To Catch a Thief Page 3

  “I hope you are right.”

  Oriol went away on his bicycle, still looking solemn. A day later Mme. Lisieux’s maid was released by the police. They had nothing to prove against her. They made no arrest.

  Oriol was a conscientious man. As a maquis fighter himself, and a fellow boule player, he wanted to give John the benefit of every doubt. But he was not over-trusting, and because he, and he alone, knew John’s identity and had taken upon himself the responsibility of extending the universally recognized but legally nonexistent amnesty, he watched the Villa des Bijoux for several nights. John rarely went out in the evenings. When he did it was openly, and he came back openly. There were no further thefts. Oriol abandoned the night watch.

  John read the newspapers every day. The Korean war pushed local crimes off the front page for several weeks, until the climbing thief moved back into the news.

  Three villas were robbed in five days. They were all in the same neighborhood, in or near St. Jean on Cap Ferrat, and the total value stolen amounted to twenty-two million francs, about sixty thousand dollars. One of the villas had just been purchased by a wealthy British couple who planned to make it their permanent home. The house was crammed with wealth—the wife’s jewels, the husband’s diamond studs and cuff links, fur coats, valuable first editions, antique furniture, silverware, objets d’art. The thief took only the jewels and loose cash, as Le Chat had always done. The inspecteur in charge of the investigation questioned and requestioned the two servants, because there was a dog in the house and he had not been heard to growl all night. There was a high wall all around the yard, with glass shards embedded in cement on top. Again inside help was suspected, until a police agent with a curious mind climbed trees in the yard until he found rope burns. From that point, the inspecteur reconstructed the theft as it must have happened.

  The thief had tossed a rope over a tree limb from outside the wall and pulled himself into the tree. From there he had moved to another tree, rerigged his rope, and swung over to the house without touching the ground, climbing in through a slit window ten inches across and thirty inches high, afterward making his escape by the same route, carrying the whole thing off so quietly that not one of four people or the dog sleeping in the house was disturbed.

  The other two thefts bore the trademarks of the same daring, agile thief. The newspapers and the police agreed that the same man must have made all three thefts. Still no one thought to bring up the name of Le Chat. There were no arrests.

  Oriol took up his night watch again, but abandoned it when John continued to go out infrequently and openly in the evenings. Oriol no longer played boule at the village, and John knew that the commissaire was avoiding him, and why. There was nothing he could do but follow the newspaper reports and hope for the thief’s arrest.

  Two weeks later there were new headlines. A villa in Monaco and a hotel room in Monte Carlo across the bay were entered and robbed between a Tuesday night and the following Friday morning. The season was then in full swing on the Côte, the summer villas occupied and the hotels full of wealthy foreign visitors making what many thought would be their last visit to the bright beaches and casinos of the Riviera before another war ended the world. Jewels and cash amounting to forty million francs were stolen in the two thefts. No one saw even the thief’s shadow, and there were no arrests.

  The local newspapers, neutral until then, began to take sides against the police. One editorial pointed out, in a hard-headed French way, that if the Côte d’Azur were to survive at all as an international playground for the rich, the thief was a greater immediate menace even than a war. Riviera businessmen would inevitably lose their wealthy customers unless the police did something drastic. An arrest, any arrest, was demanded. Still no one brought up the name of Le Chat.

  By then it had been twelve years since his arrest. He knew that twelve years was a long time to be out of the public eye, but the thief’s technique was so nearly identical with what had been his own that he did not see how the connection could be missed.

  The hotel theft at Monte Carlo was spectacular. The thief left footprints on the marquee over the main hotel entrance, and marks on the front of the building to show where he had climbed one of the chains supporting the marquee from a hook at the level of the third-floor windows. The window he wanted to enter had been closed and locked, but he had cut the pane away with a glass cutter, worked the lock open, then gone in to steal Madame’s pearls and rings while she was enjoying a run of luck at the casino. He had left behind only a crescent of glass cut from the window-pane, with a small piece of adhesive tape attached, and no fingerprints.

  John knew that it would be only a matter of time after that. The thief had duplicated, almost action for action, one of Le Chat’s boldest thefts, even to the use of the glass cutter and a piece of tape to keep the cut piece of glass from falling. It was as if he were inviting a comparison.

  The Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune finally made the connection between new thief and old. If it had been Nice-Matin or one of the other local papers, he would not have escaped when he did.

  The Herald Tribune reached Riviera newsstands about noon or later, and he had an arrangement with the mailman to deliver a copy with the afternoon mail. Germaine brought in the paper at the same time she brought another letter from Paul, with a Madrid postmark. He never opened the letter, which he later burned with his other letters before he realized that he had not yet read it.

  The newspaper headline was: Has Le Chat Returned? Underneath there was a blurry picture of himself, taken in the courtroom of the cour d’assises in 1939. The article which went with the picture put a series of questions, only suggesting some of the answers. It was an American paper and had no right to insult the French Sûreté Nationale. The French papers did that later, when they reprinted the article.

  The Herald Tribune asked if it were true that the late spectacular series of jewel robberies on the Côte d’Azur bore trademarks similar to those of the thief known as Le Chat, who had committed several burglaries in the same locality during the years 1936-1939 and had been sent to La Maison Centrale de Fontevrault-l’Abbaye for twenty years in connection with a theft from the wife of a Member of the Chamber of Deputies. Was it also true, as rumored, that Le Chat and other notorious criminals had been released from prison by the Germans before serving their full terms, but that because of their good record with the Liberation forces during the war, the Sûreté had extended an amnesty against their further imprisonment? Was this what accounted for the failure of the police to make a single arrest in connection with the latest thefts? Had Le Chat truly returned, and was he immune from arrest?

  There was more, including a review of the 1936-1939 thefts and his trial. He knew that Oriol, who spoke no English, would not ordinarily look at an English-language newspaper, but it could not be long before he heard of the story. John’s arrest and return to prison would follow automatically, whether or not the real thief continued his activity.

  He changed his clothes, burned his letters, took the money he kept in the house for an emergency, and left the Villa des Bijoux by way of the terrasse and the tree when the agents de police came for him. Now, with Bellini’s help, he meant to leave France. He had no further plans.

  Bellini, peering at him wisely under the green shade of his reading-lamp, his round, happy face shining with sweat, said, “If you leave, you can never come back. You realize that, don’t you? Once the Sûreté brings the old charge out in the open—”

  “It’s out in the open now. That’s why I’m leaving.”

  “Never to see la belle France again?”

  Only a Frenchman could imply so much with a single question. John, understanding the implication, said, “It’s not as bad as that. They’ll forget me in a few years.”

  “And if France does not survive more than a few years?”

  “You sound gloomy.”

  Bellini chuckled.

  “I am never gloomy. I am practical. Another
war will kill France forever, if it comes.”

  “I’m practical, too. I don’t intend to spend the next twenty years in prison. I’m going home.”

  “You went home once before, I remember. How long did you stay? Three months?”

  “That was different.”

  “Why different?”

  “There’s no point in talking about it. How soon can you have the passport ready?”

  Bellini lifted his good shoulder. “Two days, except for the photograph.”

  “I’ll take care of the photograph. Somebody else will have to find me luggage and clothes. Where can I stay, without papers?”

  “Where else but with your friends? Let me think.”

  Bellini thought, smiling at nothing.

  “It would not be wise to remain here with me,” he said at last. “There is Jean-Pierre, in Marseilles. He is probably safest, although not entirely safe. The flics have called on him three times in the past six weeks.”

  “What do they have against Jean-Pierre?”

  “Nothing tangible. But he is a receiver now, in a small way, no longer a hero of the Resistance, and they do not believe him when he says he has heard nothing of the stolen jewelry. They have reminded him of an unfinished prison sentence he might yet be called upon to serve if The Cat is not caught.”

  Bellini thought again. “Le Borgne? No, Le Borgne is less safe than Jean-Pierre.”

  “Is he receiving, too?”

  “Oh, no. He is practically honest now. But he was a burglar himself, before his joints grew too stiff. Never a clever fellow like you, only ordinary, and at his best he could never climb a tree. But the police are being pressed to make an arrest of some kind, and Le Borgne would serve if they can find no one else. He came out of La Maison Centrale when you did, you remember.”

  John said nothing.

  Bellini went on. “Coco? No. They are watching him, too. Bernard? No, poor Bernard is in jail. So are Boum and Ali—” He broke off, giggling. “Imagine it, John. They are even arresting my Moroccans, for nothing more serious than a little cigarette smuggling. This thief is giving us all a great deal of trouble, I tell you. More, even, than you gave us, in your time. The police are making it difficult for everyone. I, myself, have had to suspend several of my more important activities.”

  “You and Le Borgne and Jean-Pierre and Coco and the others had better get together and do something about it.”

  “We have tried. Cautiously, of course, because at first we thought it might be you again, and one does not give an old comrade to the police, however inconsiderate he may be of his friends.” Bellini chuckled. “We will have to try harder now. With this new thing”—he tapped the newspaper lying in front of him—“and the criticism of the police which will follow”—he gave his lopsided one-shoulder shrug—“it is going to be very dangerous for all of us until the thief is caught.”

  “The Sûreté will take him in time. They’re slow, but they never give up.”

  “Certainly they will take him. In time.” Bellini leaned forward under the lamp shade. “But what does that mean? It was three years before they took you, and he is as clever as you were. Maybe even more clever, because he is not trying to dispose of the jewels here in France. I have made inquiries in Marseilles, in Toulon, in Paris, in Lyons, in Lille, everywhere. They have not been offered, not a stone, unless they have gone to Belgium or Holland. Without someone to betray him, as you were betrayed”—Bellini shook his head—“he might operate for months, years. We cannot wait that long. We must uncover him before he ruins us. Before Jean-Pierre and Coco and Le Borgne are back in prison and I am left alone with no one to help me.”

  He beamed, his head cocked sideways.

  John said, “What are you hinting at?”

  Bellini nodded, his smile unchanged.

  “I should never try to be subtle with you. Your mind does not work that way. Very well. We need your help.”

  He sat back in his chair, lifting the hand of his crippled arm before John could speak. “Let me finish. Whoever this thief is—and he will be hard to uncover, very hard—he has borrowed your style, your technique. You must have noticed it. I have studied your thefts and his, and I tell you that he is exactly the thief you were. He thinks as you did, robs as you used to, mocks the police with his actions as you mocked them. He is another Cat. You see what an opportunity it gives you? You could put yourself into his mind, plan his thefts, think a step ahead of him—”

  “I can’t do it, Bellini. They’re looking for me now. Not him. I have the whole sentence to serve if I go back.”

  “They would forget the prison sentence if you gave them this thief. He makes them ridiculous. They would forgive a dozen murders to take him.”

  “They would forget about him if they could take me, too. They can prove that I’m Le Chat. If they find me—”

  “What real risk will you run? You said yourself that they would not be looking for a middle-aged tourist. There are hundreds, thousands of middle-aged tourists here on the Côte for the season. You would be one fish in a school. They have sent a commissaire divisionnaire down from Paris to take charge of the investigation, Lepic, a good man but young. He has never seen you. Your record was destroyed, your prison photographs, everything. You would not have to expose yourself. I can give you men to help, a hundred if you want them. You remember once you said that we would have made good partners? That is it. All you have to do is think for us.”

  “And risk La Maison Centrale again if I slipped.”

  “You need not slip. Did I ever ask you to take an unnecessary risk in the maquis?”

  “This is not the maquis, Bellini. I took risks then because I had reasons to take them. I have none now.”

  “What of Le Borgne and Coco and Jean-Pierre?”

  John opened his mouth, but thought better of what he had intended to say. Bellini said it for him.

  “You are not a thief, now, or a companion of thieves and gangsters. Is that it?”

  “I didn’t say it.”

  “But you meant it.” Bellini wiped sweat from his face. The smile stayed. “Very well. Then think of yourself, John. You love France. You are as much of a Frenchman as you are an American, at heart. You say you can come back again some day, after it is over, after the thief is caught. I say you will never come back.”

  “What will there be to stop me?”

  “Nothing. But how will you be able to bring yourself to return?”

  Bellini was leaning forward under the lamp again. His face gleamed in the glare of light. He still smiled.

  “You could come back before without fear of prison because of what we all did in the maquis, John. You were only part of it. You alone did not win the amnesty. Jean-Pierre did, and Coco, and Le Borgne, and La Mule, and I, and all the others together, crooks, thieves, murderers, and good comrades in spite of it. We, not you, won you off from the years in prison you are afraid of now. You didn’t pay for that when you spilled a few drops of blood for liberté, égalité, fraternité, and the Third Republic. And you can’t escape a debt by running from it. Will you ever be able to take advantage of the amnesty again, after you have abandoned us to save your own skin?”

  John turned away. He walked to the window to look at the moon track lying across the calm sea.

  Strollers still wandered along the promenade. The wind still rustled in the palms. Two or three miles offshore the lights of a passing steamer winked across the water, heading south and west for Marseilles, Gibraltar, the Atlantic, and America.

  And safety, he thought.

  After a long time he said to the open window, “I’m not as confident as you are. It’s been twelve years since I thought like a thief.”

  “I am confident enough for both of us.” Bellini chuckled warmly behind his back. “I have already made preliminary plans for you. You will have to go to Marseilles for a few days, to Jean-Pierre, but all arrangements have been made for your return. I believe you will be able to work best here in Cannes, where we
can keep in touch with each other. With your mind and my organization, it will be easy. Relatively easy, of course. Everything is relative.”

  John turned around.

  “You were confident, weren’t you?” he said, unsmiling.

  Bellini giggled.

  “I am always confident of my friends. I find that loyalty repays loyalty.”

  “What have you done so far?”

  “Only groundwork. I have been able to decide definitely on only one probable victim of the thief. I can suggest other possibilities for you to consider for yourself, but this one seems to me almost a certainty. She is a Mrs. Stevens, an American widow staying at the Hotel Midi for the season. She carries with her jewels which have been insured by a London insurance company for seventy-two thousand five hundred dollars, value accepted. I have had the figures verified. She is accompanied by her daughter Francie. How old are you?

  The irrelevancy of the question made him look up in surprise. “Thirty-four. Why?”

  “Are you susceptible to attractive women?”

  “Not particularly. Why, again?”

  “The daughter is unusual.”

  “I’ve known unusual women before, and robbed several.”

  Bellini shook his head. “Not like this one. There is nothing to steal from her. She wears no jewelry of any kind, at any time. I find it very strange that the daughter of a woman of wealth does not own even a ring.”

  It would be even more strange that there could be two such women in Cannes. John said, “Is she a blue-eyed brunette with a keep-your-distance look?”

  “How did you know?”

  “I came here on the bus with her tonight.”

  “She wouldn’t be on the bus.”

  “She was, although she didn’t belong there. She puzzled me.”

  “Then undoubtedly you have seen her.” Bellini beamed. “Everything about her puzzles me. Not only the lack of jewelry, but even her reason for existence. No one can live without a reason for existence. It may change from time to time, but there is always a driving force of some kind—pleasure, duty, fame, the accumulation of wealth, good works, thievery, destruction, murder. The mother’s is pleasure, as mine, generally speaking, is to persuade others to do what is best for me.” He giggled. “I do not know what the daughter’s is, and what I do not understand I do not trust. Also, as you have seen, she is attractive. It is a dangerous combination if you let it distract you from more important things.”