“Maybe,” I said, “but he lied to me.”
“Isn’t that like a sleuth?” Fitzstephan shook his head, grinning. “You must have had the wrong fellow–somebody impersonating him. The Chevalier Bayard doesn’t lie, and, besides, lying requires imagination. You’ve–or wait! Was a woman involved in your question?”
I nodded.
“You’re correct, then,” Fitzstephan assured me. “I apologize. The Chevalier Bayard always lies when a woman is involved, even if it’s unnecessary and puts her to a lot of trouble. It’s one of the conventions of Bayardism, something to do with guarding her honor or the like. Who was the woman?”
“Gabrielle Leggett,” I said, and told him all I knew about the Leggetts, the diamonds, and the dead man in Golden Gate Avenue. Disappointment deepened in his face while I talked.
“That’s trivial, dull,” he complained when I had finished. “I’ve been thinking of Leggett in terms of Dumas, and you bring me a piece of gimcrackery out of O. Henry. You’ve let me down, you and your shabby diamonds. But”–his eyes brightened again–“this may lead to something. Leggett may or may not be criminal, but there’s more to him than a two-penny insurance swindle.”
“You mean,” I asked. “that he’s one of these master minds? So you read newspapers? What do you think he is? King of the bootleggers? Chief of an international crime syndicate? A white-slave magnate? Head of a dope ring? Or queen of the counterfeiters in disguise?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” he said. “But he’s got brains, and there’s something black in him. There’s something he doesn’t want to think about, but must not forget. I’ve told you that he’s thirsty for all that’s dizziest in thought, yet he’s cold as a fish, but with a bitter-dry coldness. He’s a neurotic who keeps his body fit and sensitive and ready–for what?–while he drugs his mind with lunacies. Yet he’s cold and sane. If a man has a past that he wants to forget, he can easiest drug his mind against memory through his body, with sensuality if not with narcotics. But suppose the past is not dead, and this man must keep himself fit to cope with it should it come into the present. Well, then he would be wisest to anaesthetize his mind directly, letting his body stay strong and ready.”
“And this past?”
Fitzstephan shook his head, saying: “If I don’t know–and I don’t–it isn’t my fault. Before you’re through, you’ll know how difficult it is to get information out of that family.”
“Did you try?”
“Certainly. I’m a novelist. My business is with souls and what goes on in them. He’s got one that attracts me, and I’ve always considered myself unjustly treated by his not turning himself inside out for me. You know, I doubt if Leggett’s his name. He’s French. He told me once he came from Atlanta, but he’s French in outlook, in quality of mind, in everything except admission.”
“What of the rest of the family?” I asked. “Gabrielle’s cuckoo, isn’t she?”
“I wonder.” Fitzstephan looked curiously at me. “Are you saying that carelessly, or do you really think she’s off?”
“I don’t know. She’s odd, an uncomfortable sort of person. And, then, she’s got animal ears, hardly any forehead; and her eyes shift from green to brown and back without ever settling on one color. How much of her affairs have you turned up in your snooping around?”
“Are you–who make your living snooping–sneering at my curiosity about people and my attempts to satisfy it?”
“We’re different,” I said. “I do mine with the object of putting people in jail, and I get paid for it, though not as much as I should.”
“That’s not different,” he said. “I do mine with the object of putting people in books, and I get paid for it, though not as much as I should.”
“Yeah, but what good does that do?”
“God knows. What good does putting them in jail do?”
“Relieves congestion,” I said. “Put enough people in jail, and cities wouldn’t have traffic problems. What do you know about this Gabrielle?”
“She hates her father. He worships her.”
“How come the hate?”
“I don’t know; perhaps because he worships her.”