The Picture Thieves

Colonel Pierre Roquebrun emerged from his villa at nine o'clock on a certain bright, sunshine-filled Riviera morning, and walked down the path to his antique shop which was located one kilometer before the village of La Tourette on the road between Venice and Grasse.

His thoughts were stray, diverse and contented as he let himself into the back door of the elegant shop: a pair of Sévres vases he hoped to coax out of a widow who lived in St. Paul; the Louis XIII saltcellar that must be sent off to London; some doubts as to the authenticity of a 13th Century carved Christ that had been offered him.

Unlocking the front door, he picked up his copy of the Nice Matin and thereafter his thoughts were no longer scattered. For the first page was black with headlines heralding the story of the latest picture robbery, the third apparently in a series of assaults upon world-famous canvases owned by the rich.

In the earlier burglaries an El Greco and a Van Dyke had been stolen from the villa of a Swiss industrialist on the Cap d' Antibes, a man with a young wife who had displayed a strange reluctance to discuss the theft. From another mansion on Cap Ferrat, belonging to the widow of an Argentine cattle baron, canvases by Picasso, Matisse, Gauguin and Modigliani had vanished. This burglary was accompanied by murder. An aged caretaker who had apparently struggled to protect the property had been shot.

The theft during the previous Saturday night, confirmed in the paper before him, of 12 famous Renoirs to the value of two and a half million dollars from the Villa Fleury which occupied a commanding position in the hills behind Cannes, was by far the most sensational and the one closest to the Colonel since the American textile millionaire to whom the villa and the pictures belonged was both a client and a personal friend.

As he read on, Colonel Roquebrun's left eyebrow, which was extraordinarily mobile, commenced an ascent which continued until it was practically lost in the wrinkled brown skin of his bald skull. For among the pur-loined paintings was the famous Blue Renoir for which the French Government had just concluded negotiations to purchase for the nation for the staggering sum of two million New Francs. The picture was to have been removed from the Villa Fleury to the Musée des Maîtres Modernes in Cannes the following Monday. The thieves at one stroke had robbed both the American and the nation.

The Colonel continued to scan the story. No one had been able to fix a time when the robbery had occurred. There was a night watchman on duty at the Villa Fleury who made regular rounds. He had heard nothing. The burglar alarms and other security precautions were apparently intact but had given no signal. Joel Howard, the owner of the paintings, was absent in America, but his daughter Sarah, aged 20, was living there. She had returned from a party with some friends early in the morning but before retiring she had not entered the salon where the pictures were hung.

There were two things about the affair that puzzled the Colonel. One was that this third and most startling robbery did not match the other two in technique. The second was that although 24 hours had passed since the affair had taken place, he had heard nothing. Not so much as a mouse had squeaked. There had been no hint of any kind.

Not that a respectable antiquarian, who in addition to the usual cluster of French honors held several important foreign decorations, might be expected to be a repository of thieves' timetables and schedules, but the fact was that the Colonel had a past. Strange bits of information, gossip, rumor and fact that came bubbling up out of the Riviera underworld had a way of reaching his ears and passing into his bald, polished skull and there they remained concealed. The Colonel's thin, hard lips rarely opened to divulge information. Now in his 60s, the Colonel tended his antique shop, bought, sold and minded his own business.

A car crunched to a halt in the gravel of his driveway. Colonel Roquebrun looked from his newspaper to the window and saw the gleaming cream and chrome Jaguar of Sarah Howard, Joel Howard's daughter. She was alone.

He went to meet her and stood framed in the doorway, a stocky, indomitable figure whose still-young, bright-blue and clever eyes shone from a battered countenance that had practically been rebuilt, for he had suffered unspeakable tortures at the hands of the Gestapo.

The girl ran toward him from the car so swiftly that her auburn hair streamed out behind her for an instant, and as the Colonel looked into her small, piquant face he saw that she was deathly pale and her hazel eyes dilated.

"Oh, Colonel Roquebrun," she gasped, and then, quite suddenly, burst into tears.

"Sarah, my dear Sarah," said the Colonel, and putting his arm about her shoulder led her into the shop, for although she was barely 20 they were old friends.

When her tears had finished, she looked up and said, "Isn't it silly of me?"

"Theft is always a shock," the Colonel replied.

The shouting newsprint caught her attention for an instant and she half whispered, "They have stolen Daddy's pictures."

The Colonel nodded. "I was wondering who they were." He had not directed the question at her and therefore was the more surprised at her reply.

"I don't know! People! Anyone, I suppose." Then Sarah gave him a despairing look and whispered, "I'm frightened. Supposing it were all my fault?"

"My dear Sarah, your fault?" But as soon as he put the direct question to her it appeared momentarily to dissipate her panic, or whatever was causing it, and plunge her into a sea of doubts and evasions.

"It's so utterly absurd," she said. "I'm sure they're quite all right. They must be, mustn't they?" And since the Colonel did not reply, being unable to, she continued, "I mean, that's why I have come. You know everyone, don't you—I mean about everyone?" Sarah concluded with sudden passion, as though this would solve all her problems.

The Colonel replied cautiously, "Sometimes. Who are these friends who are troubling you so?"

Sarah replied, "I feel like such a fool. You see, Diana has been staying with me at the villa. Daddy has been in New York. I telephoned him. He's flying over tomorrow."

"Diana who?"

"Oh," said Sarah, "there's nothing wrong with Diana. She's English. Diana Finley. Her father has cotton mills. Daddy does business with him. She has a boyfriend."

The Colonel said nothing and Sarah continued, somewhat too quickly, "He's very nice and knows an awful lot about things. Diana's quite mad about Kip."

"Kip?"

"Kip Trenchley. He's really very sweet to Diana."

A faint bell tinkled in the Colonel's well-stocked attic of names and places and people. Ever since a grateful British Government had bestowed the Order of the British Empire upon him he had considered himself a kind of continuing partner of that country and therefore read the English newspapers assiduously. The name Kip Trenchley brought up an association he could not place beyond being aware that it was disagreeable.

"Yes," he said, "and the others?"

Sarah blinked at him for a moment, looking as though she wished she had not come and replied hesitantly, "Well, there are really eight of us, two more girls and the four men. We've been going places together. The girls Nicole and Elena are very nice—I think. I mean, Harry says they come from very good French families."

"Harry?" said the Colonel, as thought fastening him to a board with a pin.

Doubt again crept into Sarah's voice and gave it something of a little-girl quality. "Harry's the one I'm attracted to. He's sort of fascinating."

The Colonel nodded but withheld comment.

Sarah continued, "Well, there's Marcel Dufour who runs the Blue Grotto restaurant. Everyone knows he's all right. He even looks rather like a saint I always think. He's an old friend of Kip's."

For the first time during the interview the Colonel concealed definite alarm. He did know Marcel Dufour and knew likewise that he was not at all "all right." As proprietor of the fashionable Blue Grotto restaurant just outside Theoul, patronized by the international set, he was provided with a cover of firm respectability. The snow-white hair and the thin, tanned face that gave him the look of an Indian esthete cloaked a wicked man.

"And Count Andrea," Sarah continued. "Paolo Andrea. He's Italian. He's a friend of Harry's."

"Ah yes," said the Colonel, "Harry. Harry who?"

The color that flushed Sarah's face gave away her embarrassment and her voice fell almost to a whisper again. "Isn't it just too utterly ridiculous? I don't know. Just Harry."

And then quickly the words came tumbling forth in a rush of self-reassurance. "He's an American. He's terribly handsome and has been everywhere. Everyone knows him."

The Colonel had reservations as to who "everyone" might be, but he merely asked, "Then what are you frightened of?"

This time the direct question turned Sarah from a fluttering young thing into something more like her father's daughter. She thought hard and deeply, trying to marshal her feelings into coherence. She said finally, her eyes narrowed with the intensity of her concentration, "I don't really know. I couldn't write it down on paper if I tried and I can hardly express it to you. I never really knew that I ever felt anything before, but yesterday when the house was full of police—and then those awful blank spaces on the walls where the pictures had been—and the police asking me all kinds of questions about where I had (continued on page 78) Picture Thieves (continued from page 76) been that night and who my friends were—well, there it was."

"There what was?"

Sarah's eyes narrowed again and she blinked once more as though to keep out the light of what she was seeing. "Well, the four of them," she said. "Marcel, Kip, Paolo and Harry. The girls don't count—Nicole and Elena I mean—they're too stupid. Don't you see, when something has been stolen and the police are about, everything somehow begins to look different."

The Colonel said, "Yes, I understand very well."

"I mean," said Sarah, "Count Andrea is very nice but he could be awful, too, couldn't he?"

"Quite," replied the Colonel, suppressing an internal shudder. The very word "Count" was suspect on the Riviera. Then he asked, "And Harry? Harry and you?"

Sarah replied quickly with a kind of breathlessness, "Oh, nothing has happened." And then she added, "I like him terribly, even though sometimes he worries me. Nothing has happened—but don't you see—it could."

The Colonel now regarded the young girl gravely and asked, "And just what is it you wish me 'to do, Sarah?"

Sarah folded her hands with the earnestness of her plea. "Come and look, would you? We're dining tonight at the Society Club in Cannes. Just come and sit somewhere and see. You know so much about everyone. You might be able to tell whether I am just being silly and childish, or whether"—and here she gave a quick little shudder—"I'm right to be frightened."

"Very well," said the Colonel, "I'll come. You will, of course, not recognize me."

Sarah nodded her head vigorously. She said, "Oh, thank you. It's the kind of thing I couldn't even tell Daddy."

The Colonel accompanied her to the door and stood watching her as she walked across to her car. But halfway there she turned and stood uncertainly for a moment.

"You see," she cried then, "the utterly stupid, absurd and ridiculous thing is that they couldn't possibly have done it. We were all together that night. Harry didn't leave me until five o'clock in the morning." And then with a kind of wail, as though expecting to be disbelieved, she repeated, "But nothing happened, I promise you, we just danced and kissed a little. But he couldn't have done it—it was already light. And yet —"

They stood there for a moment facing each other, the inescapable alibi between them like a living thing. The Colonel's heart was torn by the fear and anguish that lay behind Sarah's cry that nothing had happened. But one day indeed it might. This was the game of the Harrys who prowled the Riviera. They were tough and predatory and young girls were weak, foolish and avid. But he said only, "I see." He nodded toward the newspaper and asked, "Is that part true about the Blue Renoir going to the Museum?"

Sarah replied, "Yes. It was supposed to go today. There's an exhibition beginning there. After that it is to go to the Louvre. Why?"

The Colonel merely grunted. He reflected that if nothing else the burglary was timely. The security at the Musée Des Maiîtres Modernes was known to be extraordinarily competent, and at the Louvre, of course, unassailable. He said, "I'll be there this evening, and after that we will see. In the meantime, not to worry."

He watched her as she got into her car and drove off. At least a part of the weight seemed to have been lifted from her shoulders by his promise.

• • •

The noise of Sarah's departing vehicle had hardly died away when the car of the second early caller that morning ground to a halt outside the shop. The Colonel did not know whether he was pleased or angry at the visit, but in view of the tidings in the newspaper he was certainly not surprised to see Captain Scoubide, Chief of the Detective Force of the Department of the Alpes-Mari-times.

The Colonel and Captain Scoubide exchanged "Good Mornings" and Roquebrun thought that the small, clever eyes of the detective were darting about his shop almost as though he had expected to find the stolen pictures hanging on the walls and was frankly disappointed when he failed to see them.

Captain Scoubide, dressed in slacks, sandals and short-sleeved, open-necked shirt, did not look like a policeman but more like one of the thousands of tourists swarming the south of France that summer. Nevertheless, he was a very good one since he was capable and not entirely honest; his dishonesty was on the side of the angels, an almost essential quality in a detective operating on the Riviera.

Captain Scoubide had been drawn to Colonel Roquebrun's antique shop that morning by one of those policeman's hunches that come from nowhere and every so often pay off most astonishingly. The question that was agitating Captain Scoubide, who was small, dapper and narrow-faced, was how to tackle the subject and still remain "correct."

The Colonel, well aware of Captain Scoubide's difficulty, was at first inclined to let him wriggle, but then took pity and said, "Can I help you, Captain?"

Scoubide was instantly into the breach, his head cocked to one side, as he replied, "Well, can you?"

Such abruptness was verging upon "incorrectness" and the Colonel felt compelled to challenge him. "My dear Scoubide!" he said.

But the Captain's roving eyes were now unmistakably halted upon the Nice Matin with its black headlines and strings of zeros denoting the millions' worth of the robbery. "Have you heard anything?" he asked.

"And why, my friend, should you think that I would have heard something?"

Captain Scoubide made a deprecating gesture. "Your formidable reputation has not diminished, Colonel. Everyone knows you. Everyone trusts you. Everyone is your friend, from the highest to the lowest."

The Colonel remained silent at this and Scoubide continued. "During your days as the leader of the Resistance this entire area was under your command. There was every kind enrolled in your secret army—perhaps someone might have talked to you."

The Colonel thought to himself, what the devil is he driving at? "Now who do you think might have talked to me?" he asked.

Captain Scoubide shrugged and replied merely, "— one meets so many people." He looked about the antique shop again, scratching his head, and said, "The question which puzzles me is how they will market them."

The Colonel nodded. "That is indeed a problem."

"How would you dispose of them?" Captain Scoubide asked. "After all, you are in the business so to speak."

The Colonel's face flushed red, coloring all but the white scar that ran from his ear along his jawline. He said, "Are you not somewhat wanting in tact, my dear Captain?"

Captain Scoubide threw up his hands, horrified at being misunderstood. "No, no, no!" he protested. "A thousand pardons! The question was purely hypothetical. If one had such valuable pictures to sell—"

"— one would realize if one were not a congenital lunatic that the market is extremely limited and the transaction likely to be accompanied by considerable publicity," the Colonel concluded for him.

Captain Scoubide looked thoughtful and repeated, "Congenital lunatic! That's a good one. I have just been sniffing about the scene of the crime and do you know what struck me? The mad slickness! The chances that were taken and gotten away with. The amateur professionalism of it."

(continued on page 154) Picture Thieves (continued from page 78)

Colonel Roquebrun lifted an eyebrow to distract Captain Scoubide from what might otherwise have been taken as a startled reaction. "How could that be?" he asked.

"A professional job done by amateurs, perhaps?"

The drift was now unmistakable to Colonel Roquebrun and he thought it high time to bring the conversation to an end. He said, "I never heard of burglaries and paradoxes mixing. Why not inquire of Marcel Dufour at the Blue Grotto? He would give you an excellent meal during which you could make up your mind whether his restaurant was a professional or an amateur activity."

Captain Scoubide laughed, and then made a grimace. "He has too many connections," he said. "One could get one's nose pinched in the door there. A large reward has been offered."

The Colonel wondered where this was leading, but merely commented, "Yes, 250,000 New Francs. The insurance company, I suppose?"

"500,000," Captain Scoubide corrected. "The Government has doubled it. A matter of national pride. The Blue Renoir was destined for the Louvre, you know." And then he added, with what struck the Colonel as almost a courious and pathetic kind of wistfulness, "I would not wish for myself any part of it. For me, the glory of recovering the pictures undamaged would be sufficient."

The Colonel commented gravely, "I sincerely hope your distinguished career will be crowned by this achievement."

The Captain acknowledged the compliment and prepared to leave. "Should anything reach your ears——" he said.

"— naturally," Roquebrun concluded and, seriously reflecting, watched through the window as the Captain marched to his black Citroën and departed. The Colonel was feeling most uncomfortable.

• • •

The four picture thieves sat gloomy and sweating at the back of a dark and scruffy little bar known as Le Perroquet Rouge, off the Place de la République in Antibes. Their names were Gaston Rive, Antoine Petitpierre, Jean Soleau and Alfonse Cousin. Some 20 years before, in their middle age, they had each had a nickname and were known respectively as Le Léopard, Le Tigre, L'Éléphant and Le Loup, and naturally when one of their operations was discussed they were referred to as the Zoological Gang.

None of this menagerie much resembled the noms de guerre they had chosen for themselves. Jean Soleau, the Elephant, was a wry, dried-up shrimp of a man, a wholesale dealer in onions. Gaston Rive, the Leopard, was enormous, fat and slothful. He had been corpulent even in his Resistance days when this obesity had provided him with good cover against the Germans. Now fatter than ever, he was the proprietor of a small electrical contracting business in Antibes.

No one could have been less like his namesake than Antoine Petitpierre, the Tiger. A carnation grower who owned a plantation behind Haut-Cagnes, he was a tall, cadaverous, mild-mannered, melancholy man. During the war when it had been necessary for them to carry out an execution he was always the one most emotionally disturbed.

The last of the group, Le Loup or the Wolf, as Alfonse Cousin had been known, was the owner of the bar. Cousin did have something lupine about him, dark and learn with glowing eyes and a sardonic mouth.

The door to the back room was shut so that their murmur of desultory conversation could not be overheard. A silent radio stood on the sideboard. A copy of the Nice Matin lay on the table. The Tiger said, "Dear God, whoever would have thought there would have been such a fuss over a few pictures?"

The Wolf gave a snort. "You call a millionaire's Renoir collection a few pictures?"

The Leopard had asthma as well as too much blubber, and his breath whistled through his nostrils as he exclaimed, "500,000 francs reward!" He nodded his head in the direction of the radio. "You heard it!"

The Elephant said, "Every stool pigeon in the neighborhood will be trying to earn it."

The Leopard sighed like an engine discharging steam. "And the police setting up roadblocks. We shall never be able to move them now."

The Elephant eyed him coldly. "Are you proposing, then, to leave them in my warehouse amongst my onions 'til the flics descend upon us?"

The Wolf leaned darkly across the table, poking a long finger at the Elephant. "Can you suggest an alternative, old friend?"

No one had anything to offer.

The Tiger leaned back in his chair and examined his fingernails. "Perhaps we were a little too hasty."

"I said we should have consulted Le Renard," put in the Elephant.

The Wolf laughed silently. "The Fox would have vetoed it."

The Leopard said, "He was always our leader ——"

"— and the only one of us with any brains," concluded the Elephant.

The Tiger completed the inspection of his fingernails and said with glum fervor, "I wish to God he were here with us now. We've got ourselves into a pretty pickle."

It was characteristic of the kind of courage they all had that the sharp knock on the door that followed this wish did not panic them. Not a man moved.

The Wolf said, "Entrez!"

The door opened. Colonel Roquebrun stood framed in the doorway, thickset, bullnecked, florid.

"Renard!" The word exploded from the blubbery lips of the fat Leopard. "We were just wishing ——"

Colonel Roquebrun came into the room, shutting the door carefully behind him. He eyed them coldly. "You idiots," he said, "where are the pictures?"

The dark eyes of the Wolf glowed and his sardonic mouth permitted itself a smile. The old Fox was still the Fox. One did not have to draw diagrams for him. He said, "In Jean's warehouse amongst the onions. Smelly, but safe."

Contempt marked the scarred features of the Colonel. "And what the devil do you think you are going to do with them? Give me a drink, someone." He sat down at the table while the Wolf reached behind to a cognac bottle and poured him a fine. They sat and watched him like four guilty children while he knocked it back.

Roquebrun set down his empty glass and sat staring silently at the four, who eventually began to recover some of their aplomb. After all, they were grown men banded together in a dangerous adventure that was far from concluded.

The Colonel quickly felt the return of this truculence and challenged them. "Well, my clever ones, and now that you have them stored amongst the onions, what do you intend to do? Advertise for a South American millionaire? Take them on tour? Or transport them to Paris and set up a stand in the lobby of the Folies-Bergère—Genuine Renoirs for sale?"

The carnation-growing Tiger, the most mild-mannered of them all, chose to reply. "There's no need for your sarcasm, Pierre, you know very well we didn't do it for gain. We were going to ransom the pictures for the poor."

Colonel Roquebrun, who had been sitting tilted back in his chair in a somewhat superior attitude, was so startled by this that he returned his seat to the floor with a crash, repeating, "Ransom for the poor!"

They were on him now like children pressing home an advantage.

"Two million francs paid to an American so rich he cannot count his money!"

"And in France people are going hungry!"

"Imagine, one man owning paintings worth tens of millions!"

"And in the house next to me the husband of my neighbor, Madame Aubert, may die because they can't afford an operation and a hospital."

"The Government steals from us in taxes and spends it on a rag with some paint daubed over it."

"There aren't enough schools or hospitals."

"The situation is rotten. This will call attention to it."

Colonel Roquebrun said, "What kind of talk is this? Have you all become Communists?" and he spat on the floor.

"On the contrary," replied the Wolf, "we merely propose to protect the rich from their own idiocies. It is they who create Communists with this madness of spending."

"My father knew Renoir in Cagnes," said the Elephant. "They were neighbors. He said he was a modest little man, riddled with arthritis, who did not think himself a god or anything extraordinary because he put paint on canvas. He was content when he was young to receive 400 or 500 francs for a painting, or even leave a little sketch at a bistro in payment for his bill. What has happened to these same paintings of my father's friend to make them worth millions? Where has the money come from? Where does it go? Who is being robbed? Who is being enriched?"

The Colonel's self-possession was returning. "No one, you donkey," he said. "No one is enriched: no one is impoverished. The wealthy trade these objects amongst themselves like children playing with picture cards found in packages of soap or cereals. If two youngsters set about exchanging postage stamps, who in the community is injured and in what manner has the economy suffered?"

The Wolf saw the point and grinned wickedly, but the others were making hard going of it. The Leopard shook his head and said, "The rich always find a way to profit."

The Colonel snorted. "It seems to me, my innocents." he said, "that you have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. You may be fighting a just war, but against the wrong enemy. It isn't the very rich who are a danger to any country but the ignorant poor. It is the latter who are always trying to pull down the structure and entomb themselves with it, instead of endeavoring to learn how wealth is acquired and following the example. And for that matter, you half-wits," the Colonel continued, "who is it that supports charities, endows foundations, creates universities, aids hospitals, and makes possible research intended to relieve every human ailment? It is the rich. The world today would be unspeakably ghastly if the philanthropies of the wealthy were to come to an end. You can afford to leave them their toys."

They sat blinking at the Colonel, taken aback for a moment. Then the Leopard heaved his huge bulk in his chair, pursed his small mouth and said, "What about the Government getting into your innocent scheme and handing over millions of our money for something which in our father's day fetched no more than a few hundred francs?"

The Colonel said, "Have you never encountered the phrase 'man cannot live by bread alone'? The nation's pride reposes in the handiwork of her gifted sons. It is something in which every man, woman and child can share."

The Elephant, Jean Soleau, said, "You weren't so damned moral in the old days, Pierre, when we were under your leadership. It was you who planned the robbery of the military funds from the Crédit National at Aix from which we took 50,000,000 francs; it was you who organized the capture of the gold transport convoy on its way to Marseille; it was you who evolved the technique of stripping the villas of the collaborators on the Riviera of food, wines and clothing."

The memory of those times evoked a nod from the Colonel. "Hah," he said, "I taught you the value of paper bullets in those days, did I not? We hit the Germans and the collaborators where it hurt them most—in the pocketbook." His glance strayed to his queerly shaped fingers which had no fingernails at their ends, and he grimaced involuntarily. "And paid, too," he concluded.

The Wolf said stubbornly, "I don't see the difference, Pierre. In the F.F.I. we fought collaborators. They were Frenchmen, too, like ourselves, but they were enemies. France is menaced by as many enemies internally today as she was during the war. What is wrong with using a little of the same technique as we did in the past?"

"We thought we would put some real worth into those paintings, Pierre," the Tiger said. "As it stands now, you yourself are willing to admit that these values are false. We planned to ransom the Blue Renoir and the others for 10,000,000 francs and turn the money over to charity. Thus, the pictures would represent a hundred hospital beds, some thousands of tons of coal and hundreds of thousands of pounds of food and milk for the hungry. Then when one stood admiringly in front of the Blue Renoir one could say, 'Ah yes, this is indeed a valuable picture. It has paid its way.' Let the spirit be fed indeed, but bread must come first."

The Colonel for a moment was so startled by this idea that he leaned forward in his chair. "By Jove," he said.

"That's it!" exclaimed the Elephant. "We knew you would see it our way."

The Colonel laughed and shook his head. "Beautiful, poetic and immoral," he said.

The Wolf snorted, "Immoral!"

"Immoral," repeated the Colonel. "It will not do, my cloud-dwelling cuckoos. We all enjoyed playing Robin Hood in the world of 1944 when it was both necessary and effective. This is the world of 1961."

"Eh? What's the difference?" the Elephant pouted. "The old war was hot, the new one is cold. We're still combatants."

"Why," said the Colonel, "just that the world of today is so infinitely more corrupt, wicked and immoral, that one more immorality piled on top of it only gets lost in the shuffle. Ransom is just another form of blackmail or bribery. The insurance companies would not hesitate to enter into a shady deal with you in order to cut their losses; the police would connive with you to split the reward and get back the stolen goods if they could; and the public would not ask any questions provided their treasure was restored. Whom are you educating? Instead of light you bring more darkness."

They sat around silently, looking unhappy.

"Well now," said Colonel Roquebrun, "since you have practically admitted that you have committed the stupidity of the century, and that none of the reasons for your coup will for one moment bear the light of intelligent scrutiny, what other excuses have you to offer for abandoning the dignity of the good lives you have all achieved and turning yourselves into criminals?"

Once more the four exchanged guilty glances and in the end it was Antoine Petitpierre, the melancholy Tiger, who replied. "Pierre, all of us suddenly found ourselves growing old: a toothless Tiger, a clawless Leopard, an Elephant with fading memories, a Wolf with failing appetite. We sat here one evening and talked of the old days when we made the Germans tremble. We longed for one final adventure."

The Colonel drew back his head and let out a roar of laughter, and when it had subsided he cried, "But now for the first time you have been talking sense. If you had only come to me when this feeling overwhelmed you we would not be in this pickle today. There would have been some brains about the affair."

The Wolf regarded the Colonel curiously. "You say we, old friend? Do you really mean we?"

"Don't ask foolish questions," the Colonel replied brusquely. "Why do you think I'm here, with Captain Scoubide practically breathing down my neck? You, my dear Leopard, I'll wager left your signature all over the electrical work in the villa when you disconnected the alarm." Here the Colonel's professional interest suddenly took over. "By the way, how was that done? If there is any tampering with the alarm it registers immediately at the police station."

"Oh," replied the Leopard with superb innocence, "I took the precaution of disconnecting it at the police-station end."

Again the Colonel shook with laughter. "Worthy of the best Resistance group a man ever led. Bravo, friend Leopard!"

"What, then, do you suggest?" asked the Elephant.

"A little morality," replied the Colonel. "It might shine out like a light in the darkness. The pictures must be returned."

"But how?" asked the practical Wolf.

"In such a manner as to cause the light to shine," replied the Colonel, and for the first time they realized that he had the glimmer of a plan.

• • •

Colonel Roquebrun drove his Simca station wagon up the twisting road into the hills behind Cannes until he came to an arched gateway with a small, modest sign at the side: Society Club—Privé—Members Only.

A hundred yards within there was a dark, sprawling villa and a parking lot. There appeared to be very little illumination. His neighbors in the car park were Rolls-Royces, Bentleys, Cadillacs, Mercedes and several fast Italian sports cars. It was nine o'clock in the evening. He heard the rambling tinkling of a bar pianist. There seemed to be no one about.

Left to find his way, Colonel Roquebrun saw an outside iron staircase and climbed it to find himself on a balcony off which rooms opened. He came upon a young girl standing there in a nightdress, looking down into the shadowy garden. Even by starlight he saw that she was exquisite. "Oh," he said, "I beg your pardon."

The eyes she turned upon him were the misty, understanding, melancholy ones of the hetaerae. She said, "The entrance is below, just beyond that tree there," and went back into the room from whence she had come. Colonel Roquebrun heard a man's cough, the creaking of a bed and muffled laughter. As he descended he reflected upon the nature of the society from which the club took its name.

He came to an entrance beneath a canopy. A doorman in uniform eyed him uncertainly and asked, "Are you a member?"

"No," said the Colonel, "but ——" and between his fingers there showed the yellow of a hundred-franc note.

"Of course," said the doorman, "it can be arranged." The Colonel handed over his card and the note. The man took them and disappeared inside.

This, the Colonel thought, was the fatality of the France of today. The words Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité rimming the coins might well be replaced by the slogan "It can be arranged."

The doorman returned with a gold-embossed card between his fingers. "Monsieur is welcome," he said, and led him down a long, unlit corridor and through the bar which was also dark. The piano player was lightly fingering nostalgic, sentimental tunes. A dark-haired girl was leaning against a door-way clad in a bikini and holding a half-empty cocktail glass, a secret smile at the corners of her mouth. There were several men sitting at the bar but no one was paying any attention to her. The Colonel supposed there was nothing essentially wrong about a bikini at nine o'clock in the evening, but somehow the effect was extraordinarily sinister. He was glad he had come.

Beyond the bar was the dining terrace. The headwaiter in a white dinner jacket waved a menu at the Colonel and led him to a table from which he could look down upon the curve of Cannes bedecked in her night jewelry spread out below. On the terrace the only illumination was the glow of tiny lamps on the tables. Roquebrun was aware that the place was already half filled. He ordered a dry martini. The piano tinkled soothingly. The girl in the bikini stood for a moment looking out across the terrace with moist eyes, then walked off down a path, her hips swaying. From nearby came the gentle splashing of a fountain, and off to the left the Colonel saw starlight reflected in a swimming pool. The setting was superb. But Roquebrun was remembering how it felt when he waited in ambush in the darkness surrounded by the Germans.

By 10 o'clock every table but one upon the terrace had been occupied. The Colonel's eyes had now adjusted to the dim light to the point where he could make out features and he felt as though transported into another world. Here was collected a kind of international scum—the froth that would come to the top if all the wicked of the world were boiled together in a caldron. The men with their smooth, parchmentlike faces and immaculate clothes sat behind their dark glasses, sleek, slicky, oily, over-bearing and arrogant: Americans, British, Spaniards, Italians, Frenchmen. Pretty girls decorated their tables and were paid no more attention by them than the furniture. These were no small dispensers of evil. These were the wholesalers. Somehow it was the dark glasses that oppressed the Colonel. Even in the murk of the club these men could not bear so much as the gleam of a candle, and he thought of sunless sewers where rats scurried. They were the smelly rich and their hangers-on who coined their money out of human weakness. Here were collected the vultures of the world pretending to be people. The Colonel felt as though he wanted a bath.

The headwaiter, with his menu card held high in front of him to show that important people were arriving, threaded a party through the narrow aisles of the crowded tables, and Roquebrun saw that it was Sarah Howard and her friends.

He noted that one of the girls was the dark-haired one who had been in the bar in a bikini, and the second was of the same class. The other girl was obviously the English girl who was staying with Sarah. The man who accompanied her he recognized as Kip Trenchley from photographs in British newspapers, and Roquebrun remembered now why the association had been unpleasant. Trenchley's specialty, one gathered, was trafficking in featherbrained debutantes. He lured them to the Continent, entangled them, and then sold them back to their fathers who paid to avoid scandal.

Count Paolo Andrea, the Italian, was easily recognizable. If there were remnants of nobility in his features they were almost obliterated by weakness and dissipation. Roquebrun thought he could guess his function in this unsavory quartet.

But the man who raised the Colonel's hackles, and for an instant turned him sick with apprehension for Sarah, was the tall one known as Harry. He was wearing a lilac-colored dinner jacket and his eyes were hidden behind the inevitable dark glasses. The Colonel felt there was real reason for this concealment, for he was sure these would be the cold, expressionless eyes of the killer. There was no mistaking the cruel mouth. This was the new type of American crook-of-all-trades that had emerged from the Army after the war, with Europe as its field of operations. The fourth member was Marcel Dufour. His sensitive face silhouetted against the table lamp gave him the aspect of a poet.

It was an ideal quartet, the Colonel thought: a French gang leader, a British blackmailer, a shady Italian and an American killer, and he thought what a jungle was this Riviera for all its innocence and loveliness of the sea reflecting the night sky, the beacons flashing from the mountains outlined against that same sky, and the necklace of lights, like blue diamonds stringing the waterfront. How easily the girls had become ensnared.

He had seen enough, and now the Colonel sighed with a kind of long-ago remembered pleasure. Colonel Pierre Roquebrun, the respected antique dealer, was no more. Le Renard had returned, the old game was on again. He called for his bill, paid it and made his way out, passing their table on his way. Outside of the momentary dilation of her eyes, Sarah Howard gave no sign of recognition.

The abrupt departure of Colonel Roquebrun had left Sarah with a feeling of desolation. As long as he was there she had felt safe. Now that he had gone she became once more prey to all her fears and doubts. She wondered how long it would be before she would be able to contact him again and hear his judgment of the men with whom she had become involved.

The swiftness with which this contact was realized was startling, for it took place, to be exact, no more than 20 minutes later when she went to visit the ladies' powder room. The woman in attendance there, without saying a word, slipped a small piece of paper into her hand. There was no one else in the room at the time. Sarah opened it and read: "Not nice. Keep your nerve. There will be a ransom note. They will take over. Let them. They will suggest you go home. Do so. R." For a moment Sarah felt the dizzying clutch of panic. Then the cool strength of the hand that had been stretched out to her through the note steadied her. She tore the paper into tiny shreds, entered the cabinet and flushed them away, and then returned to the table with the sentences of the brief message darting through her brain. There was no question as to the confirmation of her fears. Not nice said it all.

Shortly after midnight, as they were debating whether to go to the casino or on to the night club at Juan-les-Pins which was offering a new troupe of transvestites direct from Paris, a waiter came to the table and handed Sarah an envelope. Conversation died away and Sarah was conscious that they were all staring at her.

Kip Trenchley tittered and cried, "Oh, I say, Sarah's got an admirer. Harry's going to be jellie!"

For an instant Sarah was again aware of the trap into which she had fallen from the manner in which the Englishman had coupled her with Harry. She was already considered Harry's property. She remembered Colonel Roquebrun's admonition, Keep your nerve. She opened the envelope and read the printed note therein:

"We have your pictures. The identification number 2XRYB5342 concealed on the Blue Renoir will prove this to your father. We are businessmen and prepared to negotiate for their return. When your father arrives in the morning take him in your white car to the crossroads sign below Piol by La Ferme Minoury where you will be met. We are in a position to see every road in the valley leading to the rendezvous. If there is any indication that your car is being followed or observed from the air by helicopter or aircraft, the pictures will be destroyed."

A half-smile illuminated the gentle countenance of Marcel Dufour. He said, "I hope it does not contain bad news, my dear?"

There will be a ransom note. Colonel Roquebrun had written. They will take over. Let them. Sarah said, "It's—it's about the pictures. A ransom note—they say ——"

"The pictures!" It was almost like a conjurer's trick the way they had the note out of Sarah's fingers and were reading it avidly, passing it from one to the other. Harry rose quietly and left the table to reappear a few moments later. He said, "Nix! Kid on a bicycle rode up, handed it to the doorman and blew."

Sarah said, "Ought we to notify the police?"

"No," said Marcel Dufour, "under no circumstances."

Sarah was suddenly aware that she had been pushed completely out of the affair. The four had managed to switch seats with the other girls and were now gathered around two corners of the table, their heads together, rereading and whispering. Harry had removed his dark glasses to see better, and it seemed to Sarah that his eyes were filled with a curious kind of animal glare.

"I think the girls had better go home," Harry said.

"Yes, yes," Dufour added, "we'll handle this for you. We know how to deal with such matters. Leave everything to us."

Count Andrea was already summoning the waiter for the bill. "And order a taxi at once," he added. "Subito!"

Sarah suddenly felt as though she were acting in a play in which she was thoroughly at home in her lines. She saw again the words from the Colonel's note: They will suggest you go home. Do so. How had he known?

The four still had their heads together over the note. Marcel Dufour snapped his fingers and said, "I have it! There can be only one place! But we can verify this."

The waiter returned. "The taxi is waiting, Monsieur."

Harry said to Trenchley, "You take 'em home, Kip."

The Englishman hesitated. "But ——" The fever of avidity which burned in the others had set him alight, too. Here was big stuff.

Harry looked at him coldly. "I said take 'em home," he repeated. "Stick to your own racket."

Sarah and the English girl arose. Harry turned to Sarah and said, "Just you go off to bed, honey, and don't worry your little head. We'll have your old man's pictures back for you."

The words were kind, but the leftover expression of murderous cupidity on the face of the American had not yet caught up with them and Sarah looked straight through the façade of the man who had so attracted her, to the beast behind. As though by the magic of Colonel Roquebrun she had been suffered a glimpse into the abyss. She shuddered inwardly and formulated a silent prayer of gratitude. But she merely said, "Thank you," and permitted Trenchley to escort them.

As they left the three were again back in their whispering conclave and did not even look up.

• • •

The Zoo Gang sat about uneasily on bags of onions at one end of the long warehouse, topping the hill above Piol behind Antibes. The windows were shaded with sacking to keep light from showing. Beneath the tumbled heap of sacks of onions gleamed one corner of a gold picture frame.

Colonel Roquebrun glanced at his watch. "I must be going," he said, "I think your visitors ought to be along shortly."

"I don't like it," said the Elephant. "Supposing they're satisfied to pick up the reward and go on to the police ——"

"They won't be," said Colonel Roquebrun, "and you'll have to like it." He addressed them all now. "You won't, I think, be hurt if you control your natural truculence, but that is a risk you must take. These are dangerous men. They may have already killed once. You will most certainly have to swallow a certain amount of insults and possibly put up with one or two indignities. Control yourselves and accept them."

The Wolf grinned and said, "If it comes off it will be cheap at the price."

Colonel Roquebrun went to the door and said, "They will probably come in a van from the Blue Grotto. Friend Elephant, you must be prepared to lose a few sacks of your onions as well as your pretty pictures. Well, good luck!" and he was gone.

It was indeed the van of the Blue Grotto restaurant that drew up before the warehouse shortly before four o'clock in the morning. The pickup van of one of the best-known restaurants on the Riviera paying an early morning visit to an onion wholesaler would not arouse police suspicion.

And there were the insults and indignities which the Zoological Gang accepted with reasonable fortitude, considering that one of the trio that burst in upon them was armed with a longbarreled Luger.

They did not even bother to conceal their features, Dufour, Count Andrea and Harry. Thieves engaged in the profitable and invulnerable business of robbing other thieves had nothing to fear, particularly where those others were amateurs so stupid and untutored as to give away their hiding place in their ransom note. It had taken Marcel Dufour, who knew the district, only a few minutes with a survey map to figure out that the only spot from which all roads approaching the Minoury Farm could be observed was the warehouse of the onion dealer, Jean Soleau.

They were rough, too, needlessly so, and cruel, as indeed the Colonel had thought they might be, for the ease of the hijacking operation and the insoluble predicament of the four men they found collected in the warehouse with their stolen art treasures fed their arrogance to the bursting point. Besides, there was jealousy. The Leopard suffered a cut cheek where he was hit with the pistol barrel; the Elephant had the wind knocked out of him; the Tiger was kicked in the groin.

When the pictures had been transferred to the van and buried beneath layers of sacks stuffed with fat, goldenbrown onions, the gang leader's ego could not resist lecturing for a moment. "This will teach you amateurs not to encroach upon the field of professionals. You should be grateful to me for taking these paintings off your hands and absolving you from the risks connected with disposing of them. For our part," and the sensitive expression of Monsieur Dufour's thin lips and nostrils made it seem almost like a benediction, "we shall always remember you as having saved us a great deal of trouble. We had planned to remove them from the villa ourselves."

Then, having cut the telephone wires and wrecked the carburetors on the engines of the cars in the garage, they departed.

Antoine Petitpierre was still gasping from the brutality of his injury and trying to control moans of pain. Gaston Rive, the Leopard, was weeping openly with tears of rage and frustration. "Le Renard owes me one for this," he said. "By God, I'll have it out of his hide!"

The darkly sardonic Wolf, Monsieur Cousin, said to him, "Keep quiet. You don't know how lucky you are—how lucky all of us are."

For he was thinking of Colonel Roquebrun, where he would probably be at that moment and the telephone call he would be making, and the Wolf added, "Thank God, the brains of the old Fox are still working."

• • •

Colonel Roquebrun had not had much sleep that night, yet this did not vary his routine of opening his shop the following morning by so much as a minute. The Colonel had known times when he had gone 50 hours without closing an eye and yet remained alert and efficient. It was just 24 hours since Sarah Howard had drawn up before his shop in her Jaguar. He wondered who his first visitor would be.

A squeal of brakes and the crunch of tires answered his question. It was Captain Scoubide.

The Captain appeared exactly as he had the morning before, for he had not yet had time to changehis clothes. The only difference was that the left sleeve of his shirt had been ripped from shoulder to cuff, and through the gap there showed the red of a long scratch.

For the rest, the Captain was just as concerned that morning with maintaining "correctness" as he had been the day before, and he fingered one or two of the more expensive items of the Colonel's stock to give him time to reflect before he turned and said, "Thank you for the tip."

"Not at all," replied the Colonel.

"Concerning the matter of the reward," here the Captain coughed, "it may be necessary to split with me in order to avoid embarrassing questions."

"I fully understand this," agreed the Colonel.

"Still," the Captain suggested, "250,000 francs is a tidy sum."

The Colonel picked up a 14th Century ivory crucifix. "One always finds uses for unexpected sums of money."

"Such as, for instance, the husband of Madame Aubert?"

The Colonel never batted an eye. "Poor woman," he said, "she has indeed been passing through a difficult period."

The Colonel's gaze was now so unmistakably upon the rent in his shirt that Captain Scoubide felt compelled to refer to it. "Nothing," he said, "nothing at all—fellow at the door—he was momentarily argumentative."

"The pictures?" suggested the Colonel.

"Oh yes," muttered Captain Scoubide, "— quite. In the cellar. Not only the Renoirs but the others as well."

"Ah," said the Colonel, "I thought perhaps they might ——"

"A veritable petit Louvre," the Captain said. "The El Greco, the Van Dyke, the moderns and two Brueghels which had not yet even been reported stolen. I believe they expected to transfer them to South America."

"How embarrassing for Monsieur Dufour and his friends. I gather they were all there?"

"All except the Englishman."

"The little blackmailer ——"

Captain Scoubide permitted himself a grim smile. "That pigeon will keep," he said. "Another time. He was not implicated in the actual robberies, he merely provided the wealthy contacts.Dufour was the brains, the Count the art expert who selected the paintings, and Harry was the gun. He killed the caretaker in the Cap Ferrat robbery."

The Colonel nodded. "He was also the charmer. He worked on the women so that they were reluctant to complain. Excellent! I trust everything went smoothly?"

"Well, actually——" the Captain began.

The Colonel sent his left eyebrow once more toward the top of his bald head.

"Harry," explained Captain Scoubide. "When we wished to descend—he was so imprudent as to produce his weapon and discharge it at me. He shot too carelessly. My bullet killed him. I will receive a decoration for this, no doubt."

"And deservedly, my friend, deservedly," the Colonel congratulated wholeheartedly and with genuine admiration. He was of the school that enjoyed putting violence in its place with cool nonchalance. Nevertheless, the violence had taken place, and so experienced in it was the Colonelthat he saw it almost as though he had been there: the bottom of the cellar stairs perhaps, with all of the advantage of Harry standing below. Lugers had an earsplitting detonation in confined quarters and their muzzles had a way of spitting sparks as well as lead.

"He shot too carelessly," Scoubide had said. Roquebrun imagined then that the little detective would have fired between the first and second shots from the Luger. He had probably shot Harry through the body, and the Colonel for an instant pictured the surprised look that must have come across Harry's face. For no one ever expects to die.

Aloud he added, with satisfaction, "That was a mouth that wanted stopping." For he was thinking of Sarah and how she would have been smirched by the alibi Harry would have claimed if he had been brought to trial.

"It was your warning that he would be armed that enabled me to be prepared," acknowledged the Captain. The Colonel bowed. The liquidation of Harry pleased him enormously. It was one of those fortuitous bits of luck sometimes encountered. It had been a loose end that had worried him, and in all his operations as Commander of the F.F.I, in the Alpes-Maritimes, the Colonel had been a tidy man.

The Captain began to move toward the door, but hesitatingly, and Roquebrun suspected there might still be something on his mind. He was right in his judgment.

Scoubide coughed once more deprecatingly and said, "By the way, some friends of yours who live in the vicinity of the Minoury Farm have suffered a little inconvenience, one hears. Their telephone has been cut, their cars damaged; one of them has come by an injury to his face, another a painful bruise. Nothing serious though, I'm told."

"How kind of you to let me know," the Colonel said. "I must pay them a visit and extend them my sympathy."

The Captain remained yet another instant in the doorway, an expression almost of tenderness and affection on his features. He said, "I'm very pleased with you, my friend, pleased and proud." And then, since there was no way by which the Colonel could receive a medal for his share in the night's work, the Captain proceeded to decorate him with one last little florid speech, which might have proved embarrassing had it not been so utterly sincere. "France survived her defeat in the war and lives because of such as you." Then he turned and fled.

The next arrival was not unexpected either. It was the Jaguar of Sarah Howard, only Sarah was not in it. It was her father, Joel Howard, who was alone in the driver's seat.

The millionaire, a widower and a startlingly handsome man bursting with American vitality, wasted no time in getting to the point. He said, "I arrived several hours ago. Sarah was at the airport and I have spoken to Captain Scoubide. I have come to thank you."

"Ah," said Colonel Roquebrun, "for the return of the pictures ——"

"No," said Joel Howard, "for the return of Sarah."

There was then a moment of silent understanding between the two men before Howard spoke again. He began at a tangent. "The pictures were insured—besides which they were only things. But Sarah ——" He hesitated and then said, "Sarah has told me everything. It's my fault that she has been running a little wild since her mother died. I have neglected her. I shan't again. That's when the Harrys move in. She is a very lucky girl that you were here."

The Colonel managed to look suitably modest and deprecating, hoping in the depths of his soul that never, never, not ever would Mr. Joel Howard hear so much as a whisper of the renaissance of the Zoological Gang.

Howard had fallen into a moment's musing at the conclusion of which he said, "My good friend Pierre, I should like to do something in return, if you would permit it. Something—anything—that might lie close to your heart, for I know very well what manner of person you are and the nature of your charities. Would you permit it?"

The forked lightnings of thought a billion times faster than speech flashed through the mind of the Colonel as he remembered his four former comrades in arms and the idea behind their last romantic and abortive adventure. The reward money would help to alleviate local distress, but theirs had been a grander idea. "Yes," he said, "give us a hospital, Joel. Up to date, with every modern appliance and always beds free to the poor who cannot pay."

"Done," said the millionaire, "you shall have it."

"And I think," Colonel Roquebrun was saying, "— I think I should like it known as L'Hôpital du Renoir Bleu."

"Hospital of the Blue Renoir," Howard repeated. "What a strange idea."

The Colonel's smile was a faraway one, for he was thinking once more of his friends and how pleased they would be. "But a perfect one," he said.

"I beg your pardon?" said Joel Howard. "I don't quite understand."

The Colonel did not explain.