Hugger-Mugger in the Louvre by Elliot Paul

Balthazar St.-J. Truc.
    In describing himself to Tom Jackson as a man who never rested, Dr. Truc had not stretched the point very far. The doctor was a man of insatiable ambition, not for glory or the satisfaction of helping mankind. He wanted to be rich. As a boy he had been poor and before he was seven years old had been convinced that it was better to have wads of money. The prospect of wealth had stirred him to effort in his studies and had guided his every action since he had got his degree. He ran his sanitorium at a sizeable profit, soaked rich patients and avoided poor ones, wrote articles for newspapers and magazines, and in a small way speculated on the Bourse. Any ordinary man would have been satisfied with what he had acquired, but not Dr. Truc. He would not rest until he could buy and sell everyone he knew, and while he had earned money steadily in a dozen divers ways, the chances for big cleanups had eluded him, quite cruelly, it seemed to him. ‘‘American Jar and Bottle,” he kept murmuring to himself, as he followed the zigzag path of K. Parker Seldon. “It will dive, then rocket. Fortunes will be made. At last I have an iron in the fire.”
    Meanwhile, on the Dôme terrasse, Hjalmar, Kvek and Jackson were debating as to whether they should set a sort of informal dragnet of their own for Chief of Detectives Frémont, in order to find out what, if anything, he had learned about the whereabouts of Evans. There was much to be said on both sides. Jackson, in accordance with his principles of laissez faire, was all for remaining where and as they were, until such time in the near or distant future when Evans might return. Kvek was for setting out in his personal taxi and crashing the gates of the Louvre. There he proposed, if Frémont was not in the museum, to find out why and have no nonsense about it. Hjalmar, for nearly the first time in his life, found himself on middle ground. That put him further in the dumps.
    â€œI’m slipping,” he said dismally to himself. “Old Achilles was right. The whiskers in all my paintings look like putty.” And he was on the point of rushing to his studio and destroying the entire year’s output when Kvek began to thump, to yodel and to bellow.
    â€œMr. Seldon,” he shouted with such vehemence that two school teachers from Iowa, in Europe for the first time, upset their cane-woven chairs, becoming entangled with them in such a picturesque way as to attract the favorable attention of a couple of Rumanian boxers who had previously decided to pass them up.
    Seldon was nowhere in sight and a rather forceful inquiry among the neighboring clients of the Dôme brought forth no useful information. No one had noticed the bottle magnate’s departure or, for that matter, his arrival or his former presence. M. Chalgrin, the proprietor, had been brooding about some new governmental method for saving France, which involved a new tax and a complicated system of daily returns, and would not have noticed what was happening if Aimee McPherson had put on a strip tease act in person.
    â€œDid you look downstairs in the men’s room?” Jackson asked, his reporter’s instinct asserting itself at once.
    Kvek and Hjalmar followed this suggestion, to the acute discomfort of several well-meaning customers who had wished to be alone. No small dapper American business men were among them.
    The reporter would not give up so easily. He noticed that while the chair formerly occupied by Dr. Balthazar Truc was empty, the two men who had kept an appointment with the doctor were still in their places.
    â€œI’m Jackson of the Herald,” he said, approaching their table.
    The athletic man with Wedgwood eyes and a vacant tanned expression looked up irritably from the cricket news in the Times.
    â€œI beg your pardon,” he said, coldly.
    â€œThat’s it. Jackson. Tom Jackson. I wonder if you gentlemen could tell me about an