The Five Detectives
by GABRIEL BERNARD

CHAPTER I

A Grand Wedding

Near the Madeleine, the crowd was gathering, growing denser by the minute, barely contained by reinforced security.
The grand Franco-American wedding taking place that day in the most fashionable of Parisian churches was a major event, an event that, for several weeks, had been making headlines on both sides of the Atlantic. Everyone wanted to be as well placed as possible to see the bride, who was said to be ideally pretty, appear beneath the Greek colonnade facing Rue Royale, then descend the monumental staircase covered, for the occasion, with a new carpet that had cost one hundred thousand francs... And it was, among the audience, quivering with curiosity, a back-and-forth of those lines where the skeptical banter and the admiring gawking of the Parisian crowd mingled.
"I hear the bride has a dowry of one hundred million..."
"In francs or dollars?"
"Even in francs, I'll take it... The husband won't bother! You bet..."
"Especially since he's penniless... Bah!" You can have less than a hundred million and still not be in trouble... - - He's a baron, they say... Yes, Baron Gontran de Champval.... It seems the bride is a beauty...
- An American woman with a dowry of a hundred million is always a beauty... Have you seen her photo?
- No, have you?...
- Neither have I...
- Yet there are newspapers that must have published it...
At that moment, a serious figure, who had been listening silently to the words being exchanged in the group he was mingling with, intervened in the sententious tone of a well-informed man:
"No one has been able to see Miss Constance Phips's photograph for the excellent reason that no newspaper has reproduced it... It's even rather strange, given the noise this wedding has made..."
"After all, maybe she's really ugly, the billionaire's daughter," observed a snub-nosed, wild-haired woman.
"That must be it," added another. "Do you think if she were as hot as she was rich, we wouldn't have seen her face everywhere, like the Dollar Kid!..."
"We'll still see her next Friday at the movies," a little telegraph operator judiciously suggested. Get this setup...
In fact, several camera operators, after heated negotiations with their natural enemies, the guardians of the peace, had just taken a position.
The bride wouldn't escape them. She wouldn't be able to leave the church without passing into the field of their cameras.
Yet the little telegraph operator, who was definitely proving to be sagacious, murmured, nodding his head:
"They're perched too far away... Chances are they're chocolate brown... Especially if the lady decides to pull her veil over her face..."
While the group, huddled against the fence, in which the little telegraph operator represented philosophy continued to make more or less ludicrous comments, at the top of the stairs, under the peristyle, a gentleman in a suit approached the bustling troop of photojournalists.
The latter, more agile with their hand-held cameras than the cinematographers with their immense tripods, had positioned themselves so as to take snapshots from two meters away. Gentlemen photographers, the gentleman in the suit told them in a tone that was both very courteous and very firm, I feel compelled to repeat to you, for the last time, that you will be seriously disgracing Miss Constance Phips if you persist in wanting to take pictures of her as she leaves the church arm in arm with her husband... I believe you, moreover, to be too well-educated people to want to ignore the expressed wish of a lady...
"But, sir," said one of the photojournalists, "our professional duty..."
"If you think," said another, "that our directors hear of this woman..."
"I was sent here to photograph the bride," emphasized a third, "I will photograph her..."
The gentleman in the suit made a vague gesture. "Since that's the case, gentlemen, you will act at your own risk... Please accept, in advance, my sincere apologies..."
And, having bowed to them, he entered the church.
"He has good ones, that brother!" exclaimed one of the photographers. He thought, perhaps, that we would excuse ourselves very politely...
"Anyway, he offered us his apologies..."
"That's something..."
"What's this guy?"
But this question remained unanswered. It was at that precise moment that, through the main door of the Madeleine, which opened wide, the chords of Mendelssohn's wedding march escaped, like gusts of harmony.
The head of the procession was soon visible between the central columns.
A stir arose among the privileged groups who had reached the colonnade, a stir that spread to the steps of the staircase, where two human lines quivered at a respectful distance from the famous carpet of one hundred thousand francs, then beyond the gate, onto the sidewalk perpendicular to the axis of the Rue Royale. Two lavishly adorned Swiss men appeared, preceding Baron Gontran de Champval and the new Baroness, born Constance Phips, daughter of the American billionaire Reginald Phips, nicknamed the King of the Dynamos.
The weather was perfect.
The sun, a gentle Parisian sun, highlighted this always sought-after spectacle of a grand wedding at the Madeleine.
Indeed, this time, the bridal couple, even if one disregarded the surrounding prestige, looked magnificent. Tall, slender, built with vigor and finesse, with an attractive physiognomy owing to the contrasts of his dominant expression, where haughtiness and irony combined with amenity and charm, Baron Gontran de Champval lived up to his reputation as a purebred gentleman, perpetuating in our fiercely utilitarian times the innate elegance and distinction of the accomplished types of the aristocracy of yesteryear.
His hair was ash-blond, and he had not sacrificed his fine mustache to fashion.
In the crowd, there were certainly many pretty mouths murmuring: He's really nice...
However, the bride's success was in no way inferior to that of the groom.
She was truly delightful, the new baroness, and, contrary to the little telegraph operator's predictions, she never thought to hide her face under her marvelous old Malines veil, a historic veil that had long ago been commissioned by a Spanish governor of Flanders for an infanta.
So everyone could see the adorable, perfectly oval face, the large, dreamy eyes, the intelligent smile, and the light brown hair of the young American woman, whose figure, moreover, was as un-Anglo-Saxon as could be.
Well-built at her average height, Constance Phips seemed free of that je ne sais quoi that, in the most Parisian-minded American, at first glance reveals a foreigner. While women were unstinting in their admiration for Baron Gontran de Champval, the men seeing Miss Constance Phips for the first time found her exquisite.
Behind the couple, arm in arm with the wife of the United States Ambassador, walked a man in his fifties who was the typical embodiment of the high-flying American businessman, popularized by transatlantic films.
This tall, heavily built Yankee, with a clean-shaven face sculpted by vigor, trained to impassivity, was the billionaire Reginald Phips, Constance's father.
Everyone knew this figure, for there wasn't a single illustrated publication that hadn't, at least once, reproduced the features of the King of the Dynamos.
When Baron de Champval and his wife had passed the line of columns and, now in full light, were preparing to descend the stairs, the photographers rushed forward, their cameras trained...
At that moment, a series of events occurred whose concordance was, to say the least, strange.
Not a single one of the photojournalists who were aiming for the wedding couple, and particularly the bride, was able to take their shots.
All were prevented from doing so by various incidents or accidents that, simultaneously, made it impossible for them to take their snapshots.
One was given a convenient nudge by a gentleman who, incidentally, apologized very politely; another received such a sudden and violent blow on the arm that his camera slipped from his hands, and, as his first impulse was to pick it up, he never knew who had caused the unfortunate flick; a third felt his foot being stepped on, and the pain was so sharp that he gave a slight cry and was unable to operate his Kodak; others were caught, without really realizing what was happening, in a slight jostle, and pushed to the third row of onlookers.
In short, when the unfortunate photojournalists had recovered, the bride and groom were already settling into the sumptuous electric coupé that would take them to the famous palace on the Champs-Élysées where the wedding luncheon was to take place. Now, in a coincidence as bizarre as the sudden rout of the photographers, the cinematographers realized with terror, just as the wedding procession entered "the frame," that their handles were bent or even jammed...
Impossible to "shoot"!... The poor devils swore, ranted, or moaned, depending on their temperament: the bride and her procession had passed without being able to expose a millimeter of film!

CHAPTER II

The Bride's Cable

For his only daughter's wedding, Reginald Phips had done the right thing, like the billionaire he was: he had arranged with the manager of the Mundial Palace for the entirety of his lavish establishment. The other guests had been accommodated in an annex.
It had been agreed that, for a month, Reginald Phips would be at home at the Mundial Palace, and that the hotel's services and staff would be at his and his guests' exclusive disposal.
For the billionaire, who, apart from Constance, had no family, had invited many of his friends from New York, Chicago, and San Francisco to cross the Atlantic to attend his daughter's wedding.
And, naturally, just as he had secured the use of a grand hotel, he had chartered a luxury liner to transport his Yankee guests.

Gabriel Bernard