The recovery of the brooch might easily have remained nothing more than an anecdote of the ballroom. Towards the close of the winter of 1890–1891, a young woman presented herself at the office of the Chief of the Sûreté accompanied by two men, one of whom gave his name as Arton. At the Opera ball, she had lost a piece of jewelry composed of black pearls and brilliants, valued at nearly thirty thousand francs. The confetti, she declared, had swept the brooch away. Goron instituted a search of the hall without success, and dismissed the matter from his mind. The trail emerged anew when an eighteen-year-old youth was taken in flagrante delicto for shoplifting in the Temple quarter. A search of his lodgings revealed that his mistress was wearing the missing jewel.
This accident of fortune brought Arton into Goron’s office under entirely innocuous auspices. The lad’s companion maintained that he had picked up the brooch amid the confetti and bestowed it upon her as a gift; she had been taken into custody solely because she wore the bauble. Goron restored it to its rightful owner, Arton’s paramour, and both the financier and the lady expressed a gratitude so lively that he attributed the outcome purely to chance. They then went so far as to solicit clemency for the lad and his mistress, whose incarceration, they insisted, marred their joy at recovering the jewel. The Chief of the Sûreté beheld in Arton at that hour merely a gentleman of finance, unremarkable save for a generosity of spirit that led him to concern himself with two nameless prisoners.
Arton presently invited him to dinner, in the company of deputies and senators. Goron, ever wary of the political constructions that might be placed upon his presence among intimates of General Boulanger, dispatched his agent Rossignol to gather intelligence regarding their prospective host. The resulting report depicted him as a man of solid credit and philanthropic benevolence; nothing, it was said, tarnished his good name. Goron declined the dinner upon an official pretext: an aggravated robbery obliged him to pass the evening in the suburbs. He could not then foresee that, scarce a year later, he would receive a warrant for the apprehension of this very same banker.
When the order arrived from Welter, the examining magistrate, Arton had already vacated his residence in the Rue Rouget-de-l’Isle. The search of the premises yielded nothing save a charcoal likeness, executed after an outdated photograph. The description was vague. Goron caused this portrait to be distributed to agents throughout France and England, but weeks elapsed without result. Towards the end of 1892, Arton’s name began to appear in the public press coupled with the Panama scandal. Goron records that he then learned—without himself comprehending the full intricacies—of the grave financial and political allegations leveled against the financier.
Prefect Lozé initially charged Houillier and Soudais with running the fugitive to earth. He subsequently directed Soudais to accompany Lemoine, an agent of the Sûreté générale, whom Goron later identified as Dupas. This choice astonished the officers of the Prefecture: Dupas had previously met Arton in Venice without arresting him, and possessed, according to Goron, a warrant he might readily have executed. No explanation was vouchsafed to Goron regarding the true identity of his companion or the circumstances surrounding that encounter. The Chief of the Sûreté recorded the occurrence as an anomaly he was at a loss to resolve.
The detectives followed several trails across Europe. At Jassy, they missed Arton by a single hour. Goron wondered whether the man had been forewarned, or had chanced upon the telegraphic summary of a debate in the Chamber. On other occasions, they reached Hamburg or Nuremberg only after he had departed. The repeated failures provided fodder for public mockery: in Paris, the populace scoffed at police officers who appeared perpetually behindhand. In administrative corridors, the whisper ran that apprehending Arton was unlikely to bring promotion. Goron declares he lent no credence to these rumors, yet concedes they weighed heavily upon the spirits of his men.
When Dupas returned to Paris and Soudais requested leave to come home, the Prefect ordered the latter to remain at his post, should a fresh scent present itself. One of Goron’s secretaries conveyed the instruction to Soudais in blunter terms: search, or feign to search; do not show your face in Paris; “it is all politics.” Goron relates that he then resolved upon an independent course. He set out for London, ostensibly for the Panisse affair, but in reality—by his own account—to resume the pursuit of Arton. He took Orion and Girodot in his train.
A City broker had assured him that Arton was residing in the environs of London, trafficking in securities subject to stop-notices. The intelligence was precarious, but it offered an opening. Goron purchased several stopped Italian bonds and arranged a rendezvous in a Richmond public house. Girodot was to pass himself off as a Parisian thief bringing the proceeds of various burglaries; intermediaries were to present the banker to him. The bonds and a parcel of old journals were to serve as stage properties. Goron, being the only officer among them who knew Arton by sight, was to identify the man and give the signal for the swoop.
At the Richmond railway station, he observed a woman carrying a black reticule, accompanied by an individual who bore a passing resemblance to the fugitive. The stature was identical, the carriage the same; yet Goron perceived immediately that it was not Arton. He forewarned Orion. Together they watched the man and his companion join Girodot in the public house and share a dram with him. The pretended trafficker in stolen scrip sat before a bulky, corded package, the contents of which were nothing but waste paper. When Girodot began to extract the sample bonds, Goron gave the prearranged signal: it was an error.
Girodot thereupon rose and warned his table that he caught sight of two suspicious figures, likely police officers. In an instant, the company dispersed, neglecting to pay for their refreshments; Goron settled the reckoning. Later, the two self-styled intermediaries sought out Girodot and rallied him upon his fright: they had mistaken Goron for a French pickpocket, notable for his reddish moustache and a hat purchased that very morning. The snare laid to identify the fugitive had snapped shut upon a surrogate. Goron departed without Arton, and subsequently ascertained that the banker had never engaged in the illicit trade in scrip of which he had been accused.
Upon his return to Paris, he was received by the President of the Council, Alexandre Ribot. The statesman inquired why the police had failed to lay hands on Arton. Goron replied that a man upon the run might well possess his own counter-police, and proposed the offer of substantial bounties to informants. Ribot authorized him to promise as much as fifteen thousand francs. In London, certain intermediaries demanded written drafts bearing his signature; Goron delivered them, made payable only upon the actual arrest. The narrative withholds several names. It relates, however, that a former German clerk of Salberg’s received the first draft, subsequently using the paper to blackmail Arton for two years before surrendering him. Goron attributes the banker’s eventual apprehension to this very bounty.
The pursuit, however, was far from concluded in his own mind. He made several journeys to London, and, acting upon information that Arton was to arrive from Canada, spent a week boarding and inspecting the vessels steaming up the Mersey. Not one brought the man. He interrogated Salberg, who disclosed that an agent acting on behalf of the selfsame government had previously proposed to facilitate Arton’s flight, rather than effect his capture. Goron later learned that this agent was Dupas. This revelation, along with subsequent parliamentary debates, invested the tardiness of the police with a political significance that the officers had been unable to divine while pursuing a man whose protectors remained unknown to them.
At Holloway, where Goron visited Arton following his incarceration, the two men discussed their respective versions of the chase. The prisoner maintained he had known full well that no one truly desired to take him; Goron affirmed he had attempted everything within his power. The one discerned a clandestine protection, the other a chain of false descriptions, missed rendezvous, and distributed bounties. In 1896, called as a witness in the Dupas trial, Goron maintained that his superiors had invariably instructed him to apprehend the fugitive. He made no pretense of passing judgment upon the Panama scandal as a whole. His conclusion remained more circumscribed: amid deceptive intelligence, contradictory orders, and political suspicions, he and his men had pursued Arton precisely as they would have pursued any other man whom justice commanded them to take.