violent ring at the bell woke the concierge at No. 9, Avenue Hoche from her sleep. She pulled the cord, muttering:

"I thought they were all in. It's past three!"

Her husband growled:

"Perhaps it's for the doctor."

And a voice did, in fact, ask:

"Doctor Harel . . . which floor?"

"Third floor, on the left. But the doctor won't go out at night."

"He'll have to, this time."

The caller entered the hall, went up one floor, two floors, and, without even stopping on Dr. Harel's landing, continued as far as the fifth. Here he tried two keys; one opened the lock, the other unfastened the safety-catch.

"Capital," he muttered. "This simplifies matters considerably. But before setting to work let's provide for our retreat. Let me see . . . have I allowed a reasonable time for ringing at the doctor's and being dismissed by him? Not yet. . . . I must wait a little longer."

He let ten minutes elapse, then went downstairs again and tapped at the pane of the porter's box, raging and fuming against the doctor as he did so. The front door was opened for him, and he slammed it behind him. But the door did not shut, for the man had quickly applied a piece of iron to the staple to prevent the bolt from entering.

He returned without a sound, unobserved by the concierge and her husband. In case of alarm, his retreat was assured.

He calmly reascended the five flights. Entering the hall of the flat, by the light of a portable electric lamp, he put his hat and coat on one of the chairs, sat down on another, and drew a pair of thick felt slippers over his boots.

"So much for that!" he said. "And an easy job too! I sometimes ask myself why everybody doesn't choose the comfortable profession of a burglar. Given a little skill and reflective power, there's nothing more charming. It's such a restful trade, a regular family man's trade. . . . It's even too simple. . . . It ceases to be amusing. . . ."

He unfolded a minute plan of the flat.

"Let us begin by taking our bearings. Ah, here is the square hall in which I am sitting. Looking out on the street, we have the drawing-room, the boudoir, and the dining-room. No use wasting time there: it appears the countess has very poor taste . . . there's not a knick-knack of the smallest value. . . . So let's come to the point at once. . . . Ah, here is a passage -- the passage that leads to the bedrooms. At a distance of three yards I ought to find the door of the wardrobe-closet communicating with the countess's bedroom."

He folded up his plan, put out his lantern, and walked down the passage, counting:

"One yard . . . two yards . . . three yards. . . . Here is the door. . . . How well it all fits in! Bless my soul! A mere bolt, a tiny bolt, separates me from the bedroom, and, moreover, I know that the bolt is three feet and a half from the floor. . . . So that, with the aid of a little incision which I propose to make around it, we can easily get rid of it. . . ."

He took the necessary implements from his pocket. But an idea stopped him.

"Supposing the bolt should happen to be unfastened. . . . I may as well try."

He turned the handle of the lock. To his great surprise the door opened.

"Arsène Lupin, my fine fellow, fortune's on your side to-night, there's no doubt of that! What do you want next? You know the geography of your field of operations; you know where the countess keeps the black pearl hidden. . . . Consequently, the black pearl is yours. . . . All that you have to do is to be more silent than silence itself, more invisible than the darkness."

Arsène Lupin took quite half an hour to open the second door -- a glass door leading to the bedroom. But he opened it with such infinite precautions that, even if the countess had been awake, no suspicious sound could have occurred to alarm her.

According to the indications marked on his plan, he had only to follow the circuit of a sofa. This would bring him first to an easy-chair, and then to a little table beside the bed. On the table was a box of stationery, and hidden quite simply inside this box was the black pearl.

He crouched at full length on the carpet, and followed the line of the sofa. But on reaching the end of it he stopped to check the beating of his heart. Although he felt no fear, he found it impossible to overcome that sort of nervous anguish which a man experiences in a silence that is greater than usual. And he was astonished at this, for, after all, he had passed through moments more solemn than the present without undergoing any sort of emotion. He was threatened by no danger. Then why was his heart beating like a mad bull? Was it that sleeping woman that impressed him, that life so close to his own?

He listened, and seemed to distinguish a rhythmical breathing. He felt reassured, as though by a friendly presence.

He found his way to the chair, and then, with little, imperceptible movements, crept towards the table, groping in the darkness with his out-stretched arm. His right hand touched one of the legs of the table.

At last! He had only to rise to his feet, take the black pearl, and go. It was as well, for his heart was again beginning to thump in his chest like a terrified animal, and so noisily that it seemed impossible that the countess should not wake.

He quieted it with a violent effort of will; but just as he was trying to rise his left hand struck against an object lying on the carpet, which he at once recognized as a candlestick -- an overturned candlestick; and at the same moment another object offered to his touch: a clock -- one of those little travelling-clocks in a leather case.

What did it all mean? What had happened? He could not understand. The clock . . . the candlestick. . . . Why were they not in their usual places? Oh, what was happening in the frightful darkness?

And suddenly a cry escaped him. He had touched . . . oh, such a strange, unutterable thing! But no, no, fear must be affecting his brain! For twenty seconds, for thirty seconds, he lay motionless, terror-struck, with his temples bathed in perspiration. And his fingers retained the sensation of that touch.

With a relentless effort he put out his arm again. His hand once more grasped the thing -- the strange, nameless thing. He felt it. He insisted that his hand should feel it and take stock of it. . . . It was a head of hair, a face . . . and the face was cold -- almost icy cold.

However terrifying a reality may be, a man like Arsène Lupin masters it as soon as he is aware of it. Quickly he pressed the spring of his lamp. A woman lay before him covered with blood. Her neck and shoulders were disfigured by hideous wounds. He stooped over her and examined her. She was dead.

"Dead! Dead!" he repeated, in his bewilderment.

And he looked at those staring eyes, that grinning mouth, that livid flesh, and that blood -- all that blood, which had flowed upon the carpet, and was now congealing, thick and black.

He rose and switched on the electric light. He now saw that the room was filled with signs of a desperate struggle. The bed was entirely disordered, the sheets and blankets torn away. On the floor lay the candlestick, the clock (the hands pointed to twenty minutes past eleven), and, farther off, an overturned chair; and blood on every side -- blood in pools and splashes.

"And the black pearl?" he muttered.

The box of stationary was in its place. He opened it hurriedly. It contained the jewel-case. But the case was empty.

"The devil!" he said. "You boasted of your luck a bit too soon, my friend Arsène Lupin. . . . The countess murdered, the black pearl gone . . . be off, or you will have a heavy responsibility on your shoulders!"

Nevertheless, he did not stir.

"Be off? Yes, another would be off. But Arsène Lupin? Is there nothing better to be done? Come, let us proceed by order. After all, your conscience is easy. . . . Suppose that you were a police commissary, and had to make an inquiry? . . . Yes, but for that we should need a clearer brain. And mine is in such a state!"

He fell into a chair, pressing his clenched fists against his burning forehead.

=============================================================

The murder in the Avenue Hoche is one of the most puzzling of recent years, and I should never have been able to tell the story if the part played in it by Arsène Lupin had not thrown a special light upon it. There are few who suspect the nature of this part. In any case, no one knows the exact and curious facts.

Why, from seeing her driving in the Bois, did not know Léonide Zalti, the once famous opera-singer, who became the wife and widow of the Comte d'Andillot; the Zalti, whose luxurious mode of life dazzled Paris some twenty years ago; the Zalti, Comtesse d'Andillot, who owed an European reputation to the magnificence of her sets of diamonds and pearls? People used to say that she carried on her shoulders the strong-rooms of many a banking-house and the gold-mines of many an Australian company. The great jewelers worked for her much as they used to work for the kings and queens in the old days.

And who does not remember the catastrophe in which all these treasures were swallowed up? Banking-houses and gold-mines, the whirlpool devoured them all. Of the unparalleled collection, dispersed, amid great excitement, under the auctioneer's hammer, the countess retained only the famous black pearl. The black pearl -- in other words, a fortune, had she been willing to part with it.

But she consistently refused. Rather than sell this priceless gem she preferred to economize, to live in a simple flat, just just a companion, a cook, and a man-servant. Nor did she hesitate to confess her reason: the black pearl was the gift of an emperor! And though almost ruined and reduced to the most ordinary sort of existence, she remained faithful to the companion of her better days.

"As long as I live," she said, "it shall never quit my sight."

She wore it round her neck from morning till evening. At night she placed in a receptacle known to herself alone.

All these facts were related in the newspapers, and stimulated public curiosity. And, strange to say, though easy enough to understand for those who possess the key to the riddle, it was just the arrest of the alleged assassin that complicated the mystery and increased the excitement. Two days after the murder the papers contained the following news:

"We understand that Victor Danègre, the Comtesse d'Andillot's servant, has been arrested. The evidence adduced against him is overwhelming. Bloodstains have been discovered on the lustrine sleeve of his livery waistcoat, which was found in his room, hidden between the mattresses of his bed, by M. Dudouis, the chief of the detective service. Moreover, one of the stuff-covered buttons of the waistcoat was missing; and this button had been picked up, at an early stage of the investigation, under the victim's bed.

"It seems probable that, after dinner, instead of going to his own room in the attic, Danègre slipped into the wardrobe-closet, and through the glass door saw the countess hide the black pearl.

"We must add that there is no proof, so far, to confirm this supposition. In any case, one point remains unexplained. At seven o'clock in the morning Danègre went to the tobacconist's shop on the Boulevard de Courcelles. The concierge and the tobacconist have both given evidence to this effect. On the other hand, the countess's cook and her companion, both of whom sleep at the end of the passage, declare that at eight o'clock, when they got up, the front door and the kitchen door were double-locked. The two women have been in the countess's service for over twenty years, and are above suspicion. The question is, How was Danègre able to leave the flat? Did he have another key made for his own use? The inquiry will show."

The inquiry showed absolutely nothing. On the contrary. It appeared that Victor Danègre was a dangerous criminal, who had already served a term of imprisonment, a confirmed drunkard and loose-liver, who was not likely to quail before the use of the knife. But the case itself seemed to become wrapped in a thicker shroud of mystery and in more inexplicable contradictions the more it was studied.

To begin with, Mlle. de Sinclèves, the cousin and sole heiress of the murdered woman, declared that the countess, a month before her death, told her, in one of her letters, of the place where she used to hide the black pearl. This letter disappeared the day after she received it. Who had stolen it?

The concierge and his wife, on their side, said that they had opened the door to a man who had gone up to Dr. Harel's. The doctor was sent for. No one had rung at his door. In that case, who was this man? An accomplice?

This idea of an accomplice was adopted by the newspapers and the public. Ganimard -- old Chief-Inspector Ganimard -- accepted it, not without excuse.

"Lupin has had a hand in this," he said to the examining magistrate.

"Bah! You see that Arsène Lupin of yours in everything."

"I see him in everything, because he is in everything."

"Say rather that you see him whenever anything does not seem very clear to you. Besides, in this particular case, remember that the crime was committed at twenty minutes past eleven in the evening, as the clock shows, and that the night visit described by the concierge and his wife did not take place until three o'clock in the morning."

The police often yield to a sort of conviction that makes them force events so as to fit in with the first explanation offered. Victor Danègre's antecedents were of a deplorable character -- I have already said that he had undergone sentence before, was a drunkard and a loose-liver -- and this influenced magistrate's judgment. Although no new circumstance arose to corroborate the first two or three clues, he refused to be shaken. He closed the inquiry, and a few weeks later the trial began.

It dragged wearily along. The presiding judge took no interest in the case. The prosecution was feebly conducted. Under these conditions, Danègre's counsel had an easy game to play. He pointed to the gaps and impossibilities in the evidence. There was no material proof in existence. Who had made the key, the indispensable key, without which Danègre could not have double-locked the door of the flat on leaving? Who had seen this key, and what had become of it? Who had seen the murderer's knife, and what had become of that?

"In any case," said the counsel, in conclusion, "it rests with the prosecution to prove that my client committed the murder. Let them prove that the perpetrator of the theft and the murder is not the mysterious individual who entered the house at three o'clock in the morning. The clock stopped at eleven at night, they say. And then? Cannot the hands of a clock be shifted to any hour that seems convenient?"

Victor Danègre was acquitted.

===========================================================

He left prison one Friday by the waning light of the afternoon, emaciated and depressed by the six months spent in the cells. The examination, the solitary confinement, the trial, the deliberation of the jury -- all this had filled him with a sickly dread. His nights were haunted by hideous nightmares and visions of the scaffold. He trembled with fever and terror.

Under the name of Anatole Dufour he hired a small room on the heights of Montmartre, and lived on odd jobs -- shifting for himself as best he could.

A wretched life! Thrice engaged by three different employers, he was each time recognized as Victor Danègre, and dismissed on the spot.

He often saw, or thought he saw, men following him -- men, he had no doubt, belonging to the police, who would never rest until they had caught him in some trap. Already he felt a rough hand seize him by the collar.

One evening he was dining at an eating-house in the neighborhood when some one came and sat down opposite him. It was a man of about forty years of age, dressed in a black frock-coat of doubtful cleanliness. He ordered a soup, a dish of vegetables, and a quart of wine. And when he had eaten his soup he looked at Danègre with a long fixed stare.

Danègre turned pale. Without a doubt the man was one of those who had been following him for weeks. What did he want with him? Danègre tried to get up. He could not. His legs staggered beneath him.

The stranger poured himself out a glass of wine, and filled Danègre's glass.

"Have a drink, mate?"

Victor stammered:

"Thanks . . . thanks . . . your health, mate."

"Your health, Victor Danègre."

The other gave a start.

"I! I! . . . No . . . I assure you. . . ."

"You assure me what? That you are not yourself? Not the servant of the countess?"

"Whose servant? My name is Dufour. Ask the landlord."

"Anatole Dufour, yes, to the landlord, but Danègre, Victor Danègre, to the police."

"It's not true, it's not true! They've told you a lie."

The new-comer took a card from his pocket and handed it to him. Victor read:

He shivered.

"You belong to the police!"

"Not now; but I used to like the trade, and I still follow it . . . in a more lucrative way. From time to time one lights upon a golden job . . . like yours."

"Mine?"

"Yes, yours is an exceptional case -- at least, if you care to show a little willingness in the matter."

"And if I don't?"

"You'll have to. You're in a position in which you can refuse me nothing."

Victor Danègre felt himself overcome by a dull sense of fear. He asked:

"What is it? . . . Speak out!"

"Very well," said the other, let's come to the point and have done with it. In two words, I have been sent by Mademoiselle de Sinclèves."

"Sinclèves?"

"The Comtesse d'Andillot's heiress."

"Well?"

"Well, Mademoiselle de Sinclèves has employed me in order to make you give up the black pearl."

"The black pearl?"

"The one you stole."

"But I haven't got it."

"Yes, you have."

"If I had, I should be the murderer."

"You are the murderer."

Danègre gave a forced laugh.

"Fortunately, my good sir, the court took another view. The jury unanimously found me not guilty. And when a man has conscience on his side, together with the esteem of twelve good men and true . . ."

The ex-detective-inspector seized him by the arm.

"None of your speech-making, my lad. Listen to me carefully, and weigh my words: they are worth it. Three months before the crime, Danègre, you stole the key of the servants' entrance from the cook and you had a similar one made at Outard's, the locksmith, 244, Rue Oberkampf."

"It's not true! it's not true!" growled Victor. "No one has seen the key; there's no such key."

"Here it is!"

After a silence, Grimaudan resumed:

"You killed the countess with a clasp-knife which you bought at the Bazar de la République on the same day that you ordered the key. It has a three-cornered, grooved blade."

"All humbug! You're talking at random. No one has seen the knife."

"Here it is!"

Victor Danègre started back. The ex-inspector continued:

"There are stains of rust on the blade. Do you want me to explain to you where they come from?"

"And then? . . . You've got a key and a knife. . . . Who can swear that they belong to me?"

"The locksmith first, and next the shop-assistant from whom you bought the knife. I have already refreshed their memories. Once brought face to face with you, they would not fail to recognize you."

He spoke shortly and sharply, with terrifying precision. Danègre was convulsed with fear. Neither the magistrate nor the judge at his trial, nor even the prosecution counsel, had pressed him so closely -- had seen so clearly into matters which were no longer even very plain to him.

However, he still tried to make a show of indifference.

"If that's all your evidence!"

"I have this besides. After the crime you went back by the way you came. But half-way across the wardrobe-closet, seized with fright, you must have leaned against the wall to keep your balance."

"How do you know?" stammered Victor. . . . "No one can know."

"The police, no; it could never have entered the heads of any of the gentlemen in the office of the public prosecutor to light a candle and examine the walls. But if they were to do so they would see a red mark on the white plaster, a very slight mark, but clear enough to show the impression of your thumb, all wet with blood, which you put against the wall. Now you are surely aware that, in the Bertillon system, this forms one of the chief methods of identification."

Victor Danègre was deathly pale. Beads of perspiration fell from his forehead to the table. He stared mad-eyed at this strange man who was conjuring up his crime as though he had been its unseen witness.

He lowered his head, beaten, powerless. For months he had been struggling -- struggling, as it seemed to him, against the whole world. Against this man he had the impression that there was nothing to be done.

"If I give you back the pearl," he stuttered, "how much will you give me?"

"Nothing."

"What! You're joking! You expect me to give you a thing worth thousands and hundreds of thousands of francs and you to give me nothing?"

"Yes, your life."

The wretched man shuddered. Grimaudan added, in an almost gentle tone:

"Come, Danègre, the pearl is of no value to you. You cannot possibly sell it. What is the good of keeping it?"

"There are receivers . . . and some day or other, at a price . . ."

"Some day or other will be too late."

"Why?"

"Why? Because the police will have laid you by the heels again, and this time, with the proofs with which I shall supply them -- the knife, the key, the thumb-print -- you're done for, my fine fellow."

Victor clutched his head in his two hands and reflected. He felt himself lost, irreparably lost, and, at the same time, a great sense of weariness overcame him, an immense need of rest and ease.

He muttered:

"When do you want it?"

"Before one o'clock tonight"

"And if you don't get it?"

"If I don't get it I shall post this letter, in which Mademoiselle de Sinclèves denounces you to the public prosecutor."

Danègre poured himself out two glasses of wine, swallowed them one after the other, and then, rising:

"Pay the bill," he said, "and let's go. . . . I've had enough of this cursed business."

=============================================================

Night had come. The two men went down the Rue Lepic, and along the outer boulevards towards the Étoile. They walked in silence, Victor very wearily, with a bent back.

At the Parc Monceau he said:

"It's close by the house . . ."

"By Jove, you only left it, before your arrest, to go to the tobacco-shop!"

"We're there," said Danègre, in a hollow voice.

They went along the railings of the garden, and crossed a street of which the corner was formed by the tobacconist's shop. Danègre stopped a few paces farther on. His legs reeled under him. He dropped on a bench.

"Well?" asked his companion.

"It's there."

"It's there? What are you talking about?"

"Yes, there, in front of us."

"In front of us? Look here, Danègre, you had better not . . ."

"I tell you, it's there."

"Where?"

"Between two paving-stones."

"Which two?"

"Find it yourself."

"Which two?" repeated Grimaudan.

Victor did not reply.

"Ah, I see, you're trying to hoodwink me, are you?"

"No . . . but . . . I shall die of starvation . . ."

"And so you're hesitating? Well, I'll be generous with you. How much do you want?"

"Enough to pay my passage to America."

"Agreed."

"And a hundred-franc note for expenses."

"You shall have two. And now speak."

"Count the cobbles to the right of the drain. It's between the twelfth and the thirteenth."

"In the gutter?"

"Yes, just below the curb-stone."

Grimaudan looked around him. Tram-cars were passing, people were passing on foot. But, pooh! Who would suspect? . . .

He opened his pocket-knife, and thrust it between the twelfth and thirteenth cobble-stones.

"And if it's not there?"

"If no one saw me stoop and push it in, it must be there still."

Could it be there? The black pearl flung into the mud of a gutter for the first passer-by to pick up! The black pearl . . . a fortune!

"How far down?"

"About three inches."

He made an opening in the moist earth. The point of his knife struck against something. He widened the hole with his fingers.

The black pearl was there.

"Here, take your two hundred francs. I'll send you your ticket for America."

==============================================================

The next evening the Écho de France published the following paragraph, which was copied by the press of the whole world:

"Yesterday the famous black pearl fell into the hands of Arsène Lupin, who recovered it from the murderer of the Comtesse d'Andillot. Facsimilies of this valuable jewel will shortly be exhibited in London, St. Petersburg, Calcutta, Buenos Ayres, and New York.

"Arsène Lupin is prepared to receive offers from his correspondents at home and abroad."

"And that is how crime is always punished and virtue rewarded," concluded Arsène Lupin, after he had revealed to me the unknown side of the story.

"I see; that is how, under the name of Grimaudan, an ex-detective-inspector, you were selected by fate to deprive the criminal of the fruits of his crime!"

"Exactly. And I confess that it is one of the adventures of which I am most proud. The forty minutes which I spent in the countess's flat, after verifying her death, I number among the most astonishing and the most momentous in my life. Caught in an apparently inextricable situation, in forty minutes I had reconstructed the crime, and, thanks to a few signs, acquired by the certainty that the murderer could be none other than one of the countess's servants. Lastly, I saw that, if I was to have the pearl, the man must be arrested, and so I left the waistcoat-button. But that there must not be any irrefutable proofs of his guilt, I picked up the knife which he had left on the carpet, took away the key which he had left in the lock, double-locked the door and removed the finger-marks on the plaster of the wardrobe-closet. In my opinion, this was one of those flashes . . ."

"Of genius," I put in.

"Of genius, if you like, which would not have lit up the brain of the first-comer. I hit, in one second, upon the two terms of the problem -- an arrest and and acquittal -- and made use of the formidable apparatus of the law to unsettle my man, to stupefy him, and, in short, to reduce him to such a condition of mind that, once free, he must inevitably, fatally fall into the rather clumsy trap which I had laid for him."

"Rather clumsy? I should say very! For he ran no danger."

"No, none at all, for a man can't be tried twice for the same offense."

"Poor devil! . . ."

"Poor devil! . . . Victor Danègre? You forget that he's a murderer! . . . It would have been a most immoral thing to leave the black pearl in his possession. Why, he's alive! Just think, Danègre's alive!"

"And the black pearl is yours."

He took it from one of the secret compartments of his pocket-book, examined it with loving fingers and earnest eyes, and sighed.

"What Russian prince, what vain and idiot Rajah, will end by becoming the owner of this treasure? What American millionaire is destined to possess this morsel of beauty and luxury which once adorned the white shoulders of Léonide Zalti, Comtesse d'Andillot? Who can tell? . . ."

Chapter 9: Sherlock Holmes Arrives Too Late

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