Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 January 1883 — AN EMBARRASSED DETECTIVE. [ARTICLE]

AN EMBARRASSED DETECTIVE.

On the 15th of March, 1872, at 9 o’clock in the evening, a hackney coach stopped in front of the entranee to the Boule Noire ball-room. A man got out of the vehicle. He was about 35, tall and slender, with an intelligent and boldlooking face. He had a small flaxen mustache, curled up at the ends and well cared for, and wore a black velvet sack coat, bound with broad silk galloon, a soft hat planted a little on one side of his head, and Suede gloves. Another man, for a quarter of an hour past, had been walking back and forth on the pavement. He had on an overcoat buttoned to his chin, with a small greasy collar extending beyond the frayed edge of a black satin necktie, a huge hat pulled far down over his head. He carried a heavy cane in his hand. His complexion was florid. He had a thick mustache and very short side-whiskers, cut square on the cheek. These two men accosted each other and, in low tones, exchanged the following words: “Here, Dubrisart, here.” “Marconi Was it you who sent for me?" “Yes, it was I. But there are too many people and too much light on this pavement. Let us cross the boulevard.” “Shall I keep the hackney coach?” “Yes; we shall have but a short job, and we will return immediately afterward to the prefecture. ” They crossed the street, and when they were on the opposite sidewalk alone, with their backs against the little, stall of a tinsmith, which was at the corner of the Rue des Martyrs, Marcon, the man with the overcoat, grasped with great cordiality both the hands of Dubrisart, the man with the velvet sack coat. “Dubrisart, my dear Dubrisart,” he said, “I am delighted to see you again. You never fall in our way any more; you work the great political lay now; you go on missions to foreign countries. At least I have been so informed. And to think that you began at the very bottom of the ladder in my brigade—that I was your superior I” “And you are still my friend, my dear old Marcon,” replied the other. “I have had luck; influence has been used in my favor.” “Beside, you have merit, education, good breeding and refined manners. You dress with more taste than any man in the whole prefecture, not even excepting the Prefect himself. You belong to an honorable family, and can speak English, for which reasons you were intrusted with your first mission to England, under the Empire, when you went to look a little into what was taking place at Ti-Toue-Tiken—in abort, at the residence of the Orleans Princes.” “At Twickenham.” “Yes, that’s it. As for me, I have continued to vegetate among small affairs. This evening, however, something important is on hand. During the day a certain Aglae Ripon came to the prefecture. Oh! you don’t know her! •She is a celebritv of the ball-rooms and low drinking-shops about here. Four -or five of us weie "chatting about the •stove. The girl entered the office like A fury, saying that she was acquainted with one of the Chiefs of the Commune, a man who had robbed, burned, shot people and done everything else! Naturally we offered Mme. Ripon a chair. She proposed to turn over tc us this evening, at the Boule Noire, Stafner, who was a Legion Commander under the Commune.” “Stafner!—the man who stabbed me in a little case at Belleville in I 860?” “Yes, and I sent for you because 1 remembered the particulars of that ■tabbing affray. I do not know this Stafner, and I thought you would not be displeased at the idea of aiding us to—” “With all my heart, and I will recognize him, you may depend upon it. He is coming'to the ball to-night, then?” “At 10 o’clock.” “And Aglae Ripon?” “Three of my agents, Cervoiser, Poilat and Chaulet, will bring her. They ought to be here by this time. After she had made her denunciation the girl wanted to go, bnt I kgpt her in charge. I know all about a woman’s fits of anger. They vanish as they coznft in five minutes. She had only to meet her friend again—for he is her friend—to be filled with remorse and warn him ar d the whole job would be spoiled. an appointment with fit ifner for this evening at 10 o’clock, ■and that was all I wanted. I told her ■that the Government would pay for her dinner and for a hackney-coach to take her to the ball, but that she could return home only after she had put StafDer in our clutches. Ah! they are probably in that'hacknev-coach which mas just stopped on this side of the •boulevard.”

The doer of the vehicle opened a few steps from Dubrisart and Maroon. They saw emerge from it, flanked by three agents in citizens’ clothes, a tall girl, clad in a brown woolen dress, with a little gray cloth sack and a black hat, from the left side of which hung a bunch of large red roses. One of the agents came straight to Marcon, while the two others kept watch over the woman, who glanced around her with an air of uneasiness. “M. Marcon,” said the agent, “you must talk to that girl. She disturbs me. She wept in the hackney-coach? Two or three times she wiped her eyes with the tips of her fingers. It is quite certain that she regrets what she has done, and is afraid of what she has yet to do.” “I will talk to her,” answered Marcon, and he approached the woman. “See here,” said he to her, “no foolishness, if yoUplease I Your record is at the prefecture. I have looked into it a little. It contains some ugly things, knd, if I wanted to send you to St. Lazare for five or six months, plenty of pretexts could be found. You are well acquainted with St. Lazare are you not ?” “I’ve been there twice and come out. It don’t kill.” “Take care!” continued Marcon, raising his voice. “If you—” “You are on the wrong tack," whispered Dubrisart to Marcon. “One should never be hasty with women. Let me talk to her.”

Approaching Aglae Ripon, he said to her: “Listen, my little beauty; listen s> moment. You are right about St. Lazare. It don’t kill, and a woman in your position is not hurt by a six months’ sojourn there. Quite the contrary sometimes. But you have a reputation and you cling to it. Well, if you act wisely we will take care of your reputation, and no one shall know that you betrayed Stafner. We will install you at the lower end of the ball-room at a table beside the orchestra npar the entrance to the garden. You will remain there with these three gentlemen, who will give you vin sucre to drink and cigarettes to smoke, the Government paying for everything. Monsieur and myself will be in the garden. When Stafner arrives you will go to meet him. If you try to lead him in the direction of the exit door the agents will throw themselves upon him and will not touch you; they will tell everybody that you sold your friend for 50 francs. But if you bring him, like a good, clever girl, into the garden, we will collar both you and Stafner. There will be nothing for you to be ashamed of. You will lie taken to the prefecture, but will be set at liberty fifteen minutes afterward, and can finish your evening at Vauxhall or the Elysee Montmartre. Do you understand, my little beauty ? Of course you understand, don’t you ? And you will be reasonable? Why, to be sure you will? Farewell for the present. Go with these gentlemen; we will wait for you in the garden, and you men give her plenty of vin sucre to drink.” Aglae and the three agents crossed the boulevard. Marcon gazed at Dubrisart with evident satisfaction. “I understand the secret of your success in the profession,” said he to him. “You know how to capture women.” “And men, also, as you shall see. Let us enter the ball-room. It will amuse me to take another look at the Boule Noire and Stafner. I still bear the seal of his stab on my arm.” They climbed the fifteen steps of the stairway and entered an immense hall, in which were combined, in a highly concentrated form, the odor of pipes and the perfume of hot wine. The orchestra, with a deafening noise of brass instruments, was playing a quadrille. The girls and nurses of the quarter were dancing in the middle of the hall. On each side of the circular promenade, which extended around the ball-room, men and women were seated at tables. One heard the gurgle of heavy, dark-red wine as it was poured into bowls of white faience, and the sound mide by crushing lumps of sugar in the wine with pewter spoons.

Dubrisart and Marcon walked a short distance along the promenade and stopped near the platform occupied by the orchestra. The women stared a great deal at Dubrisart, because of his velvet sack-coat and his gants de Suede. Aglae Ripon and the three agents were already installed at a table, around a bowl full of wine. Dubrisart looked at the woman and sent her a stealthy little greeting. She answered with a smile. “Come, old man,” said Dubrisart to Marcon, “let’s smoke a cifear in the garden while waiting for Stafner. The woman will bring him to us, I’ll answer for it, and, until then, we can have a little chat.”

The evening was cold and the place entirely deserted. They went to the lower end of the garden and sat down on a bench. “I have a good cigar for you to smoke,” said Dubrisart to his companion; “I bought three or four boxes of excellent ones at Antwerp.” “Oh! you have been to Antwerp, then?” “Yes. I went there three weeks ago to look after the Comte de Chambord.” “You travel a great deal, do you not?” “I have been constantly on the go since the 4th of September." “Yon did not remain in Paris during the siege, did you?” “No. After the sth of September I saw what the Government of the National Defense was worth. Those gentlemen conceived the idea of holding Paris without the secret police. They

were fools, absolute fools! As I had the reputation of possessing a certain amount of merit, they asked me to become the Secretary of a newly-appointed Commissaire de Police, who could not get along with his duties alone. I declined. I do not like sedentary positions; I need run ing about, coming and going. I said to myself: * One day or another they will reorganize the secret police, then they will want me.’ I left Paris with a company of sharpshooters. For two months we scoured the Forest of Frieans, and at the expiration of that time, as we were somewhat thjnned out and disorganized, we went to Tours to rest and recruit. It was about the 15th of November. “The first person I met at Tours, in the Rue Royale, in front of the Hotel du Falsan, was big Versac, whb, prior to the 4th of September, was in the Chateau bi igade. He conducted me flt once to the Administration of General Safety. On the way he told me that Mons. Gambetta was a man who had proper ideas of government; that since his arrival they had been engaged in reorganizing the secret police and that they were greatly embarrassed. It was not difficult for the Government of Tours to improvise Prefects, SousPrefects and Generals, but men of the police can not be improvised. There’s where our strength lies. They are always obliged to return to us. “They gave me a very agreeable position, and when they learned that I had been, under the empire, to Twickenham, Baden and Woodnorton to watch the Orleans Princes, they said to me: ‘ You are the very man we want. We know that the Prince de Joinville is hidden somewhere ’in one of the provincial armies. Try to find him.’ I began to search for the Prince de Joinville. It seemed to me exceedingly droll to be doing for the republic the same business I had done for the empire ten years. Ah! old man, one becomes terribly philosophical when one has been fifteen years in the political police. The empire made us run after the Orleans Princes; the republic made us run after the Orleans Princes. No matter what change in the Government, it is always the same thing, you see. “We ultimately nabbed the Prince de Joinville. He was fighting against the Prussians in the Army of the Loire. We kept the Prince a prisoner for five days—from the 13th to the 18th of January—at Maus, in the hotel of the Prefecture. After that I conducted him to. Saint Malo, to take the packet for England. “When I saw the Jersey packet, a big white and blue steamer, depart with the Prince on board, I reflected that all this was a trifle extraordinary. They had found me on the streets of Tours in uniform, and altogether disposed to take the field again with my comrades. They had made me remove my uniform, and I had just sent out of France a man who also wished to fight against the Prussians. But when one is in the police and likes the profession one must not look too deeply into things. “The fact is that our business is not monotonous. To think, for example, that I, who am now chatting with you in the little garden of the Boule Noire, arrested on the 13th of January, 1871, the Prince de Joinville at Maus, and on the 17th of July of the same year the painter Courbet in the depths of a closet in Paris! To think that I paid my respects on the 17th of January, 1872, to the Emperor Napoleon at Chiselhurst, and on the 24th of February following to the Comte de Chambord at Antwerp!" “You talked with the Emperor and the Comte de Chambord ? a ”As I am talking with you, Marcon. It required no great tact to gain admission to Chiselhurst. One went in there as if it had been a tavern. All one had to do was to address the concierge, to say that he was a Frenchman of distinction, and that he desired to be received by the Emperor. One left his name, together with his London address, and the next day he had bis audience letter. I had arranged a very pretty little Bonapartist history for myself.. My grandfather, a Captain in the Imperial Guard, was killed at Waterloo, etc. etc. Everything went off like a letter through the postoffice. Ten or twelve of us were received in a batch, at the same time, one Sunday, after mass. We were shown into a small blue saloon on the ground floor, and whom do you think I saw beside the Emperor? Our former chief, M. Pietri. When my turn came to speak a few words T said something about the condition of Paris, where there was no longer either safety or police. I added that everybody regretted the empire and the administration of M. Pietri. The Emperor smiled, and as I was taking my departure M. Pietri grasped my hand and told me that I had spoken like a good Frenchman.

“My campaign at Antwerp was more difficult. They summoned me to the prefecture and said to me: ‘Go to Antwerp and see what is taking place there.’ I demanded permission to start on what day and at what hour I thought best, and to act on my arrival in my own way. I received the requisite authorization, and it was*agreed that I should not be stinted in regard to expense. They sent to Antwerp five or six persons. I let my comrades depart, and did not set out until the 22d of February. The pilgrimage to Antwerp was then at its height. I went early to the depot of the North. I examined the passengers as they arrived. I said to myself: ‘The train starts at 7 o’clock in the morning and. reaches Antwerp at 3 in the afternoon. ,1 must carefully choose my compartment, open a conversation with my traveling companions,' and have people to answer for me when I arrive at Antwerp. I havp eight

hours for that. It’s more than I need.* “I was, as you can readily imagine, dressed irreproachably, seriously and simply, in sober-hued garments. I had brought with me as my servant big Versac—yon remember—the man I met at Tours. We are great friends now, and always work together. He is a capable fellow, but he likes to fill minor roles; roles without responsibility. He was, however, well paid for this trip. He made the acquaintance, en route, of a little jewel of a Legitimist lady’s maid, who told him a pack of things about one of the most aristocratic families of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. Versac is a handsome man. The lady’s maid fell in love with him. He found the little angel again in Paris, and she is now of great use to us. “In the depot I spied out an old gentleman with a woman of about 30, not very pretty but very agreeable. I was attracted toward them. I scanned them closely. I said to myselt: ‘ They will do!’ I got into their compartment. I had not been deceived —they were going to pay their respects to the King, for once on the train it was no longer the Comte de Chambord; it was the King! In the vicinity of the station of Luzarches we told each other our names and rank. The old gentleman was called the Marquis de Boustasson. I called myself the Baron de Martonne de Lustrao. If I have a Bonapartist history, I have also a very complicated Legitimist history, which is adroitly hung upon two names of extinct families. At Creil I learned the name of the young woman. She was the daughter of the old Marquis and the widow of the Comte de la Riballiere. Between Creil and Compiegne the old Marquis told me his history. Between Compiegne and Fergnier I told him mine. I was a Frenchman from across the sea, who had come with the Montevideo volunteers to take part in the war, etc. At Fergnier the Marquis, the Gomtesse and I breakfasted at the same table. At Antwerp we went to the same hotel, and that evening Versac took our demands for an audience to the Comte de Blacas, at the Hotel Saint Antoine. The Marquis, in his letter, had spoken of me, and I in mine had spoken of the Marquis. We made, as it were, a combination. I was no longer alone; I had a godfather, and what a godfather!—a Marquis with grand silver hair, all in curls, and with a majestic and venerable air. He was, I assure you, the choice passenger of the whole train. “The next day we were received at the Hotel Saint Antoine, in a squad of from twenty to twenty-five persons. It was done, as at Chiselhurst, in batches. When the King entered there was a great sensation. The old Marquis was altogether overcome. He fell upon his knees, and they had all the trouble in the world to get him up again. He insisted on kissing the King’s hand. His language grew incoherent; he said that now he could die, etc., etc. We bore him back to the Hotel du Grand-Laboureur, where we were stopping. He took to his bed. The Cbmtesse and I passed the evening with him. Eight or ten persons of our batch called to ask about the old Marquis’ condition. ’ The following day we returned the visits we had received. I remained at Antwerp until the departure of the King, seeing hosts of people. I came back with a report and notes which did me the greatest honor. “If I were the least bit inclined to be foolish, I could tell you that the Comtesse leaned lovingly on my arm and showered stealthy little glances upon me when we went to see the pictures at the Antwerp Museum. Ah! perhaps I might have made a very fine marriage.” “M. Marcon, the man has arrived, and the woman is bringing him into the garden.” At these words, spoken by one of the agents, Dubrisart and Marcon arose, crossed the garden, and, standing upon the threshold of the door, gazed into the hall. They saw, coming toward them along the circular promenade, Aglae Ripon, on the arm of a small, redhaired man, in a grey paletot and soft hat. The small man was talking a great deal, and seemed very lively. The woman did not appear to be listening to him; her step was uncertain, her look vague. She must have indulged largely in the vin sucre. Almost constantly, with a mechanical movement of the left hand, she pushed back her three huge red roses which beat »gainst her face. Two of theagents were closely following the pair. “Do you recognize him?” said Marcon to Dubrisart. “No; when I saw him last he wore a full beard, and had brown hair. This man is beardless, and has red hair. But we shall see very soon. I have a sure way of telling if it be Stafner.” When the woman saw the garden door, and recognized Dubrisart and Alarcon waiting, one on each side of it, she drew herself up, stiffened herself, uttered a cry, and sprang backward. But the two agents seized the man and the woman by the shoulders and pushed them -violently into the garden. Maroon shut the door. At that moment the pastouielle of a quadrille ended, and 500 voices shouted, furiously: “Again, again!” “Let go the woman,” said Dubrisart, “and bring the man here under the gas jot. Good! And now, my friend, show me your left hand. Come, open your hand, I say; open your hand. Ah! there is the imprint of my three teeth. I gave you that mark, my friend, in exchange for your Knife thrust. Put the handcuff ion him. It’s Stafner." At 10 ;30 that evening Dubrisart and Maroon arrived at the prefecture. One of the chiefs of the service was there. They reported the result of their expedition to him.

“Everything is perfectly satisfactory,” said he, “and I thank you both for your zeal and tact. Maroon, yon can go; but, Dubrisart, remain a moment, if you please. I have a question to ask you. - Several reports have been made to me in regard to the receptions at Antwerp. In one <rf these reports a certain Baron de Martonne de Lustrao is stated to have used very violent language. He ■poke publicly against M. Thiers in the most outrageous manner. You didnot see this Baron de Martonne de LustFacv • did you?” “Yes, monsieur, I saw him.” “You do not mention him in your report Why is this?” “Because I myself was the person.” “I suspected as much. See what it is to do police duty in a whimsical fashion, each one on his own account, without instructions and without discipline. In every line of your report you speak of a Comtesse de la Riballiere.” “Yes; a very refined lady, whose father “The Marquis de Boustasson—l know —I know. Wait a bit.” The chief of the service arose and opened a door. “Mme. Robert,” . called he, “be kind enough to come here.” And the Baron de Martonne de Lustrac saw enter the Comtesse de la Riballiere, dressed in the plainest and humblest fashion. The Baron and the Comtesse stared at each other with a disconcerted and bewildered air. '“M. Dubrisart, Mme. Robert; Mme. Robert, M. Dubrisart,” said the Chief. “Now take a good look at each other, and have the kindness, whenever you meet in the future, to remember that both.of you are in the police service.” Dubrisart and Mme. Robert quitted the Chiefs office and, as they were descending one of the stairways of the prefecture, Dubrisart’said: “There is only one thing which puzzles me —who was the old man? He positively had the air of a nobleman. Where did yon unearth that prodigy?” “He is my father,” replied Mme. Robert. “Formerly he was an actor, and one of the best first old men on the boards!”