Through the Wall | Page 7

looked more closely at the words,
then sharply at her.
"I--I'm so sorry," she stammered. "Have I spoiled your book?"
"Never mind the book, but--how did you come to write this?"
"I--I didn't notice what I wrote," she said, in confusion.
"Do you mean to say that you don't know what you wrote?"
"I don't know at all," she replied with evident sincerity.

"It's the damnedest thing I ever heard of," he muttered. And then, with
a puzzled look: "See here, I guess I've been too previous. I'll cut out
that banquet to-night--that is, I'll show up for soup and fish, and then
I'll come to you. Do I get a smile now?"
"O Lloyd!" she murmured happily.
"I'll be there about nine."
"About nine," she repeated, and again her eyes turned anxiously to the
blood-red western sky.
CHAPTER II
COQUENIL'S GREATEST CASE
After leaving Notre-Dame, Paul Coquenil directed his steps toward the
prefecture of police, but halfway across the square he glanced back at
the church clock that shows its white face above the grinning gargoyles,
and, pausing, he stood a moment in deep thought.
"A quarter to seven," he reflected; then, turning to the right, he walked
quickly to a little wine shop with flowers in the windows, the Tavern of
the Three Wise Men, an interesting fragment of old-time Paris that
offers its cheery but battered hospitality under the very shadow of the
great cathedral.
"Ah, I thought so!" he muttered, as he recognized Papa Tignol at one of
the tables on the terrace. And approaching the old man, he said in a low
tone: "I want you."
Tignol looked up quickly from his glass, and his face lighted. "Eh, M.
Paul again!"
"I must see M. Pougeot," continued the detective. "It's important. Go to
his office. If he isn't there, go to his house. Anyhow, find him and tell
him to come to me at once. Hurry on; I'll pay for this."

"Shall I take an auto?"
"Take anything, only hurry."
"And you want me at nine o'clock?"
Coquenil shook his head. "Not until to-morrow."
"But the news you were going to tell me?"
"There'll be bigger news soon. Oh, run across to the church and tell
Bonneton that he needn't come either."
"I knew it, I knew it," chuckled Papa Tignol, as he trotted off. "There's
something doing!"
[Illustration: "'I want you,' he said in a low voice."]
With this much arranged, Coquenil, after paying for his friend's
absinthe, strolled over to a cab stand near the statue of Henri IV and
selected a horse that could not possibly make more than four miles an
hour. Behind this deliberate animal he seated himself, and giving the
driver his address, he charged him gravely not to go too fast, and
settled back against the cushions to comfortable meditations. "There is
no better way to think out a tough problem," he used to insist, "than to
take a very long drive in a very slow cab."
It may have been that this horse was not slow enough, for forty minutes
later Coquenil's frown was still unrelaxed when they drew up at the
Villa Montmorency, really a collection of villas, some dozens of them,
in a private park near the Bois de Boulogne, each villa a garden within
a garden, and the whole surrounded by a great stone wall that shuts out
noises and intrusions. They entered by a massive iron gateway on the
Rue Poussin and moved slowly up the ascending Avenue des Tilleuls,
past lawns and trees and vine-covered walls, leaving behind the rush
and glare of the city and entering a peaceful region of flowers and
verdure where Coquenil lived.

The detective occupied a wing of the original Montmorency chateau, a
habitation of ten spacious rooms, more than enough for himself and his
mother and the faithful old servant, Melanie, who took care of them,
especially during these summer months, when Madame Coquenil was
away at a country place in the Vosges Mountains that her son had
bought for her. Paul Coquenil had never married, and his friends
declared that, besides his work, he loved only two things in the
world--his mother and his dog.
It was a quarter to eight when M. Paul sat down in his spacious dining
room to a meal that was waiting when he arrived and that Melanie
served with solicitous care, remarking sadly that her master scarcely
touched anything, his eyes roving here and there among painted
mountain scenes that covered the four walls above the brown-and-gold
wainscoting, or out into the garden through the long, open windows; he
was searching, searching for something, she knew the signs, and with a
sigh she took away her most tempting dishes untasted.
At eight o'clock the detective rose from the table and withdrew into