Hugger-Mugger in the Louvre by Elliot Paul

Author:Elliot Paul [Elliot Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2015-09-25T04:00:00+00:00

12

Which Causes a Lawyer to Burst into Song

WHEN it is taken into consideration that at the time Miriam was born there was scarcely a fence in all Montana, and that her father, from whom she had inherited her sometimes hasty temper, had considered moving his ranch to a secluded spot because in a single week in 1903 two covered wagons had passed westward along the trail, it can be better understood how the Western girl reacted when she found herself between four stained and moldy walls, a dank low ceiling and a rough concrete floor not more than ten feet by twelve. Moreover, her recollections of the tang of the sage brush with which the great open spaces are generously carpeted did not make it easier to endure the fumes which arose from a certain corner of her cell.

To be sure, she was in quod voluntarily and the door was not locked, but the struggle between her inherited claustrophobia and her determination to stick with the suspect, Lazare, was closely contested and did not tend to make her more amenable to Sergeant Schlumberger’s well-meant suggestions. In fact, she went so far as to infer, in a talk with him, that there is something in kraut, which if indulged in to excess, dulls the wits and renders the eater unfit for human society, and particularly for holding public office or employment. That was a sore point with the Alsatian, whose mother had always stored away a barrel or two of sauerkraut in case of sickness, and who had been ridiculed before on the same score by members of the force who hailed from the Midi or the Western provinces of France.

By the time the sergeant sent for Lazare to be brought to the office for preliminary grilling, such friction had developed that Miriam dashed through two hundred yards of offices in order to protest to Dr. Hyacinthe Toudoux, and on her way upset approximately four cubic yards of wire baskets filled with documents, six swivel chairs and two villainous-looking old women who tried to stab her with rusty ink-crushed pens as she passed.

Dr. Toudoux responded with alacrity, as soon as he had scrubbed some of the asphalt from beneath his worn finger-nails. The corpse or mummy of the late Marquis de la Rose d’Antan was still stretched on his laboratory table and the doctor was, if possible, further than ever from arriving at the cause or hour of death. In the prefect’s office, where Schlumberger had confronted the demoralized taxidermist, Toudoux really let himself go.

“This man, your prisoner, is on the verge of a nervous collapse,” the doctor said, glaring at the Alsatian. “If you persist in questioning him now I shall prefer charges against you, personally, and your negligent superiors who, in this case, are showing the ineptitude for police work that they habitually display in the field of science.”

“But it’s not my fault that I find myself in charge of this hornet’s nest of related cases,” protested Schlumberger.

“Why not resign?” the doctor asked.

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