The Mysterious Mickey Finn by Elliot Paul Page B

That’s been done, you know. A dozen Italian primitives got by the customs in New York last month, because each one had a picture of Garibaldi painted over the original.’
    â€˜I’ll have every last one of them expertized at the Louvre,’ the sergeant said. ‘I’m going to get to the bottom of this, if it takes the rest of my life.’
    The telephone rang and at the end of the conversation the commissaire said: ‘The minister of justice is taking a hand. He’s having the Seine dragged for the missing taxi.’
    â€˜Don’t forget to tell him there’s a painting of Gonzo in the cab. The grappling hooks might mess it up, and then if it turned out to be something like the Mona Lisa the department would get a black eye. The public is touchy about works of art. The man in the street doesn’t care much what happens to people, if they’re not related to him or in some way profitable. But let anything happen to a work of art and the whole world is up in arms.’
    The phone rang again. ‘Every taxi in Paris has been checked, and only one, the Citroën driven by Kvek, is missing,’ the commissaire said.
    â€˜Have all the railroad stations been watched?’
    â€˜Of course, and all the tramways, buses, and airplanes. How a dozen suspicious characters could escape as if there were not a policeman in all Paris is mysterious to me,’ the commissaire said. ‘There’ll be an investigation, a shakeup, an international scandal....’
    â€˜I thought at first that our list of people came from this Greeng’s imagination, but it seems such people exist, or existed up till eight o’clock this evening.’
    â€˜I shall hold you responsible for finding them,’ the commissaire said. ‘The prefect will come down on me, and the ministries of justice and foreign affairs will be severe with him. The American ambassador will make it hot for the foreign office. The United States Government will prod the ambassador.’
    â€˜I shall find them,’ Frémont said, and started for Montparnasse again.

CHAPTER 8
No Pastures
    I N the sub-cellar of the Hotel du Caveau, rue de la Huchette, roast goose had just been served. The group of artists and friends, little suspecting what was taking place above stairs and in the embassies, city rooms, chancelleries, préfectures , commissariats and Montparnasse cafés, had done justice to mixed hors d’œuvres, turbots which were truly noble, and several wines as good as those at the Interalliée. M. Julliard, the proprietor, had called in a fiddler and piper from the dance hall nearby, thereby furnishing not only music but partners for Rosa Stier and Gwendolyn Poularde. The latter had, clutched in her shapely fingers, a volume entitled Les attributions des huiles diverses , but the worry about her Chicago show was fading from her mind.
    Hjalmar, his pockets stuffed with thousand franc and five thousand franc notes which he mistook now and then for a napkin or handkerchief, sat lustily at the head of the wooden table with Miriam on his right and Cirage on his left.
    â€˜Skal,’ he shouted from time to time.
    In a less boisterous way, Homer Evans was enjoying the party, too. He did not roar and drink from bottles after biting off the neck, or recite Barbara Frietchie in Swedish, jumping up on the revolutionary table when he was Barbara and down again to reply in the person of Stonewall Jackson. Neither did he fill pipes with red wine or carve snatches of the Twenty-Third Psalm on the woodwork of the piano. His was a contemplative nature, and in idle moments he was thinking about Miriam, or problem ‘c’. When his eyes began to smart from the smoke, he suggested to her that they get a breath of air. Upstairs, meanwhile, M. Julliard was reading the early morning papers, still wet with ink.
    â€˜Any news?’ asked Evans as he passed.
    â€˜Nothing much,’ replied the