Contrary, perhaps, to the opinion of the Bright Young People in our midst, the World-before-the-War was not by any means barren of adventure and excitement. Only, they did things differently then. There was, in those days, a certain sparkling gaiety, a spontaneity, a chic sadly lacking from the exploits of a younger generation. There was wit as well as honor among thieves. Just as really good wine differs from that modern depravity, the cocktail, so does the finished artistry of Jim Barnett compare with the outrages of bobbed-hair bandits and cat-burglars.

For Barnett had a brain and used it; a sense of humor, and rejoiced in it. He was independent of revolvers and racing cars and hypodermic syringes. He made a confidant of no man—or woman. He was an unassisted conjurer, as it were, performing his little tricks always in the full glare of the limelight, relying entirely on his own lightning skill to vanish his watches and evolve his rabbits.

A curious, memorable figure, Jim Barnett. By profession, a private detective, principal of the Barnett [10]Agency in the rue Laborde, with a modest ground-floor office for his headquarters. Unlike others of his trade, he worked entirely alone. He employed no spies, and saved himself their possible treachery. He had no secretary for the simple reason that he kept no records. His telephone rang infrequently, and when it did he answered it himself.

In appearance, Barnett was something of a problem. He gave the impression of a man who is wilfully badly dressed, intentionally careless of his attire. His coat’s sole claim to respect was its indubitable antiquity. His trousers—but we will spare possible heartbreak to the tailors who read this description. He wore his incongruous monocle like some exotic bloom—its startling aristocracy in conjunction with the rest of his get-up was that of an orchid in an onion patch.

What a contrast to his friend, Inspector Béchoux, that immaculate sprig of the Paris Police Force. Béchoux was frankly a dandy, devoting all his off-time to the adornment of his person. Yet he was no fool. Only, his brain moved in the channels of detective routine, whereas Barnett’s leaped nimbly from point to point of a mystery until it plucked out the heart.

Be it said to Inspector Béchoux’s undying honor that he recognized Barnett’s gifts quite openly. He even resorted to asking his help in various problems, and it is the inner history of some of these that this book now reveals for the first time to the world at large.

The peculiar feature of all the Béchoux-Barnett [11]cases was always either their apparent insolubility (e.g., the Disappearance of the Twelve Little Nigger Boys) or the fact that they seemed solved at the outset (as in the case of the Man with the Gold Teeth). And the finale of each presented certain similar features—a dramatic and quite unexpected eleventh-hour dénouement; a swift adjustment of account between the innocent and guilty parties; and—a highly satisfactory windfall for Barnett. Only, as Inspector Béchoux bitterly observed, it was always the kind of windfall that meant shaking the tree. Barnett’s gifts would have stripped an orchard.…

What placed Inspector Béchoux in a serious dilemma was that in every case Barnett’s position was unassailable from start to finish. His victims were people who could not be brought to speak a word against him. You could call it intimidation—blackmail—what you liked. Barnett merely grinned and fed large checks to his banking account.

Large checks—and yet the slogan of the Barnett Agency was:—

“Information Free. No Fees of Any Kind.”

Which was paradoxically true. Barnett’s income was composed not of fees but of levies. Sometimes he took toll of his clients, sometimes of their enemies. A certain poetic justice characterized his depredations. The poor and the innocent had nothing to fear from Jim Barnett.

And he was undeniably on the side of the law so far [12]as results went. Only, where it suited his purpose, he meted out his own idea of a suitable punishment to criminals instead of turning them over to the police.

Inspector Béchoux was probably Barnett’s only close friend. Yet all he knew of him was gleaned from the hours they spent together when Barnett intervened in one of his cases. He was quite ignorant of Barnett’s private life—his antecedents—even his identity. For there was always one mystery which remained unsolved. Who was the man who called himself “Jim Barnett”?

There was something about his methods and his amusing buffoonery which could not fail to recall the King of Crooks—the one man who persisted in eluding and baffling the Paris police—the man Inspector Béchoux would have given his life-savings to lay hands on—whom he sometimes, in his inmost heart, half suspected to be masquerading as “Barnett,” and then dismissed the suspicion as fantastic.

It is a long way back to pre-war Paris, and the clash of wits between Barnett and Inspector Béchoux. In these days, when so much of admiration and adulation is being misapplied, honor to whom honor is due! The moment has come when we can openly state that the worthy Inspector’s instinct was right, and the “interventions” of Jim Barnett may safely be attributed to their perpetrator—Arsène Lupin! [13]