HAMARD.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10010, 5 April 1910, Page 3

HAMARD.

THE FIRST DIRECTIVE OF EUROPE.

Octave Henri Abeodat Hamard is the brain ot the Parb Criminal Investigation Department. Though he works unobtrusively, it is to his genius that most of the successful work of chi Paris police is due. An excellent character sketch in the current "Rcyal Mnpazinp" pives a good idea of the man and his peculiar methods. He is rightly dubbed the first detective of Europe. Although the name of Hamard is as familiar to Paris newspaper reader i as that of Loubet of Fallieres, he is a man of mystery. Not one in ten thousand has ever seen him. There is no official in France that has been pointed out so often, and yet with such unfailing error. Hamard is tall and broad, and in- ! credibly dynamic. He is 47, and slightly grizzled;, but his activity is overwhelming. This activity is not purely physical. His obviously strong, heavily-muscled body likes repose. The dynamics are in his brain, and visible in his face. It is a strong, good natured face; framed and set off by the closely-cropped, grey-brown hair, the carefully-trimmed moustache snd small, pointed beard. Hia mouth is straight and firm. Then you suddenly notice his eyes. No more wonder now. You know. They are two twinkling, tireless lancets. They are like no eyes you have ever seen—the eyes of a thinking , machine, swift, alert, infallible. When a criminal confronts Hamard, ; it is a good deal like a rat confronting a python.His office is a vast room on the fourth floor of the Preferture, furnished with Spartan simplicity. J "Bring me 'Le Beau Georges,' " j says the chief, as he drops into his chair. Down in the Aix-les-Bains, where the season is at its height, Mile. X , young, beautiful and wealthy, has been assassinated. They found her in the morning with a rope round her neck. Her aged housekeeper had met a similar fate. The only other inmate of the villa where the crime was perpetrated was the maid, Odette. She had been bound and gagged Odette knew nothing, remembered nothing, save her terror when she was being stifled. Then she fainted. The local police had only one clue. Mile. x had been seen leaving the Casino at midnight, accompanied by a distinguished stranger. But the stranger turned out to be a Russian > grand duke whp had left her safey at ! her own door. The maid was promptly j suspected, of course, but there was no proof against her, and she was allowed to return to Paris. That brought the case into M. Hamard's territory. A few days after her ar - rival in Paris, Odette was summoned before the Chef de la Surete. There a pleasant surprise awaited her. Instead of being menaced and browbeaten, she was merely questioned in a fatherly way by M. Hamard about all her friends and acquaintances, particularly her little love affairs. She'gave,him a list of every man she had talked to during the past month. There were only a dozen in all. Try as she might, she could not thinK of another single onne Less than a minute after she left two detectives hurried away with an 6rder to bring in the man known as 'Handsome George.' Be had been missing from his usual haunts at tha time of the crime. He had seen and talked with Odetta since her return to Paris. And yet the maid had not mentioned him. As 'Le Beau Georges' was pushed into the room he was sullen and out of sorts. He was i\o longer the Beau Brummell of the undeiworld that he was when they pick«d him up that afternoon on the Boulevard de Sebastopol. He had been awakened from sound sleep and marched through chill, dim corridors. He blinked his eyes now in the brilliant light. It was past three o'clock in the morning, and he had been locked up supperless. He sat down on the edge I of the aimchair, scowling uneasilv. The detective who had brought him in stood close behind liis'cbair. Some- } times M. Hamard's night callers

make swift grabs at the inkwell or anything else convenient to throw, i Another detective stojJ al attention awaiting orders ' The chief drilled a few gimlet holes in George, thin turned to the detective who was unoccupied. 'Go I a> d eat,' he aaid 'Get voorself some- • 1 thing good—a inci chicken, and some salad and cheese, and a bottle | of wine. Tell Odetta she can eat with you. George is going to talk. He knows he's nothing to gain by holding back now.'

Turning his twinkling, scintilatins lancets on George. t> e chief examined him in detail, while hf talked to him a fiiem). What he saw was a vicious, bru*al f ice, in which there was both vanity and f^ar. 'Eh, bein, monenfant,' he began, ; 'they've played you a dirty tri k.' j Then be went on to tell how 'they' | had tried to fix the ciime on hi in. I 'They* were jealous jf hi n because ! be was good-looking 'lhuy' had . told how it was that he bad drawn the noose, although it would be so easy for him to prove that his afftetinn for j Odette had held him back while the i others had done the work. I Was it guessing? Perhaps. All that M. Hamard knew was that George was a friend of Odette, that ! his record was bad, and that he was j out in the country somewhere on the night of the crime. And, then, Ueorge ; was a beginner in this sort of thing. ' There were indications that tbn crime was the work of beginner < - the unnecessary ferocity, the waste i f i.uman life,"the hurried ransacH f • f the villa, all indicated am-itemis-" panic. But beginners coulo never have entered the villa so cleverly an I ; noiselessly without the aid ot a confederate on the inside. Njr would o >e j beginner, even then, have atteiriptnd j the job all alone. There were two or j three—'they.' ; And the chief guessed that he h&d one of the men Lefore him now. As the morning advanced he became sure of it. What he needed now was evidence that would be good in court, For an hour the sound of knives and forks on pla es, the popping of corks, and the • dour of a gener- , ous ! cuisine bad been floating in from the adjacent room Now and i then a woman hushed, making the prisoner stir uneasily. Brazen and insolent at the first, George next became silent and obstinate. Then, when the chief profanely professed indiiference as to whether George rotteJ or nut in New Caledonia while vhe guilty, ones had a gOud nme as they were doing now —Ecouttz? and as the sound of mild revelry came from the other room Geo ige btgan to weaken. It was a guess; but it turned out to be the right one* About six o'clock George decided to perform that ceremony which is known among the denizens of Les Tour Pointues as manager le moreeau —that is, make j a clean breast of it and get a square 1 meal. It is this faculty of guessing right —in keeping with all the available fact3—that has helped more than anything else to keep M. Hamard's slate so clean. Not since he came into office has there been a first-class crime in Paris that remained a mystery. Obviously 1 it has not be?n all guesswork. It requires more than a guess to get a conviction, even in France. One by one, criminals of high and low de- ! gtee have been picked out .by the thinkirg-machine of the Quai des Orferves, brought into the presence of those scintillating eyes, and have confessed, Somecimes the action was amazingly swift, sometimes piinfully slow. Other illustrations of M. Hamsrd's methods are also giver, but the one above quoted his astuteness in bottoming a mystery.