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Updated: June 4, 2025
You looked at the cards, you mistook the nine for a ten, in which case you were right to call for another card." "It is not that," he wailed. "It is the spoiling of my combination, on which I have wasted sleepless nights. A curse on my mad folly. Do you know who the banker was?" "No," said I. "He was Captain Vauvenarde, the husband of Madame Brandt." You could have knocked me down with a feather.
Captain Vauvenarde had resigned his commission in the Chasseurs d'Afrique two years ago. At the present moment the Bureau had no information to give as to his domicile. "Have you no suggestion, Monsieur, to offer?" I asked, "whereby I may obtain this essential information concerning Captain Vauvenarde?" "His old comrades in the regiment might know, Monsieur." "And the regiment?"
If I had discovered Captain Vauvenarde instead of Anastasius I would have anathematised him as the most meddlesome, crazy little marplot that ever looked like Napoleon the Third. But as the credit of the discovery belonged to him and not to me, I could only anathematise myself for my dilettanteism in the capacity of a private inquiry agent. I went to bed and slept badly.
"I have heard all, I have heard all," shrieked the little man. "I know you for what you are. I am the champion of the carissima signora and the protector of the English statesman. You are a traitor and murderer " Vauvenarde lifted his hand in a threatening gesture. "Hold your tongue, you little abortion!" he shouted. But Anastasius went on screaming and flourishing his bundle of papers.
All my little affairs are comfortably settled, and I can set out on my little trip to Avernus via Paris and the habitat of Captain Vauvenarde with a quiet conscience.
"I can get an introduction to the Chef de bureau of the information department of the Ministere de la Guerre in Paris," I replied after a moment's reflection. "He will be able to tell me whether Captain Vauvenarde is alive or dead." "He is alive. He must be." "Very well. But I doubt whether Captain Vauvenarde keeps the office informed of his movements."
"You can't have Captain Vauvenarde for your husband, Dale for your cavaliere servente, and myself for your guide, philosopher and friend all at the same time." "Which would you advise me to give up?" "That's obvious. Give up Dale." She uttered a sound midway between a sob and a laugh, and said, as it seemed, ironically: "Would you take his place?"
"Then, my dear Lola," said I, "the first thing I must tell you is that I did not send for you." "What do you mean? The telegram?" "It was sent by Anastasius Papadopoulos." "Anastasius?" She bent forward and looked at me. "What is he doing here?" "Heaven knows!" said I. "But what he has done has been to find Captain Vauvenarde.
Moreover, he had little beyond his pay and his gambling debts, instead of the comfortable little fortune that would have assured her social position. Now, officers in the French Army who marry ladies with performing horses are not usually guided by reason; and Captain Vauvenarde seems to have been the most unreasonable being in the world.
As they refused to return him his dossier, he occupied himself in reconstructing it, and wrote pages and pages of incoherence to prove the guilt of Captain Vauvenarde. He was hopelessly mad. . . . The bond of pain bound me very close to Lola. "What are you going to do with your life?" I asked her one day. "So long as I have you as a friend, it doesn't greatly matter."
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