The Greatest Works of Cleveland Moffett. Cleveland Moffett
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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 case he is hurled helpless over his adversary's shoulder, or he may resist, with the result that the tendons are torn from his lacerated arm and he faints in agony.
Such was the master hold gained by M. Paul in the first minute of the struggle; long and carefully he had practiced this coup with a wrestling professional. It never failed, it could not fail, and, in savage triumph, he prolonged his victory, slowly increasing the pressure, slowly as he felt the tendons stretching, the bones cracking in this helpless right arm. A few seconds more and the end would come, a few seconds more and—then a crashing, shattering pain drove through Coquenil's lower heart region, his arms relaxed, his hands relaxed, his senses dimmed, and he sank weakly to the ground. His enemy had done an extraordinary thing, had delivered a blow not provided for in Jitsu tactics. In spite of the torsion torture, he had swung his free arm under the detective's lifted guard, not in Yokohama style but in the best manner of the old English prize ring, his clenched fist falling full on the point of the heart, full on the unguarded solar-plexus nerves which God put there for the undoing of the vainglorious fighters. And Coquenil dropped like a smitten ox with this thought humming in his darkening brain: "It was the left that spoke then."
As he sank to the ground M. Paul tried to save himself, and seizing his opponent by the leg, he held him desperately with his failing strength; but the spasms of pain overcame him, his muscles would not act, and with a furious sense of helplessness and failure, he felt the clutched leg slipping from his grasp. Then, as consciousness faded, the brute instinct in him rallied in a last fierce effort and he bit the man deeply under the knee.
When Coquenil came to himself he was lying on the ground and several policemen were bending over him. He lifted his head weakly and looked about him. The stranger was gone. The automobile was gone. And it all came back to him in sickening memory, the flaunting challenge of this man, the fierce struggle, his own overconfidence, and then his crushing defeat. Ah, what a blow that last one was with the conquering left!
And suddenly it flashed through his mind that he had been outwitted from the first, that the man's purpose had not been at all what it seemed to be, that a hand-to-hand conflict was precisely what the stranger had sought and planned for, because—because—In feverish haste Coquenil felt in his breast pocket for the envelope with the precious leather fragments. It was not there. Then quickly he searched his other pockets. It was not there. The envelope containing the woman's name and address was gone.
Chapter X.
Gibelin Scores a Point
The next day all Paris buzzed and wondered about this Ansonia affair, as it was called. The newspapers printed long accounts of it with elaborate details, and various conjectures were made as to the disappearance of Martinez's fair companion. More or less plausible theories were also put forth touching the arrested American, prudently referred to as "Monsieur K., a well-known New Yorker." It was furthermore dwelt upon as significant that the famous detective, Paul Coquenil, had returned to his old place on the force for the especial purpose of working on this case. And M. Coquenil was reported to have already, by one of his brilliant strokes, secured a clew that would lead shortly to important revelations. Alas, no one knew under what distressing circumstances this precious clew had been lost!
Shortly before nine by the white clock over the columned entrance to the Palais de Justice, M. Paul passed through the great iron and gilt barrier that fronts the street and turning to the left, mounted the wide stone stairway. He had had his snatch of sleep at the haman, his rubdown and cold plunge, but not his intended bout with the wrestling professional. He had had wrestling