, lifted his hat with the right hand, offered the envelope with the right hand. There was nothing to show that he was not a right-handed man.

      "I wonder if you have anything against me personally?" inquired M. Paul.

      "On the contrary," declared the other, "we admire you and wish you well."

      "But you threaten my dog?"

      "If necessary, yes."

      "And my mother?"

      "If necessary."

      The decisive moment had come, not only because Coquenil's anger was stirred by this cynical avowal, but because just then there shot around the corner from the Avenue Montaigne a large red automobile which crossed the Champs Elysées slowly, past the fountain and the tulip beds, and, turning into the Avenue Gabrielle, stopped under the chestnut trees, its engines throbbing. Like a flash it came into the detective's mind that the same automobile had passed them once before some streets back. Ah, here was the intended way of escape! On the front seat were two men, strong-looking fellows, accomplices, no doubt. He must act at once while the wide street was still between them.

      "I ask because—" began M. Paul with his indifferent drawl, then swiftly drawing his whistle, he sounded a danger call that cut the air in sinister alarm. The stranger sprang away, but Coquenil was on him in a bound, clutching him by the throat and pressing him back with intertwining legs for a sudden fall. The bearded man saved himself by a quick turn, and with a great heave of his shoulders broke the detective's grip, then suddenly he attacked, smiting for the neck, not with clenched fist but with the open hand held sideways in the treacherous cleaving blow that the Japanese use when they strike for the carotid. Coquenil ducked forward, saving himself, but he felt the descending hand hard as stone on his shoulders.

      "He struck with his right," thought M. Paul.

      At the same moment he felt his adversary's hand close on his throat and rejoiced, for he knew the deadly Jitsu reply to this. Hardening his neck muscles until they covered the delicate parts beneath like bands of steel, the detective seized his enemy's extended arm in his two hands, one at the wrist, one at the elbow, and as his trained fingers sought the painful pressure points, his two free arms started a resistless torsion movement on the captured arm. There is no escape from this movement, no enduring its excruciating pain; to a man taken at such a disadvantage one of two things may happen. He may yield, and in that СКАЧАТЬ