That night the detectives reconvened in the underground parlor of the Numancia Hotel. Between those four walls their grief took strange forms: without removing his white hat, Jack Novarius took long strides from one side of the room to the other, while his Sioux assistant remained immobile; Castelvetia laughed openly; Hatter waited for the meeting to start while taking apart a small mechanism that looked like an artificial heart; Sakawa was arranging flowers in a vase, pulling out some petals and letting them fall onto the table. They were detectives, crime was their lifeblood, they couldn’t be blamed for not shedding tears.
Only Arzaky seemed to be grieving.
“When Castelvetia goes out, follow him. I want to find out the truth about his assistant today.”
It was a job for a lackey, but I accepted it, even though I didn’t like the whole business. I didn’t want to get involved in the gossip between detectives.
Arzaky took center stage. The shelves of the glazed cabinets had begun to fill with objects: a giant magnifying glass, a microscope, a small metal filing case with photographs of delinquents, a pistol that shot tranquilizer darts, a hypnotizing machine. Off to one side, away from the other objects, was Craig’s cane, its powers concealed. Arzaky spoke.
“As we all know, Louis Darbon died last night, falling from the stairs that led to the second platform of the tower. For the moment nothing points to its having been anything but an accident.”
“And the railings?”
“They had been found to be defective and were being replaced.”
“Come on, Arzaky. Who can believe it was an accident?” said Hatter.
“I am going to be in charge of the case and when I know anything for certain, I will tell you.”
Caleb Lawson, tall and stooped, cloaked in the smoke from his pipe, stepped forward.
“I don’t think you should be in charge of this case. We all know that Darbon despised you. If anyone is a suspect, it’s you. Captain Bazeldin has already been asking questions around here.”
“Shut up, Lawson!” said Magrelli indignantly. “Arzaky is one of the founders of our order, along with Renato Craig. You can’t go accusing him just because that idiot, Captain Bazeldin, was asking questions. Have you never read Grimas’s magazine?”
In the pages of Traces, Captain Bazeldin was always the butt of jokes. The clues he followed up on, which were the most obvious ones, always ended in failure.
“Darbon was also one of The Twelve Detectives,” said the Englishman. “And someone pushed him from the tower. What’s more, Arzaky, his death left all of Paris to you.”
Arzaky shrugged his shoulders. Sakawa, who rarely spoke, said, “Arzaky should be in charge of the case. This is his city. What right do we have to investigate a crime in Paris? If someone was thrown from a tower in Tokyo, I wouldn’t let any one of you investigate who incited the victim to jump.”
“In the West no one invites anyone to jump with flicks of their fan or seventeen-syllable poems, Sakawa,” said Lawson. “Here, when someone wants to throw someone off a tower, they push him. We know that we have to investigate those who stand to benefit from his death. Why shouldn’t we suspect Arzaky?”
The Japanese detective responded serenely. “I am sure that if Arzaky is the murderer, he himself will follow every single one of the clues that lead to him and he will accuse himself of the crime.”
What Sakawa said didn’t make any sense, but as often happens, nonsense is harder to refute than logical opinions.
Arthur Neska let his voice be heard.
“Arzaky hated my mentor, Louis Darbon. If you leave the case in his hands, the guilty party will never be punished. Or an innocent man will pay.”
“The assistants must ask for special permission to speak, which is granted by their mentor,” said Hatter. “Those are the rules.”
“My mentor is dead. I speak in his name.”
“It’s okay, Hatter. Let him speak,” said Arzaky. “These are exceptional circumstances. We can’t always go by the rules. I’m going to be in charge of the case: I am not asking for your permission, because that is not incumbent on The Twelve Detectives. If you want to make inquiries on your own behalf, you may do so. But we shouldn’t compete among ourselves. We should share our discoveries.”
There was a suspicious murmur.
“We don’t know each other, Arzaky,” said Caleb Lawson. “If there’s one thing you can’t ask of us, it’s that we share what we know. For many long years we have cultivated secrecy and solitude; it is too late for us to become a commune.”
Neska always had a gloomy air about him, and now that appearance was substantiated. He didn’t speak with the humility appropriate to the acolytes. He even dared to give the detectives advice.
“You would be wise to watch your backs. I don’t think that anyone who finds out anything will live to see the dawn.”
“Be careful. Don’t let your grief make you reckless. We have rules about expulsion as well,” warned Hatter.
“What are you going to expel me from? I no longer have a detective to assist. The murderer has already expelled me.”
Arzaky, who until that point had spoken softly, now raised his voice.
“I am not going to respond to your foolish words. But I need Darbon’s papers in order to begin my work. I want to know who he was investigating.”
Neska smiled defiantly at Arzaky.
“I left everything in the hands of his widow. If you can convince her to give them to you, you’ll have everything.”
Neska left the room without another word. We all, detectives and assistants, remained there in silence. And that moment was the only tribute that Louis Darbon received, the only moment in which his death weighed on the detectives’ lives, not as an enigma, not as a mouthful for their insatiable curiosity, but as a loss. With a solemnity that competed with the others’ silence, Arzaky spoke.
“Perhaps Darbon did fall accidentally, perhaps it was some old enemy with a score to settle. But we have to consider another possibility. We have gathered here, in Paris, to display our trade among the other works of Man. And it is possible that one of our secret partners has taken this opportunity to challenge us. And thus display, not only the art of investigation, but the art of crime.”