All was bustle and movement in the great entrance-hall of the Hôtel Terminus, the imposing edifice that rears its bulk immediately outside the Gare Saint-Lazare; there was a never ceasing coming and going of travellers, new customers continually arriving from the trains reaching Paris from all parts, others taking their departure for a hundred different destinations in all quarters of the globe. The throng was especially dense round a small office of a severe and dignified aspect worthy of a public Ministry, but more elegant in its furniture and appointments, where three active young women were busy quickly and methodically answering countless questions in a dozen different languages, entering the names of the various newcomers in a great ledger and indicating the rooms assigned them.
Amongst other applicants was the American Tom Bob, cool and collected as always. In two minutes he had completed the necessary formalities, and, under the guidance of a servant of the hotel carrying his hand baggage, was crossing the hall towards the lift. But turning suddenly on the man, the traveller shook his head emphatically and announced his intention of mounting by the stairs to the suite he had previously engaged by wireless on the third floor.
“I don’t like lifts,” he said peremptorily, and heedless of the look of surprise on the servant’s face at so unusual a preference, insisted on adopting the slower and more fatiguing route.
Before reaching the foot of the grand staircase, however, he was very unexpectedly—to the best of his belief the American did not know a soul in all Paris—accosted by a shabbily dressed young man, a total stranger to him, who earnestly craved the favour of a few minutes’ conversation.
“I am a friend,” he urged eagerly and ingratiatingly, “of someone who knows you, who has often had occasion to describe some of your exploits to me, and who, I have no doubt whatever, would authorize me to use his name to secure the interview I have the honour to beg of you, of your kindness, to accord.”
Short and sharp, Tom Bob stopped him in mid career.
“I have not a friend in France,” he declared.
The young man smiled, not at all disconcerted, only saying, in a very low whisper:
“Oh, yes, you have—one at any rate—Juve!”
Not a muscle of Tom Bob’s face moved; nevertheless the great American detective must have been well acquainted with the name of the king of police-officers, nor indeed could he well fail to know something of Juve’s famous doings, for he replied at once:
“Follow me, sir”—and putting an abrupt end to the dialogue, he turned his back on the young man, and marching on in front without a word of apology, started to mount the stairs.
“No. 142, here you are, sir! your luggage will be up in
ten minutes, sir.”
Tom Bob and the unknown stranger who followed him had just been ushered into the room the detective had engaged several days ago by wireless from mid-Atlantic. Now, laying his hand on the waiter’s shoulder, he ordered him:
“Have my luggage here in one hour from now, and not before! I particularly wish not to be disturbed.”
The man looked at him in astonishment; this traveller had tastes exactly the opposite of those of the ordinary run of customers. However, the well-trained servant, without a word indicating his surprise, went on:
“Here is the bell, sir—one ring for the waiter who attends to your room, two for the chambermaid; this is the cold water tap and there’s the hot; the electric switch is by the head of the bed.”
Tom Bob was standing in the middle of the room and gazing steadfastly at the ceiling while the man was speaking. Then he put an odd question:
“How long ago was it the gentleman who has the bedroom immediately over mine first came to the hotel?”
The waiter stared, more surprised than ever. “I haven’t an idea, sir,” he admitted; “but why?”
Tom Bob took the man by the shoulders and pushed him gently out of the room:
“It interests me enormously. It is now twenty past seven, you will find means to give me this information at twenty past eight, in sixty minutes, when they bring up my luggage. Now go!”
And now, when the servant was gone and the door shut behind him, Tom Bob at last turned to the stranger, who was, no less than the other, staring at him, bewildered by his queer behaviour.
“You will excuse me, won’t you,” he asked, “but before I give you my attention, I have a little piece of work to do.”
The other bowed, saying only by way of remonstrance:
“I must mention again, Mr. Bob, that what I have to say is pretty urgent ...”
But the detective only smiled and cutting short his protest: “There’s something else,” he declared, “that’s very much more urgent, Monsieur Jérôme Fandor.”
Then as the journalist gave a start of amazement at hearing his name spoken—it was as a matter of fact Jérôme Fandor who had just now accosted the detective in the entrance-hall and asked leave to speak with him—Tom Bob, calm as ever, signified with an imperative gesture that he was not to interrupt:
“Something very much more urgent, I repeat. Will you be so kind as to help me in my little piece of work?”
More and more surprised, but confounded by his host’s phlegm, Fandor nodded “yes,” without so much as opening his lips.
“Then,” Tom Bob went on, “here’s how I start the job. Look! I take off my hat ... so; then I plant my chair against the wall ... so; I take my seat on the chair ... Have you a pencil on you, Monsieur Fandor?”
“I have, sir.”
“Very good! Will you be so very obliging as to take it and draw a line on—on the door; see here, exactly on a level with the top of my head.”
Fandor carried out the order, lost in astonishment.
“He’s mad,” he thought to himself; “the good man’s as mad as a hatter! What does it all mean?”
His reflections were cut short by the detective, who announced in his deliberate voice:
“The fact is, you see, I have a horror of high chairs.” And as he uttered these extraordinary words, Tom Bob got up and, kneeling down on the floor, turned the chair he had been sitting on the minute before upside down, then drew from his pocket a hunting-knife.
“Don’t be afraid, Monsieur Fandor, I’m not going to open the blade; it is the saw I want to use.”
So saying, he extracted from the handle a little saw of the kind often found in such knives.
“Go on, sir, go on!” Fandor protested. “Can I help you?”
“Oh! no, it’s done in a moment,” and as if he were performing the most natural action in the world, Tom Bob, still on his knees, began to saw off the legs of the chair in front of him.
“I have a horror of high chairs,” he said for the second time; “that’s why I saw off the legs, as you see, and convert it into a low one; it’ll cost me a trifle to pay for the damage, but what of that?... Ah! that’s done!”
The detective had in fact abbreviated the chair legs by eight or nine inches. He set the chair on its feet again, and after making sure it stood firm, sat down; then springing up again, still without uttering a word, he went over to the bed standing on one side of the room, and picked up a pillow and bolster, which he threw down near the wall.
“You are a young man, Monsieur Fandor,” he remarked, “you are not just come off a journey; you are not tired like me; besides, I don’t want to demolish all the hotel furniture ... in a word, will you be so kind as to seat yourself on these improvised cushions?... yes? cross-legged, if you like.”
This time Fandor showed such a comic face of astonishment that even the phlegmatic American could not help smiling.
“I am not mad,” he observed simply by way of explanation, “but I have a horror of seeing people sitting in high chairs when I am myself seated in a low one—a whim, Monsieur Fandor, a monomania, if you like, of no importance.... Now, what can I do for you?”
Jérôme Fandor squatted on the ground in obedience to the detective’s strange invitation, while the latter took his place on the seat so oddly truncated.
“Sir,” declared the journalist, “the name I have mentioned, the name of Juve, must have informed you of the object of my visit. You can guess ...”
But Tom Bob uttered a sharp protest: “No, I know nothing, I cannot guess. Besides, I never guess; I infer, that’s all.”
“Nevertheless you guessed my name, Monsieur Tom Bob?”
“Not at all! I only inferred you were Fandor from the fact that you invoked Juve’s name by way of introduction to me and that, as I look at it, there can hardly be another individual but you, Jérôme Fandor, to act so imprudently as to name Juve as guarantee, when Juve is generally taken to be Fantômas!”
On hearing the American’s words, Fandor sprang up instinctively to grasp his hand.
“Oh, sir,” he cried, “thank you for what you say, I thank you from the bottom of my heart! At the first word, I guessed you were to be an ally. You do not think, do you, that Juve is Fantômas?”
Tom Bob interrupted sharply again:
“I think I told you to sit on the floor! You get up instead; you are in the wrong, you must do what I ask. If you mean to jump up and down like this, I prefer to put off the interview you desire till to-morrow.”
“But, sir ... but!” Fandor stammered, again bemused with surprise, as he sat down again, while the other insisted:
“There’s no ‘but’ about it; it is so! However, let’s leave that. You did not come to see me, I presume, for the mere pleasure of annoying me by standing? You came to tell me something. What have you to tell me?”
Fandor called up all his coolness, shut his eyes a second, pulled himself together, and now, in a calm voice, assented, without troubling further about his interlocutor’s eccentricities:
“You are right, sir: I have come to tell you something, to tell you this—I am indeed Jérôme Fandor.”
“Excuse me,” broke in Tom Bob, “but how came you to recognize me?”
“Gad! sir,” confessed Fandor, smiling innocently, “the newspapers, announcing your sensational arrival the other day, published your portrait, which no doubt they had among their stock of blocks. I knew, moreover, that you would land from the Lorraine, saw the Trans-Atlantic special come in, I followed you from the Commissary’s office which you visited, I don’t know for what reason, to this hotel, and ...”
“Very good!... Now, you came to tell me?”
“Sir,” replied Fandor, “you have challenged Fantômas to mortal combat; Fantômas, as you know, has set himself to terrorize Paris, to make war on France, on civilization itself ...”
Tom Bob interrupted again: “I have heard of his challenge to the Chamber. Proceed!”
“Good!” Fandor agreed. “But Fantômas has committed crimes you have not heard of. Yesterday a Minister was killed ...”
“I know,” again affirmed the detective.
“Already?”
“Already?... the papers I bought at Rouen!”
“Then you also know that the day before yesterday, Mr. Bob, Fantômas murdered three police-officers, so arranging it as to make it believed I was the criminal?”
“No, I did not know that.”
“In that case I will tell you about it”—and Fandor proceeded to relate clearly and succinctly his extraordinary adventure, concluding his narrative with the words:
“Which comes to this, Mr. Tom Bob, that at this present moment not only does the fear of Fantômas paralyse all Paris, but further, public opinion accuses me of being Fantômas’ accomplice, or even Fantômas himself!”
All the time the young man was speaking, Tom Bob kept nodding his approval at intervals. Now he broke in on the other’s remarks.
“If you please,” he said, “better lie down, don’t you think, on the floor instead of just crouching, as you are now?” And as Fandor gazed at him in a sort of panic, the detective added in an explanatory tone:
“My monomania, you know! Don’t be alarmed ... You were saying, Monsieur Fandor, that people took you for Fantômas? But Fantômas is in prison; he is generally thought to be Juve, I understand?”
“People don’t know what to think, sir. Certainly, two weeks ago, everybody accepted this monstrous improbability; now, in face of the new facts, they are doubtful. As for me, as you may well suppose, I have never varied in my belief. I know that Juve is Juve. You, sir, know it, too.”
Again the detective nodded approval: “Certainly I do! By reputation I know Juve well; nay more, I have had occasion to pursue certain inquiries in conjunction with him. So I know he is not Fantômas. Besides which, like public opinion, Monsieur Fandor, I am for believing that if Juve was Fantômas, the present crimes could not be committed ... But, after all, in what you tell me, even in your story of the strange attack of which you were the victim, I see nothing particularly novel. What would you propose to do?”
Fandor’s face paled: “It is something more than a proposal, sir, that I am here to make you. When I read the announcement of your arrival, and recalled all Juve had told me in praise of Tom Bob, I congratulated myself, I say again, on the noble ally you would be for me, on the fine opportunity I had of obtaining by you, and thanks to you, Juve’s release from gaol—and that is the reason I resolved to come to you and give you the means, at the first moment after your arrival, to make a grand impression on the French police.”
“I fail to understand you.”
“I will explain. Once succeed in effecting an arrest, Monsieur Bob, a difficult arrest, within four and twenty hours of your arrival in Paris, and you will instantly be the hero of the day! They cannot any longer then affect in high places the same indifference the French police will certainly show towards you, chagrined as they are that you should come to help them out of their difficulty. A sensational arrest, loudly proclaimed and commended by the Press, will give you prestige, add weight to your declaration, when you come to declare, as I hope you will, that Juve is not Fantômas.”
“And this arrest, Monsieur Fandor?”
“This arrest, Monsieur Bob, I am going to tell you of.”
Carried away by the importance of his statement, Fandor again rose to his feet. But barely a second did he retain that attitude! Quick as thought, Tom Bob sprang from his chair, fell on his knees, seized the journalist round the waist and forced him back on the floor!
“Stay lying down, I tell you!” he ordered in a furious voice; “have you no nose?”
“No nose?” stammered Fandor, really alarmed by the detective’s conduct.
Already the latter had resumed his seat on his abbreviated chair: “Forgive me,” he said with a smile—“my monomania! only my monomania again!... You were saying?”
Fandor resolved to show no more surprise at anything, and above all not to move again.
“This arrest,” he went on, “this sensational arrest that is needed to give you prestige, I am going to supply you with the means of carrying out. Some days ago an unfortunate bank messenger was murdered in M. Moche’s house, the same house where, as I described just now, I was myself the victim of mysterious violence. The police at this present time have proved unable to discover either the body of the victim or his murderer. His murderer, I know, I denounce him here and now; it is, it must be, it cannot but be M. Moche!”
“M. Moche?”
“Yes!”—and Fandor began a detailed account of how he had come to know that dubious man of business. He said how he associated with notorious apaches, how he was habitually engaged in shady transactions with those gentry, that in particular he was the intimate and friend of a bully, one Paulet. He concluded: “There is besides a damning piece of evidence against him. While I was in the Chinese lantern, where Fantômas had imprisoned me, I saw the officers find in the garret a button from the uniform of the bank collector who has disappeared. This garret belongs to M. Moche, it was in this garret the crime was committed. Moche must be the criminal. You will understand, Mr. Bob, that after I had crept away along the house-roofs after my extraordinary adventure, I could not, under pain of being immediately arrested, return to make investigations at M. Moche’s. Nor have the police, on their side, being convinced that Fantômas is responsible for the murder of the collector and that I am Fantômas, troubled M. Moche. You are free to act: I beseech you to move heaven and earth to clear up with all speed the mystery of the bank employé’s death.”
The detective nodded his comprehension.
“What you tell me is interesting, very inter...”
But, cutting him off short, with a dull roar that was unmistakable, an explosion shook the room. It came from above the two men’s heads, like a hurricane sweeping by. Facing them, fragments of plaster, bits of the woodwork, broke away, and the wall was pitted with little holes. A thick, acrid smoke, smelling like gunpowder, rolled through the room in heavy blue-grey wreaths.
Tom Bob did not so much as start; Fandor stammered a terrific oath. Then after a moment’s silence, the detective in the calmest way completed his interrupted sentence: “... Very interesting what you are telling me;... but what has just happened is interesting, too. And now, Monsieur Fandor, you can stand up.”
But a loud knocking was heard at the door. A waiter was asking:
“What is the matter—an accident?”
“No,” Tom Bob assured him, without opening, “an incident. I was shaving and my water-heater burst ... only tell them to bring up my luggage in an hour and a half’s time, not before.”
The detective’s voice was so calm the man seemed satisfied, while amid the never ending turmoil of the great hotel the violent explosion in the room had apparently passed almost unnoticed.
When the waiter was gone, Tom Bob got up from his chair, remarking:
“So now, Monsieur Fandor, you understand why I made such a point of our both being seated as close to the ground as possible.”
But Fandor shook his head. “I don’t understand anything at all,” he protested.
“Well, go and look at the pencil line you drew just now, on a level with my head.”
Fandor ran to the wall and could not restrain an exclamation:
“By the Lord! the line is exactly in the zone riddled by the explosion of the bomb!”
“It was not a bomb.”
“Not a bomb? What was it then?”
“A shot fired by Fantômas.”
“By Fantômas?”
“Precisely, by Fantômas.”
The other’s calm was so wonderful, his imperturbability so complete, that Fandor felt almost ashamed of himself to be so profoundly agitated. Once again he called upon his strength of will power and mastered his feelings. In a quiet voice he asked:
“Well then, sir, what has happened? Why did you ask me to mark just that height on the wall? You guessed?...”
Tom Bob, hands in pockets, was looking up at the top of a tall wardrobe.
“I did not guess anything,” he said. “I never guess, I infer.”
“But what have you inferred then?”
“Why, I observe ...”
“But, good Lord, what do you observe?”
“What occurs, Monsieur Fandor! Now look here, is it, yes or no, a logical conclusion that Fantômas was put out by my arrival? Was it, yes or no, logical to conclude that knowing, as everybody knows, thanks to my wireless messages, that I am setting to work to arrest him, while he proposes to terrify Paris and force the Chambers to satisfy his demands, was it, I ask again, logical to suppose that he was going to try to murder me?”
“Logical, why yes; but how did you guess?”
“I argued, Monsieur Fandor; I argued that Fantômas, wishing to murder me, would do it as swiftly as possible; consequently, if I wished to escape his criminal manœuvres, it was advisable to lay a trap for him. The trap consisted in engaging a room here. Fantômas knew of this. How, I cannot say, but Fantômas knows everything. For my part, I knew—knowledge is power—I knew that, on my coming to the Terminus, an attempt was going to be made on my life. What sort of an attempt? I felt uncertain. I suspected the lift—that risk avoided, in revenge I was pretty well convinced, when I entered this room, the room I had engaged in advance, that something was going to happen here. But what? I thought of a poisonous gas infiltrated during the night, and that is why I questioned the waiter about the occupant of the room above. Monsieur Fandor, I told you you had no nose, did I not? The fact is I am astonished that you didn’t, like me, detect in the room a faint smell of burning, of burning tinder.”
Fandor, lost in admiration at the precision of the American detective’s discoveries, the nature of which he was beginning to fathom, declared: “I noticed the smell of burning perfectly well, but ...”
“But you drew no inference from it. I inferred that a slow-match was burning—but where? To search for it was running a risk, an incautious movement might precipitate the crisis. Instead, I said to myself, Monsieur Fandor—the natural thing for a traveller to do when he enters a bedroom is to sit down. Therefore it is more than probable, if a shot is to be fired, from a revolver say, or from a gun, that the weapon will be levelled at the height of a person’s head seated on a chair. I cut down my chair so as to be below the line of fire! I made you sit on the floor to save you from being hit!”
One thing, and one thing only, could Fandor find to say to express his admiration adequately: “Juve could not have done better!”
“Truly, it was not so bad. Now, if you would like to get to the bottom of things, we will take a look on top of that wardrobe ... There, what did I say?”
From the top of the wardrobe Tom Bob, mounted on a chair, proceeded to unship a sort of gatling-gun, consisting of six barrels fixed side by side, the muzzles of which, arranged fan-wise, commanded the whole room.
“Don’t you see,” the detective concluded, “it’s all as plain as daylight. Here’s how Fantômas set to work. He hired this room, up to seven or eight o’clock this morning, I imagine. Seeing it was taken for to-night by me, it was evident no one would occupy it between us two. On top of the wardrobe he lashed an extraordinary contrivance loaded up with grape-shot, which swept the whole place with a hurricane of lead; to touch off the charge, he laid down a slow-match of tinder.”
Fandor shook his head: “No,” he objected, so enthralled in spite of himself by the interest of the investigation as to have completely recovered his clearness of mind; “you seem to forget one detail; if he lit the slow-match before leaving, it’s ten to one the smoke would have been noticed by the hotel waiter. Then besides, it would have needed a great length of slow-match, and that meant risking a conflagration ...”
But Tom Bob indulged in another meaning smile, as he said:
“Fantômas left, I suppose, about eight in the morning, quite early anyway; but his match was not lit till two or three o’clock in the afternoon. You needn’t be surprised, Fandor, the trick is quite elementary! Look there, on the carpet, near the wardrobe; you see those little shards of glass? the fragments of a burning-glass! The tinder was set alight by means of that lens, scientifically adjusted for the precise moment when the sun had reached the altitude chosen by Fantômas. It’s really very ingenious, after all!”
And as Fandor remained silent, struck dumb with admiration for the coolness displayed by the American, who had thus escaped by a hair’s breadth the terrible machinations of a murderer, and at the same time saved his companion from a hideous death, Tom Bob resumed:
“The present business being now cleared up, and Fantômas responsible for yet another attempted murder, let us pass on to serious matters. This is not really important, as it only concerns two of his individual enemies, you and me ... You were telling me just now, that M. Moche was guilty of the bank messenger’s murder?... h’m, that’s not so sure. Come, Monsieur Fandor, just give me a little information about the man’s associates.”
At the detective’s invitation Fandor had at last installed himself comfortably in a big armchair.
“Moche’s associates,” he said, “are a deplorably bad lot; to begin with, amongst other notorious ruffians, I can give you the names, or rather the nicknames, of several, ‘Beardy,’ ‘the Beadle,’ ‘the Cellarman,’—women too, ‘Big Ernestine,’ little Nini, who, I told you before, has for her fancy man, the bully Paulet—calls himself a stone-mason, even works at his trade in his spare moments, for I know Moche has lately given him several jobs to do; then there is ‘Beauty Boy,’ another choice blackguard, and ...”
But Tom Bob suddenly interrupted his informant.
“I am dog tired,” he declared, “and half dropping asleep. Listen here, Monsieur Fandor, my own opinion is, an investigation is advisable before deciding on anything. I give you my word I will investigate ...”