THE EXPLOITS OF ARSÈNE LUPIN
by Maurice Leblanc
c. 1907
1. The Arrest of Arsène Lupin
2. Arsène Lupin in Prison
3. The Escape of Arsène Lupin
4. The Mysterious Railway Passenger
5. The Queen's Necklace
6. The Seven of Hearts
7. Madame Imbert's Safe
8. The Black Pearl
9. Sherlock Holmes Arrives Too Late
CHAPTER 1: THE ARREST OF ARSÈNE LUPIN
The strangest of journeys! And yet it had begun so well! I, for my
part, had never made a voyage that started under better auspices. The
Province is a swift and comfortable transatlantic liner, commanded by
the most genial of men. The company gathered on board was of a very
select character. Acquaintances were formed and amusements organized.
We had the delightful feeling of being separated from the rest of the
world, reduced to our own devices, as though upon an unknown island,
and obliged, therefore, to make friends with one another. And we grew
more and more intimate. . . .
Have you ever reflected on the element of originality and surprise
contained in this grouping of a number of people who, but a day
earlier, had never seen one another, and who are now, for a few days,
destined to live together in the closest contact, between the infinite
sky and the boundless sea, defying the fury of the ocean, the alarming
onslaught of the waves, the malice of the winds, and the distressing
calmness of the slumbering waters?
Life itself, in fact, with its storms and its greatnesses, its monotony
and its variety, becomes a sort of tragic epitome; and that, perhaps,
is why we enjoy with a fevered haste and an intensified delight this
short voyage of which we see the end.
But, of late years, a thing has happened that adds curiously to the
excitement of the passage. The little floating island is no longer
entirely separated from the world from which we believed ourselves cut
adrift. One link remains, and is at intervals tied and at intervals
untied in mid-ocean. The wireless telegraph! As who should say a
summons from another world, whence we receive news in the most
mysterious fashion! The imagination no longer has the resource of
picturing wires along which the invisible message glides: the mystery
is even more insoluble, more poetic; and we must have recourse to the
winds to explain the new miracle.
And so, from the start, we felt that we were being followed, escorted,
even preceded by that distant voice which, from time to time, whispered
to one of us a few words from the continent which we had quitted. Two
of my friends spoke to me. Ten others, twenty others sent to all of us,
through space, their sad or cheery greetings. Now, on the stormy
afternoon of the second day, when we were five hundred miles from the
French coast, the wireless telegraph sent us a message of the following
tenor:
"Arsène Lupin on board your ship, first class, fair
hair, wound on right forearm, traveling alone under
alias R--"
At that exact moment, a violent thunderclap burst in the dark sky. The
electric waves were interrupted. The rest of the message failed to
reach us. We knew only the initial of the name under which Arsène Lupin
was concealing his identity.
Had the news been any other, I have no doubt but that the secret would
have been scrupulously kept by the telegraph-clerks and the captain and
his officers. But there are certain events that appear to overcome the
strictest discretion. Before the day was past, though no one could have
told how the rumor had got about, we all knew that the famous Arsène
Lupin was hidden in our midst.
Arsène Lupin in our midst! The mysterious housebreaker whose exploits
had been related in all the newspapers for months! The baffling
individual with whom Ganimard, our greatest detective, had entered upon
that duel to the death of which the details were being unfolded in so
picturesque a fashion! Arsène Lupin, the fastidious gentleman who
confines his operations to country-houses and fashionable drawing-rooms,
and who one night, after breaking in at Baron Schormann's, had gone
away empty-handed, leaving his visiting card:
_____________________
| |
| Arsène Lupin |
| Gentleman Burglar |
|_____________________|
with these words added in pencil:
"Will return when the furniture is genuine."
Arsène Lupin, the man with a thousand disguises, by turns chauffeur,
opera-singer, book-maker, gilded youth, young man, old man, Marseillese
bagman, Russian doctor, Spanish bull-fighter!
Picture the situation: Arsène Lupin moving about within the
comparatively restricted compass of a transatlantic liner, nay -- more,
within the small space reserved to the first-class passengers -- where
one might come across him at any moment, in the saloon, the drawing-
room, the smoking-room! Why, Arsène Lupin might be that gentleman over
there . . . or this one close by . . . or my neighbor at table . . . or
the passenger sharing my stateroom . . .
"And just think, this is going to last for five days!" cried Miss
Nellie Underdown, on the following day. "Why, it's awful! I do hope
they'll, catch him!" And, turning to me, "Do say, Monsieur d'Andrezy,
you're such friends with the captain, haven't you heard anything?"
I wished that I had, if only to please Nellie Underdown. She was one of
those magnificent creatures that become the cynosure of all eyes
wherever they may be. Their beauty is as dazzling as their fortune. A
court of fervent enthusiasts follow in their train.
She had been brought up in Paris by her French mother, and was now on
her way to Chicago to join her father, Underdown, the American
millionaire. A friend, Lady Gerland, was chaperoning her on the voyage.
I had paid her some slight attentions from the first. But, almost
immediately, in the rapid intimacy of ocean travel, her charms had
gained upon me, and my emotions now exceeded those of a mere flirtation
whenever her great dark eyes met mine. She, on her side, received my
devotion with a certain favor. She condescended to laugh at my jokes
and to be interested in my stories. A vague sympathy seemed to respond
to the assiduity which I displayed.
One rival alone, perhaps, could have given me cause for anxiety: a
rather good-looking fellow, well-dressed and reserved in manner, slow
silent humor seemed at times to attract her more than did my somewhat
"butterfly" Parisian ways.
He happened to form one of the group of admirers surrounding Miss
Underdown at the moment when she spoke to me. We were on deck,
comfortably installed in our chairs. The storm of the day before had
cleared the sky. It was a delightful afternoon.
"I have heard nothing very definite," I replied. "But why should we not
be able to conduct our own inquiry just as well as old Ganimard,
Lupin's personal enemy, might do?"
"I say, you're going very fast!"
"Why? Is the problem so complicated?"
"Most complicated."
"You only say that because you forget the clues which we possess
towards its solution."
"Which clues?"
"First, Lupin is traveling under the name of Monsieur R--."
"That's rather vague."
"Secondly, he's traveling alone."
"If you consider that a sufficient detail!"
"Thirdly, he is fair."
"Well, then?"
"Then we need only consult the list of first-class passengers and
proceed by elimination."
I had the list in my pocket. I took it out and glanced through it:
"To begin with, I see that there are only thirteen persons whose names
begin with an R."
"Only thirteen?"
"In the first class, yes. Of these thirteen R's, as you can ascertain
for yourself, nine are accompanied by their wives, children, or
servants. That leaves four solitary passengers: the Marquis de Raverdan
. . ."
"Secretary of legation," interrupted Miss Underdown. "I know him."
"Major Rawson . . . "
"That's my uncle," said someone.
"Signor Rivolta . . . "
"Here!" cried one of us, an Italian, whose face disappeared from view
behind a huge black beard.
Miss Underdown had a fit of laughing: "That gentleman is not exactly
fair!"
"Then," I continued, "we are bound to conclude that the criminal is the
last on the list."
"Who is that?"
"Monsieur Rozaine. Does any one know Monsieur Rozaine?"
No one answered. But Miss Underdown, turning to the silent young man
whose assiduous presence by her side vexed me, said:
"Well, Monsieur Rozaine, have you nothing to say?"
All eyes were turned upon him. He was fair-haired!
I must admit I felt a little shock pass through me. And the constrained
silence that weighed down upon us showed me that the other passengers
present also experienced that sort of choking feeling. The thing was
absurd, however, for, after all, there was nothing in his manner to
warrant our suspecting him.
"Have I nothing to say?" he replied. "Well, you see, realizing what my
name was and the color of my hair and the fact that I am traveling by
myself, I have already made a similar inquiry and arrived at the same
conclusion. My opinion, therefore, is that I ought to be arrested."
He wore a queer expression as he uttered these words. His thin, pale
lips grew thinner and paler eyes were bloodshot.
There was no doubt but that he was jesting. And yet his appearance and
attitude impressed us. Miss Underdown asked, innocently:
"But have you a wound?"
"That's true," he said. "The wound is missing."
With a nervous movement, he pulled up his cuff and uncovered his arm.
But a sudden idea struck me. My eyes met Miss Underdown's: he had shown
his left arm.
And, upon my word. I was on the point of remarking upon this, when an
incident occurred to divert our attention. Lady Gerland, Miss
Underdown's friend, came running up.
She was in a state of great agitation. Her fellow-passengers crowded
round her; and it was only after many efforts that she succeeded in
stammering out:
"My jewels! . . . My pearls! . . . They've all been stolen!"
No, they had not all been stolen, as we subsequently discovered; a much
more curious thing had happened: the thief had made a selection!
From the diamond star, the pendant of uncut rubies, the broken
necklaces and bracelets, he had removed not the largest but the finest,
the most precious stones -- those, in fact, which had the greatest
value and at the same time occupied the smallest space. The settings
were left lying on the table. I saw them, we all saw them, stripped of
their gems like flowers from which the fair, bright-colored petals had
been torn.
And to carry out this work, he had had, in broad daylight, while Lady
Gerland was taking tea, to break in the door of the state-room in a
frequented passage, to discover a little jewel-case purposely hidden at
the bottom of a bandbox, to open it and make his choice!
We all uttered the same cry. There was but one opinion among the
passengers when the theft became known: it was Arsène Lupin. And,
indeed, the theft had been committed in his own complicated, mysterious,
inscrutable . . . and yet logical manner, for we realized that, though
it would have been difficult to conceal the cumbersome mass which the
ornaments as a whole would have formed, he would have much less trouble
with such small independent objects as single pearls, emeralds and
sapphires.
At dinner this happened: the two seats to the right and left of Rozaine
remained unoccupied. And, in the evening, we knew that he had been sent
for by the captain.
His arrest, of which no one entertained a doubt, caused a genuine
relief. We felt at last that we could breathe. We played charades in
the salon. We danced. Miss Underdown, in particular, displayed an
obstreperous gayety which made it clear to me that, though Rozaine's
attentions might have pleased her at first, she no longer gave them a
thought. Her charm conquered me entirely. At midnight, under the still
rays of the moon, I declared myself her devoted lover in emotional
terms which she did not appear to resent.
But, the next day, to the general stupefaction, it became known that
the charges brought against him were insufficient. Rozaine was free.
It seemed that he was the son of a wealthy Bordeaux merchant. He had
produced paper's which were in perfect order. Moreover, his arms showed
not the slightest trace of a wound.
"Papers, indeed!" exclaimed Rozaine's enemies. "Birth-certificates!
Tush! Why, Arsène Lupin can supply them by the dozen! As for the wound,
it only shows that he never had a wound . . . or that he has removed
its traces!"
Somebody suggested that, at the time when the theft was committed,
Rozaine -- this had been proved -- was walking on deck. In reply to
this it was urged that, with a man of Rozaine's stamp, it was not
really necessary for the thief to be present at his own crime. And,
lastly, apart from all other considerations, there was one point upon
which the most skeptical had nothing to say: who but Rozaine was
traveling alone, had fair hair, and was called by a name beginning
with the letter R? Who but Rozaine answered to the description in the
wireless telegram?
And when Rozaine, a few minutes before lunch, boldly made for our group,
Lady Gerland and Miss Underdown rose and walked away.
It was a question of pure fright.
An hour later, a manuscript circular was passed from hand to hand among
the staff of the vessel, the crew, and the passengers of all classes. M.
Louis Rozaine had promised a reward of ten thousand francs to whosoever
should unmask Arsène Lupin or discover the possessor of the stolen
jewels.
"And if no one helps me against the ruffian," said Rozaine to the
captain, "I'll settle his business myself."
The contest between Rozaine and Arsène Lupin, or rather, in the phrase
that soon became current, between Arsène Lupin himself and Arsène Lupin,
was not lacking in interest.
It lasted two days. Rozaine was observed wandering to right and left,
mixing with the crew, questioning and ferreting on every hand. His
shadow was seen prowling about at night.
The captain, on his side, displayed the most active energy. The
Provence was searched from stem to stern, in every nook and corner.
Every state-room was turned out, without exception, under the very
proper pretext that the stolen objects must be hidden somewhere --
anywhere rather than in the thief's own cabin.
"Surely they will end by finding something?" asked Miss Underdown.
"Wizard though he may be, he can't make pearls and diamonds invisible."
"Of course they will," I replied, "or else they will have to search the
linings of our hats and clothes and anything that we carry about with
us." And, showing her my five-by-four Kodak, with which I never wearied
of photographing her in all manner of attitudes, I added, "Why, even in
a camera no larger than this there would be room to stow away all Lady
Gerland's jewels. You pretend to take snapshots and the thing is done."
"Still, I have heard say that every burglar always leaves a clue of
some kind behind him."
"There is one who never does: Arsène Lupin."
"Why?"
"Why? Because he thinks not only of the crime which he is committing,
but of all the circumstances that might tell against him."
"You were more confident at first."
"Ah, but I had not seen him at work then!"
"And so you think . . . "
"I think that we are wasting our time."
As a matter of fact, the investigations produced no result whatever, or,
at least, that which was produced did not correspond with the general
effort: the captain lost his watch.
He was furious, redoubled his zeal, and kept an even closer eye than
before on Rozaine, with whom he had several interviews. The next day,
with a delightful irony, the watch was found among the second officer's
collars.
All this was very wonderful, and pointed clearly to the humorous
handiwork of a burglar, if you like, but an artist besides. He worked
at his profession for a living, but also for his amusement. He gave the
impression of a dramatist who thoroughly enjoys his own plays and who
stands in the wings laughing heartily at the comic dialogue and
diverting situations which he himself has invented.
He was decidedly an artist in his way; and, when I observed Rozaine, so
gloomy and stubborn, and reflected on the two-faced part which this
curious individual was doubtless playing, I was unable to speak of him
without a certain feeling of admiration....
Well, on the night but one before our arrival in America, the officer
of the watch heard groans on the darkest portion of the deck. He drew
nearer, went up, and saw a man stretched at full length, with his head
wrapped in a thick, gray muffler, and his hands tied together with a
thin cord.
They unfastened his bonds, lifted him, and gave him a restorative.
The man was Rozaine.
Yes, it was Rozaine, who had been attacked in the course of one of his
expeditions, knocked down, and robbed. A visiting-card pinned to his
clothes bore these words:
"Arsène Lupin accepts M. Rozaine's ten
thousand francs, with thanks."
As a matter of fact the stolen pocket-book contained twenty thousand-
franc notes.
Of course, the unfortunate man was accused of counterfeiting this
attack upon his own person. But, apart from the fact that it would have
been impossible for him to bind himself in this way, it was proved that
the writing on the card differed absolutely from Rozaine's handwriting,
whereas it was exactly like that of Arsène Lupin, as reproduced in an
old newspaper which had been found on board.
So Rozaine was not Arsène Lupin! Rozaine was Rozaine, the son of a
Bordeaux merchant! And Arsène Lupin's presence had been asserted once
again and by means of what a formidable act!
Sheer terror ensued. The passengers no longer dared stay alone in their
cabins nor wander unaccompanied to the remoter parts of the ship. Those
who felt sure of one another kept prudently together. And even here an
instinctive mistrust divided those who knew one another best. The
danger no longer threatened from a solitary individual kept under
observation and therefore less dangerous. Arsène Lupin now seemed to be
. . . to be everybody. Our over-excited imaginations ascribed to him
the possession of a miraculous and boundless power. We supposed him
capable of assuming the most unexpected disguises, of being by turns
the most respectable Major Rawson, or the most noble Marquis de
Raverdan, or even -- for we no longer stopped at the accusing initial
-- this or that person known to all, andd traveling with wife, children
and servants.
The wireless telegrams brought us no news; at least, the captain did
not communicate them to us. And this silence was not calculated to
reassure us.
It was small wonder, therefore, that the last day appeared interminable.
The passengers lived in the anxious expectation of a tragedy. This time
it would not be a theft, it would not be a mere assault; it would be
crime -- murder. No one was willing to admit that Arsène Lupin would
rest content with those two insignificant acts of larceny. He was
absolute master of the ship; he reduced the officers to impotence; he
had but to wreak his will upon us. He could do as he pleased; he held
our lives and property in his hands. These were delightful hours to me,
I confess, for they won for me the confidence of Nellie Underdown.
Naturally timid and impressed by all these events, she spontaneously
sought at my side the protection which I was happy to offer her.
In my heart, I blessed Arsène Lupin. Was it not he who had brought us
together? Was it not to him that I owed the right to abandon myself to
my fondest dreams? Dreams of love and dreams more practical: why not
confess it? The d'Andrezys are of good Poitevin stock, but the gilt of
their blazon is a little worn; and it did not seem to me unworthy of a
man of family to think of restoring the lost lustre of his name.
Nor, I was convinced, did these dreams offend Nellie. Her smiling eyes
gave me leave to indulge them. Her soft voice bade me hope.
And we remained side by side until the last moment, with our elbows
resting on the bulwark rail, while the outline of the American coast
grew more and more distinct.
The search had been abandoned. All seemed expectation. From the first-
class saloon to the steerage, with its swarm of emigrants, every one
was waiting for the supreme moment when the insoluble riddle would be
explained. Who was Arsène Lupin? Under what name, under what disguise
was the famous Arsène Lupin lurking?
The supreme moment came. If I live to be a hundred, never shall I
forget its smallest detail.
"How pale you look, Nellie!" I said, as she leaned, almost fainting, on
my arm.
"And you, too. Oh, how you have changed!" she replied.
"Think what an exciting minute this is and how happy I am to pass it at
your side. I wonder, Nellie, if your memory will sometimes
linger . . ."
All breathless and fevered, she was not listening. The gang-plank was
lowered. But before we were allowed to cross it, men came on board:
custom-house officers, men in uniform, postmen.
Nellie murmured:
"I shouldn't be surprised even if we heard that Arsène Lupin had
escaped during the crossing!"
"He may have preferred death to dishonor, and plunged into the Atlantic
rather than submit to arrest!"
"Don't jest about it," said she, in a tone of vexation.
Suddenly I gave a start and, in answer to her question, I replied:
"Do you see that little old man standing by the gang-plank?"
"The one in a green frock-coat with an umbrella?"
"That's Ganimard."
"Ganimard?"
"Yes, the famous detective who swore that he would arrest Arsène Lupin
with his own hand. Ah, now I understand why we received no news from
this side of the ocean. Ganimard was here, and he does not care to have
any one interfering in his little affairs."
"So Arsène Lupin is sure of being caught?"
"Who can tell? Ganimard has never seen him, I believe, except made-up
and disguised. Unless he knows the name under which he is traveling
. . ."
"Ah," she said, with a woman's cruel curiosity, "I should love to see
the arrest!"
"Have patience," I replied. "No doubt Arsène Lupin has already observed
his enemy's presence. He will prefer to leave among the last when the
old man's eyes are tire."
The passengers began to cross the gang-plank. Leaning on his umbrella
with an indifferent air, Ganimard seemed to pay no attention to the
throng that crowded past between the two hand-rails. I noticed the
ship's officers, standing behind him, whispered in his ear from time to
time.
The Marquis de Raverdan, Major Rawson, Rivolta, the Italian, went past,
and others and many more. Then I saw Rozaine approaching.
Poor Rozaine! He did not seem to have recovered from his misadventures!
"It may be he, all the same," said Nellie. "What do you think?"
"I think it would be very interesting to have Ganimard and Rozaine in
one photograph. Would you take the camera? My hands are so full."
I gave it to her, but too late for her to use it. Rozaine crossed. The
officer bent over to Ganimard's ear; Ganimard gave a shrug of the
shoulders; and Rozaine passed on.
But then who, in Heaven's name, was Arsène Lupin?
"Yes," she said, aloud, "who is it!"
There were only a score of people left. Nellie looked at them, one
after the other, with the bewildered dread that he was not one of the
twenty.
I said to her:
"We cannot wait any longer."
She moved on. I followed her. But we had not taken ten steps when
Ganimard barred our passage.
"What does this mean?" I exclaimed.
"One moment, sir. What's your hurry?"
"I am escorting this young lady."
"One moment," he repeated, in a more mysterious voice.
He stared hard at me, and then, looking me straight in the eyes, said:
"Arsène Lupin, I believe."
I gave a laugh.
"Bernard d'Andrezy, simply."
"Bernard d'Andrezy died in Macedonia, three years ago."
"If Bernard d'Andrezy were dead I could not be here. And it's not so.
Here are my papers."
"They are his papers. And I shall be pleased to tell you how you came
to possess them."
"But you are mad! Arsène Lupin took his passage under a name beginning
with R."
"Yes, another of your tricks -- a false scent upon which you put the
people on the other side, OH, you have no lack of brains, my lad! But,
this time, your luck has turned. Come, Lupin, show that you're a good
loser."
I hesitated for a second. He struck me smart blow on the right forearm.
I gave a cry of pain. He had hit the unhealed wound mentioned in the
telegram.
There was nothing in it but to submit. I turned to Miss Underdown. She
was listening with a white face, staggering where she stood.
Her glance met mine, and then fell upon the Kodak which I had handed
her. She made a sudden movement, and I received the impression, the
certainty, that she had understood. Yes, it was there -- between the
narrow boards covered with black morocco, inside the little camera
which I had taken the precaution to place in her hands before Ganimard
arrested me -- it was there that Rozaine's twenty thousand francs' and
Lady Gerland's pearls and diamonds lay concealed.
Now I swear that, at this solemn moment, with Ganimard and two of his
minions around me, everything was indifferent to me -- my arrest, the
hostility of my fellow-men, everything save only this: the resolve
which Nellie Underdown would take in regard to the object I had given
into her charge.
Whether they had this material and decisive piece of evidence against
me, what cared I? The only question that obsessed my mind was, would
Nelly furnish it or not?
Would she betray me? Would she ruin me? Would she act as an
irreconcilable foe, or as a woman who remembers, and whose contempt is
softened by a touch of indulgence -- a shade of sympathy?
She passed before me. I bowed very low, without a word. Mingling with
the other passengers, she moved towards the gang-board, carrying my
Kodak in her hand.
"Of course," I thought, "she will not dare to, in public. She will
hand it over presently -- in an hour."
But, on reaching the middle of the plank, with a pretended movement of
awkwardness, she dropped the Kodak in the water, between the landing-
stage and the ship's side.
Then I watched her walk away.
Her charming profile was lost in the crowd, came into view again, and
disappeared. It was over -- over for good and all.
For a moment I stood rooted to the deck, sad and, at the same time,
pervaded with a sweet and tender emotion. Then, to Ganimard's great
astonishment, I sighed:
"Pity, after all, that I'm a rogue!"
It was in these words that Arsène Lupin, one winter's evening, told me
the story of his arrest Chance and a series of incidents which I will
some day describe had established between us bonds of . . . shall I say
friendship? Yes, I venture to think that Arsène Lupin honors me with a
certain friendship; and it is owing to this friendship that he
occasionally drops in upon me unexpectedly, bringing into the silence
of my study his youthful gayety, the radiance of his eager life, his
high spirits -- the spirits of a man for whom fate has little put
smiles and favors in store.
His likeness? How can I trace it? I have seen Arsène Lupin a score of
times, and each time a different being has stood before me . . . or
rather the same being under twenty distorted images reflected by as
many mirrors, each image having its special eyes, its particular facial
outline, its own gestures, profile and character.
"I myself," he once said to me, "have forgotten what I am really like.
I no longer recognize myself in a glass."
A paradoxical whim of the imagination, no doubt; and yet true enough as
regards those who come into contact with him, and who are unaware of
his infinite resources, his patience, his unparalleled skill in make-up,
and his prodigious faculty for changing even the proportions of his
features one to the other.
"Why," he asked, "should I have a definite fixed appearance? Why not
avoid the dangers attendant upon a personality that is always the
same? My actions constitute my identity sufficiently."
And he added, with a touch of pride:
"It is all the better if people are never able to say with certainty:
'There goes Arsène Lupin.' The great thing is that they should say
without fear of being mistaken: 'That action was performed by Arsène
Lupin.'"
It is some of those actions of his, some of those exploits, that I will
endeavor to narrate, thanks to the confidences with which he has had
the kindness to favor me on certain winter evenings in the silence of
my study....
CHAPTER 2: ARSÈNE LUPIN IN PRISON
Every tourist by the banks of the Seine must have noticed, between the
ruins of Jumieges and those of Saint-Wandrille, the curious little
feudal castle of the Malaquis, proudly seated on its rock in mid-
stream. A bridge connects it with the road. The base of its turrets
seems to make one with the granite that supports it, a huge block
detached from a mountain-top and flung where it stands by some
formidable convulsion of nature. All around, the calm water of the
broad river ripples among the reeds, while wagtails perch timidly on
the top of the moist pebbles.
The history of the Malaquis is as rough as its name, as harsh as its
outlines, and consists of endless fights, sieges, assaults, sacks and
massacres. Stories are told in the Caux country, late at night, with a
shiver, of the crimes committed there. mysterious legends are conjured
up. There is talk of a famous underground passage that led to the Abbey
of Jumieges and to the manor-house of Agnes Sorel, the favourite of
Charles VII.
This erstwhile haunt of heroes and robbers is now occupied by Baron
Nathan Cahorn, or Baron Satan as he used to be called on the Bourse,
where he made his fortune a little too suddenly. The ruined owners of
the Malaquis were compelled to sell the abode of their ancestors to him
for a song. Here he installed his wonderful collections of pictures and
furniture, of pottery and carvings. He lives here alone, with three old
servants. No one ever enters the doors. No one has ever beheld, in the
setting of those ancient halls, his three Rubens, his two Watteaus, his
pulpit carved by Jean Goujon and all the other marvels snatched by
force of money from before the eyes of the wealthiest frequenters of
the public sale-rooms.
Baron Satan leads a life of fear. He is afraid not for himself, but for
the treasures which he has accumulated with so tenacious a passion and
with the perspicacity of a collector whom not the most cunning of
dealers can boast of having ever taken in. He loves his curiosities
with all the greed of a miser, with all the jealousy of a lover.
Daily, at sunset, the four iron-barred doors that command both ends of
the bridge and the entrance to the principal court are locked and
bolted. At the least touch, electric bells would ring through the
surrounding silence. There is nothing to be feared on the side of the
Seine, where the rock rises sheer from the water.
One Friday in September, the postman appeared as usual at the bridge-
head. And, in accordance with his daily rule, the baron himself opened
the heavy door.
He examined the man as closely as if he had not for years known that
good jolly face and those crafty peasant eyes. And the man said, with a
laugh:
"It's me all right, monsieur le baron. It's not another chap in my cap
and blouse!"
"One never knows!" muttered Cahorn.
The postman handed him a bundle of newspapers. Then he added:
"And now, monsieur le baron, I have something special for you."
"Something special? What do you mean?"
"A letter... and a registered letter at that!"
Living cut off from everybody, with no friends nor any one that took an
interest in him, the baron never received letters; and this suddenly
struck him as an ill-omened event which gave him good cause for
nervousness. Who was the mysterious correspondent that came to worry
him in his retreat?
"I shall want your signature, monsieur le baron."
He signed the receipt, cursing as he did so. Then he took the letter,
waited until the postman had disappeared round the turn of the road
and, after taking a few steps to and fro, leaned against the parapet
of the bridge and opened the envelope. It contained a sheet of ruled
paper, headed, in writing:
"Prison de la Santé, Paris."
He looked at the signature:
"ARSÈNE LUPIN."
Utterly dumbfounded, he read:
MONSIEUR LE BARON, -- In the gallery that connects
your two drawing-rooms there is a picture by
Philippe de Champaigne, an excellent piece of
work, which I admire greatly. I also like your
Rubens pictures and the smaller of your two
Watteaus. In the drawing-room on the right, I note
the Louis XIII credence-table, the Beauvais
tapestries, the Empire stand, signed by Jacob,
and the Renascence chest. In the room on the left,
the whole of the case of trinkets and miniatures.
This time, I will be satisfied with these objects,
which, I think, can be easily turned into cash. I
will therefore ask you to have them properly packed
and to send them to my name, carriage paid, to the
Gare de Batignolles, on or before this day week,
failing which I will myself see to their removal on
the night of Wednesday the 27th instant. In the
latter case, as is only fair, I shall not be content
with the above-mentioned objects.
Pray excuse the trouble which I am giving you, and
believe me to be
Yours very truly,
ARSÈNE LUPIN
P.S. -- Be sure not to send me the larger of the two
Watteaus. Although you paid thirty thousand francs
for it at the sale-rooms, it is only a copy, the
original having been burnt under the Directory, by
Barras, in one of his orgies. See Garat's unpublished
Memoirs.
I do not care either to have the Louis XVI chatelaine,
the authenticity of which appears to me to be
exceedingly doubtful.
This letter thoroughly upset Baron Cahorn. It would have alarmed him
considerably had it been signed by any other hand. But signed by Arsène
Lupin! . . .
He was a regular reader of the newspapers, knew of everything that went
on in the way of theft and crime and had heard all about the exploits
of the infernal house-breaker. He was quite aware that Lupin had been
arrested in America by his enemy, Ganimard; that he was safely under
lock and key; and that the preliminaries of his trial were now being
conducted... with great difficulty, no doubt! But he also knew that one
could always expect anything of Arsène Lupin. Besides, this precise
knowledge of the castle, of the arrangement of the pictures and
furniture, was a very formidable sign. Who had informed Lupin of things
which nobody had ever seen?
The baron raised his eyes and gazed at the frowning outline of the
Malaquis, its abrupt pedestal, the deep water that surrounds it. He
shrugged his shoulders. No, there was no possible danger. No one in the
world could penetrate to the inviolable sanctuary that contained his
collections.
No one in the world, perhaps; but Arsène Lupin? Did doors, draw-
bridges, walls so much as exist for Arsène Lupin? Of what use were the
most ingeniously contrived obstacles, the most skillful precautions,
once that Arsène Lupin had decided to attain a given object? . . .
That same evening, he wrote to the public prosecutor at Rouen. He
enclosed the threatening letter and demanded police protection.
The reply came without delay: the said Arsène Lupin was at that moment
a prisoner at the Santé, where he was kept under strict observation and
not allowed to write. The letter, therefore, could only be the work of
a hoaxer. Everything went to prove this: logic, common sense and the
actual facts. However, to make quite sure, the letter had been
submitted to a handwriting expert, who declared that, notwithstanding
certain points of resemblance, it was not in the prisoner's writing.
"Notwithstanding certain points of resemblance." The baron saw only
these five bewildering words, which he regarded as the confession of a
doubt which alone should have been enough to justify the intervention
of the police. His fears increased. He read the letter over and over
again. "I will myself see to their removal." And that fixed date, the
night of Wednesday the 27th of September!
Of a naturally suspicious and silent disposition, he dared not unburden
himself to his servants, whose devotion he did not consider proof
against all tests. And yet, for the first time for many years, he felt
a need to speak, to take advice. Abandoned by the police of his
country, he had no hope of protecting himself by his own resources and
thought of going to Paris to beg for the assistance of some retired
detective or other.
Two days elapsed. On the third day, as he sat reading his newspapers,
he gave a start of delight. The Reveil de Caudebec contained the
following paragraph:
"We have had the pleasure of numbering among our
visitors, for nearly three weeks, Chief-Inspector
Ganimard, one of the veterans of the detective
service. M. Ganimard, for whom his last feat, the
arrest of Arsène Lupin, has won a European
reputation, is enjoying a rest from his arduous
labours and spending a short holiday fishing for
bleak and gudgeon in the Seine."
Ganimard! The very man that Baron Cahorn wanted! Who could baffle
Lupin's plans better than the cunning and patient Ganimard?
The baron lost no time. It is a four-mile walk from the castle to the
little town of Caudebec. He did the distance with a quick and joyous
step, stimulated by the hope of safety.
After many fruitless endeavours to discover the chief-inspector's
address, he went to the office of the Reveil, which is on the quay. He
found the writer of the paragraph, who, going to the window, said:
"Ganimard! Why, you're sure to meet him, rod in hand, on the quay.
That's where I picked up with him and read his name, by accident, on
his fishing-rod. Look, there he is, the little old man in the frock-
coat and a straw hat, under the trees."
"A frock-coat and a straw hat?"
"Yes. He's a queer specimen, close-tongued and a trifle testy."
Five minutes later, the baron accosted the famous Ganimard, introduced
himself and made an attempt to enter into conversation. Failing in
this, he broached the question quite frankly and laid his case before
him.
The other listened, without moving a muscle or taking his eyes from the
water. Then he turned his head to the Baron, eyed him from head to foot
with a look of profound compassion and said:
"Sir, it is not usual for criminals to warn the people whom they mean
to rob. Arsène Lupin, in particular, never indulges in that sort of
bounce."
"Still... "
"Sir, if I had the smallest doubt, believe me, the pleasure of once
more locking up that dear Lupin would outweigh every consideration.
Unfortunately, the youth is already in prison."
"Suppose he escapes?"
"People don't escape from the Santé."
"But Lupin... "
"Lupin no more than another."
"Still... "
"Very well, if he does escape, so much the better; I'll nab him again.
Meanwhile, you can sleep soundly and stop frightening my fish."
The conversation was ended. The baron returned home feeling more or
less reassured by Ganimard's indifference. He saw to his bolts, kept a
watch upon his servants and another forty-eight hours passed, during
which he almost succeeded in persuading himself that, after all, his
fears were groundless. There was no doubt about it: as Ganimard had
said, criminals don't warn the people whom they mean to rob.
The date was drawing near. On the morning of Tuesday the twenty-sixth,
nothing particular happened. But, at three o'clock in the afternoon, a
boy rang and handed in this telegram:
"No goods Batignolles. Get everything ready for
to-morrow night.
ARSÈNE."
Once again, Cahorn lost his head, so much so that he asked himself
whether he would not do better to yield to Arsène Lupin's demands.
He hurried off to Caudebec. Ganimard was seated on a camp-stool,
fishing, in the same spot as before. The baron handed him the telegram
without a word.
"Well?" said the detective.
"Well what? It's fixed for to-morrow!"
"What is?"
"The burglary! The theft of my collections!"
Ganimard turned to him, and, folding his arms across his chest, cried,
in a tone of impatience:
"Why, you don't really mean to say that you think I'm going to trouble
myself about this stupid business?"
"What fee will you take to spend Wednesday night at the castle?"
"Not a penny. Don't bother me!"
"Name your own price. I'm a rich man, a very rich man."
The brutality of the offer took Ganimard aback. He replied, more
calmly:
"I am here on leave and I have no right to...."
"No one shall know. I undertake to be silent, whatever happens!"
"Oh, nothing will happen!"
"Well, look here; is three thousand francs enough?"
The inspector took a pinch of snuff, reflected and said:
"Very well. But it's only fair to tell you that you are throwing your
money away."
"I don't mind."
"In that case.... And besides, after all, one can never tell, with that
devil of a Lupin! He must have a whole gang at his orders.... Are you
sure of your servants?"
"Well, I...."
"Then we must not rely upon them. I'll wire to two of my own men; that
will make us feel safer.... And, now, leave me; we must not be seen
together. To-morrow evening, at nine o'clock."
On the morning of the next day, the date fixed by Arsène Lupin, Baron
Cahorn took down his trophy of arms, polished up his pistols and made a
thorough inspection of the Malaquis, without discovering anything
suspicious.
At half-past eight in the evening, he dismissed his servants for the
night. They slept in a wing facing the road, but set a little way back
and right at the end of the castle. As soon as he was alone, he softly
opened the four doors. In a little while, he heard footsteps
approaching.
Ganimard introduced his assistants, two powerfully-built fellows, with
bull necks and huge, strong hands, and asked for certain explanations.
After ascertaining the disposition of the place, he carefully closed
and barricaded every issue by which the threatened rooms could be
entered. He examined the walls, lifted up the tapestries and finally
installed his detectives in the central gallery.
"No nonsense, do you understand? You're not here to sleep. At the least
sound, open the windows on the court and call me. Keep a look-out also
on the water side. Thirty feet of steep cliff doesn't frighten
scoundrels of that stamp."
He locked them in, took away the keys and said to the baron:
"And now to our post."
He had selected, as the best place in which to spend the night, a small
room contrived in the thickness of the outer walls, between the two
main doors. It had at one time been the watchman's lodge. A spy-hole
opened upon the bridge, another upon the court. In one corner was what
looked like the mouth of a well.
"You told me, did you not, monsieur l baron, that this well is the only
entrance to the underground passage and that it has been stopped up
since the memory of man?"
"Yes."
"Therefore, unless there should happen to be another outlet, unknown to
any but Arsène Lupin, which seems pretty unlikely, we can be easy in
our minds."
He placed three chairs in a row, settled himself comfortably at full
length, lit his pipe and sighed:
"Upon my word, monsieur le baron, I must be very eager to build an
additional storey to the little house in which I mean to end my days,
to accept so elementary a job as this. I shall tell the story to our
friend Lupin; he'll split his sides with laughter."
The baron did not laugh. With ears pricked up, he questioned the
silence with ever-growing restlessness. From time to time, he leaned
over the well and plunged an anxious eye into the yawning cavity.
The clock struck eleven; midnight; one o'clock.
Suddenly, he seized the arm of Ganimard, who woke with a start:
"Do you hear that?"
"Yes."
"What is it?"
"It's myself, snoring!"
"No, no, listen...."
"Oh yes, it's a motor-horn."
"Well?"
"Well, it's as unlikely that Lupin should come by motor-car as that he
should use a battering-ram to demolish your castle. So I should go to
sleep, if I were you, monsieur l baron... as I shall have the honour of
doing once more. Good-night!"
This was the only alarm. Ganimard resumed his interrupted slumbers; and
the baron heard nothing save his loud and regular snoring.
At break of day, they left their cell. A great calm peace, the peace of
the morning by the cool waterside, reigned over the castle. Cahorn,
beaming with joy, and Ganimard, placid as ever, climbed the staircase.
Not a sound. Nothing suspicious.
"What did I tell you, monsieur l baron? I really ought not to have
accepted... I feel ashamed of myself.... "
He took the keys and entered the gallery.
On two chairs, with bent bodies and hanging arms, sat the two
detectives, fast asleep.
"What, in the name of all the... " growled the inspector.
At the same moment, the baron uttered a cry:
"The pictures!... The credence-table!"
He stammered and spluttered, with his hand out-stretched towards the
dismantled walls, with their bare nails and slack cords. The Watteau
and the two Rubens had disappeared! The tapestries had been removed,
the glass cases emptied of their trinkets!
"And my Louis XVI sconces!... And the Regency chandelier!... And my
twelfth-century Virgin!... "
He ran from place to place, maddened, in despair. Distraught with rage
and grief, he quoted the purchase-prices, added up his losses, piled up
figures, all promiscuously, in indistinct words and incomplete phrases.
He stamped his feet, flung himself about and, in short, behaved like a
ruined man who had nothing before him but suicide.
If anything could have consoled him, it would have been the sight of
Ganimard's stupefaction. Contrary to the baron, the inspector did not
move. He seemed petrified, and with a dazed eye, examined things. The
windows? They were fastened. The locks of the doors? Untouched. There
was not a crack in the ceiling, not a hole in the floor. Everything was
in perfect order. The whole thing must have been carried out
methodically, after an inexorable and logical plan.
"Arsène Lupin... Arsène Lupin," he muttered, giving way.
Suddenly, he leapt upon the two detectives, as though at last overcome
with rage, and shook them and swore at them furiously. They did not
wake up!
"The deuce!" he said. "Can they have been...?"
He bent over them and scrutinized them closely, one after the other:
they were both asleep, but their sleep was not natural. He said to the
baron:
"They have been drugged."
"But by whom?"
"By him, of course... or by his gang, acting under his instructions.
It's a trick in his own manner. I recognize his touch."
"In that case, I am undone: the thing is hopeless."
"Hopeless."
"But this is abominable; it's monstrous."
"Lodge a complaint."
"What's the good?"
"Well, you may as well try... the law has its resources...."
"The law! But you can see for yourself... Why, at this very moment,
when you might be looking for a clue, discovering something, you're not
even stirring!"
"Discover something, with Arsène Lupin! But, my dear sir, Arsène Lupin
never leaves anything behind him! There's no chance with Arsène Lupin!
I am beginning to wonder whether he got himself arrested by me of his
own free will, in America!"
"Then I must give up the hope of recovering my pictures or anything!
But he has stolen the pearls of my collection. I would give a fortune
to get them back. If there's nothing to be done against him, let him
name his price."
Ganimard looked at him steadily:
"That's a sound notion. Do you stick to it?"
"Yes, yes, yes! But why do you ask?"
"I have an idea."
"What idea?"
"We'll talk of it if nothing comes of the enquiry.... Only, not a word
about me, to a soul, if you wish me to succeed."
And he added, between his teeth:
"Besides, I have nothing to be proud of."
The two men gradually recovered consciousness, with the stupefied look
of men awakening from an hypnotic sleep. They opened astounded eyes,
tried to make out what had happened. Ganimard questioned them. They
remembered nothing.
"Still you must have seen somebody?"
"No, nobody."
"Try and think?"
"No, nobody."
"Did you have a drink?"
They reflected and one of them replied:
"Yes, I had some water."
"Out of that bottle there?"
"Yes."
"I had some too," said the other.
Ganimard smelt the water, tasted it. It had no particular scent or
flavour.
"Come", he said, "we are wasting our time. Problems set by Arsène Lupin
can't be solved in five minutes. But, by Jingo, I swear I'll catch him!
He's won the second bout. The rubber game to me!"
That day, a charge of aggravated larceny was brought by Baron Cahorn
against Arsène Lupin, a prisoner awaiting trial at the Santé.
The baron often regretted having laid his information when he saw the
Malaquis made over to the gendarmes, the public prosecutor, the
examining magistrate, the newspaper-reporters and all the inquisitive
who worm themselves in wherever they have no business to be.
Already the case was filling the public mind. It had taken place under
such peculiar conditions and the name of Arsène Lupin excited men's
imaginations to such a pitch that the most fantastic stories crowded
the columns of the press and found acceptance with the public.
But the original letter of Arsène Lupin, which was published in the
Echo de France -- and no one ever knew who had supplied the text -- the
letter in which Baron Cahorn was insolently warned of what threatened
him, caused the greatest excitement. Fabulous explanations were offered
forthwith. The old legends were revived. The newspapers reminded their
readers of the existence of the famous subterranean passages. And the
public prosecutor, influenced by these statements, pursued his search
in that direction.
The castle was ransacked from top to bottom. Every stone was examined;
the wainscotings and chimneys, the frames of the mirrors and the
rafters of the ceilings were carefully inspected. By the light of
torches, the searchers investigated the immense cellars in which the
lords of the Malaquis had been used to pile up their provisions and
munitions of war. They sounded the very bowels of the rock. All to no
purpose. They discovered not the slightest trace of a tunnel. No secret
passage existed.
Very well, was the answer on every side; but pictures and furniture
don't vanish like ghosts. They go out through doors and windows; and
the people that take them also go in and out through doors and windows.
Who are these people? How did they get in? And how did they get out?
The public prosecutor of Rouen, persuaded of his own incompetence,
asked for the assistance of the Paris police. M. Dudouis, the chief of
the detective-service, sent the most efficient bloodhounds in his
employ. He himself paid a forty-eight hours' visit to the Malaquis, but
met with no greater success.
It was after his return that he sent for Chief-Inspector Ganimard,
whose services he had so often had occasion to value.
Ganimard listened in silence to the instructions of his superior and
then, tossing his head, said:
"I think we shall be on a false scent so long as we continue to search
the castle. The solution lies elsewhere."
"With Arsène Lupin? If you think that, then you believe that he took
part in the burglary."
"I do think so. I go further, I consider it certain."
"Come, Ganimard, this is absurd. Arsène Lupin is in prison."
"Arsène Lupin is in prison, I agree. He is being watched, I grant you.
But, if he had his legs in irons, his hands bound and his mouth gagged,
I should still be of the same opinion."
"But why this persistency?"
"Because no one else is capable of contriving a plan on so large a
scale and of contriving it in such a way that it succeeds... as this
has succeeded."
"Words, Ganimard!"
"They are true words, for all that. Only, it's no use looking for
underground passages, for stones that turn on a pivot and stuff and
nonsense of that kind. Our friend does not employ such antiquated
measures. He is a man of to-day, or rather of to-morrow."
"And what do you conclude?"
"I conclude by asking you straight to let me spend an hour with Lupin."
"In his cell?"
"Yes. We were on excellent terms during the crossing from America and I
venture to think that he is not without friendly feeling for the man
who arrested him. If he can tell me what I want to know, without
compromising himself, he will be quite willing to spare me an
unnecessary journey."
It was just after mid-day when Ganimard was shown into Arsène Lupin's
cell. Lupin, who was lying on his bed, raised his head and uttered an
exclamation of delight:
"Well, this is a surprise! Dear old Ganimard here!"
"Himself."
"I have hoped for many things in this retreat of my own choosing, but
for none more eagerly than the pleasure of welcoming you here."
"You are too good."
"Not at all, not at all. I have the liveliest regard for you."
"I am proud to hear it."
"I have said it a thousand times: Ganimard is our greatest detective.
He's almost -- see how frank I am -- almost as clever as Sherlock
Holmes. But, really, I'm awfully sorry to have nothing better than
this stool to offer you. And not a drink of any kind! Not so much as a
glass of wine! Do forgive me: I am only just passing through town, you
see!"
Ganimard smiled and sat down on the stool; and the prisoner, glad of
the opportunity of speaking, continued:
"By Jove, what a treat to see a decent man's face! I am sick of the
looks of all these spies who go through my cell and my pockets ten
times a day to make sure that I am not planning an escape. Fichtre!
how fond the government must be of me!"
"They show their judgment."
"No, no! I should be so happy if they would let me lead my own quiet
life."
"On other people's money."
"Just so. It would be so simple. But I'm letting my tongue run on, I'm
talking nonsense and I daresay you're in a hurry. Come, Ganimard, tell
me to what I owe the honour of this visit."
"The Cahorn case," said Ganimard, abruptly.
"Stop! Wait a bit... You see, I have so many on hand! First, let me
search my brain for the Cahorn pigeonhole.... Ah, I have it! Cahorn
case, Chateau du Malaquis, Seine-Inferieure.... Two Rubens, a Watteau
and a few minor trifles."
"Trifles!"
"Oh, yes, all this is of small importance. I have bigger things on
hand. However, you're interested in the case and that's enough for
me.... Go ahead, Ganimard."
"I need not tell you, need I, how far we have got with the
investigation?"
"No, not at all. I have seen the morning papers. And I will even take
the liberty of saying that you are not making much progress."
"That's just why I have come to throw myself upon your kindness."
"I am entirely at your service."
"First of all, the thing was done by you, was it not?"
"From start to finish."
"The registered letter? The telegram?"
"Were sent by yours truly. In fact, I ought to have the receipts
somewhere."
Arsène opened the drawer of a little deal table which, with the bed and
the stool, composed all the furniture of his cell, took out two scraps
of paper and handed them to Ganimard.
"Hullo!" cried the latter. "Why, I thought you were being kept under
constant observation and searched on the slightest pretext. And it
appears that you read the papers and collect post-office receipts.... "
"Bah! Those men are such fools. They rip up the lining of my waistcoat,
explore the soles of my boots, listen at the walls of my cell; but not
one of them would believe that Arsène Lupin could be such a fool as to
choose so obvious a hiding-place. That's just what I reckoned on."
Ganimard exclaimed, in amusement:
"What a funny chap you are! You're beyond me. Come, tell me the story."
"Oh, I say! Not so fast! Initiate you into all my secrets... reveal my
little tricks to you? That's a serious matter."
"Was I wrong in thinking that I could rely on you to oblige me?"
"No, Ganimard, and, as you insist upon it.... "
Arsène Lupin took two or three strides across his cell. Then, stopping:
"What do you think of my letter to the baron?" he asked.
"I think you wanted to have some fun, to tickle the gallery a bit."
"Ah, there you go! Tickle the gallery, indeed! Upon my word, Ganimard,
I gave you credit for more sense! Do you really imagine that I, Arsène
Lupin, waste my time with such childish pranks as that? Is it likely
that I should have written the letter, if I could have rifled the baron
without it? Do try and understand that the letter was the indispensable
starting-point, the main-spring that set the whole machine in motion.
Look here, let us proceed in order and, if you like, prepare the
Malaquis burglary together."
"Very well."
"Now follow me. I have to do with an impregnable and closely-guarded
castle.... Am I to throw up the game and forego the treasures which I
covet, because the castle that contains them happens to be
inaccessible?"
"Clearly not."
"Am I to try to carry it by assault as in the old days, at the head of
a band of adventurers?"
"That would be childish."
"Am I to enter it by stealth?"
"Impossible."
"There remains only one way, which is to get myself invited by the
owner of the foresaid castle."
"It's an original idea."
"And so easy! Suppose that, one day, the said owner receives a letter
warning him of a plot hatched against him by one Arsène Lupin, a
notorious housebreaker. What is he sure to do?"
"Send the letter to the public prosecutor."
"Who will laugh at him, because the said Lupin is actually under lock
and key. The natural consequence is the utter bewilderment of the
worthy man, who is ready and anxious to ask for the assistance of the
first-comer. Am I right?"
"Quite so."
"And, if he happens to read in the local rag that a famous detective is
staying in the neighbourhood...?"
"He will go and apply to that detective."
"Exactly. But, on the other hand, let us assume that, foreseeing this
inevitable step, Arsène Lupin has asked one of his ablest friends to
take up his quarters at Caudebec, to pick up acquaintance with a
contributor to the Reveil, a paper, mark you, to which the baron
subscribes, and to drop a hint that he is so-and-so, the famous
detective. What will happen next?"
"The contributor will send a paragraph to the Reveil stating that the
detective is staying at Caudebec."
"Exactly; and one of two things follows; either the fish -- I mean
Cahorn -- does not rise to the bait, in which case nothing happens. Or
else -- and this is the more likely presumption -- he nibbles, in which
case you have our dear Cahorn imploring the assistance of one of my own
friends against me!"
"This is becoming more and more original."
"Of course, the sham detective begins by refusing. Thereupon, a
telegram from Arsène Lupin. Dismay of the baron, who renews his
entreaties with my friend and offers him so much to watch over his
safety. The friend aforesaid accepts and brings with him two chaps of
our gang, who, during the night, while Cahorn is kept in sight by his
protector, remove a certain number of things through the window and
lower them with ropes into a barge freighted for the purpose. It's as
simple as... Lupin."
"And it's just wonderful," cried Ganimard, "and I have no words in
which to praise the boldness of the idea and the ingenuity of the
details. But I can hardly imagine a detective so illustrious that his
name should have attracted and impressed the baron to that extent."
"There is one and one only."
"Who?"
"The most illustrious of them all, the arch-enemy of Arsène Lupin, in
short, Inspector Ganimard."
"What, myself?"
"Yourself, Ganimard. And that's the delightful part of it: if you go
down and persuade the baron to talk, he will end by discovering that it
is your duty to arrest yourself, just as you arrested me in America. A
humorous revenge, what? I shall have Ganimard arrested by Ganimard!"
Arsène Lupin laughed loud and long, while the inspector bit his lips
with vexation. The joke did not appear to him worthy of so much
merriment.
The entrance of a warder gave him time to recover. The man brought the
meal which Arsène Lupin, by special favour, was allowed to have sent in
from the neighbouring restaurant. After placing the tray on the table,
he went away. Arsène sat down, broke his bread, ate a mouthful or two
and continued:
"But be easy, my dear Ganimard, you won't have to go. I have something
to tell you that will strike you dumb. The Cahorn case is about to be
withdrawn."
"What!"
"About to be withdrawn, I said."
"Nonsense! I have just left the chief."
"And then? Does Monsieur Dudouis know more than I do about my concerns?
You must learn that Ganimard -- excuse me -- that the sham Ganimard
remained on very good terms with Baron Cahorn. The baron -- and this is
his main reason for keeping the thing quiet -- charged him with the
very delicate mission of negotiating a deal with me; and the chances
are that, by this time, on payment of a certain sum, the baron is once
more in possession of his pet knick-knacks. In return for which he will
withdraw the charge. Wherefore there is no question of theft. Wherefore
the public prosecutor will have to abandon...."
Ganimard gazed at the prisoner with an air of stupefaction:
"But how do you know all this?"
"I have just received the telegram I was expecting."
"You have just received a telegram?"
"This very moment, my friend. I was too polite to read it in your
presence. But, if you will allow me...."
"You're poking fun at me, Lupin."
"Have the kindness, my friend, to cut off the top of that egg, gently.
You will see for yourself that I am not poking fun at you."
Ganimard obeyed mechanically and broke the egg with the blade of a
knife. A cry of surprise escaped him. The shell was empty but for a
sheet of blue paper. At Arsène's request, he unfolded it. It was a
telegram, or rather a portion of a telegram from which the postal
indications had been removed. He read:
"Arrangement settled. Hundred thousand spondulics delivered. All well."
"Hundred thousand spondulics?" he uttered.
"Yes, a hundred thousand francs. It's not much, but these are hard
times.... And my general expenses are so heavy! If you knew the amount
of my budget... it's like the budget of a big town!"
Ganimard rose to go. His ill-humour had left him. He thought for a few
moments and cast a mental glance over the whole business, trying to
discover a weak point. Then, in a voice that frankly revealed his
admiration as an expert, he said:
"It's a good thing that there are not dozens like you, or there would
be nothing for us but to shut up shop."
Arsène Lupin assumed a modest simper and replied:
"Oh, I had to do something to amuse myself, to occupy my spare time...
especially as the scoop could only succeed while I was in prison."
"What do you mean?" exclaimed Ganimard. "Your trial, your defense, your
examination: isn't that enough for you to amuse yourself with?"
"No, because I have decided not to attend my trial."
"Oh, I say!"
Arsène Lupin repeated deliberately:
"I shall not attend my trial."
"Really!"
"Why, my dear fellow, you surely don't think I mean to rot in gaol? The
mere suggestion is an insult. Let me tell you that Arsène Lupin remains
in prison as long as he thinks fit and not a moment longer."
"It might have been more prudent to begin by not entering it," said the
inspector, ironically.
"Ah, so you're chaffing me, sirrah? Do you remember that you had the
honour to effect my arrest? Well, learn from me, my respectable friend,
that no one, neither you nor another, could have laid a hand upon me,
if a much more important interest had not occupied my attention at that
critical moment."
"You surprise me."
"A woman had cast her eyes upon me, Ganimard, and I loved her. Do you
realize all that the fact implies when a woman whom one loves casts her
eyes upon one? I cared about little else, I assure you. And that is why
I'm here."
"You've been here a long time, allow me to observe."
"I was anxious to forget. Don't laugh, it was a charming adventure and
I still have a tender recollection of it.... And then I have had a
slight nervous break-down. We lead such a feverish existence nowadays!
It's a good thing to take a rest-cure from time to time. And there's no
place for it like this. They carry out the cure in all its strictness
at the Santé."
"Arsène Lupin," said Ganimard, "you're pulling my leg."
"Ganimard," replied Lupin, "this is Friday. On Wednesday next, I'll
come and smoke a cigar with you, in the Rue Pergolese, at four o'clock
in the afternoon."
"Arsène Lupin, I shall expect you."
They shook hands like two friends who have a proper sense of each
other's value and the old detective turned towards the door.
"Ganimard!"
Ganimard looked round:
"What is it?"
"Ganimard, you've forgotten your watch."
"My watch?"
"Yes, I've just found it in my pocket."
He returned it, with apologies:
"Forgive me ... it's a bad habit.... They've taken mine, but that's no
reason why I should rob you of yours. Especially as I have a
chronometer here which keeps perfect time and satisfies all my
requirements."
He took out of the drawer a large, thick, comfortable-looking gold
watch, hanging to a heavy chain.
"And out of whose pocket does this come?" asked Ganimard.
Arsène Lupin carelessly inspected the initials:
"J.B.... What on earth does that stand for?... Oh, yes, I remember:
Jules Bouvier, my examining magistrate, a charming fellow...."
CHAPTER 3: THE ESCAPE OF ARSÈNE LUPIN
Arsène Lupin finished his mid-day meal, took a good cigar from his
pocket, and complacently studied the gold-lettered inscription on its
band. At that moment the door of his cell opened. He had just a second
in which to throw the cigar into the drawer of the table and to move
away. The warden came in to tell him that it was time to take his
exercise.
"I was waiting for you, old chap!" cried Lupin, with his unfailing
good-humor.
They went out together. Hardly had they turned the corner of the
passage when two men entered the cell and began to make a minute
examination. One of these was Inspector Dieuzy, the other Inspector
Folenfant.
They wanted to have the matter settled once and for all. There was no
doubt about it: Arsène Lupin was keeping up a correspondence with the
outside world and communicating with his confidants. Only the day
before the Grand Journal had published the following lines, addressed
to its legal contributor:
"SIR, -- In an article published a few days ago
you ventured to express yourself concerning me
in utterly unwarrantable terms. I shall come and
call you to account a day or two before my trial
commences.
"Yours faithfully,
ARSÈNE LUPIN.
The handwriting was Arsène Lupin's. Therefore, he was sending letters.
Therefore, he was receiving letters. Therefore, it was certain that he
was preparing the escape which he had so arrogantly announced.
The position was becoming intolerable. By arrangement with the
examining magistrate, M. Dudouis himself, the head of the detective
service, went to the Santé to explain to the prison governor the
measures which it was thought advisable to take, and on his arrival he
sent two of his men to the prisoner's cell.
The men raised every one of the flag-stones, took the bed to pieces,
did all that is usually done in such cases, and ended by discovering
nothing. They were about to abandon their search when the warden came
running in, and said:
"The drawer... look in the drawer of the table! I thought I saw him
shut it when I came in just now."
They looked, and Dieuzy exclaimed:
"Gad, we've caught our customer this time!"
Folenfant stopped him.
"Don't do anything, my lad; let the chief take the inventory."
"Still, this Havana..."
"Leave it alone, and let us tell the chief."
Two minutes later M. Dudouis was exploring the contents of the drawer.
He found, first, a collection of press-cuttings concerning Arsène
Lupin; next, a tobacco-pouch, a pipe, and some foreign post-paper; and,
lastly, two books.
He looked at the titles: Carlyle's Heroes and Hero-worship, in English,
and a charming Elzevir, in the contemporary binding: a German
translation of the Manual of Epictetus, published at Leyden in 1634.
He glanced through them, and observed that every page was scored,
underlined, and annotated. Were these conventional signs, or were they
marks denoting the reader's devotion to a particular book?
"We'll go into this in detail," said M. Dudouis.
He investigated the tobacco-pouch, the pipe. Then, taking up the
magnificent cigar in its gold band:
"By Jove!" he cried, "our friend does himself well! A Henry Clay!"
With the mechanical movement of a smoker he put it to his ear and
crackled it. An exclamation escaped him. The cigar had given way under
the pressure of his fingers! He examined it more attentively, and soon
perceived something that showed white between the leaves of the
tobacco. And carefully, with the aid of a pin, he drew out a scroll of
very thin paper, no thicker than a tooth-pick. It was a note. He
unrolled it, and read the following words, in a small, female hand:
"Maria has taken the other's place. Eight
out of ten are prepared. On pressing
outside foot, metal panel moves upward.
H.P. will wait from 12 to 16 daily. But
where? Reply at once. Have no fear: your friend
is looking after you."
M. Dudouis reflected for a moment and said:
"That's clear enough.... Maria, the prison-van... the eight
compartments.... Twelve to sixteen; that is, from twelve to four
o'clock...."
"But who is H.P.? Who is to wait for him?"
"H.P. stands for horse-power, of course -- a motor-car."
He rose and asked:
"Had the prisoner finished his lunch?"
"Yes."
"And, as he has not yet read this message, as the condition of the
cigar shows, the chances are that he had only just received it."
"By what means?"
"How can I tell? In his food; inside a roll or a potato."
"That's impossible. He was only permitted to have his meals from the
outside so that we might trap him and we have found nothing."
"We will look for Lupin's reply this evening. Meantime keep him out of
his cell. I will take this to Monsieur Bouvier, the examining
magistrate. If he agrees, we will have the letter photographed at once,
and in an hour's time you can put these other things back in the
drawer, together with an exactly similar cigar containing the original
message. The prisoner must not be allowed to suspect anything."
It was not without a certain curiosity that M. Dudouis, accompanied by
Inspector Dieuzy, returned to the office of the Santé in the evening.
In a corner, on the stove, were three plates.
"Has he had his dinner?"
"Yes," replied the governor.
"Dieuzy, cut those pieces of macaroni into very thin shreds and open
that bit of bread.... Is there nothing there?"
"No, sir."
M. Dudouis examined the plates, the fork, the spoon, and, lastly, the
knife -- a regulation knife with a rounded blade. He twisted the handle
to the left and then to the right. When turned to the right the handle
gave way and became unscrewed. The knife was hollow, and served as a
sheath for a slip of paper.
"Pooh!" he said, "that's not very artful for a man like Arsène. But let
us waste no time. Do you go to the restaurant, Dieuzy, and make your
inquiries."
Then he read:
"I leave it to you. Let H.P. follow every
day at a distance. I shall go in front. I
shall see you soon, my dear and adorable
friend."
"At last!" cried M. Dudouis, rubbing his hands. "Things are going
better, I think. With a little assistance from our side the escape will
succeed... Just enough to enable us to bag the accomplices."
"And suppose Arsène Lupin slips through your fingers?" said the
governor.
"We shall employ as many men as are necessary. If, however, he shows
himself too clever . . . well, then, so much the worse for him! As for
the rest of the gang, since the leader refuses to talk the others must
be made to."
The fact was that Arsène Lupin did not talk much. For some months M.
Jules Bouvier, the examining magistrate, had been exerting himself to
no purpose. The interrogatories were reduced to uninteresting
colloquies between the magistrate and Maitre Danval, one of the leaders
of the bar, who, for that matter, knew as much and as little about the
defendant as the man in the street.
From time to time, out of politeness, Arsène Lupin would let fall a
remark:
"Quite so, sir; we are agreed. The robbery at the Credit Lyonnais, the
robbery in the Rue de Babylone, the uttering of the forged notes, the
affair of the insurance policies, the burglaries at the Chateaux
d'Armesnil, de Gouret, d'Imblevain, des Groseillers, du Malaquis:
that's all my work."
"Then perhaps you will explain..."
"There's no need of it. I confess to everything in the lump --
everything, and ten times as much."
Tired out, the magistrate had suspended these wearisome interrogatories.
He resumed them, after being shown the two intercepted missives. And
regularly at twelve o'clock every day Arsène Lupin was taken from the
Santé to the police-station in a van, with a number of other prisoners.
They left again at three or four in the day.
One afternoon the return journey took place under exceptional
conditions. As the other criminals from the Santé had not yet been
examined, it was decided to take Arsène Lupin back first. He therefore
stepped into the van alone.
These prison-vans, vulgarly known as paniers a salade, or salad-
baskets, in France, and as "Black Marias" in England, are divided
lengthwise by a central passage, giving admittance to ten compartments
or boxes, five on each side. Each of these boxes is so arranged that
its occupant has to adopt a sitting posture, and the five prisoners are
consequently seated one beside the other, and are separated by parallel
partitions. A municipal guard sits at the end and watches the central
passage.
Arsène was placed in the third box on the right, and the heavy vehicle
started. He perceived that they had left the Quai de l'Horloge, and
were passing before the Palais de Justice. When they reached the middle
of the Pont Saint-Michel he pressed his outer foot -- that is to say,
his right foot, as he had always done -- against the sheet-iron panel
that closed his cell. Suddenly something was thrown out of gear, and
the panel opened outward imperceptibly. He saw that he was just between
the two wheels.
He waited, with a watchful eye. The van went along the Boulevard Saint-
Michel at a foot's pace. At the Carrefour Saint-Germain it pulled up. A
dray-horse had fallen. The traffic was stopped, and soon there was a
block of cabs and omnibuses.
Arsène Lupin put out his head. Another prison-van was standing beside
the one in which he was sitting. He raised the panel farther, put his
foot on one of the spokes of the hind wheel, and jumped to the ground.
A cab-driver saw him, choked with laughing, and then tried to call out.
But his voice was lost in the din of the traffic, which had started
afresh. Besides, Arsène Lupin was already some distance away.
He had taken a few steps at a run; but, crossing to the left-hand
pavement, he turned back, cast a glance around him, and seemed to be
taking his breath, like a man who is not quite sure which direction he
means to follow. Then, making up his mind, he thrust his hands into his
pockets, and, with the careless air of a person taking a stroll,
continued to walk along the boulevard.
The weather was mild: it was a bright, warm autumn day. The cafes were
full of people. He sat down outside one of them.
He called for a bock and a packet of cigarettes. He emptied his glass
with little sips, calmly smoked a cigarette and lit a second. Lastly,
he stood up and asked the waiter to fetch the manager.
The manager came, and Arsène said, in a voice loud enough to be heard
by all around:
"I am very sorry, but I have come out without my purse. Possibly you
know my name and will not mind trusting me for a day or two: I am
Arsène Lupin."
The manager looked at him, thinking he was joking. But Arsène repeated:
"Lupin, a prisoner at the Santé, just escaped. I venture to hope that
my name inspires you with every confidence."
And he walked away amid the general laughter before the other dreamed
of raising a protest.
He slanted across the Rue Soufflot, and turned down the Rue Saint-
Jacques. He proceeded along this street quietly, looking at the shop-
windows, and smoking one cigarette after the other. On reaching the
Boulevard de Port-Royal he took his bearings, asked the way, and walked
straight towards the Rue de la Santé. Soon the frowning walls of the
prison came into view. He skirted them, and, going up to the municipal
guard who was standing sentry at the gate, raised his hat, and said:
"Is this the Santé Prison?"
"Yes."
"I want to go back to my cell, please. The van dropped me on the way,
and I should not like to abuse..."
The guard grunted.
"Look here, my man, you just go your road, and look sharp about it!"
"I beg your pardon, but my road lies through this gate. And, if you
keep Arsène Lupin out, it may cost you dear, my friend."
"Arsène Lupin! What's all this?"
"I am sorry I haven't a card on me," said Arsène, pretending to feel in
his pockets.
The guard, utterly nonplused, eyed him from head to foot. Then,
without a word and as though in spite of himself, he rang a bell. The
iron door opened.
A few minutes later the governor hurried into the office, gesticulating
and pretending to be in a violent rage. Arsène smiled.
"Come, sir, don't play a game with me! What! You take the precaution to
bring me back alone in the van, you prepare a nice little block in the
traffic, and you think that I am going to take to my heels and rejoin
my friends! And what about the twenty detectives escorting us on foot,
on bicycles, and in cabs? They'd have made short work of me: I should
never have got off alive! Perhaps that was what they were reckoning
on?"
Shrugging his shoulders, he added: "I beg you sir, don't let them
trouble about me. When I decide to escape I shall want nobody's
assistance."
Two days later the Echo de France, which was undoubtedly becoming the
official gazette of the exploits of Arsène Lupin -- he was said to be
one of the principal shareholders -- published the fullest details of
his attempted escape. The exact text of the letters exchanged between
the prisoner and his mysterious woman friend, the means employed for
this correspondence, the part played by the police, the drive along the
Boulevard Saint-Michel the incident at the Café Soufflot -- everything
was told in print. It was known that the inquiries of Inspector Dieuzy
among the waiters of the restaurant had led to no result. And, in
addition, the public were made aware of this bewildering fact, which
showed the infinite variety of the resources which the man had at his
disposal: the prison-van in which he had been carried was "faked" from
end to end, and had been substituted by his accomplices for one of the
six regular vans that compose the prison service.
No one entertained any further doubt as to Arsène Lupin's coming
escape. He himself proclaimed it in categorical terms, as was shown by
his reply to M. Bouvier on the day after the incident. The magistrate
having bantered him on the check which he had encountered, he looked at
him and said, coldly:
"Listen to me, sir, and take my word for it: this attempted escape
formed part of my plan of escape."
"I don't understand," grinned the magistrate.
"There is no need that you should."
And when, in the course of this private interrogatory, which appeared
at full length in the columns of the Echo de France, the magistrate
resumed his cross-examination, Lupin exclaimed, with a weary air:
"Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! What is the use of going on? All these
questions have no importance whatever."
"How do you mean, no importance?"
"Of course not, seeing that I shall not attend my trial."
"You will not attend?..."
"No, it's a fixed idea of mine, an irrevocable decision. Nothing will
induce me to depart from it."
This assurance, combined with the inexplicable indiscretions committed
day after day, ended by enervating and disconcerting the officers of
the law. Secrets were revealed, known to Arsène Lupin alone, the
divulging of which could, therefore, come from none but him. But with
what object did he divulge them? And by what means?
They changed Arsène Lupin's cell, moved him to a lower floor. The
magistrate, on his side, closed the examination, and delivered the
materials for the indictment.
A two months' silence ensued. These two months Arsène Lupin passed
stretched on his bed, with his face almost constantly turned to the
wall. The change of cell seemed to have crushed his spirits. He refused
to see his counsel. He exchanged hardly a word with his wardens.
In the fortnight immediately preceding his trial he seemed to revive.
He complained of lack of air. He was sent into the yard for exercise
very early in the morning with a man on either side of him.
Meanwhile public curiosity had not abated. The news of his escape was
expected daily; it was almost hoped for, so greatly had he caught the
fancy of the crowd with his pluck, his gayety, his variety, his
inventive genius, and the mystery of his life. Arsène Lupin was bound
to escape. It was inevitable. People were even astonished that he put
it off so long. Every morning the prefect of police asked his
secretary:
"Well, isn't he gone yet?"
"No, sir."
"Then it will be to-morrow."
And on the day before the trial a gentleman called at the office of the
Grand Journal, asked to see the legal contributor, flung his card at
his head, and made a rapid exit. The card bore the words:
"Arsène Lupin always keeps his promises."
It was in these conditions that the trial opened. The crowd was
enormous. Everybody wanted to see the famous Arsène Lupin, and was
enjoying in advance the way in which he was sure to baffle the
presiding judge. The court was thronged with barristers, magistrates,
reporters, artists, society men and women -- with all, in fact, that go
to make up a first-night audience in Paris.
It was raining; the light was bad outside; it was difficult to see
Arsène Lupin when his wardens ushered him into the dock. However, his
torpid attitude, the manner in which he let himself fall into his
chair, his indifferent and passive lack of movement, did not tell in
his favor. His counsel -- one of Maitre Danval's "devils," the great
man himself having regarded the part to which he was reduced as
beneath him -- spoke to him several times. He jerked his head and made
no reply.
The clerk of the court read the indictment. Then the presiding judge
said:
"Prisoner at the bar, stand up. Give your name, your age, and your
occupation."
Receiving no answer, he repeated:
"Your name -- what is your name?"
A thick and tired voice articulated the words:
"Desiré Baudru."
There was a murmur in court. But the judge retorted:
"Desiré Baudru? Is this a new incarnation? As it is about the eighth
name to which you lay claim, and no doubt as imaginary as the rest, we
will keep, if you don't mind, to that of Arsène Lupin, under which you
are more favorably known."
The judge consulted his notes, and continued:
"For, notwithstanding all inquiries, it has been impossible to
reconstruct your identity. You present the case, almost unparalleled in
our modern society, of a man without a past. We do not know who you
are, whence you come, where your childhood was spent -- in short, we
know nothing about you. You sprang up suddenly, three years ago, from
an uncertain source, to reveal yourself as Arsène Lupin -- that is to
say, as a curious compound of intelligence and perversity, of
criminality and generosity. The data which we have concerning you
before that time are of the nature of suppositions. It seems probable
that the so-called Rostat, who, eight years ago, was acting as
assistant to Dickson, the conjurer, was none other than Arsène Lupin.
It seems probable that the Russian student who, six years ago, used to
attend Dr. Altier's laboratory at St. Louis' Hospital, and who often
astonished the master by the ingenious character of his hypotheses on
bacteriology and by the boldness of his experiments in the diseases of
the skin -- it seems probable that he too was none other than Arsène
Lupin. So was the professor of Japanese wrestling, who established
himself in Paris long before jiu-jitsu had been heard of. So, we
believe, was the racing cyclist who won the great prize at the
Exhibition, took his ten thousand francs, and has never been seen
since. So, perhaps, was the man who saved so many people from burning
at the Charity Bazaar, helping them through the little dormer window
. . . and robbing them of their belongings."
The judge paused for a moment, and concluded:
"Such was that period which seems to have been devoted entirely to a
careful preparation for the struggle upon which you had embarked
against society, a methodical apprenticeship in which you improved your
force, your energy, and your skill to the highest pitch of perfection.
Do you admit the accuracy of these facts?"
During this speech the defendant had shifted from foot to foot, with
rounded back, and arms hanging slackly before him. As the light
increased the spectators were able to distinguish his extreme
emaciation, his sunken jaws, his curiously prominent cheek-bones, his
earthen countenance, mottled with little red stains, and framed in a
sparse and straggling beard. Prison had greatly aged and withered him.
The clean-cut profile, the attractive, youthful features which had so
often been reproduced in the papers, had passed away beyond all
recognition.
He seemed not to have heard the question. It was twice repeated to him.
At last he raised his eyes, appeared to think, and then, making a
violent effort, muttered:
"Desiré Baudru."
The judge laughed.
"I fail to follow exactly the system of defense which you have adopted,
Arsène Lupin. If it be to play the irresponsible imbecile, you must
please yourself. As far as I am concerned, I shall go straight to the
point without troubling about your fancies. "
And he enumerated in detail the robberies, swindles, and forgeries
ascribed to Arsène Lupin. Occasionally he put a question to the
prisoner. The latter gave a grunt or made no reply. Witness after
witness entered the box. The evidence of several of them was
insignificant; others delivered more important testimony; but all of
them had one characteristic in common, which was that each contradicted
the other. The trial was shrouded in a puzzling obscurity until Chief-
Inspector Ganimard was called, when the general interest woke up.
Nevertheless, the old detective caused a certain disappointment from
the first. He seemed not so much shy -- he was too old a hand for that
-- as restless and ill at ease. He kept turning his eyes with visible
embarrassment towards the prisoner. However, with his two hands resting
on the ledge of the box, he described the incidents in which he had
taken part, his pursuit of Lupin across Europe, his arrival in America.
And the crowded court listened to him greedily, as it would have
listened to the story of the most exciting adventures. But towards the
close of his evidence, twice over, after alluding to his interviews
with Arsène Lupin, he stopped with an absent and undecided air.
It was obvious that he was under the influence of some obsession. The
judge said:
"If you are not feeling well, you can stand down and continue your
evidence later."
"No, no, only..."
He stopped, took a long and penetrating look at the prisoner, and said:
"Might I be allowed to see the prisoner more closely? There is a
mystery which I want to clear up."
He stepped across to the dock, gazed at the prisoner longer still,
concentrating all his attention upon him, and returned to the witness-
box. Then, in a solemn voice, he said:
"May it please the court, I swear that the man before me is not Arsène
Lupin."
A great silence greeted these words. The judge, at first taken aback,
exclaimed:
"What do you mean? What are you saying? You are mad!"
The inspector declared, deliberately:
"At first sight one might be deceived by a likeness which, I admit,
exists; but it needs only a momentary examination. The nose, the mouth,
the hair, the color of the skin: why, it's not Arsène Lupin at all. And
look at the eyes: did he ever have those drunkard's eyes?"
"Come, come, explain yourself, witness. What do you mean?"
"I don't know. He must have substituted in his place and stead some
poor wretch who would have been found guilty in his place and stead
. . . unless this man is an accomplice."
This unexpected denouement caused the greatest sensation in court.
Cries of laughter and astonishment rose from every side. The judge gave
instructions for the attendance of the examining magistrate, the
governor of the Santé, and the warders -- and suspended the sitting.
After the adjournment M. Bouvier and the governor, on being confronted
with the prisoner, declared that there was only a very slight
resemblance in features between the man and Arsène Lupin.
"But, in that case," cried the judge, "who is this man? Where does he
come from? How does he come to be in the dock?"
The two warders from the Santé were called. To the general
astonishment, they recognized the prisoner, whom it had been their
business to watch by turns. The judge drew a breath.
But one of the warders went on to say:
"Yes, yes, I think it's the man."
"What do you mean by saying you think?"
"Well, I hardly ever saw him. He was handed over to me at night, and
for two months he was always lying on his bed with his face to the
wall."
"But before those two months?"
"Oh, before that, he was not in Cell 24."
The governor of the prison explained:
"We changed his cell after his attempted escape."
"But you, as governor, must have seen him since the last two months."
"No, I had no occasion to see him... he kept quiet."
"And this man is not the prisoner who was given into your keeping?"
"No."
"Then who is he?"
"I don't know."
"We have, therefore, to do with a substitution of personalities
effected two months ago. How do you explain it?"
"I can't explain it."
"Then..."
In despair the judge turned to the prisoner, and, in a coaxing voice,
said:
"Prisoner, cannot you explain to me how and since when you come to be
in the hands of the law?"
It seemed as though this benevolent tone disarmed the mistrust or
stimulated the understanding of the man. He strove to reply. At last,
skillfully and kindly questioned, he succeeded in putting together a
few sentences which revealed that, two months before, he had been taken
to the police-station and charged with vagrancy. He spent a night and a
morning in the cells. Being found to possess a sum of seventy-five
centimes, he was dismissed. But as he was crossing the yard two
officers had caught him by the arm and taken him to the prison-van.
Since that time he had been living in Cell 24. . . . He had been
comfortable. . . . Had had plenty to eat. . . . Had slept pretty
well. . . . So he had not protested. . . .
All this seemed probable. Amid laughter and a great effervescence of
spirits the judge adjourned the case to another sitting for further
inquiries.
The inquiries forthwith revealed the existence of an entry in the gaol-
book to the effect that, eight weeks previously, a man of the name of
Desiré Baudru had spent the night at the police-station. He was
released the next day, and left the station at two o'clock in the
afternoon. Well, at two o'clock on that day, Arsène Lupin, after
undergoing his final examination, had left the police-station in the
prison-van for the Santé.
Had the warders made a mistake? Had they themselves, in an inattentive
moment, deceived by the superficial likeness, substituted this man for
their prisoner? This seemed hardly possible in view of the length of
their service.
Had the substitution been planned in advance? Apart from the fact that
the disposition localities made this almost unrealizable, it would have
been necessary, in that case, that Baudru should be an accomplice, and
cause himself to be arrested with the precise object of taking Arsène
Lupin's place. But, then, by what miracle could a plan of this sort
have succeeded, based, as it was, entirely on a series of improbable
chances, of fortuitous meetings and fabulous mistakes?
Desiré Baudru was subjected to the anthropometrical test: there was not
a single record corresponding with his description. Besides, traces of
him were easily discovered. He was known at Courbevoie, at Asnieres, at
Levallois. He lived by begging, and slept in one of those rag-pickers'
huts of which there are so many near the Barriere des Ternes. He had
disappeared from sight for about a year.
Had he been suborned by Arsène Lupin? There were no grounds for
thinking so. And even if this were so, it threw no light upon the
prisoner's escape. The marvel remained as extraordinary as before. Of a
score of suppositions put forward in explanation, not one was
satisfactory. Of the escape alone there was no doubt: an
incomprehensible, sensational escape, in which the public as well as
the authorities felt the effect of a long preparation, a combination of
wonderfully dove-tailed actions. And the upshot of it all was to
justify Arsène Lupin's boastful prophecy:
"I shall not be present at my trial."
After a month of careful investigations the puzzle continued to present
the same inscrutable character. Still, it was impossible to keep that
poor wretch of a Baudru indefinitely locked up. To try him would have
been absurd -- what charge was there against him? The magistrate signed
the order for his release. But the head of the detective service
resolved to keep an active supervision upon his movements.
The idea was suggested by Ganimard. In his opinion, there was an
unconscious complicity and no accident in the matter. Baudru was an
instrument that Arsène Lupin had employed with his amazing skill. With
Baudru at large, they might hope, through him, to come upon Arsène
Lupin, or, at least, upon one of his gang.
Inspectors Folenfant and Dieuzy were assigned as assistants to
Ganimard, and one foggy morning in January the prison gates were thrown
open to Desiré Baudru.
At first he seemed rather embarrassed, and walked like a man who has no
very precise idea as to how to employ his time. He went down the Rue de
la Santé and the Rue Saint-Jacques. Stopping outside an old-clothes
shop, he took off his jacket and waistcoat, sold his waistcoat for a
few sous, put on his jacket again, and went on.
He crossed the Seine. At the Chatelet an omnibus passed him. He tried
to get into it. It was full. The ticket-collector advised him to take a
number. He entered the waiting-room.
Ganimard beckoned to his two men, and, keeping his eyes on the office,
said, quickly:
"Stop a cab... no, two cabs, that's better. I'll take one of you with
me. We'll follow him."
The men did as they were told. Baudru, however, did not appear.
Ganimard went into the waiting-room: there was no one there.
"What a fool I am!" he muttered. "I forgot the other door."
The office, as a matter of fact, is connected with the other office in
the Rue Saint-Martin. Ganimard rushed through the communicating
passage. He was just in time to catch sight of Baudru on the top of the
omnibus from Batignolles to the Jardin des Plantes, which was turning
the corner of the Rue de Rivoli. He ran after the omnibus and caught it
up. But he had lost his two assistants, and was continuing the pursuit
alone.
In his rage he felt like taking Baudru by the collar without further
form or ceremony. Was it not by premeditation and thanks to an
ingenious trick that the so-called idiot had separated him from his two
auxiliaries? He looked at Baudru. The man was dozing where he sat, and
his head shook from right to left. His mouth was half open, his face
wore an incredible expression of stupidity. No, this was not an
adversary capable of taking old Ganimard in; chance had favored him,
that was all.
At the Carrefour des Galeries-Lafayette, Baudru changed from the
omnibus to the La Muette tram-car. Ganimard followed his example. They
went along the Boulevard Haussmann and the Avenue Victor-Hugo. Baudru
alighted at the stopping-place at La Muette, and, with a lounging step,
entered the Bois de Boulogne.
He passed from one alley to another, retraced his steps, and went on
again. What was he looking for? Had he an object in view?
After an hour of these manoeuvres he seemed tired and worn out.
Catching sight of a bench, he sat down upon it. The spot was not far
from Auteuil, on the brink of a little lake hidden among the trees, and
was absolutely deserted. Half an hour elapsed. At last, losing
patience, Ganimard resolved to enter into conversation.
He therefore went up and took a seat by Baudru's side. He lit a
cigarette, drew a pattern in the sand with the end of his walking-
stick, and said:
"A cold day."
Silence. And suddenly in this silence a peal of laughter rang out -- a
peal of glad and happy laughter, the laughter of a child seized with a
fit of laughter, and utterly unable to keep from laughing, laughing,
laughing. Ganimard felt his hair literally and positively stand on end
on his head. That laugh, that infernal laugh, which he knew so well!...
With an abrupt movement he caught the man by the lapels of his jacket,
and gave him a violent and penetrating look -- looked at him even more
closely than he had done at the criminal court; and, in truth, it was
no longer the man he had seen. It was the man, but, at the same time,
it was the other, the real man.
Aided by the wish which is father to the thought, he rediscovered the
glowing light in the eyes, he filled in the sunken features, he saw the
real flesh under the wizened skin, the real mouth through the grimace
which deformed it. And it was the other's eyes, it was the other's
mouth, it was -- it was, above all -- his keen, lively, mocking, witty
expression, so bright and so young.
"Arsène Lupin! Arsène Lupin!" he stammered.
And in a sudden access of rage he caught him by the throat and tried
to throw him down. Notwithstanding his fifty years, he was still a man
of uncommon vigor, whereas his adversary seemed quite out of condition.
And what a master-stroke it would be if he succeeded in bringing him
back!
The struggle was short. Arsène Lupin hardly made a movement in defense
and Ganimard let go as promptly as he had attacked. His right arm hung
numbed and lifeless by his side.
"If they taught you jiu-jitsu at the Quai des Orfevres," said Lupin,
"you would know that they call this movement uli-shi-ghi in Japanese."
And he added, coldly: "Another second and I should have broken your
arm, and you would have had no more than you deserve. What! You, an old
friend, whom I esteem, before whom I reveal my incognito of my own
accord, would you abuse my confidence? It's very wrong of you!...
Hullo, what's the matter now?"
Ganimard was silent. This escape, for which he held himself responsible
-- was it not he who, by his sensationall evidence, had diverted the
ends of justice? -- this escape seemed to him to mark the disgrace of
his career. A tear trickled slowly down his cheek towards his gray
mustache.
"Why, goodness me, Ganimard, don't take on like that! If you hadn't
spoken I should have arranged for some one else to speak. Come, come,
how could I have allowed them to find a verdict against Desiré Baudru?"
"So it was you that were there?" muttered Ganimard. "And it is you that
are here?"
"Yes, I, I, no one but me."
"Is it possible?"
"Oh, one needn't be a wizard for that. It is enough, as that worthy
judge said, to prepare one's self for a dozen years or so in order to
be ready for every eventuality."
"But your face? Your eyes?"
"You can understand that when I worked for eighteen months at St.
Louis' with Dr. Altier it was not for love of art. I felt that the man
who would one day have the honor of calling himself Arsène Lupin ought
to be exempt from the ordinary laws of personal appearance and
identity. You can modify your appearance as you please. A hypodermic
injection of paraffin puffs up your skin to just the extent desired.
Pyrogallic acid turns you into a Cherokee Indian. Celandine juice
adorns you with blotches and pimples of the most pleasing kind. A
certain chemical process affects the growth of your hair and beard,
another the sound of your voice. Add to that, two months of dieting in
Cell 24, incessant practice, at opening my mouth with this particular
grimace and carrying my head at this angle and my back at this stoop.
Lastly, five drops of atrophine in the eyes to make them haggard and
dilated, and the trick is done!"
"I can't see how the warders..."
"The change was slow and progressive. They could never have noticed its
daily evolution."
"But Desiré Baudru...?"
"Baudru is a real person. He is a poor, harmless beggar whom I met last
year, and whose features are really not quite unlike my own. Foreseeing
an always possible arrest, I placed him in safe-keeping, and applied
myself from the first to picking out the points of dissimilarity
between us, so as to diminish these in myself as far as I could. My
friends made him pass a night at the police-station in such a way that
he left it at about the same time as I did and the coincidence could be
easily established. For, observe, it was necessary that his passage
should be traceable, else the lawyers would have wanted to know who I
was; whereas, by offering them that excellent Baudru I made it
inevitable -- do you follow me? -- inevitable that they should jump at
him, in spite of the insurmountable difficulties of a substitution --
prefer to believe in that substitution rather than admit their
ignorance."
"Yes, yes, that's true," muttered Ganimard.
"And then," cried Arsène Lupin, "I held a formidable trump in my hand,
a card which I had prepared from the start: the universal expectation
of my escape! And there you see the clumsy mistake into which you and
all of you fell in this exciting game which the law and I were playing,
with my liberty for the stakes: you again thought that I was bragging,
that I was intoxicated with my successes, like the veriest greenhorn!
Fancy me, Arsène Lupin, guilty of such weakness! And, just as in the
Cahorn case, you failed to say to yourselves: 'As soon as Arsène Lupin
proclaims from the house-tops that he means to escape he must have some
reason that obliges him to proclaim it.' But, hang it all, don't you
see that, in order to escape... without escaping, it was essential that
people should believe beforehand in my escape, that it should be an
article of faith, an absolute conviction, a truth clear as daylight?
And that is what it became, in accordance with my will. Arsène Lupin
intended to escape, Arsène Lupin did not intend to be present at his
trial. And when you stood up and said, 'That man is not Arsène Lupin,'
it would have been beyond human nature for all those present not at
once to believe that I was not Arsène Lupin. Had only one person
expressed a doubt, had only one person uttered this simple reservation,
'But suppose it is Arsène Lupin?'... that very moment I should have
been lost. They had only to bend over and look at me, not with the idea
that I was not Arsène Lupin, as you and the rest did, but with the idea
that I might be Arsène Lupin, and, in spite of all my precautions, I
should have been recognized. But I was quite easy in my mind. It was
logically and psychologically impossible for anybody to have that
simple little idea."
He suddenly seized Ganimard's hand.
"Look here, Ganimard, confess that, a week after our interview at the
Santé prison, you stayed in for me, at four o'clock, as I asked you
to?"
"And your prison-van?" said Ganimard, evading the question.
"Bluff, mere bluff. My friends had faked up that old discarded van and
substituted it for the other, and they wanted to try the experiment.
But I knew that it was impracticable without the co-operation of
exceptional circumstances. Only I thought it useful to complete this
attempted escape and to give it the proper publicity. A first escape,
boldly planned, gave to the second the full value of an escape realized
in advance."
"So the cigar..."
"Was scooped out by myself; and the knife, too."
"And the notes?"
"Written by me."
"And the mysterious correspondent?"
"She and I were one. I can write any hand I please."
Ganimard thought for a moment, and said:
"How was it that, when they took Baudru's measurements in the
anthropometrical room, these were not found to coincide with the record
of Arsène Lupin?"
"Arsène Lupin's record does not exist."
"Nonsense!"
"Or, at least, it is not correct. This is a question to which I have
devoted a good deal of study. The Bertillon system allows for, first, a
visual description -- and you have seen that this is not infallible --
and, next, a description by measurements: measurements of the head, the
fingers, the ears, and so on. There is nothing to be done against
that."
"So?..."
"So I had to pay. Before my return from America one of the clerks of
the staff accepted a definite bribe to enter one false measurement at
the start. This is enough to throw the whole system out of gear, and to
cause a record to stray into a compartment diametrically opposite to
the compartment in which it ought to go. The Baudru record could not,
therefore, possibly agree with the Arsène Lupin record."
There was another silence, and then Ganimard asked:
"And what are you going to do now?"
"Now!" exclaimed Lupin. "I am going to take a rest, feed myself up and
gradually become myself again. It's all very well to be Baudru or
another, to change your personality as you would your boots, and to
select your appearance, your voice, your expression, your handwriting.
But there comes a time when you cease to know yourself amid all these
changes, and that is very sad. I feel at present as the man must have
felt who lost his shadow. I am going to look for myself... and to find
myself."
He walked up and down. The daylight was waning. He stopped in front of
Ganimard.
"We've said all that we had to say to each other, I suppose?"
"No," replied the inspector. "I should like to know if you intend to
publish the truth about your escape... and the mistake I made..."
"Oh, no one will ever know that it was Arsène Lupin that was released.
I have too great an interest to serve in heaping up the most mysterious
darkness around me, and I should not dream of depriving my flight of
its almost miraculous character. So have no fear, my dear friend; and
good-bye. I am dining out to-night, and have only just time to dress."
"I thought you were so anxious for a rest."
"Alas, there are social engagements from which it is impossible to
escape. My rest must begin to-morrow."
"And where are you dining, may I ask?"
"At the British Embassy."
CHAPTER 4: THE MYSTERIOUS RAILWAY PASSENGER
I had sent my motor-car to Rouen by road on the previous day I was to
meet it by train, and go on to some friends, who have a house on the
Seine.
A few minutes before we left Paris my compartment was invaded by seven
gentlemen, five of whom were smoking. Short though the journey by the
fast train be, I did not relish the prospect of taking it in such
company, the more so as the old-fashioned carriage had no corridor. I
therefore collected my overcoat, my newspapers, and my railway guide,
and sought refuge in one of the neighboring compartments.
It was occupied by a lady. At the sight of me, she made a movement of
vexation which did not escape my notice, and leaned towards a gentleman
standing on the foot-board -- her husband, no doubt, who had come to
see her off. The gentleman took stock of me, and the examination seemed
to conclude to my advantage; for he whispered to his wife and smiled,
giving her the look with which we reassure a frightened child. She
smiled in her turn, and cast a friendly glance in my direction, as
though she suddenly realized that I was one of those well-bred men with
whom a woman can remain locked up for an hour or two in a little box
six feet square without having anything to fear.
Her husband said to her:
"You must not mind, darling; but I have an important appointment, and I
must not wait."
He kissed her affectionately, and went away. His wife blew him some
discreet little kisses through the window, and waved her handkerchief.
Then the guard's whistle sounded, and the train started.
At that moment, and in spite of the warning shouts of the railway
officials, the door opened, and a man burst into our carriage. My
travelling companion, who was standing up and arranging her things in
the rack, uttered a cry of terror, and dropped down upon the seat.
I am no coward -- far from it; but I confess that these sudden
incursions at the last minute are always annoying. They seem so
ambiguous, so unnatural. There must be something behind them, else...
The appearance of the new-comer, however, and his bearing were such as
to correct the bad impression produced by the manner of his entrance.
He was neatly, almost smartly, dressed; his tie was in good taste, his
gloves clean; he had a powerful face.... But, speaking of his face,
where on earth had I seen it before? For I had seen it: of that there
was no possible doubt; or at least, to be accurate, I found within
myself that sort of recollection which is left by the sight of an oft-
seen portrait of which one has never beheld the original. And at the
same time I felt the uselessness of any effort of memory that I might
exert, so inconsistent and vague was that recollection.
But when my eyes reverted to the lady I sat astounded at the pallor and
disorder of her features. She was staring at her neighbor -- he was
seated on the same side of the carriage -- with an expression of
genuine affright, and I saw one of her hands steal trembling towards a
little travelling-bag that lay on the cushion a few inches from her lap.
She ended by taking hold of it, and nervously drew it to her.
Our eyes met, and I read in hers so great an amount of uneasiness and
anxiety that I could not help saying:
"I hope you are not unwell, madame.... Would you like me to open the
window?"
She made no reply, but, with a timid gesture, called my attention to
the individual beside her. I smiled as her husband had done, shrugged
my shoulders, and explained to her by signs that she had nothing to
fear, that I was there, and that, besides, the gentleman in question
seemed quite harmless.
Just then he turned towards us, contemplated us, one after the other,
from head to foot, and then huddled himself into his corner, and made
no further movement.
A silence ensued; but the lady, as though she had summoned up all her
energies to perform an act of despair, said to me, in a hardly audible
voice:
"You know he is in our train."
"Who?"
"Why, he... he himself... I assure you."
"Whom do you mean?"
"Arsène Lupin!"
She had not removed her eyes from the passenger, and it was at him
rather than at me that she flung the syllables of that alarming name.
He pulled his hat down upon his nose. Was this to conceal his
agitation, or was he merely preparing to go to sleep?
I objected.
"Arsène Lupin was sentenced yesterday, in his absence, to twenty years'
penal servitude. It is not likely that he would commit the imprudence
of showing himself in public to-day. Besides, the newspapers have
discovered that he has been spending the winter in Turkey ever since
his famous escape from the Sante."
"He is in this train," repeated the lady, with the ever more marked
intention of being overheard by our companion. "My husband is a deputy
prison-governor, and the station-inspector himself told us that they
were looking for Arsène Lupin."
"That is no reason why..."
"He was seen at the booking-office. He took a ticket for Rouen."
"It would have been easy to lay hands upon him."
"He disappeared. The ticket-collector at the door of the waiting-room
did not see him; but they thought that he must have gone round by the
suburban platforms and stepped into the express that leaves ten
minutes after us."
"In that case, they will have caught him there."
"And supposing that, at the last moment, he jumped out of that express
and entered this, our own train... as he probably... as he most
certainly did?"
"In that case they will catch him here; for the porters and the police
cannot have failed to see him going from one train to the other, and,
when we reach Rouen, they will net him finely."
"Him? Never! He will find some means of escaping again."
"In that case I wish him a good journey."
"But think of all that he may do in the mean time!"
"What?"
"How can I tell? One must be prepared for anything."
She was greatly agitated; and, in point of fact, the situation, to a
certain degree, warranted her nervous state of excitement. Almost in
spite of myself, I said:
"There are such things as curious coincidences, it is true.... But calm
yourself. Admitting that Arsène Lupin is in one of these carriages, he
is sure to keep quiet, and, rather than bring fresh trouble upon
himself, he will have no other idea than that of avoiding the danger
that threatens him."
My words failed to reassure her. However she said no more, fearing, no
doubt, lest I should think her troublesome.
As for myself, I opened my newspapers and read the reports of Arsène
Lupin's trial. They contained nothing that was not already known, and
they interested me but slightly. Moreover, I was tired, I had had a
poor night, I felt my eye-lids growing heavy, and my head began to nod.
"But surely, sir, you are not going to sleep?"
The lady snatched my paper from my hands, and looked at me with
indignation.
"Certainly not," I replied. "I have no wish to."
"It would be most imprudent," she said.
"Most," I repeated.
And I struggled hard, fixing my eyes on the landscape, on the clouds
that streaked the sky. And soon all this became confused in space, the
image of the excited lady and the drowsy man was obliterated in my
mind, and I was filled with the great, deep silence of sleep.
It was soon made agreeable by light and incoherent dreams, in which a
being who played the part and bore the name of Arsène Lupin occupied a
certain place. He turned and shifted on the horizon, his back laden
with valuables, clambering over walls and stripping country-houses of
their contents.
But the outline of this being, who had ceased to be Arsène Lupin, grew
more distinct. He came towards me, grew bigger and bigger, leaped into
the carriage with incredible agility, and fell full upon my chest.
A sharp pain... a piercing scream... I awoke. The man, my fellow-
traveller, with one knee on my chest, was clutching my throat.
I saw this very dimly, for my eyes were shot with blood. I also saw the
lady in a corner writhing in a violent fit of hysterics. I did not even
attempt to resist. I should not have had the strength for it had I
wished to: my temples were throbbing, I choked ... my throat rattled....
Another minute... and I should have been suffocated.
The man must have felt this. He loosened his grip. Without leaving hold
of me, with his right hand he stretched a rope, in which he had
prepared a slipknot, and, with a quick turn, tied my wrists together.
In a moment I was bound, gagged -- rendered motionless and helpless.
And he performed this task in the most natural manner in the world,
with an ease that revealed the knowledge of a master, of an expert in
theft and crime. Not a word, not a fevered movement. Sheer coolness and
audacity. And there lay I on the seat, roped up like a mummy -- I,
Arsène Lupin!
It was really ridiculous. And notwithstanding the seriousness of the
circumstances I could not but appreciate and almost enjoy the irony of
the situation. Arsène Lupin "done" like a novice, stripped like the
first-comer! For of course the scoundrel relieved me of my pocket-book
and purse! Arsène Lupin victimized in his turn -- duped and beaten!
What an adventure!
There remained the lady. He took no notice of her at all. He contented
himself with picking up the wrist-bag that lay on the floor, and
extracting the jewels, the purse, the gold and silver knicknacks which
it contained. The lady opened her eyes, shuddered with fright, took off
her rings and handed them to the man as though she wished to spare him
any superfluous exertion. He took the rings, and looked at her: she
fainted away.
Then, calm and silent as before, without troubling about us further, he
resumed his seat, lit a cigarette, and abandoned himself to a careful
scrutiny of the treasures which he had captured, the inspection of
which seemed to satisfy him completely.
I was much less satisfied. I am not speaking of the twelve thousand
francs of which I had been unduly plundered: this was a loss which I
accepted only for the time; I had no doubt that those twelve thousand
francs would return to my possession after a short interval, together
with the exceedingly important papers which my pocket-book contained:
plans, estimates, specifications, addresses, lists of correspondents,
letters of a compromising character. But, for the moment, a more
immediate and serious care was worrying me: what was to happen next?
As may be readily imagined, the excitement caused by my passing through
the Gare Saint-Lazare had not escaped me. As I was going to stay with
friends who knew me by the name of Guillaume Berlat, and to whom my
resemblance to Arsène Lupin was the occasion of many a friendly jest, I
had not been able to disguise myself after my wont, and my presence had
been discovered. Moreover, a man, doubtless Arsène Lupin, had been seen
to rush from the express into the fast train. Hence it was inevitable
and fated that the commissary of police at Rouen, warned by telegram,
would await the arrival of the train, assisted by a respectable number
of constables, question any suspicious passengers, and proceed to make
a minute inspection of the carriages.
All this I had foreseen, and had not felt greatly excited about it; for
I was certain that the Rouen police would display no greater
perspicacity than the Paris police, and that I should have been able to
pass unperceived: was it not sufficient for me, at the wicket,
carelessly to show my deputy's card, collector at Saint-Lazare with
every confidence? But how things had changed since then! I was no
longer free. It was impossible to attempt one of my usual moves. In one
of the carriages the commissary would discover the Sieur Arsène Lupin,
whom a propitious fate was sending to him bound hand and foot, gentle
as a lamb, packed up complete. He had only to accept delivery, just as
you receive a parcel addressed to you at a railway station, a hamper of
game, or a basket of vegetables and fruit.
And to avoid this annoying catastrophe, what could I do, entangled as I
was in my bonds?
And the train was speeding towards Rouen, the next and the only
stopping-place; it rushed through Vernon, through Saint-Pierre....
I was puzzled also by another problem in which I was not so directly
interested, but the solution of which aroused my professional
curiosity: What were my fellow-traveller's intentions?
If I had been alone he would have had ample time to alight quite calmly
at Rouen. But the lady? As soon as the carriage door was opened the
lady, meek and quiet as she sat at present, would scream, and throw
herself about, and cry for help!
Hence my astonishment. Why did he not reduce her to the same state of
powerlessness as myself, which would have given him time to disappear
before his twofold misdeed was discovered?
He was still smoking, his eyes fixed on the view outside, which a
hesitating rain was beginning to streak with long, slanting lines.
Once, however, he turned round, took up my railway guide, and consulted
it.
As for the lady, she made every effort to continue fainting, so as to
quiet her enemy. But a fit of coughing, produced by the smoke, gave the
lie to her pretended swoon.
Myself, I was very uncomfortable, and had pains all over my body. And I
thought... I planned.
Pont-de-l'Arche... Oissel.... The train was hurrying on, glad, drunk
with speed.... Saint-Etienne....
At that moment the man rose and took two steps towards us, to which the
lady hastened to reply with a new scream and a genuine fainting fit.
But what could his object be? He lowered the window on our side. The
rain was now falling in torrents, and he made a movement of annoyance
at having neither umbrella nor overcoat. He looked up at the rack: the
lady's en-tout-cas was there; he took it. He also took my overcoat and
put it on.
We were crossing the Seine. He turned up his trousers, and then,
leaning out of the window, raised the outer latch.
Did he mean to fling himself on the permanent way? At the rate at which
we were going it would have been certain death. We plunged into the
tunnel pierced under the Cote Sainte-Catherine. The man opened the
door, and, with one foot, felt for the step. What madness! The
darkness, the smoke, the din -- all combined to give a fantastic
appearance to any such attempt. But suddenly the train slowed up, the
Westinghouse brakes counteracted the movement of the wheels. In a
minute the pace from fast became normal, and decreased still more.
Without a doubt there was a gang at work repairing this part of the
tunnel; this would necessitate a slower passage of the trains for some
days perhaps, and the man knew it.
He had only, therefore, to put his other foot on the step, climb down
to the foot-board, and walk away quietly, not without first closing the
door, and throwing back the latch.
He had scarcely disappeared when the smoke showed whiter in the
daylight. We emerged into a valley. One more tunnel, and we should be
at Rouen.
The lady at once recovered her wits, and her first care was to bewail
the loss of her jewels. I gave her a beseeching glance. She understood,
and relieved me of the gag which was stifling me. She wanted also to
unfasten my bonds, but I stopped her.
"No, no; the police must see everything as it was. I want them to be
fully informed as regards that blackguard's actions."
"Shall I pull the alarm-signal?"
"Too late. You should have thought of that while he was attacking me."
"But he would have killed me! Ah, sir, didn't I tell you that he was
travelling by this train? I knew him at once, by his portrait. And now
he's taken my jewels!"
"They'll catch him, have no fear."
"Catch Arsène Lupin! Never."
"It all depends on you, madam. Listen. When we arrive be at the window,
call out, make a noise. The police and porters will come up. Tell them
what you have seen in a few words: the assault of which I was the
victim, and the flight of Arsène Lupin. Give his description: a soft
hat, an umbrella -- yours -- a gray frock-overcoat..."
"Yours," she said.
"Mine? No, his own. I didn't have one."
"I thought that he had none either when he got in."
"He must have had... unless it was a coat which some one left behind in
the rack. In any case, he had it when he got out, and that is the
essential thing.... A gray frock-overcoat, remember.... Oh, I was
forgetting ... tell them your name to start with. Your husband's
functions will stimulate the zeal of all those men."
We were arriving. She was already leaning out of the window. I resumed,
in a louder, almost imperious voice, so that my words should sink into
her brain:
"Give my name also, Guillaume Berlat. If necessary, say you know me...
That will save time... we must hurry on the preliminary inquiries...
the important thing is to catch Arsène Lupin... with your jewels....
You quite understand, don't you? Guillaume Berlat, a friend of your
husband's."
"Quite... Guillaume Berlat."
She was already calling out and gesticulating. Before the train had
come to a standstill a gentleman climbed in, followed by a number of
other men. The critical hour was at hand.
Breathlessly the lady exclaimed:
"Arsène Lupin... he attacked us... he has stolen my jewels.... I am
Madame Renaud... my husband is a deputy prison-governor.... Ah, here's
my brother, Georges Andelle, manager of the Credit Rouennais.... What I
want to say is..."
She kissed a young man who had just come up, and who exchanged
greetings with the commissary. She continued, weeping:
"Yes, Arsène Lupin.... He flew at this gentleman's throat in his
sleep.... Monsieur Berlat, a friend of my husband's."
"But where is Arsène Lupin?"
"He jumped out of the train in the tunnel, after we had crossed the
Seine."
"Are you sure it was he?"
"Certain. I recognized him at once. Besides, he was seen at the Gare
Saint-Lazare. He was wearing a soft hat..."
"No; a hard felt hat, like this," said the commissary, pointing to my
hat.
"A soft hat, I assure you," repeated Madame Renaud, "and a gray
frock-overcoat."
"Yes," muttered the commissary; "the telegram mentions a gray frock-
overcoat with a black velvet collar."
"A black velvet collar, that's it!" exclaimed Madame Renaud,
triumphantly.
I breathed again. What a good, excellent friend I had found in her!
Meanwhile the policemen had released me from my bonds. I bit my lips
violently till the blood flowed. Bent in two, with my handkerchief to
my mouth, as seems proper to a man who has long been sitting in a
constrained position, and who bears on his face the blood-stained marks
of the gag, I said to the commissary, in a feeble voice:
"Sir, it was Arsène Lupin, there is no doubt of it.... You can catch
him if you hurry.... I think I may be of some use to you...."
The coach, which was needed for the inspection by the police, was
slipped. The remainder of the train went on towards Le Havre. We were
taken to the station-master's office through a crowd of on-lookers who
filled the platform.
Just then I felt a hesitation. I must make some excuse to absent
myself, find my motor-car, and be off. It was dangerous to wait. If
anything happened, if a telegram came from Paris, I was lost.
Yes; but what about my robber? Left to my own resources, in a district
with which I was not very well acquainted, I could never hope to come
up with him.
"Bah!" I said to myself. "Let us risk it, and stay. It's a difficult
hand to win, but a very amusing one to play. And the stakes are worth
the trouble."
And as we were being asked provisionally to repeat our depositions, I
exclaimed:
"Mr. Commissary, Arsène Lupin is getting a start of us. My motor is
waiting for me in the yard. If you will do me the pleasure to accept a
seat in it, we will try..."
The commissary gave a knowing smile.
"It's not a bad idea... such a good idea, in fact, that it's already
being carried out."
"Oh!"
"Yes; two of my officers started on bicycles... some time ago."
"But where to?"
"To the entrance to the tunnel. There they will pick up the clues and
the evidence, and follow the track of Arsène Lupin."
I could not help shrugging my shoulders.
"Your two officers will pick up no clues and no evidence."
"Really!"
"Arsène Lupin will have arranged that no one should see him leave the
tunnel. He will have taken the nearest road, and from there..."
"From there made for Rouen, where we shall catch him."
"He will not go to Rouen."
"In that case, he will remain in the neighborhood, where we shall be
even more certain..."
"He will not remain in the neighborhood."
"Oh! Then where will he hide himself?"
I took out my watch.
"At this moment Arsène Lupin is hanging about the station at Darnetal.
At ten-fifty -- that is to say, in twenty-two minutes from now -- he
will take the train which leaves Rouen from the Gare du Nord for
Amiens."
"Do you think so? And how do you know?"
"Oh, it's very simple. In the carriage Arsène Lupin consulted my
railway guide. What for? To see if there was another line near the
place where he disappeared, a station on that line, and a train which
stopped at that station. I have just looked at the guide myself, and
learned what I wanted to know."
"Upon my word, sir," said the commissary, "you possess marvellous
powers of deduction. What an expert you must be!"
Dragged on by my certainty, I had blundered by displaying too much
cleverness. He looked at me in astonishment, and I saw that a suspicion
flickered through his mind. Only just, it is true; for the photographs
despatched in every direction were so unlike, represented an Arsène
Lupin so different from the one that stood before him, that he could
not possibly recognize the original in me. Nevertheless, he was
troubled, restless, perplexed.
There was a moment of silence. A certain ambiguity and doubt seemed to
interrupt our words. A shudder of anxiety passed through me.
Was luck about to turn against me? Mastering myself, I began to laugh.
"Ah well, there's nothing to sharpen one's wits like the loss of a
pocket-book and the desire to find it again. And it seems to me that,
if you will give me two of your men, the three of us might, perhaps..."
"Oh, please, Mr. Commissary," exclaimed Madame Renaud, "do what
Monsieur Berlat suggests."
My Kind friend's intervention turned the scale. Uttered by her, the
wife of an influential person, the name of Berlat became mine in
reality, and conferred upon me an identity which no suspicion could
touch. The commissary rose.
"Believe me, Monsieur Berlat, I shall be only too pleased to see you
succeed. I am as anxious as yourself to have Arsène Lupin arrested."
He accompanied me to my car. He introduced two of his men to me: Honore
Massol and Gaston Delivet. They took their seats. I placed myself at
the wheel. My chauffeur started the engine. A few seconds later we had
left the station. I was saved.
I confess that as we dashed in my powerful 35-h.p. Moreau-Lepton along
the boulevards that skirt the old Norman city I was not without a
certain sense of pride. The engine hummed harmoniously. The trees sped
behind us to right and left. And now, free and out of danger, I had
nothing to do but to settle my own little private affairs with the co-
operation of two worthy representatives of the law. Arsène Lupin was
going in search of Arsène Lupin!
Ye humble mainstays of the social order of things, Gaston Delivet and
Honore Massol, how precious was your assistance to me! Where should I
have been without you? But for you, at how many cross-roads should I
have taken the wrong turning! But for you, Arsène Lupin would have gone
astray and the other escaped!
But all was not over yet. Far from it. I had first to capture the
fellow and next to take possession, myself, of the papers of which he
had robbed me. At no cost must my two satellites be allowed to catch a
sight of those documents, much less lay hands upon them. To make use of
them and yet act independently of them was what I wanted to do; and it
was no easy matter.
We reached Darnetal three minutes after the train had left. I had the
consolation of learning that a man in a gray frock-overcoat with a
black velvet collar had got into a second-class carriage with a ticket
for Amiens. There was no doubt about it: my first appearance as a
detective was a promising one.
Delivet said:
"The train is an express, and does not stop before Monterolier-Buchy,
in nineteen minutes from now. If we are not there before Arsène Lupin
he can go on towards Amiens, branch off to Cleres, and, from there,
make for Dieppe or Paris."
"How far is Monterolier?"
"Fourteen miles and a half."
"Fourteen miles and a half in nineteen minutes... We shall be there
ahead of him."
It was a stirring race. Never had my trusty Moreau-Lepton responded to
my impatience with greater ardor and regularity. It seemed to me as
though I communicated my wishes to her directly, without the
intermediary of levers or handles. She shared my desires. She approved
of my determination. She understood my animosity against that
blackguard Arsène Lupin. The scoundrel! The sneak! Should I get the
best of him? Or would he once more baffle authority, that authority of
which I was the incarnation?
"Right!" cried Delivet.... "Left! ... Straight ahead!..."
We skimmed the ground. The mile-stones looked like little timid animals
that fled at our approach.
And suddenly at the turn of a road a cloud of smoke -- the north
express!
For half a mile it was a struggle side by side -- an unequal struggle,
of which the issue was certain -- we beat the train by twenty lengths.
In three seconds we were on the platform in front of the second class.
The doors were flung open. A few people stepped out. My thief was not
among them. We examined the carriages. No Arsène Lupin.
"By Jove!" I exclaimed, "he must have recognized me in the motor while
we were going alongside of him, and jumped!"
The guard of the train confirmed my supposition. He had seen a man
scrambling down the embankment at two hundred yards from the station.
"There he is!... Look!... At the level crossing!"
I darted in pursuit, followed by my two satellites, or, rather, by one
of them; for the other, Massol, turned out to be an uncommonly fast
sprinter, gifted with both speed and staying power. In a few seconds
the distance between him and the fugitive was greatly diminished. The
man saw him, jumped a hedge, and scampered off towards a slope, which
he climbed. We saw him, farther still, entering a little wood.
When we reached the wood we found Massol waiting for us. He had thought
it no use to go on, lest he should lose us.
"You were quite right, my dear fellow," I said. "After a run like this
our friend must be exhausted. We've got him."
I examined the skirts of the wood while thinking how I could best
proceed alone to arrest the fugitive, in order myself to effect certain
recoveries which the law, no doubt, would only have allowed after a
number of disagreeable inquiries. Then I returned to my companions.
"Look here, it's very easy. You, Massol, take up your position on the
left. You, Delivet, on the right. From there you can watch the whole
rear of the wood, and he can't leave it unseen by you except by this
hollow, where I shall stand. If he does not come out, I'll go in and
force him back towards one or the other of you. You have nothing to do,
therefore, but wait. Oh, I was forgetting: in case of alarm, I'll fire
a shot."
Massol and Delivet moved off, each to his own side. As soon as they
were out of sight I made my way into the wood with infinite
precautions, so as to be neither seen nor heard. It consisted of close
thickets, contrived for the shooting, and intersected by very narrow
paths, in which it was only possible to walk by stooping, as though in
a leafy tunnel.
One of these ended in a glade, where the damp grass showed the marks of
footsteps. I followed them, taking care to steal through the underwood.
They led me to the bottom of a little mound, crowned by a tumble-down
lath-and-plaster hovel.
"He must be there," I thought. "He has selected a good post of
observation."
I crawled close up to the building. A slight sound warned me of his
presence, and, in fact, I caught sight of him through an opening; with
his back turned towards me.
Two bounds brought me upon him. He tried to point the revolver which he
held in his hand. I did not give him time, but pulled him to the ground
in such a way that his two arms were twisted and caught under him,
while I held him pinned down with my knee upon his chest.
"Listen to me, old chap," I whispered in his ear. "I am Arsène Lupin.
You've got to give me back, this minute and without any fuss, my
pocket-book and the lady's wrist-bag... in return for which I'll save
you from the clutches of the police and enroll you among my friends.
Which is it to be: yes or no?"
"Yes," he muttered.
"That's right. Your plan of this morning was cleverly thought out. We
shall be good friends."
I got up. He fumbled in his pocket, fetched out a great knife, and
tried to strike me with it.
"Imbecile!" I cried.
With one hand I parried the attack. With the other I caught him a
violent blow on the carotid artery, the blow which is known as "the
carotid hook." He fell back stunned.
In my pocket-book I found my papers and bank-notes. I took his own out
of curiosity. On an envelope addressed to him I read his name: Pierre
Onfrey.
I gave a start. Pierre Onfrey, the perpetrator of the murder in the Rue
Lafontaine at Auteuil! Pierre Onfrey, the man who had cut the throats
of Madame Delbois and her two daughters. I bent over him. Yes, that was
the face which, in the railway-carriage, had aroused in me the memory
of features which I had seen before.
But time was passing. I placed two hundred-franc notes in an envelope,
with a visiting-card bearing these words:
"Arsène Lupin to his worthy assistants, Honore Massol
and Gaston Delivet, with his best thanks."
I laid this where it could be seen, in the middle of the room. Beside
it I placed Madame Renaud's wrist-bag. Why should it not be restored to
the kind friend who had rescued me? I confess, however, that I took
from it everything that seemed in any way interesting, leaving only a
tortoise-shell comb, a stick of lip-salve, and an empty purse. Business
is business, when all is said and done! And, besides, her husband
followed such a disreputable occupation!...
There remained the man. He was beginning to move. What was I to do? I
was not qualified either to save or to condemn him.
I took away his weapons, and fired my revolver in the air.
"That will bring the two others," I thought. "He must find a way out of
his own difficulties. Let fate take its course."
And I went down the hollow road at a run.
Twenty minutes later a cross-road which I had noticed during our
pursuit brought me back to my car.
At four o'clock I telegraphed to my friends from Rouen that an
unexpected incident compelled me to put off my visit. Between
ourselves, I greatly fear that, in view of what they must now have
learned, I shall be obliged to postpone it indefinitely. It will be a
cruel disappointment for them!
At six o'clock I returned to Paris by L'Isle-Adam, Enghien, and the
Porte Bineau.
I gathered from the evening papers that the police had at last
succeeded in capturing Pierre Onfrey.
The next morning -- why should we despise the advantages of intelligent
advertisement? -- the Echo de France contained the following
sensational paragraph:
"Yesterday, near Buchy, after a number of
incidents, Arsène Lupin effected the arrest
of Pierre Onfrey. The Auteuil murderer had
robbed a lady of the name of Renaud, the
wife of the deputy prison-governor, in the
train between Paris and Le Havre. Arsène
Lupin has restored to Madame Renaud the
wrist-bag which contained her jewels, and
has generously rewarded the two detectives
who assisted him in the matter of this
dramatic arrest."
CHAPTER 5: THE QUEEN'S NECKLACE
Two or three times a year, on the occasion of important functions, such
as the balls at the Austrian Embassy or Lady Billingstone's receptions,
the Comtesse de Dreux-Soubise would wear the Queen's Necklace.
This was really the famous necklace, the historic necklace, which
Böhmer and Bassange, the crown jewelers, had designed for the Du
Barry, which the Cardinal de Rohan-Soubise believed himself to be
presenting to the Queen Marie-Antoinette, and which Jeanne de Valois,
Comtesse de La Motte, the adventuress, took to pieces, one evening in
February, 1785, with the assistance of her husband and their
accomplice, Rétaux de Villette.
As a matter of fact, the setting alone was genuine. Rétaux de Villette
had preserved it, while Sieur de La Motte and his wife dispersed to the
four winds of heaven the stones so brutally unmounted, the admirable
stones once so carefully chosen by Böhmer. Later, Rétaux sold it, in
Italy, to Gaston de Dreux-Sobise, the cardinal's nephew and heir, who
had been saved by his uncle at the time of the notorious bankruptcy of
the Rohan-Guéménée family, and who, in grateful memory of his kindness,
bought up the few diamonds that remained in the possession of Jeffreys,
the English jeweler, completed them with others of smaller value, but
of identical dimensions, and thus succeeded in reconstructing the
wonderful necklace in the form in which it had left Böhmer and
Bassagne's hands.
The Dreux-Soubises had prided themselves upon the possession of this
ornament for nearly a century. Although their fortune had been
considerably diminished by various circumstances, they preferred to
reduce their establishment rather than part with the precious royal
relic. The reigning count in particular clung to it as a man clings to
the home of his fathers. For prudence' sake, he hired a safe at the
Crédit Lyonnais in which to keep it. He always fetched it there
himself on the afternoon of any day on which his wife proposed to wear
it; and he as regularly took it back the next morning.
That evening, at the Palais de Castille, then occupied by Isabella II
of Spain, the Countess had a great success, and King Christian of
Denmark, in whose honor the reception was given, remarked upon her
magnificent beauty. The gems streamed down her slender neck. The
thousand facets of the diamonds shone and sparkled like flames in the
light of the brilliantly illuminated rooms. None but she could have
carried with such ease and dignity the burden of that marvelous jewel.
It was a twofold triumph which the Comte de Dreux enjoyed most
thoroughly, and upon which he congratulated himself when they returned
to their bedroom in the old house in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. He
was proud of his wife, and quite as proud, perhaps, of the ornament
which had shed its lustre upon his family for four generations. And
the countess, too, derived from it a vanity which was a little
childish, and yet quite in keeping with her haughty nature.
She took the necklace from her shoulders, not without regret, and
handed it to her husband, who examined it with admiring eyes, as though
he had never seen it before. Then, after replacing it in its red
morocco case, stamped with the cardinal's arms, he went into an
adjoining linen-closet, originally a sort of alcove, which had been cut
off from the room, and which had only one entrance--a door at the foot
of the bed. He hid it, according to his custom, among the bandboxes
and stacks of linen on one of the upper shelves. He returned, closed
the door behind him, and undressed himself.
In the morning he rose at nine o'clock, with the intention of going to
the Crédit Lyonnais before lunch. He dressed, drank his coffee, and
went down to the stables, where he gave his orders for the day. One of
the horses seemed out of condition. He made the groom walk and trot it
up and down before him in the yard. Then he went back to his wife.
She had not left the room, and was having her hair dressed by her maid.
She said:
"Are you going out?"
"Yes, to take it back. . . ."
"Oh, of course, yes, that will be safest. . . ."
He entered the linen-closet. But in a few seconds he asked, without,
however, displaying the least astonishment:
"Have you taken it out, dear?"
She replied:
"What do you mean? No, I've taken nothing."
"But you moved it?"
"Not at all . . . I haven't even opened the door."
He appeared in the doorway with a bewildered air, and stammered, in
hardly intelligible accents:
"You haven't . . . you didn't . . . but then. . . ."
She ran to join him, and they made a feverish search, throwing the
bandboxes to the floor, and demolishing the stacks of linen. And the
count kept on saying:
"It's useless. . . . All that we are doing is quite useless. . . . I
put it up here on this shelf."
"You may have forgotten."
"No, no; it was here, on this shelf, and nowhere else."
They lit a candle, for the light in the little room was bad, and
removed all the linen and all the different things with which it was
crowded. And when the closet was quite empty they were compelled to
admit, in despair, that the famous necklace, the Queen's Necklace, was
gone.
The countess, who was noted for her determined character, wasted no
time in vain lamentations, but sent for the commissary of police, M.
Valorbe, whose sagacity and insight they had already had occasion to
appreciate. He was put in possession of the details, and his first
question was:
"Are you sure, monsieur le comte, that no one can have passed through
your room at night?"
"Quite sure. I am a very light sleeper, and, besides, the bedroom door
was bolted. I had to unfasten it this morning when my wife rang for
the maid."
"Is there no other inlet through which it is possible to enter the
closet?"
"None."
"No window?"
"Yes, but it is blocked up."
"I should like to see it."
Candles were lit, and M. Valorbe at once remarked that the window was
only blocked halfway by a chest, which, besides, did not absolutely
touch the casements.
"It is close enough up to prevent its being moved without making a
great deal of noise."
"What does the window look out on?"
"On a small inner yard."
"And you have another floor above this?"
"Two; but at the level of the servants' floor the yard is protected by
a close-railed grating. That is what makes the light so bad."
Moreover, when they moved the chest they found that the window was
latched, which would have been impossible if any one had entered from
the outside.
"Unless," said the count, "he went out through our room."
"In which case you would not have found the door bolted in the
morning."
The commissary reflected for a moment, and then, turning to the
countess, asked:
"Did your people know, madame, that you were going to wear the
necklace last night?"
"Certainly; I made no mystery about it. But nobody knew that we put it
away in the linen-closet."
"Nobody?"
"No . . . unless. . . ."
"I must beg you, madame, to be exact. It is a most important point."
She said to her husband:
"I was thinking of Henriette."
"Henriette? She knew no more about it than the others."
"Who is this lady?" asked M. Valorbe.
"One of my convent friends who quarreled with her family, and married
a sort of artisan. When her husband died I took her in here with her
son, and furnished a couple of rooms for them in the house." And she
added, with a certain confusion: "She does me a few little services.
She is a very handy person."
"What floor does she live on?"
"On our own floor, not far off . . . at the end of the passage. . . .
And, now that I think of it, her kitchen window. . . ."
"Looks out on this yard?"
"Yes, it is just opposite."
A short silence followed upon this statement.
Then M. Valorbe asked to be taken to Henriette's rooms.
They found her busy sewing, while her son Raoul, a little fellow of six
or seven, sat reading beside her. Somewhat surprised at the sight of
the poor apartment which had been furnished for her, and which
consisted in all of one room without a fireplace, and of a sort of
recess or box-room that did duty for a kitchen, the commissary
questioned her. She seemed upset at hearing of the robbery. The night
before she had herself dressed the countess, and fastened the necklace
round her throat.
"Good gracious!" she exclaimed, "who would have ever thought it?"
"And you have no idea, not the smallest inkling? You know it is
possible that the thief may have passed through your room."
She laughed whole-heartedly, as though not imagining for a moment that
the least suspicion could rest upon her.
"Why, I never left my room! I never go out, you know. And, besides,
look!" She opened the window of the kitchen. "There, it's quite three
yards to the ledge opposite."
"Who told you that we were considering the likelihood of a theft
committed by this way?"
"Why, wasn't the necklace in the closet?"
"How do you know?"
"Goodness me, I always knew that they put it there at night! . . . They
used to talk of it before me. . . ."
Her face, which was still young, but scored by care and sorrow, showed
great gentleness and resignation. Nevertheless, in the silence that
ensued, it suddenly assumed an expression of anguish, as though a
danger had threatened its owner. Henriette drew her son to her. The
child took her hand, and impressed a tender kiss upon it.
"I presume," said M. de Dreux to the commissary, when they were alone
again--"I presume that you do not suspect her? I will answer for her.
She is honesty itself."
"Oh, I am quite of your opinion," declared M. Valorbe. "At most, the
thought of an unconscious complicity passed through my mind. But I can
see that we must abandon this explanation . . . it does not in the
least help to solve the problem that faces us."
The commissary did not arrive any further with the inquiry, which was
taken up by the examining magistrate, and completed in the course of
the days that followed. He questioned the servants, experimented on
the way in which the window of the linen-closet opened and shut,
explored the little inner yard from top to bottom. . . . It was all
fruitless. The latch was untouched. The window could not be opened or
closed from the outside.
The inquiries were aimed more particularly at Henriette, for, in spite
of everything, the question always reverted in her direction. Her life
was carefully investigated. It was ascertained that in three years she
had only four times left the house, and it was possible to trace her
movements on each of these occasions. As a matter of fact, she served
Madame de Dreux in the capacity of lady's maid and dressmaker, and her
mistress treated her with a strictness to which all the servants, in
confidence, bore witness.
"Besides," said the magistrate, who, by the end of the first week, had
come to the same conclusions as the commissary, "admitting that we know
the culprit--and we do not--we are no wiser as to the manner in which
the theft was committed. We are hemmed in on either side by two
obstacles--a locked window and a locked door. There are two mysteries:
How could the thief get in? and, more difficult still, how could he get
out, and leave a bolted door and a latched window behind him?"
After four months' investigation the magistrate's private impression
was that M. and Mme. de Dreux, driven by their monetary needs, which
were known to be considerable and pressing, had sold the Queen's
Necklace. He filed the case, and dismissed it from his mind.
-----
The theft of the priceless jewel struck the Dreux-Soubises a blow from
which it took them long to recover. Now that their credit was no
longer sustained by the sort of reserve-fund which the possession of
that treasure constituted, they found themselves confronted with less
reasonable creditors and less willing money-lenders. They were
compelled to resort to energetic measures, to sell and mortgage their
property; in short, it would have meant absolute ruin if two fat
legacies from distant relatives had not come in the nick of time to
save them.
They also suffered in their pride, as though they had lost one of the
quarterings of their coat. And, strange to say, the countess wreaked
her resentment upon her old school friend. She bore a real grudge,
and accused her openly. Henriette was first banished to the servants'
floor, and afterwards given a day's notice to quit.
The life of M. and Mme. de Dreux passed without any event of note.
They traveled a great deal.
One fact alone must be recorded as belonging to this period. A few
months after Henriette's departure the countess received a letter from
her that filled her with amazement:
"Madame,--I do not know how to thank you. For it was you, was it not,
who sent me that? It must have been you. No one else knows of my
retreat in this little village. Forgive me if I am mistaken, and, in
any case, accept the expression of my gratitude for your past
kindnesses."
What did she mean? The countess' past and present kindnesses to
Henriette amounted to a number of acts of injustice. What was the
meaning of these thanks?
Henriette was called upon to explain, and replied that she had received
by post, in an unregistered envelope, two notes of a thousand francs
each. She enclosed the envelope in her letter. It was stamped with
the Paris post-mark, and bore only her address, written in an obviously
disguised hand.
Where did that two thousand francs come from? Who had sent it? And
why had it been sent? The police made inquiries. But what possible
clue could they follow up in that darkness?
The same incident was repeated twelve months later; and a third time;
and a fourth time; and every year for six years, with this difference:
that in the fifth and sixth year the amount sent was doubled, which
enabled Henriette, who had suddenly fallen ill, to provide for proper
nursing. There was another difference: the postal authorities having
seized one of the letters, on the pretext that it was not registered,
the two last letters were handed in for registration--one at Saint-
Germain, the other at Suresnes. The sender had signed his name first
as Anquerty, next as Péchard. The addresses which he gave were false.
At the end of six years Henriette died. The riddle remained unsolved.
-----
All these particulars are matters of public knowledge. The case was
one of those which stir men's minds, and it was strange that this
necklace, after setting all France by the ears at the end of the
eighteenth century, should succeed in causing so much renewed
excitement more than a hundred years later. But what I am now about to
relate is known to none, except the principals interested and a few
persons upon whom the count imposed absolute secrecy. As it is
probable that they will break their promises sooner or later, I have no
scruple in tearing aside the veil; and thus my readers will receive,
together with the key to the riddle, the explanation of the paragraph
that appeared in the newspapers two mornings ago--an extraordinary
paragraph, which added, if possible, a fresh modicum of darkness and
mystery to the obscurity in which this drama was already shrouded.
We must go five days back. Among M. de Dreux-Soubise's guests at lunch
were his two nieces and a cousin; the men were the Président
d'Essaville; M. Bachas, the deputy; The Chevalier Floriani, whom the
count had met in Sicily; and General the Marquis de Rouzières, an old
club acquaintance.
After lunch, the ladies served coffee in the drawing room, and the
gentlemen were given leave to smoke, on condition that they stayed
where they were and talked. One of the girls amused them by telling
their fortunes on the cards. The conversation afterwards turned on the
subject of celebrated crimes. And thereupon M. de Rouzières, who never
neglected an opportunity of teasing the count, brought up the affair of
the necklace--a subject which M. de Dreux detested.
Everyone proceeded to give his opinion. Everyone summed up the
evidence in his own way. And, of course, all the conclusions were
contradictory, and all equally inadmissable.
"And what is your opinion, monsieur?" asked the countess of the
Chevalier Floriani.
"Oh, I have no opinion, madame."
There was a general outcry of protest, inasmuch as the chevalier had
only just been most brilliantly describing a series of adventures in
which he had taken part with his father, a magistrate at Palermo, and
in which he had given evidence of his taste for these matters and of
his sound judgement.
"I confess," he said, "that I have sometimes managed to succeed where
the experts had abandoned all their attempts. But I am far from
considering myself a Sherlock Holmes. . . . And, besides, I hardly
know the facts. . . ."
All faces were turned to the master of the house, who was reluctantly
compelled to recapitulate the details. The chevalier listened,
reflected, put a few questions, and murmured:
"It's odd . . . at first sight the thing does not seem to me so
difficult to guess at."
The count shrugged his shoulders. But the others flocked round the
chevalier, who resumed, in a rather dogmatic tone:
"As a general rule, in order to discover the author of a theft or other
crime, we have first to determine how this theft or crime has been
committed, or at least how it might have been committed. In the
present case nothing could be simpler, in my view, for we find
ourselves face to face not with a number of different suppositions, but
with one hard certainty, which is that the individual was able to enter
only by the door of the bedroom or the window of the linen-closet.
Now, a bolted door cannot be opened from the outside. Therefore, he
must have entered by the window."
"It was closed, and it was found closed," said M. de Dreux, flatly.
Floriani took no notice of the interruption, and continued:
"In order to do so he had only to fix a bridge of some sort--say, a
plank or a ladder--between the balcony outside the kitchen and the
ledge of the window; and, as soon as the jewelcase. . . ."
"But I tell you the window was closed!" cried the count, impatiently.
This time Floriani was obliged to reply. He did so with the greatest
calmness, like a man who refuses to be put out by so insignificant an
objection.
"I have no doubt that it was. But was there no hinged pane or
trancem?"
"What makes you think so?"
"To begin with, it is almost a rule in the casement windows of that
period. And, next, there must have been one, because otherwise the
theft would be inexplicable."
"As a matter of fact, there was one, but it was closed, like the
window. We did not even pay attention to it."
"That was a mistake; for if you had paid attention to it, you would
obviously have seen that it had been opened."
"And how?"
"I presume that, like all of them, it opens by means of a twisted iron
wire, furnished with a ring at its lower end?"
"Yes."
"And did this ring hand down between the casement and the chest?"
"Yes, but I do not understand. . . ."
"It is like this. Through some cleft or cranny in the pane they must
have contrived, with the aid of an instrument of some sort--say, an
iron rod ending in a hook--to grip the ring, press down upon it, and
open the pane."
The count sneered.
"That's perfect! Perfect! You settle it all so easily! Only you have
forgotten one thing, my dear sir, which is that there was no cleft or
cranny in the pane."
"Oh, but there was!"
"How can you say that? We should have seen it."
"To see a thing one must look, and you did not look. The cleft exists,
it is materially impossible that it should not exist, down the side of
the pane, along the putty . . . vertically, of course. . . ."
The count rose. He seemed greatly excited, took two or three nervous
strides across the room, and, going up to Floriani, said:
"Nothing has been changed up there since that day . . . no one has set
foot in that closet."
"In that case, monsieur, it is open to you to assure yourself that my
explanation is in accordance with reality."
"It is in accordance with none of the facts which the police
ascertained. You have seen nothing, you know nothing, and you go
counter to all that we have seen and to all that we know."
Floriani did not seem to remark the count's irritation, and said, with
a smile:
"Well, monsieur, I am trying to see plainly, that is all. If I am
wrong you have only to prove me so. . . ."
"So I will, this very minute. . . . I confess that, in the long run,
your assurance. . . ."
M. de Dreux mumbled a few words more, and then suddenly turned to the
door and went out.
No one spoke a word. All waited anxiously, as though convinced that a
particle of the truth was about to appear. And the silence was marked
by an extreme gravity.
At last the count was seen standing in the doorway. He was pale, and
singularly agitated. He addressed his friends in a voice trembling
with emotion:
"I beg your pardon. . . . Monsieur Floriani's revelations have taken
me so greatly by surprise. . . . I should never have thought. . . ."
His wife asked him eagerly:
"What is it? . . . Tell us! . . . Speak! . . ."
He stammered out:
"The cleft is there . . . at the very place mentioned . . . down the
side of the pane. . . ."
Abruptly seizing the chevalier's arm, he said, in an imperious tone:
"And now, monsieur, continue. . . . I admit that you have been right
so far, but now. . . . That is not all. . . . Tell me . . . what
happened, according to you?"
Floriani gently released his arm, and, after a moment's interval, said:
"Well, according to me, this is what happened: The individual, whoever
he was, knowing that Madame de Dreux was going to wear the necklace at
the reception, put his foot-bridge in position during your absence. He
watched you through the window, and saw you hide the diamonds. As soon
as you were gone he passed some implement down the pane and pulled the
ring."
"Very well; but the distance was too great to allow of his reaching the
latch of the window through the trancem."
"If he was unable to open the window he must have got in through the
trancem itself."
"Impossible; there is not a man so slight in figure as to obtain
admission that way."
"Then it was not a man."
"What do you mean?"
"What I say. If the passage was too narrow to admit a man, then it
must have been a child."
"A child?"
"Did you not tell me that your friend had a son?"
"I did; a son named Raoul."
"It is extremely likely that Raoul committed the theft."
"What evidence have you?"
"What evidence? . . . There is no lack of evidence. . . . For
instance . . ." He was silent, and reflected for a few seconds. Then
he continued: "For instance, it is incredible that the child could have
brought a foot-bridge from outside and taken it away again unperceived.
He must have employed what lay ready to hand. In the little room where
Henriette did her cooking, were there not some shelves against the wall
on which she kept her pots and pans?"
"There were two shelves, as far as I remember."
"We must find out if these shelves were really fixed to the wooden
brackets that support them. If so, we are entitled to believe that the
child unscrewed them and then fastened them together. Perhaps, also,
if there was a range, we shall discover a stove-hook or plate-lifter
which he would have employed to open the hinged pane."
The count went out without a word, and this time the others did not
even feel that little touch of anxiety attendant upon the unknown
which they had experienced on the first occasion. They knew, they knew
absolutely, that Floriani's view were correct. There emanated from
that man an impression of such strict certainty that they listened to
him not as though he were deducting facts one from the other, but as
though he were describing events the accuracy of which it was easy to
verify as he proceeded. And no one felt surprised when the count
returned and said:
"Yes, it's the child . . . there's no doubt about it . . . everything
proves it. . . ."
"Did you see the shelves . . . the plate-lifter?"
But Madame de Dreux-Soubise exclaimed:
"The child! . . . You mean his mother. Henriette is the only guilty
person. She must have compelled her son to . . ."
"No," said the chevalier, "the mother had nothing to do with it."
"Come, come! They lived in the same room; the child cannot have acted
unknown to Henriette."
"They occupied the same room; but everything happened in the adjoining
recess, at night, while the mother was asleep."
"And what about the necklace?" said the count. "It would have been
found among the child's things."
"I beg your pardon. *He* used to go out. The very morning when you
found him with his book he had come back from school, and perhaps the
police, instead of exhausting their resources against the innocent
mother, would have been better advised to make a search there, in his
desk, among his lesson-books."
"Very well. But the two thousand francs which Henriette received every
year: is not that the best sign of her complicity?"
"Would she have written to thank you for the money if she had been an
accomplice? Besides, was she not kept under supervision? Whereas the
child was free, and had every facility for going to the nearest town,
seeing a dealer, and selling him a diamond cheaply, or two diamonds, as
the case demanded . . . the only condition being that the money should
be sent from Paris, in consideration of which the transaction would be
repeated next year."
The Dreux-Soubises and their guests were oppressed by an undefinable
sense of uneasiness. There was really in Floriani's tone and attitude
something more than that certainty which had so irritated the count
from the beginning. There was something resembling irony--an irony,
moreover, that seemed hostile rather than sympathetic and friendly, as
it ought to have been. The count affected a laugh.
"All of this is delightfully ingenious. Accept my compliments. What a
brilliant imagination you possess!"
"No, no, no!" cried Floriani, with more seriousness. "I am not
imagining anything; I am recalling circumstances which were inevitably
such as I have described them to you."
"What do you know of them?"
"What you yourself have told me. I picture the life of the mother and
the child down there in the country: the mother falling ill, the tricks
and inventions of the little fellow to sell the stones and save his
mother, or at least to ease her last moments. Her illness carries her
off. She dies. Years pass. The child grows up, becomes a man. And
then--this time, I am willing to admit that I am giving scope to my
imagination--suppose that this man should feel a longing to return to
the places where his childhood was spent, that he sees them once again,
that he finds the people who have suspected and accused his mother:
think of the poignant interest of such an interview in the old house
under whose roof the different stages of the drama were enacted!"
His words echoed for a moment or two in the restless silence, and the
faces of M. and Mme. de Dreux revealed a desperate endeavor to
understand, combined with an agonizing dread of understanding. The
count asked, between his teeth:
"Tell me, sir! Who are you?"
"I? Why, the Chevalier Floriani, whom you met at Palermo, and whom you
have had the kindness to invite to your house time after time."
"Then what is the meaning of this story?"
"Oh, nothing at all! It is a mere joke on my part. I am trying to
picture to myself the delight which Henriette's son, if he were still
alive, would take in telling you that he is the only culprit, and that
he became so because his mother was on the point of losing her place as
a . . . as a domestic servant, which was her only means of livelihood,
and because the child suffered at the sight of his mother's
unhappiness."
He had half risen from his seat, and, bending towards the countess, was
expressing himself in terms of suppressed emotion. There was no doubt
possible. The Chevalier Floriani was none other than Henriette's son.
Everything in his attitude, in his words, proclaimed the fact.
Besides, was it not his evident intention, his wish, to be recognized
as such?
The count hesitated. What line of conduct was he to adopt towards
this daring individual? To ring the bell? Provoke a scandal? Unmask
the villain who had robbed him? But it was so long ago! And who would
believe this story of a guilty child? No, it was better to accept the
position and pretend not to grasp its real meaning. And the count,
going up to Floriani, said, playfully:
"Your little romance is very interesting and very entertaining. It has
quite taken hold of me, I assure you. But, according to you, what
became of that exemplary young man, this model son? I trust he did not
stop on his prosperous road to fortune."
"Certainly not!"
"Why, of course not! After so fine a start, too! At the age of six to
capture the Queen's Necklace, the celebrated necklace coveted by Marie-
Antoinette!"
"And to capture it, mind you," said Floriani, entering into the count's
mood, "to capture it without its costing him the smallest
unpleasantness, the police never taking it into their heads to examine
the condition of the panes, or noticing that the window-ledge was too
clean after he had wiped it so as to obliterate the traces of his feet
on the thick dust. . . . You must admit that this was enough to turn
the head of a scapegrace of his years. It was all too easy. He had
only to desire it and put out his hand. . . . Well, he desired . . ."
"And put out his hand?"
"Both hands!" replied the chevalier, with a smile.
A shudder passed through his hearers. What mystery concealed the life
of this self-styled Floriani? How extraordinary must be the existence
of this adventurer, a gifted thief at the age of six, who today, with
the refined taste of a dilettante in search of an emotion, or, at most,
to satisfy a sense of revenge, had come to brave his victim in that
victim's own house, audaciously, madly, and yet with all the good-
breeding of a man of the world on a visit!
He rose, and went up to the countess to take his leave. She suppressed
a movement of recoil. He smiled.
"Ah, madame, you are frightened! Have I carried my little comedy of
parlor magician too far?"
"Not at all, monsieur. On the contrary, the legend of that good son
has interested me greatly, and I am happy to think that my necklace
should have been the occasion of so brilliant a career. But does it not
seem to you that the son of that . . . of that woman, of Henriette,
was, above all things, obeying his natural upbringing?"
He started, felt the point of her remark, and replied:
"I am sure he was; and, in fact, his upbringing must have been quite
strong, or the child would have been discouraged."
"Why?"
"Well, you know, most of the stones were false. The only real ones
were the few diamonds bought of the English jeweler. The others had
been sold, one by one, in obedience to the stern necessities of life."
"It was the Queen's Necklace, monsieur, for all that," said the
countess, haughtily, "and that, it seems to me, is what Henriette's
son was unable to understand."
"He must have understood, madame, that, false or genuine, the necklace
was, before all, a show thing, a sign-board."
M. de Dreux made a movement. His wife stopped him at once.
"Monsieur," she said, "if the man to whom you allude has the least
sense of honor . . ."
She hesitated, shrinking before Floriani's calm gaze. He repeated
after her:
"If he has the least feeling of honor . . ."
She felt that she would gain nothing by speaking to him in this way;
and, despite her anger and indignation, quivering with humiliated
pride, she said, almost politely:
"Monsieur, tradition says that Rétaux de Villette, when the Queen's
Necklace was in his hands, forced out all the diamonds with Jeanne de
Valois, but he dared not touch the setting. He understood that the
diamonds were but the ornaments, the accessories, whereas the setting
was the essential work, the creation of the artist; and he respected it.
Do you think that this man understood as much?"
"I have no doubt but that the setting exists. The child respected it."
"Well, monsieur, if ever you happen to meet him, tell him that he is
acting unjustly in keeping one of those relics which are the property
and glory of certain families, and that though he may have removed the
stones, the Queen's Necklace continues to belong to the house of Dreux-
Soubise. It is ours as much as our name or our honor."
The chevalier replied, simply:
"I will tell him so, madame."
He bowed low before her, bowed to the count, bowed to all the visitors,
one after the other, and went out.
-----
Four days later Madame de Dreux found a red morocco case, stamped with
the arms of the Cardinal de Rohan, on her bedroom table. She opened
it. It contained the necklace of Marie-Antoinette.
But as in the life of any logical and single-minded man all things must
needs concur towards the same object--and as a little advertisement
never does any harm--the Echo de France of the next day contained the
following sensational paragraph:
"The Queen's Necklace, the famous historic jewel stolen many years ago
since from the Dreux-Soubise family, has been recovered by Arsène
Lupin. Arsène Lupin has hastened to restore it to its lawful owners.
This delicate and chivalrous act is sure to meet with universal
commendation."
CHAPTER 6: THE SEVEN OF HEARTS
"How did you come to know Arsène Lupin?"
No one doubts that I know him. The details which I am able to heap up
concerning his bewildering personality, the undeniable facts which I
set forth, the fresh proofs which I supply, the interpretation which I
provide of certain acts of which others have seen only the outward
manifestations, without following their secret reasons or their
invisible mechanism: all this points, if not to an intimacy, which
Lupin's very existence would render impossible, at least to friendly
relations and an uninterrupted confidence.
But how did I come to know him? Why was I favored to the extent of
becoming his biographer? Why I rather than another?
The answer presents no difficulty: accident alone determined a
selection in which my personal merit goes for nothing. It was accident
that threw me across his path. It was by accident that I was mixed up
in one of his most curious and mysterious adventures; by accident,
lastly, that I became an actor in a drama of which he was the wonderful
stage-manager, an obscure and complicated drama bristling with such
extraordinary catastrophes that I feel a certain perplexity as I sit
down to describe them.
The first act passes in the course of that famous night of the twenty-
second of June which has been so much discussed. And I may as well at
once confess that I attribute my somewhat abnormal conduct on that
occasion to the very peculiar condition of mind in which I found myself
when I returned home. I had been dining with friends at the Restaurant
de la Cascade, and throughout the evening, while we sat smoking and
listening to the Bohemian band and their melancholy waltzes, we had
talked of nothing but crimes, robberies, lurid and terrifying
adventures. This is always a bad preparation for sleep.
The Saint-Martins had driven away in their motor-car. Jean Daspry--the
charming, reckless Daspry, who was to meet his death, six months later,
in so tragic a fashion, on the Morocco frontier--Jean Daspry and I
walked back in the dark, hot night. When we reached the little house
at Neuilly, on the Boulevard Maillot, where I had been living for the
past twelve months, he said:
"Do you never feel frightened?"
"What an idea!"
"Well, this little house of yours is very lonely: no neighbors . . .
surrounded by waste land . . . I'm no coward, as you know. And yet . .
."
"By Jove, you're in a cheerful mood to-night!"
"Oh, I said that as I might have said anything else. The Saint-Martins
have impressed me with their stories about burglars and highwaymen."
We shook hands, and he walked away. I took out my key, and opened the
door.
"That's pleasant!" I muttered. "Antoine has forgotten to leave a
lighted candle for me."
And suddenly I remembered: Antoine was out; I had given him his night
off.
I at once resented the darkness and the silence. I groped my way up-
stairs to my room as quickly as I could, and, contrary to my custom,
turned the key in the door, and shot the bolt.
The light of the candle restored my presence of mind. Nevertheless, I
was careful to take my revolver--a big, long-range revolver--from its
case, and laid it beside my bed. This precaution completed my
composure. I went to bed, and, as usual, took up the book that lay on
my night-table to read myself to sleep.
A great surprise awaited me. In the place of the paper-cutter with
which I had marked my page the night before I now found an envelope
sealed with five red seals. I seized it eagerly. It was addressed in
my name, accompanied by the word "Urgent."
A letter! A letter addressed to me! Who could have put it there?
Somewhat nervously I tore open the envelope, and read:
"From the moment when you open this letter,
whatever happens, whatever you may hear, do
not stir, do not make a movement, do not utter
a sound. If you do, you are lost."
Now I am not a coward, and I know as well as another how a man should
bear himself in the presence of real danger or smile at the fanciful
perils that alarm our imagination. But, I repeat, I was in an abnormal
and easily impressionable frame of mind; my nerves were on edge.
Besides, was there not something perturbing in all this, something
inexplicable -- enough to trouble the most undaunted soul?
My fingers feverishly pressed the sheet of notepaper, and my eyes
incessantly read and reread the threatening words:
"Do not make a movement, do not utter a sound.
If you do, you are lost."
"Nonsense!" I thought. "It's a joke, a silly trick!"
I was on the point of laughing, I even tried to laugh aloud. What was
it that prevented me? What vague fear compressed my throat?
At least, I would blow out the candle. No, I could not blow it out.
"Not a movement, or you are lost," said the letter.
But why struggle against this kind of auto-suggestion, which is often
more urgent than the most precise facts? There was nothing to do but
to close my eyes. I closed my eyes.
At that moment a light sound passed through the silence, followed by a
creaking noise. It seemed to me to come from a large adjoining room
which I had fitted up as a study, and from which I was separated only
by the passage.
The approach of real danger excited me, and I felt that I was going to
jump up, seize my revolver, and rush into the other room. I did not
jump up. One of the curtains of the window on my left had moved before
my eyes.
There was no doubt possible; it had moved. It was still moving! And I
saw -- oh, I distinctly saw! -- that in that narrow space between the
curtains and the window there stood a human form, the thickness of
which prevented the material from hanging down straight.
And the being saw me, too; it was certain that he could see me through
the wide meshes of the stuff. Then I understood all. While the others
were carrying off their booty, his mission consisted in terrorizing me.
Jump out of bed? Seize a revolver? It was impossible . . . he was
there! At the least movement, at the least sound, I was lost.
A violent blow shook the house, followed by smaller blows, in twos and
threes, like those of a hammer driving in tacks and rebounding -- or,
at least, that was what I imagined in the confusion of my brain; and
other noises followed, a regular din of different noises, which proved
that my visitors were doing as they pleased and acting in all security.
They were right: I did not budge. Was it cowardice on my part? No,
it was annihilation rather, a complete incapacity to move a single
muscle. Prudence also; for, after all, why struggle? Behind that man
were ten others, who would come at his call. Was it worth while to
risk my life to save a few hangings and knick-knacks?
And this torture lasted all night long: an intolerable torture, a
terrible agony! The noise had stopped, but I never ceased waiting for
it to begin again! And the man, the man who stood there watching me,
weapon in hand! My terrified gaze never left him. And my heart beat,
and the perspiration streamed from my forehead and my whole body!
Suddenly I was pervaded by an unspeakable sense of relief: a milk-
cart, of which I knew the clatter well, passed along the boulevard; and
at the same time, I received the impression that the dawn was filtering
through the drawn blinds, and that a glimmer of daylight from the
outside was mingling with the darkness within.
And the light entered my room. And other vehicles passed. And all the
phantoms of the night vanished.
Then I put one arm out of bed slowly and stealthily. Opposite me
nothing stirred. With my eyes I noted the fold in the curtain, the
exact spot at which to take aim. I made a precise calculation of the
movements which I should have to make. I grasped the revolver -- and I
fired.
I sprang out of bed with a shout of deliverance, and leaped at the
curtain. There was a hole through the material, and a hole in the pane
behind it. As for the man, I had missed him . . . for the very good
reason that there was nobody there.
Nobody! And so all night long I had been hypnotized by a fold in a
curtain! And during that time, criminals had . . . . Furiously, with
an impulse which nothing could have stopped, I turned the key in the
lock, opened my door, crossed the passage, opened another door, and
rushed into the room.
But a feeling of stupefaction rooted me to the threshold, panting,
dumfounded, even more astonished than I had been by the absence of the
man: nothing had disappeared! All the things which I had expected to
find gone -- furniture, pictures, old silks, and velvets -- all these
things were in their places!
It was an incomprehensible sight. I could not believe my eyes. And
yet that din, those noises of moving furniture. . . . I went all round
the room, inspected the walls, took an inventory of all the objects
which I knew so well. There was not a thing missing! And what
disconcerted me most of all was that nothing either revealed the
passing of the evil-doers -- not a sign, not a chair out of place, not
a footmark.
"Come, come," I said, clasping my head with my two hands, "after all,
I'm not a madman! I heard what I heard! . . ."
I examined the room inch by inch, employing the most minute methods of
investigation; it was to no purpose. Or, rather . . . but could I
consider that a discovery? Under a small Persian rug, flung down on
the floor, I picked up a card -- a playing-card. It was a seven of
hearts, similar to the seven of hearts in any French pack of cards; but
it attracted my attention because of a rather curious detail. The
extreme lower end of each of the seven red, heart-shaped pips was
pierced with a hole, the round and regular hole made by the point of an
awl.
That, and no more. A card, and a letter found in a book! Beyond that,
nothing. Was this enough to avouch that I had not been the sport of a
dream?
-----
I pursued my investigations throughout the day. It was a large-sized
room, out of all proportion with the general smallness of the house,
and its decoration bore witness to the eccentric taste of the man who
had conceived it. The floor was made of a mosaic of tiny, parti-
coloured stones, forming large symmetrical designs. The walls were
covered with a similar mosaic, arranged in panels representing
Pompeiian allegories, Byzantine compositions, mediaeval frescoes: a
Bacchus sat astride a barrel; an emperor with a golden crown and a
flowing beard held a sword uplifted in his right hand.
High up in the wall was a huge solitary window, something like the
window of a studio. It was always left open at night, and the
probability was that the men had entered by it with the aid of a
ladder. But here again there was no certainty. The posts of the
ladder would necessarily have left marks on the trodden ground of the
yard: there were no such marks. The grass of the waste land
surrounding the house would have been freshly trampled: it was not.
I confess that the idea of applying to the police never entered my
head, so inconsistent and absurd were the facts which I should have had
to lay before them. They would have laughed at me. But the next day
but one was the day for my column in the Gil Blas, for which I was then
writing. Obsessed as I was by my adventure, I described it at full
length.
My article attracted some little attention, but I could see that it was
not taken seriously, and that it was looked upon as a fanciful rather
than a true story. The Saint-Martins chaffed me about it. Daspry,
however, who was something of an expert in these matters, came to see
me, made me explain the whole case to him, and studied it . . . but
with no more success than myself.
A few mornings later the bell at the front gate rang, and Antoine came
to tell me that a gentleman wished to speak to me. He had refused to
give his name. I asked him up.
He was a man of about forty, with a very dark complexion and strongly
marked features; and his clothes, which, though greatly worn, were neat
and clean, proclaimed a taste for fashion that contrasted with his
manners, which were rather common.
Coming straight to the point, he said, in a grating voice, and in an
accent that confirmed my opinion as to the man's social status:
"I have been out of town, sir, and I saw the Gil Blas at a café. I
read your article. It interested me . . . immensely."
"I thank you."
"And I came back."
"Ah!"
"Yes, to see you. Are all the facts which you describe correct?"
"Absolutely correct."
"Is there not a single one invented by yourself?"
"Not a single one."
"In that case, I may have some information to give you."
"Pray speak."
"No."
"How do you mean?"
"Before saying any more, I must make sure that I am right."
"And to do that? . . ."
"I must remain alone in this room."
I looked at him in surprise.
"I don't quite see . . ."
"It's an idea that came to me on reading your article. Certain details
establish a really remarkable coincidence between your adventure and
another which was revealed to me by chance. If I am wrong, it would be
better for me to keep silence. And the only way of finding out is for
me to remain alone . . ."
What was there underlying this proposal? Later I remembered that, in
making it, the man wore an uneasy air, an anxious look. But at the
same time, although feeling a little astonished, I saw nothing
particularly abnormal in his request. And, besides, his curiosity
stimulated me.
I replied:
"Very well. How long do you want?"
"Oh, three minutes, that's all. I shall join you in three minutes from
now."
I left the room and went down-stairs. I took out my watch. One minute
passed. Two minutes . . . What gave me that sense of oppression? Why
did those moments seem to me more solemn than any others? . . .
Two minutes and a half. . . . Two minutes and three-quarters. . . .
And suddenly a shot resounded.
I rushed up the stairs in half a dozen strides, and entered the room.
A cry of horror escaped me.
The man lay motionless, on his left side, in the middle of the floor.
Blood trickled from his head, mingled with portions of brains. A
smoking revolver lay close by his hand.
He gave a single convulsion, and that was all.
But there was something that struck me even more than this awful sight
-- something that was the reason why I ddid not at once call out for
help, nor fling myself on my knees to see if the man was still
breathing: at two paces from him a seven of hearts lay on the floor!
I picked it up. The lower point of each of the seven pips was pierced
with a hole. . . .
-----
Half an hour later the commissary of police of Neuilly arrived,
followed, in a few moments, by the police surgeon, and by M. Dudouis,
the head of the detective service. I was careful not the touch the
corpse. There was nothing to interfere with their first observations.
These were brief, the more so as, at the beginning, the officers
discovered nothing, or very little. There were no papers in the dead
man's pockets, no name on his clothes, no initials on his linen; in
short, there was no clue whatever to his identity.
And in the room itself the same order prevailed as before. The
furniture had not been moved, the different objects were all in their
old places. And yet the man had not come to see me with the sole
intention of killing himself, or because he considered my house better
suited than another for the purpose of committing suicide. There must
have been some motive to drive him to this act of despair, and this
motive must have resulted from some new fact ascertained by himself in
the course of the three minutes which he had spent alone.
But what fact? What had he seen? What had he discovered? What
frightful secret had he surprised?
At the last moment, however, an incident occurred which seemed to us of
great importance. Two policemen were stooping to lift the corpse in
order to carry it away on a stretcher when they perceived that the left
hand, till then closed and shrunk, had become relaxed, and a crumpled
visiting-card fell from it. The card bore the words:
_______________________
| |
| GEORGES ANDERMATT |
| 37, Rue de Berry |
|_______________________|
What did this mean? Georges Andermatt was a big Paris banker, the
founder and chairman of the Metal Exchange, which has done so much to
forward the prospects of the metal trade in France. He lived in great
style, kept a drag, motor-cars, a racing-stable. His parties were very
much frequented, and Madame Andermatt was well known for her charm and
her personal beauty.
"Could that be the man's name?" I murmured.
The head of the detective service bent over the corpse.
"No. Monsieur Andermatt is a pale-faced man, with hair just turning
grey."
"But why that card?"
"Have you a telephone, sir?"
"Yes, it's in the hall. If you will come this way . . ."
He turned up the directory, and asked for number 415.21.
"Is Monsieur Andermatt in? . . . My name is Dudouis. . . . Please ask
him to come with all speed to 102, Boulevard Maillot. It's urgent."
Twenty minutes later M. Andermatt stepped out of his car. He was told
the reason why he had been sent for, and was then taken up-stairs to
see the body.
He had a momentary emotion that contracted his features, and said, in
an undertone, as though involuntarily:
"Etienne Varin."
"Do you know him?"
"No . . . or, at least, yes . . . but only by sight. His brother . .
."
"He has a brother?"
"Yes, Alfred Varin. . . . His brother used to come and ask me to assist
him. . . . I have forgotten in what connection . . ."
"Where does he live?"
"The two brothers used to live together . . . in the Rue de Provence, I
think."
"And have you no suspicion of the reason why he shot himself?"
"None at all."
"Still, he was holding your card in his hand . . . your card, with your
name and address."
"I can't understand it. It's obviously a mere accident which the
inquiry will explain."
It was, in any case, a very curious accident, I thought, and I felt
that we all received the same impression.
I noticed this impression again in the papers of the next morning, and
among all my friends with whom I discussed the circumstances. Amid the
mysteries that complicated it, after the renewed and disconcerting
discovery of that seven of hearts seven times pierced -- after the two
incidents, each as puzzling as the other, of which my house had been
the scene -- that visiting-card seemed at last to promise a glimpse of
light. By its means they would arrive at the truth.
But, contrary to the general expectation, M. Andermatt furnished not a
single clue.
"I have said all that I know," he repeated. "What can I do more? I
was the first to be thunderstruck by the fact that my card was found
where it was; and, like everybody else, I shall expect this point to be
cleared up."
It was not cleared up. The inquiry established that the Varins were
two brothers, of Swiss origin, who had led a very checkered life under
different aliases, frequenting the gambling-houses and connected with a
whole gang of foreigners whose movements had been watched, and who had
dispersed after a series of burglaries in which their participation was
not proved until later. At No. 24, Rue de Provence, where the brothers
Varin had, in fact, lived six years before, no one knew what had become
of them.
I confess that, for my part, the case seemed to me so intricate that I
scarcely believed in the possibility of a solution, and I tried hard to
banish it from my mind. But Jean Daspry, on the contrary -- and I saw
a great deal of him at that time -- grew daily more enthusiastic about
it. It was he that called my attention to the following paragraph from
a foreign paper, which was reproduced and commented upon throughout the
press of the country:
"A new submarine is to be tried shortly in the presence
of the Emperor. It is claimed on behalf of this vessel
that her class will revolutionize the conditions of naval
warfare in the future. The place of the trial will be
kept secret until the last moment; but the name of the
submarine has leaked out, through an indiscretion in
official circles: she is called the Seven of Hearts."
The Seven of Hearts! Was this a chance coincidence? Or did it
establish a link between the name of the new submarine and the
incidents of which we have spoken? But what sort of link? Surely,
there could be no possible connection between what was happening here
and in Germany?
"How do you know?" said Daspry. "The most incongruous effects often
arise from one and the same cause."
Two days later another piece of news was reprinted from the German
papers:
"It is now contended that the Seven of Hearts, the
submarine whose trials are to take place forthwith,
has been designed by French engineers. These
engineers, after vainly seeking the support of their
own government, are said to have applied next, and
with no more success, to the British Admiralty. We
need hardly say that we publish this statement with
all reserve."
I do not wish to insist too much upon the facts of an extremely
delicate character which provoked considerable excitement, as the
reader will remember, in France. Nevertheless, since all danger of
international complications is now removed, I must speak of an article
in the Echo de France which made a great deal of noise at the time, and
which threw a more or less vague light upon "The Seven of Hearts
Affair," as it was called.
Here it is, as it appeared under the signature of "Salvator":
"THE SEVEN OF HEARTS AFFAIR: A CORNER OF THE VEIL RAISED
"We will be brief. Ten years ago Louis Lacombe, a young
engineer in the mines, wishing to devote his time and
money to the studies which he was pursuing, resigned his
appointment, and hired a small house, at 102, Boulevard
Maillot, which had recently been built and decorated by
an Italian nobleman. Through the intermediary of two
brothers called Varin, of Lausanne, one of whom assisted
him as a preparator of his experiments, while the other
went in search of financial bankers for his schemes,
Lacombe entered into relations with M. Georges Andermatt,
who had then just founded the Paris Metal Exchange.
"After a number of interviews he succeeded in interesting
M. Andermatt in the plans of a submarine upon which he was
engaged; and it was understood that, as soon as the
invention had been definitely perfected, M. Andermatt
would employ his influence to persuade the Minister of
Marine to grant a series of trials.
"For two years Louis Lacombe was constantly visiting the
Hotel Andermatt, and submitting his improvements to the
banker, until the day came when, having lighted upon the
final formula which he was seeking and being fully
satisfied with his labors, he asked M. Andermatt to set
to work on his side.
"On that day Louis Lacombe dined at the Andermatts'. He
left the house at half-past eleven in the evening. Since
then he has not been seen by mortal eyes.
"On reading the newspapers of the day we find that the
young man's family called in the police, and that the
public prosecutor took the matter up. But the inquiries
led to nothing, and it was generally believed that Louis
Lacombe, who was looked upon as an eccentric and whimsical
young fellow, had gone abroad without acquainting any of
his friends with his intentions.
"If we accept this somewhat improbable suggestion, one
question remains, a question of supreme importance to the
country: what became of the plans of the submarine? Did
Louis Lacombe take them with him? Were they destroyed?
"We have caused the most serious investigations to be made,
resulting in the conclusion that the plans are in existence.
The brothers Varin have had them in their hands. How did
they obtain possession of them? This we have not yet
succeeded in establishing, any more than we know why they did
not try to sell them sooner. They may have feared lest they
should be asked whence they obtained them. In any case, this
fear subsided in course of time, and we are in a position to
state as a certainty that Louis Lacombe's plans are now the
property of a foreign power, and, if necessary, to publish the
letters exchanged in this connection between the representatives
of that power and the brothers Varin. At the moment of writing
the Seven of Hearts conceived by Louis Lacombe has been brought
into actual existence by our neighbors.
"Will the reality answer to the optimistic expectations of the
men implicated in this act of treason? We have reasons for
hoping the contrary, and we should like to think that these
reasons will be justified by the event.
And a postscript added:
"Our hopes were well grounded. Private information received
at the moment of going to press enables us to state that the
trials of the Seven of Hearts have not proved satisfactory.
It is quite probable that the plans delivered by the Varins
lacked the last document which Louis Lacombe brought to M.
Andermatt, on the evening of his disappearance, a document
which was essential to the complete understanding of the
project -- a sort of summary of definite conclusions,
valuations and measurements contained in the other papers.
Without this document the plans remain imperfect, even as the
document is useless without the plans.
"There is, therefore, still time to take action and to recover
what belongs to us. In undertaking this very difficult task
we rely greatly upon the assistance of M. Andermatt. He will
be anxious to explain the apparently inexplicable conduct
which he has maintained from the first. He will say not only
why he did not tell what he knew at the time of Etienne Varin's
suicide, but also why he never mentioned the disappearance of
the papers with the existence of which he was acquainted. He
will also say why, for the past six years, he has had the
brothers Varin watched by detectives in his pay.
"We look to him for deeds, not words. If not . . ."
The article ended with this brutal implied threat. But what force did
it possess? What means of intimidation could "Salvator," the
anonymous writer of the article, hope to exercise over M. Andermatt?
A host of reporters swept down on the banker, and a dozen interviews
described the scorn with which he rejected the insinuations which
seemed to bring the matter home to him. Thereupon the correspondent of
the Echo de France retorted with these three lines:
"M. Andermatt may like it or dislike it, but from to-day he is
our collaborator in the work which we have undertaken."
On the day when this rejoinder appeared Daspry and I dined together.
After dinner, with the newspapers spread out on my table before us, we
discussed the case, and went into it from every point of view, with the
irritation which a man would feel if he were walking indefinitely in
the dark, and constantly stumbling over the same obstacles.
Suddenly -- for the bell had not rung -- the door opened, and a lady
covered with a thick veil, entered unannounced.
I at once rose to meet her. She said:
"Are you the gentleman that lives here?"
"Yes, madame. But I am bound to say . . ."
"The gate on the boulevard was open," she explained.
"But the hall door? . . ."
She made no reply, and I reflected that she must have gone round by the
tradesmen's entrance. Then she knew the way?
A rather embarrassing pause ensued. She looked at Daspry. I
introduced him to her mechanically -- as I would have done in a
drawing-room. Then I offered her a chair, and asked her to tell me the
object of her visit.
She raised her veil, and I saw that she was dark, with regular
features, and that, though not very pretty, she possessed an infinite
charm, which came, above all, from her eyes -- her grave, sad eyes.
She said simply:
"I am Madame Andermatt."
"Madame Andermatt!" I repeated, more and more surprised.
There was a fresh pause. And she resumed, in a calm voice and an
exceedingly quiet manner:
"I have come about that matter . . . which you know of. I thought that
perhaps you might be able to give me some particulars . . ."
"Upon my word, madame, I know no more about it than what has appeared
in the papers. Please tell me precisely how I can be of use to you."
"I don't know . . . I don't know . . ."
It was only then that I received an intuition that her calmness was
assumed, and that a great agitation lay hidden under this air of
perfect security. And we were silent, both equally embarrassed.
But Daspry, who had never ceased watching her, came up to her, and
said:
"Will you allow me to put a few questions to you, madame?"
"Oh yes!" she cried. "I will speak if you do that."
"You will speak . . . whatever the questions may be?"
"Whatever they may be."
He reflected, and then asked:
"Did you know Louis Lacombe?"
"Yes, through my husband."
"When did you see him last?"
"On the evening when he dined with us."
"On that evening did nothing lead you to think that you would never see
him again?"
"No. He said something about a journey to Russia, but it was a vague
allusion."
"So you expected to see him soon?"
"Yes, the next day but one, at dinner."
"And how do you account for his disappearance?"
"I can't account for it."
"And Monsieur Andermatt?"
"I don't know."
"Still . . ."
"Don't ask me about that."
"The article in the Echo de France seems to suggest . . ."
"What it seems to suggest is that the brothers Varin had something to
do with his disappearance."
"Is that your own opinion?"
"Yes."
"On what do you base your conviction?"
"When Louis Lacombe left us he was carrying a portfolio containing all
the papers relating to his scheme. Two days later my husband and one
of the Varins, the one who is still alive, had an interview, in the
course of which my husband acquired the certainty that those papers
were in the hands of the two brothers."
"And did he not lodge an information?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because there was something in the portfolio besides Louis Lacombe's
papers."
"What was that?"
She hesitated, made as though to answer, and, finally, kept silence.
Daspry continued:
"So that is the reason why your husband had the two brothers watched
without informing the police. He hoped to recover both the papers and
that other . . . compromising thing, thanks to which the two brothers
levied a sort of blackmail on him."
"On him . . . and on me."
"Ah, on you, too?"
"On me principally."
She uttered these three words in a dull voice. Daspry observed her,
took a few steps aside, and, returning to her:
"Did you write Louis Lacombe?"
"Certainly . . . my husband had business . . ."
"Apart from those official letters, did you not write Louis Lacombe . .
. any other letters? . . . Forgive me for insisting, but it is
essential that I should know the whole truth. Did you write any other
letters?"
She turned very red, and murmured:
"Yes."
"And are those the letters which the brothers Varin had in their
possession?"
"Yes."
"So Monsieur Andermatt knows?"
"He never saw them, but Alfred Varin told him of their existence, and
threatened to publish them if my husband took action. My husband was
afraid . . . he dreaded a scandal."
"Only he did all he could to obtain the letters from them."
"He did all he could . . . at least, I presume so; for ever since the
day of that last interview with Alfred Varin, and after the few very
violent words in which he told me of it, there has been no intimacy, no
confidence between my husband and myself. We live together like two
strangers."
"In that case, if you have nothing to lose, what do you fear?"
"However indifferent I may have become to him, I am the woman he once
loved, the woman he could still have loved -- oh, I am certain of
that!" she whispered, in an eager voice. "He would still have loved me
if he had not obtained possession of those accursed letters."
"What! Did he succeed? . . . But surely the two brothers were on
their guard?"
"Yes; and it seems that they even used to boast of having a safe
hiding-place."
"Well? . . ."
"I have reason to believe that my husband has discovered the hiding-
place."
"Not really! Where was it?"
"Here."
I started.
"Here!"
"Yes; and I always suspected it. Louis Lacombe, who was very clever
and had a passion for mechanics, used to amuse himself, in his spare
time, by constructing locks and safes. The brothers Varin must have
discovered one of these receptacles, and used it afterwards for the
purpose of hiding the letters . . . and other things as well, no
doubt."
"But they did not live here!" I exclaimed.
"This house stood empty until your arrival, four months ago. They
probably, therefore, used to come here; and they will have thought,
moreover, that your presence need not hinder them on the day when they
might want to withdraw all their papers. But they reckoned without my
husband, who, on the night of the twenty-second of June, forced the
safe, took . . . what he was looking for, and left his card behind him
to make it quite clear to the two brothers that the tables were turned,
and that he no longer had any cause to fear them. Two days later,
after seeing your article in the Gil Blas, Etienne Varin came to call
on you in hot haste, was left alone in this room, found the safe empty
. . . and shot himself."
After a moment's silence, Daspry asked:
"This is a mere conjecture, is it not? Has Monsieur Andermatt said
anything to you?"
"No."
"Has his attitude towards you changed? Has he seemed to you to be
brooding or betrayed any anxiety?"
"No."
"And don't you think that he would, if he had found the letters? For
my part, I don't believe that he has them. In my opinion, it was some
one else who entered here."
"But who can it have been?"
"The mysterious person who is managing this business, who holds all the
threads of it, and who is directing it towards an object of which we
can only catch a glimpse through all these complications; the
mysterious person whose invisible and all-powerful action has been felt
from the start. It was he and his friends who entered this house on
the twenty-second of June; it was he who discovered the hiding-place;
it was he who left Monsieur Andermatt's card behind him; it is he who
has the correspondence of the brothers Varin and the proofs of their
treason in his keeping."
"But who is 'he'?" I broke in, with some impatience.
"Why, the correspondent of the Echo de France, of course -- 'Salvator'.
Isn't the evidence overpowering? Doesn't the article give details that
could be known only to the man who had fathomed the secrets of the two
brothers?"
"In that case," stammered Madame Andermatt, in dismay, "he has my
letters as well, and he will threaten my husband in his turn! What, in
Heaven's name, am I to do?"
"Write to him," said Daspry, plainly. "Confide in him straight out,
tell him all that you know, and all that you can learn."
"What!"
"Your interests and his are identical. It is beyond all question that
he is acting against the survivor of the two brothers. He is seeking a
weapon against Alfred Varin, not against Monsieur Andermatt. Help
him."
"How?"
"Has your husband that document which completes Louis Lacombe's plans
and allows them to be employed?"
"Yes."
"Tell 'Salvator' so. If need be, try to procure the document for him.
In short, enter into correspondence with him. What risk do you run?"
The advice was daring, at first sight even dangerous, but Madame
Andermatt had very little choice. Besides, as Daspry said, what was
she risking? If the unknown individual was an enemy, this step
rendered the situation no worse than before. If he was a stranger
pursuing some private aim, he must attach but a secondary importance to
those letters.
In any case, it was an idea; and Madame Andermatt, in her mental
disarray, was only too pleased to fall in with it. She thanked us
effusively, and promised to keep us informed.
Two days later she sent us a line which she had received in reply:
"The letters were not there. But set your mind at
rest: I shall have them. I am attending to everything.
"S"
I took up the note. It was in the same handwriting as the
communication which I had found in my bedside book on the evening of
the twenty-second of June.
So Daspry was right: "Salvator" was the great wire-puller in this
affair.
-----
We were beginning, in fact, to discern a few gleams amid the
surrounding darkness, and certain points became illuminated with an
unexpected light. But others remained obscure, such as the discovery
of the two sevens of hearts. I, on my side, always harked back to
this, being more puzzled, perhaps, than I need have been by those two
cards whose seven pierced pips had struck my eyes in such perturbing
circumstances. What part did they play in the drama? What importance
were we to attribute to them? What conclusion were we to draw from the
fact that the submarine built in accordance with Louis Lacombe's plans
bore the name of the Seven of Hearts?
As for Daspry, he paid little attention to the two cards, but devoted
himself entirely to the study of another problem, the solution of which
struck him as more urgent: he hunted indefatigably for the famous
hiding-place.
"Who knows," he said, "That I shall not succeed in finding the letters
which Salvator failed to find . . . through inadvertence, perhaps? It
seems hardly credible that the Varins should have removed from a place
which they considered inaccessible the weapon of which they knew the
inestimable value."
And he went on hunting. Soon the big room had no secret left for him,
and he extended his investigations to all the other rooms in the house,
searched the inside and the outside, examined the stones and bricks of
the walls, lifted up the slates of the roof.
One day he arrived with a pickaxe and a spade, gave me the spade, kept
the pickaxe, and, pointing to the waste ground, said:
"Come along."
I followed him without enthusiasm. He divided the ground into a number
of sections, which he inspected in sequence, until, in one corner, at
the angle formed by the walls of two adjoining properties, his
attention was attracted by a heap of stones and rubble overgrown with
brambles and grass. He attacked it forthwith.
I had to help him. For an hour we labored to no purpose in the glaring
sun. But when, after removing the stones, we came to the ground itself
and opened it, Daspry's pickaxe laid bare a number of bones -- the
remains of a skeleton with shreds of clothing still clinging to it.
And suddenly I felt myself turn pale. I saw, stuck into the earth, a
small iron plate, cut in a rectangular shape, and seeming to bear some
red marks. I stooped. It was as I thought: the iron plate was the
size of a playing-card, and the marks, the color of red corroded in
places, were seven in number, arranged like the pips of a seven of
hearts, and pierced with a hole at each of the seven points.
"Listen to me, Daspry," I said. "I've had enough of all this business.
It's very pleasant for you, if it interests you. But I shall leave you
to enjoy it by yourself."
Was it the excitement? Was it the fatigue of a piece of work carried
out in the heat of too fierce a sun? The fact remains that I staggered
as I went, and that I had to take to my bed, where I remained for
forty-eight hours in a burning fever, and obsessed by skeletons that
danced around me and threw their blood-red hearts at one another's
heads.
Daspry was faithful to me. Every day he gave me three or four hours of
his time, though it is true that he spent them in ferreting, tapping,
and poking around the big room.
"The letters are in there, in that room," he came and told me, at
intervals. "They're in there. I'll stake my life on it."
"Leave me alone, for goodness' sake," I replied, with my hair standing
on end.
On the morning of the third day I got up, feeling very weak still, but
cured. A substantial lunch did me good. But an express letter which I
received at about five o'clock contributed even more to my recovery and
stimulated my curiosity anew, in spite of everything.
The letter contained these words:
"SIR -- The play of which the first act was performed
on the night of the 22nd of June is approaching its
conclusion. As the force of things requires that I
should bring the two principal characters face to
face, and that this the confrontation should take
place at your house, I shall be infinitely obliged
if you will let me have the use of your house this
evening. It would be a good thing if your servant
could be sent out from nine to eleven, and perhaps
it would be as well if you yourself would be so extremely
kind as to leave the field free to the adversaries.
You were able to see for yourself, on the 22nd of June,
that I made a point of respecting all your belongings.
I, for my part, would consider that I was insulting you
if I were for a moment to doubt your absolute discretion
with regard to
"Yours sincerely,
"SALVATOR."
I was delighted with the tone of courteous irony in which this letter
was couched, and with the pretty wit of the request it conveyed. It
was so charmingly free and unconstrained, and my correspondent seemed
so sure of my compliance! I would not for the world have disappointed
him or replied to his confidence with ingratitude.
My servant, to whom I had given a ticket for the theatre, was out at
eight o'clock when Daspry arrived. I showed him the letter. He said:
"Well?"
"Well, I shall leave the garden gate unlocked, so that he can come in."
"And are you going out?"
"Not if I know it!"
"But he asks you to . . ."
"He asks me to be discreet. I shall be discreet. But I am mad with
curiosity to see what happens."
Daspry laughed:
"By Jove, you're right; and I shall stay too. Something tells me that
we sha'n't be bored . . ."
He was interrupted by a ring at the bell.
"Are they there already?" he said, quietly. "Twenty minutes before
their time? Impossible!"
I went to the hall, and pulled the cord that opened the garden gate. A
woman's figure came down the path: it was Madame Andermatt.
She seemed greatly upset, and her voice caught as she stammered out:
"My husband . . . he's on his way. . . . He has an appointment here. .
. . They're going to give him the letters . . ."
"How do you know?" I asked.
"By accident. My husband had a message during dinner."
"An express letter?"
"No, the message was telephoned. The servant handed it to me by
mistake. My husband took it from me at once, but it was too late. . .
. I had read it."
"What did it say?"
"Something like this: 'Be at the Boulevard Maillot at nine this evening
with the documents relating to the business. In exchange, the
letters.' When dinner was over, I went up to my room and came on
here."
"Unknown to Monsieur Andermatt?"
"Yes."
Daspry looked at me.
"What do you think of it?"
"I think what you think, that Monsieur Andermatt is one of the
adversaries summoned."
"By whom? And for what purpose?"
"That is exactly what we shall see."
I took them to the big room. We found that there was just space for
the three of us under the chimney-mantel, and that we could hide behind
the velvet curtain. Madame Andermatt sat down between Daspry and
myself. We had a view of the whole room through the slits in the
hangings.
The clock struck nine. A few minutes later the garden gate grated on
its hinges.
I confess that I felt a certain pang, and that a new fever seized upon
me. I was on the point of discovering the key to the mystery! The
bewildering adventure whose successive phases had been unfolding
themselves before me for weeks was at last about to adopt its real
meaning, and the battle was to be fought before my eyes.
Daspry took Madame Andermatt's hand, and whispered:
"Be sure that you do not make a movement. Whatever you see or hear,
remain impassive."
A man entered the room, and I at once recognized Alfred Varin by his
strong resemblance to his brother Etienne. He had the same heavy gait,
the same dark, bearded face.
He came in with the anxious air of a man who is accustomed to fear
ambushes around him, who suspects them and avoids them. He cast a
rapid glace all around the room, and I felt that that chimney hidden by
a velvet curtain annoyed him. He took three steps in our direction.
But an idea, doubtless more urgent than the first, diverted him from
his intention; for, turning towards the wall, he stopped before the old
mosaic emperor with the flowing beard and the gleaming sword, and
examined the figure at length, mounting a chair, following the outline
of the shoulders and the face with his finger, and touching certain
portions as he did so.
But suddenly he jumped from his chair, and moved away from the wall. A
sound of footsteps approached. M. Andermatt appeared upon the
threshold.
The banker uttered an exclamation of surprise.
"You! You! Was it you that sent for me?"
"I? Not at all!" protested Varin, in a grating voice that reminded me
of his brother's. "I came because of your letter."
"My letter!"
"A letter signed by you, in which you offer me . . ."
"I never wrote to you."
"You never wrote to me!"
Instinctively Varin took up a position of defense, not against the
banker, but against the unknown foe who had drawn him into this snare.
For the second time his eyes turned in our direction, and, with a quick
step, he moved towards the door.
M. Andermatt blocked his way.
"What are you doing, Varin?"
"There's more in this than meets the eye. I don't like it. I'm going.
Good-night."
"One moment."
"Come, Monsieur Andermatt, don't insist; you and I have nothing to say
to each other."
"We have a great deal to say to each other, and the opportunity is too
good. . . ."
"Let me pass."
"No, no, no, you shall not pass."
Varin fell back, cowed by the banker's resolute attitude, and mumbled:
"Be quick, then; say what you have to say, and be done with it!"
One thing astonished me, and I had no doubt that my two companions
underwent the same feeling of disappointment. Why was "Salvator" not
there? Did it not form part of his plan to interfere? Did the mere
bringing together of the banker and Varin appear to him enough? I felt
curiously ill at ease. By the fact of "Salvator's" absence, this duel,
desired and contrived by himself, was assuming the tragic turn of an
event created and controlled by the strict order of destiny; and the
force that was now hurling these two men against each other was the
more impressive inasmuch as it existed outside themselves.
After a moment M. Andermatt went up to Varin, and, standing right in
front of him and looking him straight in the eyes, said:
"Now that the years have passed, and that you have nothing more to
fear, answer me frankly, Varin. What have you done with Louis
Lacombe?"
"There's a question! As if I could know what has become of him!"
"You do know! You do know! You and your brother followed his every
footstep, you almost lived with him in this very house where we are
standing. You knew all about his work, all about his schemes. An on
that last evening, Varin, when I saw Louis Lacombe to my front door, I
caught sight of two figures lurking in the shadow. That I am prepared
to swear to."
"Well, and when you have sworn to it? . . ."
"It was your brother and you, Varin."
"Prove it."
"Why, the best proof is that, two days later, you yourself showed me
the papers and plans which you had found int Lacombe's portfolio, and
offered to sell them to me. How did those papers come into your
possession?"
"I told you, Monsieur Andermatt, that we found them on Louis Lacombe's
table the next morning after he had disappeared."
"That's a lie."
"Prove it."
"The police could have proved it."
"Why didn't you go to the police?"
"Why? Ah, why? . . ."
He was silent, with a gloomy face. And the other resumed:
"You see, Monsieur Andermatt, if you had the least certainty, you would
not have allowed our little threat to prevent you . . ."
"What threat? Those letters? Do you imagine that I ever believed for
a moment . . . ?"
"If you did not believe in those letters, why did you offer me untold
money to give them up? And why, since then, did you have my brother
and me hunted like wild beasts?"
"To recover the plans which I wanted."
"Nonsense! You wanted the letters! Once in possession of the letters,
you would have informed against us. You didn't catch me parting with
them!" A sudden fit of laughter interrupted him. "But enough of this.
It's no use saying the same thing over and over again; we should get no
further. So we'll drop the subject."
"We will do nothing of the kind," said the banker, "and, now that you
have spoken of the letters, you shall not go from this place without
handing them over to me."
"I shall go!"
"No, no, no!"
"Listen to me, Monsieur Andermatt: I advise you . . ."
"You shall not go."
"We shall see," said Varin, in so furious a tone that Madame Andermatt
stifled a faint cry.
He must have heard it, for he tried to pass by force. M. Andermatt
pushed him back violently. Then I saw him slip his hand into his
jacket-pocket.
"For the last time!"
"The letters first."
Varin drew a revolver, and, pointing it at M. Andermatt, said:
"Yes or no?"
The banker stooped quickly.
A shot rang out. The weapon fell to the ground.
I was dumbfounded. The shot had been fired from my side. And it was
Daspry who, with a pistol bullet, had dashed the revolver out of Alfred
Varin's hand!
Standing suddenly between the two adversaries, facing Varin, he
sneered:
"You're lucky, my friend, you're jolly lucky! I aimed at your hand and
hit your revolver."
Both men stared at him in confusion. He said to the banker:
"Forgive me, sir, for interfering in what does not concern me. But
really you play your cards very badly. Let me hold them for you."
Turning to the other:
"Now, then, my lad; and play the game please. Hearts are trumps, and I
lead the seven!"
And he banged the iron plate with the seven red pips withing three
inches of Varin's nose.
Never did I see a man so taken aback. Livid, his eyes starting from
his head, his features distorted with agony, Varin seemed hypnotized by
the sight before him.
"Who are you?" he stammered.
"I have already told you: a gentleman who meddles with what does not
concern him . . . but who meddles with it to the bitter end."
"What do you want?"
"All that you've brought."
"I've brought nothing."
"Yes, you have, or you wouldn't have come. You received a note this
morning telling you to be here at nine o'clock, and to bring all the
papers you had. Well, you're here. Where are the papers?"
There was an air of authority in Daspry's voice and attitude that
nonplused me, a preemptory demeanor that was quite new to me in this
rather easy-going and mild-mannered man. Varin, now entirely subdued,
pointed to one of his pockets:
"The papers are in there."
"Are they all there?"
"Yes."
"All that you found in Louis Lacombe's portfolio and sold to Major von
Lieben?"
"Yes."
"Are they the copies or the originals?"
"The originals."
"What do you want for them?"
"A hundred thousand francs."
Daspry burst out:
"You're mad! The major only gave you twenty thousand. Twenty thousand
francs flung away, now that the trials have failed."
"They did not know how to use the plans."
"The plans are not complete."
"Then why do you ask for them?"
"I want them. I'll give you five thousand francs. Not a sou more."
"Ten thousand. Not a sou less."
Daspry turned to M. Andermatt.
"Be good enough, sir, to sign a check."
"But . . . I haven't my . . ."
"Your check-book? Here it is."
Astounded, M. Andermatt fingered the check-book which Daspry handed
him.
"It's my check-book. . . . But how . . . ?"
"My dear sir, please don't waste words: you have only to fill it in."
The banker took out his stylograph, and filled in and signed the check.
Varin held out his hand.
"Paws off!" said Daspry. "We're not done yet."
And to the banker:
"There was a question also of some letters which you claim."
"Yes, a bundle of letters."
"Where are they, Varin?"
"I haven't them."
"Where are they, Varin?"
"I don't know. My brother took charge of them."
"They are hidden here, in this room."
"In that case, you know where they are."
"How should I know?"
"Considering it was you that went to the hiding-place! You seem to be
as well informed as . . . 'Salvator'!"
"The letters are not in the hiding-place."
"They are."
"Open it."
A look of distrust passed over Varin's face. Were Daspry and
'Salvator' really one, as everything led him to presume? If so, he
risked nothing by revealing a hiding-place that was already known. If
not, there was no point in . . .
"Open it," repeated Daspry.
"I haven't a seven of hearts."
"Yes, here's one," said Daspry, holding out the iron plate.
Varin fell back in terror.
"No . . . no . . . I will not . . ."
"Never mind that. . . ."
Daspry went up to the old emperor with the flowing beard, climbed a
chair, and applied the seven of hearts to the bottom of the sword,
against the hilt, so that the edges of the plate exactly covered the
two edges of the blade. The, with the point of an awl, which he
pressed successively through each of the seven holes contrived in the
end of the seven pips, he pressed upon seven of the tiny stones
composing the mosaic. When the seventh stone was driven in, a catch
was released, and the whole of the emperor's bust turned on a pivot,
revealing a wide aperture arranged as a safe, iron-cased and fitted
with two shelves of gleaming steel.
"You see, Varin, the safe is empty."
"Just so. . . . Then my brother must have removed the letters."
Daspry came back to the man, and said:
"Don't try to get the better of me. There is another hiding-place.
Where is it?"
"There isn't one."
"Is it money you want? How much?"
"Ten thousand francs."
"Monsieur Andermatt, are those letters worth ten thousand francs to
you?"
"Yes," said the banker, in a firm voice.
Varin shut the safe, took the seven of hearts, not without a visible
repugnance, and applied it to the blade, at exactly the same place,
against the hilt. He drove the awl successively through the end of the
seven pips. There was a second release of a catch, but, this time, an
unexpected thing occurred: only a part of the safe turned round,
disclosing a smaller safe, contrived in the thickness of the door that
closed the large one.
The bundle of letters was there, tied up with tape and sealed. Varin
gave it to Daspry, who asked:
"Is the check ready, Monsieur Andermatt?"
"Yes."
"And have you also the last document, which Louis Lacombe left with
you, completing the plans of the submarine?"
"Yes."
The exchange was made. Daspry pocketed the document and the check, and
offered the packet to M. Andermatt.
"Here is what you wanted, sir."
The banker hesitated a moment, as though he were afraid to touch those
cursed pages which he had been so eager to find. Then he took them,
with a nervous movement.
I heard a groan by my side. I caught hold of Madame Andermatt's hand;
it was icy cold.
And Daspry said to the banker:
"I think, sir, that our conversation is ended. Oh, no thanks, I beg of
you. It was a mere accident that enabled me to serve you."
M. Andermatt withdrew, taking with him his wife's letters to Louis
Lacombe.
"Splendid!" cried Daspry, with an air of delight. "Everything is
arranged for the best. You and I have only to settle our business, my
lad. Have you the papers?"
"They are all here."
Daspry looked through them, examined them closely, and stuffed them
into his pocket.
"Quite right; you have kept your word."
"But . . ."
"But what?"
"The two checks? . . . The money? . . ."
"Well, you're a cool hand, you are! What! You dare put in a claim . .
. !"
"I claim what is owed me."
"Do you mean to say that you're owed anything for papers which you
stole?"
But the man was beside himself. He shook with rage; his eyes were shot
with blood.
"Give me my money . . . the twenty thousand francs," he stuttered.
"Out of the question . . . I appropriate it."
"My money!"
"Come, be reasonable . . . and drop that dagger, will you?"
He caught him by the arm so roughly that the other roared with pain.
And he added:
"Go away, my lad, the air will do you good. Would you like me to see
you off? We will go by the waste ground, and I will show you a heap of
stones and brambles under which . . ."
"It's not true! It's not true!"
"Yes, it is true. This little iron plate with the seven pips came from
there. Louis Lacombe used to always carry it about with him, don't you
remember? You and your brother buried it with the corpse . . . and
with other things which will interest the police enormously."
Varin covered his face with his raging fists. Then he said:
"Very well. I have been done. Let's say no more about it. One word,
however . . . just one word . . . I want to know . . ."
"I am listening . . ."
"There was a cash-box in that safe, in the larger of the two."
"Yes."
"Was it there when you came here on the night of the twenty-second of
June?"
"Yes."
"What was inside it?"
"All that the brothers Varin had locked up in it: a pretty collection
of jewels, diamonds, and pearls, picked up right and left by the
brothers aforesaid."
"And did you take it?"
"By Jove! what would you have done in my place?"
"Then . . . it was after he discovered the disappearance of the cash-
box that my brother committed suicide?"
"Probably." The disappearance of your correspondence with Major van
Lieben would hardly have been enough. But the cash-box was another
matter. . . . Is that all you wanted to know?"
"One thing more: your name?"
"You say that as though you were thinking of revenge."
"Quite right! One's luck turns. You're on top to-day. To-morrow . .
."
"You may be."
"I hope so. What's your name?"
"Arsène Lupin."
"Arsène Lupin!"
The man staggered back as though he had received a blow on the head
with a club. Those two words seemed to dash all his hopes. Daspry
laughed.
"Ah, so you thought that some Monsieur Durand or Dupont had managed
this fine business? Come, come, it must have needed an Arsène Lupin at
least. And now that you know all you wanted to, old chap, go and
prepare your revenge. You will find Arsène Lupin waiting for you."
And without another word, he pushed him out at the door.
"Daspry, Daspry!" I cried, still, in spite of myself, calling him by
the name by which I had known him.
I pulled back the velvet curtain.
He ran up.
"What is it? What's the matter?"
"Madame Andermatt is fainting."
He hastened up, made her sniff at a bottle of salts, and, while he was
bringing her round, asked:
"Well, but what happened?"
"The letters," I said. "The letters which you gave her husband."
He struck his forehead.
"What! She believed. . . . But, after all, why shouldn't she believe?
. . . Fool that I am!"
Madame Andermatt, when she had recovered consciousness, listened to him
greedily. He drew from his pocket a little bundle similar in every
respect to that which M. Andermatt had taken away with him.
"Here are your letters, madame -- the real ones."
"But . . . the others?"
"The others are like these, but were copied out by me last night, and
carefully altered. Your husband will be all the better pleased when he
reads them, as he has no idea that they are not the originals."
"But the writing . . ."
"There is no writing that can't be imitated."
She thanked him in the same terms of gratitude which she would have
addressed to a man of her own station, and it was clear to me that she
could not have heard the last sentences exchanged between Varin and
Arsène Lupin.
As for myself, I looked at him with a certain perplexity, not quite
knowing what to say to this old friend who was revealing himself to me
in so unexpected a light. But Lupin, very much at his ease, said:
"You can say good-bye to Jean Daspry."
"Really!"
"Yes, Jean Daspry is going abroad. I am sending him to Morocco, where
he will probably come to an end quite worthy of him; in fact, he has
made up his mind."
"But Arsène Lupin remains . . . ?"
"I should think so! Arsène Lupin is only at the beginning of his
career, and he fully means to . . ."
An impulse of irresistible curiosity attracted me to him, and, leading
him to some distance from Madame Andermatt, I asked:
"So you ended by discovering the second hiding-place containing the
letters?"
"It took me long enough, though! It was not until yesterday afternoon
while you were still in bed. And yet goodness knows how easy it was!
But the simplest things always occur to one last." And showing me the
seven of hearts: "I had guessed that, to open the large safe, one had
to rest this card against the sword of the old boy in mosaic . . ."
"How did you guess that?"
"Easily. From private information, I knew, when I came here, on the
evening of the twenty-second of June . . ."
"After leaving me . . ."
"Yes; and after selecting my conversation so as to throw you into such
a state of mind that a nervous and impressionable man like yourself was
bound to let me act as I pleased without leaving his bed."
"The reasoning was sound."
"Well, I knew when I came here that there was a cash-box hidden in a
safe with a secret lock, to which the seven of hearts formed the key.
It was only a question of applying the seven of hearts to a place that
was obviously intended for it. An hour's examination was enough for
me."
"An hour!"
"Look at the old boy in mosaic."
"The emperor?"
"That old emperor is the exact image of Charlemagne, who figures as the
king of hearts in every French pack."
"You're quite right. . . . But why should the seven of hearts open
sometimes the large safe and sometimes the small one? And why did you
open only the large safe at first?"
"Why?" Because I persisted in always applying my seven of hearts in
the same way. Yesterday only I perceived that, by turning it round --
that is to say, by putting the seventh pip, the middle one, with its
point up instead of down -- the position of the seven pips was
altered."
"Of course."
"It's easy to say 'of course,' but I ought to have thought of it."
"Another thing: you knew nothing about the story of the letters until
Madame Andermatt . . ."
"Spoke of it before me? Just so. I found nothing in the safe besides
the cash-box, except the correspondence of the two brothers, which put
me on the scent of their treason."
"So, when all is said, it was chance that made you first reconstruct
the history of the two brothers, and next search for the plans and
documents of the submarine?"
"Pure chance."
"But what was your object in making those researches? . . ."
Daspry interrupted me with a laugh.
"Bless my soul, how the thing interests you!"
"It interests me, madly."
"Well, presently, when I have seen Madame Andermatt home and sent a
messenger to the Echo de France with a few lines which I want to write,
I will come back, and we will go into details."
He sat down and wrote one of those monumental little paragraphs that
delight his whimsical imagination. Who does not remember the noise
which this particular one made throughout the world:
"Arsène Lupin has solved the problem which was
set the other day by 'Salvator.' He has obtained
possession of all the original plans and documents
of Louis Lacombe, the engineer, and has forwarded
them to the Minister of Marine. Moreover, Arsène
Lupin is opening subscription to present the state
with the first submarine constructed after these
plans. And he himself has headed the list by
subscribing twenty thousand francs."
"The twenty thousand francs of the Andermatt checks?" I said, when he
had given me the paper to read.
"Exactly. It was only fair that Varin should at least partly redeem
his treason."
-----
And that was how I came to know Arsène Lupin. That was how I learned
that Jean Daspry, my acquaintance at the club and in society, was none
other than Arsène Lupin, the gentleman-burglar. That was how I formed
bonds of a very pleasant friendship with the great man, and how, thanks
to the confidence with which he deigns to honor me, I gradually came to
be his most humble, devoted, and grateful biographer.
CHAPTER 7: MADAME IMBERT'S SAFE
It was three o'clock in the morning, and there were still some half-
dozen carriages in front of one of those little artist's houses which
form the one and only side of the Boulevard Berthier. The door opened.
A group of guests, men and women, came out into the street. Four
carriages drove off to right and left, and there remained upon the
pavement only two gentlemen, who parted company at the corner of the
Rue de Courcelles, where one of them lived. The other decided to go
home to the Porte-Maillot on foot.
He therefore crossed the Avenue de Villiers and continued his road on
the side opposite the fortifications. He found it pleasant walking in
this bright and frosty winter night. The sound of his footsteps echoed
gayly as he went.
But after some minutes he began to have the disagreeable impression
that he was being followed; and, in fact, on turning round he perceived
the shadow of a man gliding between the trees. He was not of a nervous
disposition; nevertheless, he hastened his steps in order to reach the
Octroi des Ternes as quickly as possible. But the man behind him broke
into a run; and, feeling more or less anxious, he thought it better to
face him and to take his revolver from his pocket.
He did not have time to complete his purpose. The man attacked him
violently, and then and there a fight commenced on the deserted
boulevard -- a fight at close quarters in which he at once felt that he
had the disadvantage. He shouted for help, struggled and was knocked
down upon a heap of flint-stones, caught up by the throat and gagged
with a handkerchief, which his adversary stuffed into his mouth. His
eyes closed, his ears buzzed, and he was on the point of losing
consciousness when suddenly the pressure was relieved, and the man who
had been stifling him with the weight of his body rose to defend
himself in his turn against an unexpected attack.
A blow on the wrist from a walking-stick, a kick on the ankle, and the
man gave two groans of pain and ran away, limping and swearing as he
went.
Without condescending to go in pursuit, the new-comer stooped and
asked:
"Are you hurt, sir?"
The victim was not hurt, but quite dazed and unable to stand. As luck
would have it, one of the officials of the Octroi, attracted by the
shouts, came hastening up. A cab was hailed, and the gentleman stepped
into it, accompanied by his rescuer, and was driven to his house in the
Avenue de la Grande-Armée.
On arriving at his door, now quite recovered, he was lost in thanks.
"I owe you my life, sir, and you may be sure that I shall never forget
it. I do not wish to alarm my wife at this time of night, but I want
her to thank you herself before the day is out."
He begged the other to come to lunch, and told him his name -- Ludovic
Imbert; adding:
"May I know to whom I have the honor . . . ?"
"Certainly," said the other, introducing himself: "Arsène Lupin."
-----
At that time -- this was five years ago -- Arsène Lupin had not yet
attained the celebrity which he owed to the Cahorn case, his escape
from the Santé, and a number of other resounding exploits. He was not
even called Arsène Lupin. This name, for which the future held such a
brilliant renown in store, was specially invented to denote M. Imbert's
rescuer, who may be said to have won his spurs in this encounter.
Ready for the fray, it is true, armed at all points, but without
resources, without the authority which success leads, Arsène was but an
apprentice in a profession of which he was, erelong, to become a past-
master.
It was only natural that he should feel an emotion of delight when he
woke up and remembered the invitation of the night before. The goal
was within reach at last! At last he was undertaking a work worthy of
his powers and of his talent! The Imbert millions: what a magnificent
prey for an appetite such as his!
He made a special toilet: a threadbare frock-coat, shabby trousers, a
rusty silk hat, frayed shirt-collar and cuffs, the whole very clean,
but having all the appearance of poverty. Thus dressed out, he walked
down the staircase of his lodgings at Montmartre. On reaching the
third floor, without stopping he tapped at a closed door with the knob
of his walking-stick. Leaving the house, he made for the outer
boulevards. A tram-car passed. He jumped into it, and a man who had
been walking behind him, the occupant of the third floor, promptly took
the seat beside him.
After a moment the man said:
"Well, governor?"
"Well, it's done."
"How do you mean?"
"I'm lunching there."
"You're lunching there?"
"You wouldn't have me risk a life as precious as mine for nothing, I
hope? I have snatched M. Ludovic Imbert from the certain death which
you had prepared for him. Monsieur Ludovic Imbert has a very grateful
nature. He has asked me to lunch."
A silence; and then the other ventured:
"So you're not giving it up?"
"My boy," said Arsène, "after plotting that little assault of last
night, after taking the trouble, at three o'clock in the morning, along
the fortifications, to give you a bank on the wrist and a kick on the
shin and running the risk of inflicting personal damage of my one and
only friend, it's not likely that I should give up the profits arising
from a rescue so carefully planned."
"But the unfavorable reports circulating about the fortune . . ."
"Let them circulate! It is six months since I first took the matter in
hand; six months since I began to collect information, to study the
case, to lay my snares, to question the servants, the moneylenders, and
the men of straw; six months since I started shadowing the husband and
wife. I don't care whether the fortune proceeds from old Rawford, as
they contend, or from another source; but I declare that it exists.
And, as it exists, I mean to have it."
"Fichtre! A hundred millions!"
"Say ten, or even five -- no matter! There are fat bundles of
securities in the safe. I'll be hanged if I don't, sooner or later,
lay hands on the key!"
The car stopped at the Place de l'Etoille.
"So, for the present . . . ?"
"Nothing to be done. I'll let you know. There's plenty of time."
Five minutes later Arsène Lupin climbed the sumptuous staircase of the
Hotel Imbert, and Ludovic introduced him to his wife. Gervaise was a
nice little woman, round as a ball, and very talkative. She gave him
the warmest of greetings.
"We wanted to be by ourselves to entertain our rescuer," she said.
And from the first they treated "our rescuer" as a friend of long
standing. By the time that dessert was reached the intimacy was
complete, and confidences were being exchanged at a great pace. Arsène
told the story of his own life and the life of his father, an upright
magistrate, described his sad childhood, his present difficulties.
Gervaise, in her turn, talked of her youth, her marriage, old
Rawford's kindnesses, the hundred millions which she had inherited, the
obstacles that delayed her entering into their enjoyment, the loans
which she had had to raise at exorbitant rates of interest, her endless
strife with Rawford's nephews. And the injunctions! And the
sequestrations! In fact, the whole story!
"Just think, Monsieur Lupin, the bonds are there, in the next room, in
my husband's office, and if we cut off a single coupon we lose
everything! There securities are there, in our safe, and we cannot
touch them!"
A thrill passed through M. Lupin's frame at the thought of this
proximity, and he felt very clearly that he would never have the
problem of having the same scruples as the worthy lady.
"Ah, they are in there!" he murmured, with a parched throat. "They are
in there."
Relations begun under such auspices as these were bound to lead to
closer ties still. In reply to questions delicately worded, Arsène
Lupin confessed his poverty, his distress. The poor fellow received
his appointment, then and there, as private secretary to the pair, at a
salary of one hundred and fifty francs a month. He was to go on living
where he was, but to come every morning and receive his instructions
for the day's work. For his greater comfort, a room on the second
floor was placed at his disposal as a study.
He chose one for himself. By what stroke of luck did it happen to be
immediately over Ludovic's office?
It did not take Arsène long to perceive that his secretaryship bore a
furious resemblance to a sinecure. In two months he was given only
four insignificant letters to copy out, and was only once called to his
employer's office, which permitted him only once to catch an official
glimpse of the safe. He noted, besides, that the titular of this
sinecure was not even deemed worthy of figuring beside Anquety the
deputy, or Grouvel the leader of the bar, for he was never invited to
the famous fashionable receptions.
He did not complain, for he much preferred to keep to his modest little
place in the shade. Nor did he waste time. From the first he paid a
certain number of clandestine visits to Ludovic's office and presented
his duty to the safe, which remained none the less hermetically sealed.
The safe was a huge mass of cast-iron and steel, presenting a surly and
stubborn appearance, and neither file nor crowbar could prevail against
it.
Arsène Lupin was not an obstinate man.
"Where force fails, craft prevails," he said. "The great thing is to
keep one's eyes and ears open."
He took the necessary measurements, and, after much careful and
difficult boring, inserted through the floor of his room a piece of
lead pipe, which came out in the office ceiling, between two
projections in the cornice. (1) Through this pipe, which served as
both a speaking-tube and a spy-glass, he hoped to hear and see.
[1. Author's note: In the course of the alterations affected
by the Tourist Club, which, as the reader knows, was the
purchaser of the Hotel Imbert, this pipe was discovered by
the workmen, who were, of course, unable to explain its
purpose.]
Thenceforward he spent his days lying flat on the floor of his room.
And, as a matter of fact, he often saw the Imberts in close conference
before the safe, turning up books and handling bundles of papers. When
they twisted in succession the four knobs that worked the lock, he
tried, in order to learn the code, to catch the number of notches that
were passed. He watched their movements, listened to their words.
What did they do with the key? Did they hide it somewhere?
One day he ran hurriedly down-stairs, having seen them leave the room
without locking the safe. He boldly entered the office. They had
returned.
"Oh, I beg your pardon, I made a mistake in the door. . . ."
But Gervaise ran up to him and drew him into the room.
"Come in, Monsieur Lupin," she said, "don't you feel at home here?
Come in and advise us. Which do you think we ought to sell out?
Foreigners or Rentes?"
"But what about the injunction?" asked Lupin, greatly astonished.
"Oh, it does not affect all of the securities."
She flung open the door of the safe. The shelves were heaped up with
portfolios fastened with straps. She took out one of them. But her
husband protested:
"No, no, Gervaise, it would be madness to sell foreign stock! It is
going up. . . . But the Rentes are as high as they are likely to go.
What do you think, my dear fellow?"
The dear fellow had no opinion on the subject; however, he advised the
sacrifice of the Rentes. Thereupon she caught hold of another file of
papers, and from this file took a document at random. It was a bond in
the Three-per-Cents. Ludovic put it in his pocket. In the afternoon,
accompanied by his secretary, he took the bond to a broker to sell, and
received forty-six thousand francs for it.
In spite of what Gervaise had said, Arsène Lupin did not feel at home.
On the contrary, his position in the Hotel Imbert filled him with
surprise. He realized with a shock that the servants did not even know
his name. They spoke of him as "monsieur". Ludovic always referred to
him as such.
"You will tell monsieur . . . Has monsieur arrived yet?"
Why this enigmatical designation?
Moreover, after the first enthusiasm, the Imberts hardly spoke to him,
and, while treating him with the consideration due to a benefactor,
took no further notice of him at all! They appeared to look upon him
as an eccentric who did not wish to be intruded on, and the respected
his isolation as though this isolation had been a rule laid down by
himself, a whim of his own. Once, as he was passing through the hall,
he heard Gervaise remark to two gentleman:
"He's so shy!"
"Very well," he thought, "I'm shy." (2)
[2. Transcriber's note: in another translation these two lines
read:
"He's such a barbarian!"
"Very well," he thought, "I'm a barbarian."]
And he ceased to worry his head about the oddities of these people, and
pursued the execution of his plan. He had acquired the certainty that
it was no use relying upon chance or upon any act of thoughtlessness on
the part of Gervaise, who never let the key out of her possession, and
who, besides, never took away the key without first mixing up the
mechanisms of the lock. He must, therefore, act for himself.
One thing hastened matters, which was the violent campaign conducted
against the Imberts by a section of the press. They were accused of
swindling. Arsène Lupin followed the evolutions of the drama and the
consequent excitement in the household, and he understood that if he
waited much longer he would lose all.
On five days in succession, instead of leaving at six o'clock, as was
his habit, he locked himself into his room. He was supposed to have
gone out. Stretched at full length on the floor he watched Ludovic's
office.
On the sixth day, as the favorable circumstance for which he was
waiting had not occurred, he went away in the middle of the night by
the little door in the court-yard, of which he had a key.
But on the seventh day he learned that the Imberts, by way of replying
to the malevolent insinuations of their enemies, had offered to
publicly open the safe.
"It's to-night or never," thought Lupin.
And, in fact, after dinner Ludovic went to his office accompanied by
Gervaise. They began to turn over the pages of the books in the safe.
An hour passed, another hour. He heard the servants going up to bed.
Now there was no one left on the first floor. Midnight struck. The
Imberts went on with their work.
"Come on," muttered Lupin.
He opened his window. It looked out upon the court-yard, and the
space, on this moonless, starless night, was dark. He took from his
cupboard a knotted rope, fastened it to the railing of the balcony,
stepped over, and let himself down gently, with the help of a rain-
spout, to the window beneath his own. It was the window of the office,
and the thick curtains veiled the interior from his eyes. He stood for
a moment motionless, listening carefully, on the balcony.
Reassured by the silence, he gave a slight push to the casement
windows. If no one had checked them, they ought to yield to the
slightest pressure, for, in the course of the afternoon, he had twisted
the fastening in such a way as to prevent it from entering the
staples.
The casements gave way. Thereupon, with infinite precautions, he
opened them a little farther. As soon as he was able to pass his head
through he stopped. A gleam of light filtered out between the
curtains, which did not quite meet. He saw Gervaise and Ludovic
sitting beside the safe.
Absorbed in their work, they exchanged but a few occasional words in a
low voice. Arsène calculated the distance that separated him from
them, settled upon the exact movements that would be necessary to
reduce them to a state of helplessness, one after the other, before
they had time to call for help, and was about to rush in upon them,
when Gervaise said:
"How cold the room has turned! I am going to bed. Are you coming?"
"I should like to finish first."
"Finish! Why, it will take you all night!"
"Oh no; an hour at the most."
She went away. Twenty minutes, thirty minutes elapsed. Arsène pushed
the window a little more. The curtains shook. He pushed still
farther. Ludovic turned around, and, seeing the curtains swollen by
the wind, rose to shut the window. . . .
There was not a cry, not even the appearance of a struggle. With a few
accurate movements and without doing Ludovic the least harm, Arsène
stunned him, wrapped his head in the curtain, and tied him up so that
he was not even able to distinguish his assailant's features.
Then he went quickly to the safe, took two portfolios, which he put
under his arm, left the office, went down the stairs, crossed the
court-yard, and opened the door of the servants' entrance. A cab was
waiting in the street.
"Take these first," he said to the driver, "and come with me."
They went back to the office. In two journeys they emptied the safe.
Then Arsène went up to his room, hoisted in the rope, removed all
traces of his passage. The thing was done.
A few hours after, Arsène Lupin, assisted by his companion, stripped
the portfolios of their contents. He felt no disappointment, having
foreseen as much, on ascertaining that the fortune of the Imberts was
not as great as the rumors had ascribed to it. The millions did not
number hundreds, or even tens. But, at any rate, the total made up a
very respectable sum, and consisted of excellent securities: railway
debentures, municipal loans, state funds, northern mines, and so on.
He declared himself satisfied:
"No doubt," he said, "there will be a sad loss when the time comes for
dealing. There will be all sorts of difficulties, and I shall often
have to let things go very cheap. Never mind! With this first
capital, I undertake to live according to my ideas . . . and to realize
a few dreams that lie near my heart."
"And the rest?"
"Burn them, my lad. These piles of papers looked very well in the
safe. They're no use to us. As for the securities, we'll lock them up
in the cupboard, and wait calmly till the auspicious moment arrives to
dispose of them."
The next morning Arsène could see no reason why he should not return to
the Hotel Imbert. But the papers contained an unexpected piece of
news: Ludovic and Gervaise had disappeared.
The safe was opened amid great solemnity. The magistrates found what
Arsène had left behind, an empty safe.
-----
Such are the facts and such is the explanation of some of the details,
owing to the intervention of Arsène Lupin. I had the story from his
own lips one day when he was in a confidential vein.
He was walking up and down my study, and his eyes wore a little
feverish look which I had never seen in them before.
"On the whole, therefore," I said, "this is your master-stroke."
Without giving a direct answer, he continued:
"There are impenetrable secrets in this business. Even after the
explanation which I have given you a number of mysteries remain
unsolved. For instance, why that flight? Why did they not take
advantage of the assistance which I had involuntarily rendered them?
It would have been so simple to say, 'The millions were there in the
safe. They are not there now because they have been stolen."
"They lost their nerve."
"Yes, that's it, they lost their nerve. . . . And yet, it is
true . . ."
"What is true?"
"Oh, never mind."
What did this reticence mean? He had not told me all, that was
obvious; and what he had not told me he disliked telling. I was
puzzled. The thing must be serious to provoke hesitation in a man of
his stamp.
I put a few questions to him at hap-hazard.
"Did you never see them again?"
"No."
"And did it never occur to you to feel any pity for those poor
wretches?"
"I?" he cried, with a start.
His excitement astonished me. Had I hit the mark? I said:
"Of course. But for you, they might have stayed and faced the
music . . . or at least gone off with their pockets filled."
"So you expect me to feel remorse -- is that it?"
"Well, in a sense."
He struck the table with his clenched fist.
"So, according to you, I ought to feel remorse!"
"You can call it remorse, or regret, a feeling of some kind . . ."
"A feeling of some kind for that couple . . ."
"For a couple whom you robbed of a fortune."
"What fortune?"
"Well . . . those two or three bundles of securities . . ."
"Those two or three bundles of securities! I robbed them of bundles of
securities, did I? Part of their legacy, their fortune? Is that what
I did? Is that my crime? But, bless my soul, my dear chap, haven't
you guessed that those securities were so many forgeries? . . . Do you
hear? They were forgeries!"
I looked at him, dumbfounded.
"What! those four or five millions were forgeries! . . ."
"Forgeries!" he shouted, in his rage, "forgeries! every scrap: the
debentures, the municipal loans, the state funds; not worth the paper
they were printed on! Not a sou, not a single sou did I get out of the
whole lot! And you ask me to feel remorse! But it's they who ought to
feel remorse! They cheated me like a common jay! They plucked me like
the meanest of their pigeons and the stupidest!"
He shook with a perfectly genuine anger, made up of personal resentment
and wounded pride.
"Don't you see that they had the better of me from first to last, from
start to finish? Do you know what part I played in the business, or
rather what part they made me play? I was Andrew Rawford! Yes, my
dear fellow, and I was completely taken in! I only learned it after
reading the newspapers and comparing certain details. While I was
posing as the benefactor, as the gentleman who had risked his life to
save Imbert from the hooligans, he was passing me off as one of the
Rawfords! Isn't it admirable? That eccentric who had his room on the
second floor, that shy [barbaric] man whom they pointed to at a
distance was Rawford. And Rawford was myself! And, thanks to me,
thanks to the confidence which I inspired under the name of Rawford,
the banks granted loans and the solicitors persuaded their clients to
lend their money! Ah, I learned a useful lesson there, I assure you!"
He stopped suddenly, caught me by the arm, and, in a tone of
exasperation in which, nevertheless, it was easy to perceive a certain
shade of mingled admiration and irony, he added this ineffable phrase:
"My dear chap, at this moment, Gervaise Imbert owes me fifteen hundred
francs!"
This time I could not help laughing. It was really a splendid joke,
and Arsène himself joined in my laughter.
"Yes, my dear fellow, fifteen hundred francs! Not only did I not
receive a sou of my salary, but she borrowed fifteen hundred francs of
me! The whole savings of my youth! And do you know what for? I'll
give you a thousand guesses. . . . For her charities! I mean what I
say! For poor people whom she pretended to be relieving, unknown to
Ludovic! And I fell into the trap! A good joke, isn't it? Arsène
Lupin done out of fifteen hundred francs, and done by the good lady
whom he was robbing of four millions in forged securities! And think
of the contrivings, the efforts, the ingenious tricks to which I had to
resort in order to achieve that magnificent result! It's the only time
that I've been swindled in my life! But, by Jove, I was had that time,
and finely and in good taste!"
CHAPTER 8: THE BLACK PEARL
A 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 traveling-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 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 judgement. 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:
__________________________
| |
| GRIMAUDAN |
| Ex-Detective-Inspector |
| Confidential Inquiries |
|__________________________|
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 to-night."
"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. Facsimiles 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 an acquittal -- and madde 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 offence."
"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
"It's really curious, your likeness to Arsène Lupin, my dear Velmont."
"Do you know him?"
"Oh, just as everybody does--by his photographs, not one of which in
the least resembles the others; but they all leave the impression of
the same face . . . which is undoubtedly yours."
Horace Velmont seemed rather annoyed.
"I suppose you're right Devanne. You're not the first to tell me of
it, I assure you."
"Upon my word," persisted Devanne, "if you had not been introduced to
me by my cousin d'Estavan, and if you were not the well-known painter
whose charming sea-pieces I admire so much, I'm not sure but that I
should have informed the police of your presence at Dieppe."
The sally was received with general laughter. There were gathered, in
the great dining-room of Thibermesnil Castle, in addition to Velmont,
the Abbé Gélis, rector of the village, and a dozen officers whose
regiments were taking part in the manoevers in the neighborhood, and
who had accepted the invitation of Georges Devanne, the banker, and his
mother. One of them exclaimed:
"But, I say, wasn't Arsène Lupin seen on the coast after his famous
performance in the train between Paris and Le Havre?"
"Just so, three months ago; and the week after I made the acquaintance,
at the Casino, of our friend Velmont here, who has since honored me
with a few visits: an agreeable preliminary to a more serious call
which I presume he means to pay me one of these days . . . or, rather,
one of these nights!"
The company laughed once more, and moved into the old guard-room -- a
huge, lofty hall which occupies the whole of the lower portion of the
Tower Guillaume, and which Georges Devanne has arranged all the
incomparable treasures accumulated through the centuries by the lords
of Thibermesnil. It is filled and adorned with old chests and
credence-tables, fire-dogs and candelabra. Splendid tapestries hand on
the stonewalls. The deep embrasures of the four windows are furnished
with seats and end in pointed casements with leaded panes. Between the
door and the window on the left stands a monumental Renaissance book-
case, on the pediment of which is inscribed, in gold letters, the word
"THIBERMESNIL" and underneath it is the proud motto of the family:
"Fais ce que veux." [Do what thou wilt]
And as they were lighting their cigars, Devanne added:
"But you will have to hurry, Velmont, for this is the last night on
which you will have a chance."
"And why the last night?" said the painter, who certainly took the jest
in very good part.
Devanne was about to reply when his mother made signs to him. But the
excitement of the dinner and the wish to interest his guests were too
much for him:
"Pooh!" he muttered. "Why shouldn't I tell them? There's no
indiscretion to be feared now."
They sat round him, filled with a lively curiosity, and he declared,
with the self-satisfied air of a man announcing a great piece of news:
"To-morrow, at four o'clock in the afternoon, I shall have here, as my
guest, Sherlock Holmes, the great English detective, for whom no
mystery exists, the most extraordinary solver of riddles that has ever
been known, the wonderful individual who might have been the creation
of a novelist's brain."
There was a general exclamation. Sherlock Holmes at Thibermesnil! The
thing was serious, then? Was Arsène Lupin really in the district?
"Arsène Lupin and his gang are not very far away. Without counting
Baron Cahorn's mishap, to whom are we to ascribe the daring burglaries
at Montigny and Gruchet and Crasville if not to our national thief?
To-day it's my turn."
"And have you had a warning, like Baron Cahorn?"
"The same trick does not succeed twice."
"Then? . . ."
"Look here."
He rose, and, pointing to a little empty space between two tall folios
on one of the shelves of the bookcase, said:
"There was a book here -- a sixteenth-century book, entitled The
Chronicles of Thibermesnil -- which was the history of the castle since
the time of its construction by Duke Rollo, on the site of a feudal
fortress. It contained three engraved plates. One of the presented a
general view of the domain as a whole; the second a plan of the
building; and the third -- I call your special attention to this -- the
sketch of an underground passage, one of whose outlets opens outside
the first line of the ramparts, while the other ends here -- yes, in
this very hall where we are sitting. Now this book disappeared last
month."
"By Jove!" said Velmont, "that's a bad sign. Only it's not enough to
justify the intervention of Sherlock Holmes."
"Certainly it would not have been enough if another fact had not come
to give its full significance to that which I have just told you.
There as a second copy of the chronicle in the Bibliothèque Nationale,
and the two copies differed in certain details concerning the
underground passage, such as the addition of a sectional drawing, and a
scale and a number of notes, not printed, but written in ink and more
or less obliterated. I knew of these particulars, and I knew that the
definite sketch could not be reconstructed except by carefully
comparing the two plans. Well, on the day after that on which my copy
disappeared the one in the Bibliothèque Nationale was applied for by a
reader who carried it off without any clue as to the manner in which
the theft had been effected."
These words were greeted with many exclamations.
"This time the affair grows serious."
"Yes; and this time," said Devanne, "the police were roused, and there
was a double inquiry which, however, led to no result.
"Like all those aimed at Arsène Lupin."
"Exactly. It then occurred to me to write and ask for the help of
Sherlock Holmes, who replied that he had the keenest wish to come into
contact with Arsène Lupin."
"What an honor for Arsène Lupin!" said Velmont. "But if our national
thief, as you call him, should not be contemplating a project upon
Thibermesnil, then there will be nothing for Sherlock Holmes to do but
twiddle his thumbs."
"There is another matter which is sure to interest him: the discovery
of the underground passage."
"Why, you told us that one end opened in the fields and the other here,
in the guard-room!"
"Yes, but in what part of it?" The line that represents the tunnel on
the plans finishes, at one end, at a little circle accompanied by the
initials T. G., which, of course, stands for Tower Guillaume. But it's
a round tower, and who can decide at which point in the circle the line
in the drawing touches?"
Devanne lit a second cigar, and poured himself out a glass of
Benedictine. The others pressed him with questions. He smiled with
pleasure at the interest which he had aroused. At last, he said:
"The secret is lost. Not a person in the world knows it. The story
says that the high and mighty lords handed it down to one another, on
their death-beds, from father to son, until the day when Geoffrey, the
last of the name, lost his head on the scaffold, on the seventh of
Thermidor, Year Second, in the nineteenth year of his age."
"Yes, but more than a century has passed since then; and it must have
been looked for."
"It has been looked for, but in vain. I myself, after I bought the
castle from the great-grand-nephew of Leribourg of the National
Convention, had excavations made. What was the good? Remember that
this tower is surrounded by water on every side, and only joined to the
castle by a bridge, and that, consequently, the tunnel must pass under
the old moats. The plan in the Bibliothèque Nationale shows a series
of four staircases, comprising forty-eight steps, which allows for a
depth of over ten yards, and the scale annexed to the other plans fixes
the length at two hundred yards. As a matter of fact, the whole
problem lies here, between this floor, that ceiling, and these walls;
and, upon my word, I do not feel inclined to have them pulled down."
"And is there no clue?"
"Not one."
The Abbé Gélis objected.
"Monsieur Devanne, we have to reckon with two quotations . . ."
"Oh," cried Devanne, laughing, "the rector is a great rummager of
family papers, a great reader of memoirs, and he fondly loves
everything that has to do with Thibermesnil. But the explanation to
which he refers only serves to confuse matters."
"But tell us what it is."
"Do you really care to hear?"
"Immensely."
"Well, you must know that, as a result of his reading, he has
discovered that two kings of France held the key to the riddle."
"Two kings of France?"
"Henry the Fourth and Louis the Sixteenth."
"Two famous men. And how did the rector find out?"
"Oh, it's very simple," continued Devanne. "Two days before the battle
of Arques, King Henry the Fourth came to sup and sleep in the castle.
At eleven o'clock, Louise de Tonquerville, the prettiest lady in
Normandy, was brought into the castle through the subterranian passage
by Duke Edgar, who at the same time confided the secret to the King.
This secret Henry IV revealed later to Sully, his minister, who tells
the story in his Royales Economies d'État, without adding any comment
besides this incomprehensible phrase: 'Turn one eye on the bee that
shakes, the other eye will lead to God.' (3)
[3. see endnotes]
A silence followed, and Velmont laughed:
"It's not as clear as daylight, is it?"
"That's what I say. The rector maintains that Sully set down the key
to the puzzle by means of those words, without betraying the secret to
the scribes to whom he dictated his memoirs."
"It's an ingenious supposition."
"True. But what is the eye that turns? What is the bee that shakes?"
"And who goes to God?"
"Goodness knows!"
"And what about our good King Louis the Sixteenth? Was it also to
receive a lady that he caused the passage to be opened?" asked Velmont.
"I don't know," said M. Devanne. "All I can say is Louis the Sixteenth
stayed at Thibermesnil in 1784, and the famous Iron Cupboard
discovered at the Louvre on the information of the Gamain, the
locksmith, contained a paper with these words written in the king's
hand: 'Thibermesnil, 3-4-11.'"
Horace Velmont laughed aloud.
"Victory! The darkness is dispelled!"
"Laugh as you please, sir," said the rector. "Those two quotations
contain the solution for all that, and one of these days some one will
come along who knows how to interpret them."
"Sherlock Holmes is the man," said Devanne, "unless Arsène Lupin
forestalls him. What do you think, Velmont?"
Velmont rose, laid his hand on Devanne's shoulder, and declared:
"I think that the data supplied by your book and the copy in the
Bibliothèque Nationale lacked just one link of the highest importance,
and that you have been kind enough to supply it. I am much obliged to
you."
"Well? . . ."
"Well, now that the eye has turned and the bee has shaken, all I have
to do is set to work."
"Without losing a minute?"
"Without losing a second! You see, I must rob your castle to-night,
that is to say, before Sherlock Holmes arrives."
"You're quite right; you have only just got time. Would you like me to
drive you?"
"To Dieppe?"
"Yes, I may as well fetch Monsieur and Madame d'Androl and a young lady
friend of theirs, who are arriving by the midnight train."
Then, turning to the officers:
"We shall all meet here at lunch to-morrow, sha'n't we, gentlemen? I
rely upon you, for the castle is to be invested by your regiments and
taken by assault at eleven in the morning."
The invitation was accepted, the officers took their leave, and a
minute later a powerful motorcar was carrying Devanne and Velmont along
the Dieppe road. Devanne dropped the painter at the Casino, and went
on to the station.
His friends arrived at midnight, and at half-past twelve the motor
passed through the gates of Thibermesnil. At one o'clock, after a
light supper served in the drawing-room, every one went to bed. The
lights were extinguished one by one. The deep silence of the night
enshrouded the castle.
-----
But the moon pierced the clouds that veiled it, and, through two of the
windows, filled the hall with the light of its white beams. This
lasted for but a moment. Soon the moon was hidden behind the curtain
of the hills, and all was darkness. The silence increased as the
shadows thickened. At most it was disturbed, from time to time, by the
creaking of the furniture or the rustling of the reeds in the pond
which bathes the old walls with its green waters.
The clock told the endless ticks of its seconds. It struck two. Then
once more the seconds fell hastily and monotonously in the heavy
stillness of the night. Then three struck. And suddenly something
gave a clash, like the arm of a railway-signal that drops as a train
passes, and a thin streak of light crossed the hall from one end to the
other, like an arrow, leaving a glittering track behind it. It issued
from the central groove of a pilaster against which the pediment of the
bookcase rests upon the right. It lingered upon the opposite panel in
a dazzling circle, next wandered on every side like a restless glance
searching the darkness, and then faded away, only to appear once more,
while the whole of one section of the bookcase turned upon its axis,
and revealed a wide opening shaped like a vault.
A man entered, holding an electric lantern in his hand. Another man
and a third emerged, carrying a coil of rope and different implements.
The first man looked round the room, listened, and said:
"Call the others."
Eight men came out of the underground passage -- eight strapping
fellows, with determined faces. And the removal began.
It did not take long. Arsène Lupin passed from one piece to another,
examined it, and, according to its size or its artistic value, spared
it or gave an order:
"Take it away."
And the piece in question was removed, swallowed by the yawning mouth
of the tunnel, and sent down into the bowels of the earth.
And thus were juggled away six Louis XV. armchairs and as many
occasional chairs, a number of Aubusson tapestries, some candelabra
signed by Gouthière, two Fragonards and a Nattier, a bust by Houdon,
and some statuettes. At times Arsène Lupin would stop before a
magnificent oak chest or a splendid picture and sigh:
"That's to heavy . . . Too big . . . What a pity!"
And he would continue his expert survey.
In forty minutes the hall was "cleared," to use Arsène's expression.
And all this was accomplished in an admirably orderly manner, without
the least noise, as though all the objects which the men were handling
had been wrapped in thick wadding.
To the last man who was leaving, carrying a clock signed by Boule, he
said:
"You need not come back. You understand, don't you, that as soon as
the motor-van is loaded you're to make for the barn at Roquefort?"
"What about yourself, governor?"
"Leave me the motor-cycle."
When the man had gone he pushed the movable section of the bookcase
back into its place, and, after clearing away the traces of the removal
and the footmarks, he raised a curtain and entered a gallery which
served as a communication between the tower and the castle. Half-way
down the gallery stood a glass case, and it was because of this case
that Arsène Lupin had continued his investigations.
It contained marvels: an unique collection of watches, snuff-boxes,
rings, chatelaines, miniatures of the most exquisite workmanship. He
forced the lock with a jimmy, and it was an unspeakable pleasure to him
to finger those gems of gold and silver, those precious and dainty
little works of art.
Hanging round his neck was a large canvas bag specially contrived to
hold these windfalls. He filled it. He also filled the pockets of his
jacket, waistcoat, and trousers. And he was stuffing under his left
arm a heap of those pearl reticules beloved of our ancestors and so
eagerly sought after by our present fashion . . . when a slight sound
fell upon his ear.
He listened; he was not mistaken; the noise became clearer.
And suddenly he remembered. At the end of the gallery an inner
staircase led to a room which had been hitherto unoccupied, but which
had been allotted that evening to the young girl whom Devanne hd gone
to meet at Dieppe with his friends the d'Androls.
With a quick movement he pressed the spring of his lantern and
extinguished it. He had just time to hide in the recess of a window
when the door at the top of the staircase opened and the gallery was
lit by a faint gleam.
He had a feeling -- for, half-hidden behind a curtain, he could not see
-- that a figure was cautiously descendiing the top stairs. He hoped
that it would come no farther. It continued, however, and took several
steps into the gallery. But it gave a cry. It must have caught sight
of the broken case, three-quarters emptied of its contents.
By the scent he recognized the presence of a woman. Her dress almost
touched the curtain that concealed him, and he seemed to hear her heart
beating, while she must needs herself perceive the presence of another
person behind her in the dark, within reach of her hand. He said to
himself:
"She's frightened . . . she'll go back . . . she is bound to go back."
She did not go back. The candle shaking in her hand became steadier.
She turned round, hesitated for a moment, appeared to be listening to
the alarming silence, and then, with a sudden movement, pulled back the
curtain.
Their eyes met.
Arsène murmured, in confusion:
"You . . . you . . . Miss Nellie!"
It was Nellie Underdown, the passenger on the Provence, the girl who
had mingled her dreams with his during that never-to-be-forgotten
crossing, who had witnessed his arrest, and who, rather than betray
him, had generously flung into the sea the kodak in which he had hidden
the stolen jewels and bank-notes! . . . It was Nellie Underdown, the
dear, sweet girl whose image had so often saddened or gladdened his
long hours spent in prison!
So extraordinary was their chance meeting in this castle and at that
hour of the night that they did not stir, did not utter a word,
dumfounded and, as it were, hypnotized by the fantastic apparition
which each of them presented to the other's eyes.
Nellie, shattered with emotion, staggered to a seat.
He remained standing in front of her. And gradually, as the
interminable seconds passed, he became aware of the impression which
he must be making at that moment, with his arms loaded with
curiosities, his pockets stuffed, his bag filled to bursting. A great
sense of confusion mastered him, and he blushed to find himself there
in the mean plight of a thief caught in the act. To her henceforth,
come what may, he was the thief, the man who puts his hand into other
men's pockets, the man who picks locks and enters doors by stealth.
One of the watches rolled upon the carpet, followed by another. And
more things came slipping from under his arms, which were unable to
retain them. Then, quickly making up his mind, he dropped a part of
his booty into a chair, emptied his pockets, and took off his bag.
He now felt easier in Nellie's presence, and took a step towards her,
with the intention of speaking to her. But she made a movement of
recoil and rose quickly, as though seized with fright, and ran to the
guard-room. The curtain fell behind her. He followed her. She stood
there, trembling and speechless, and her eyes gazed in terror upon the
great devastated hall.
Without a moment's hesitation, he said:
"At three o'clock tomorrow everything shall be restored to its place. .
. . The things shall be brought back."
She did not reply; and he repeated:
"At three o'clock tomorrow, I give you my solemn pledge. . . . No
power on earth shall prevent me from keeping my promise. . . . At
three o'clock tomorrow."
A long silence weighed upon them both. He dared not break it, and the
girl's emotion made him suffer in every nerve. Softly, without a word,
he moved away.
And he thought to himself:
"She must go! . . . She must feel that she is free to go! . . . She
must not be afraid of me! . . ."
But suddenly she started, and stammered:
"Listen! . . . Footsteps! . . . I hear some one coming . . ."
He looked at her with surprise. She appeared distraught, as though at
the approach of danger.
"I hear nothing," he said, "and even so . . ."
"Why, you must fly! . . . Quick, fly! . . ."
"Fly . . . why?"
"You must! . . . you must! . . . Ah, don't stay!"
She rushed to the entrance to the gallery and listened. No, there was
no one there. Perhaps the sound had come from the outside. . . . She
waited a second, and then, reassured, turned round.
Arsène Lupin had disappeared.
-----
Devanne's first thought, on ascertaining that his castle had been
pillaged, found expression in the words which he spoke to himself:
"This is Velmont's work, and Velmont is none other than Arsène Lupin."
All was explained by this means, and nothing could be explained by any
other. And yet the idea only just passed through his mind, for it
seemed almost impossible that Velmont should not be Velmont -- that is
to say, the well-known painter, the club friend of his cousin
d'Estavan. And when the sergeant of gendarmes had been sent for and
arrived, Devanne did not even think of telling him of this absurd
conjecture.
The whole of that morning was spent, at Thibermesnil, in an
indescribable hubbub. The gendarmes, the rural police, the commissary
of police from Dieppe, the inhabitants of the village thronged the
passages, the park, the approaches to the castle. The arrival of the
troops taking part in the manoevres and the crack of the rifles added
to the picturesqueness of the scene.
The early investigations furnished no clue. The windows had not been
broken nor the doors smashed in. There was no doubt but that the
removal had been effected through the secret passage. And yet there
was no trace of footsteps on the carpet, no unusual mark upon the
walls.
There was one unexpected thing, however, which clearly pointed to the
fanciful methods of Arsène Lupin: the famous sixteenth-century
chronicle had been restored to its old place in the bookcase, and
beside it stood a similar volume, which was none other than the copy
stolen from the Biliothèque Nationale.
The officers arrived at eleven. Devanne received them gayly; however
annoyed he might feel at the loss of his artistic treasures, his
fortune was large enough to enable him to bear it without showing
ill-humor. His friends the d'Androls and Nellie came down from their
rooms, and the officers were introduced.
One of the guests was missing: Horace Velmont. Was he not coming? He
walked in upon the stroke of twelve, and Devanne exclaimed:
"Good! There you are at last!"
"Am I late?"
"No, but you might have been . . . after such an exciting night! You
have heard the news, I suppose?"
"What news?"
"You robbed the castle last night."
"Nonsense!"
"I tell you, you did. But give your arm to Miss Underdown, and let us
go in to lunch . . . Miss Underdown, let me introduce . . ."
He stopped, struck by the confusion on the girl's features. Then,
seized with a sudden recollection, he said:
"Ah, of course, you once traveled on the same ship with Arsène Lupin .
. . before his arrest. . . . You are surprised by the likeness, no
doubt?"
She did not reply. Velmont stood before her, smiling. He bowed; she
took his arm. He led her to her place, and sat down opposite to her.
. . .
During lunch they talked of nothing but Arsène Lupin, the stolen
furniture, the underground passage, and Sherlock Holmes. Not until the
end of the meal, when other subjects were broached, did Velmont join in
the conversation. He was amusing and serious, eloquent and witty, by
turns. And whatever he said he appeared to say with the sole object of
interesting Nellie. She, wholly engrossed in her own thoughts, seemed
not to hear him.
Coffee was served on the terrace overlooking the court-yard and the
French garden in front of the castle. The regimental band played on
the lawn, and a crowd of peasants and soldiers strolled about the walks
in the park.
Nellie was thinking of Arsène Lupin's promise:
"At three o'clock everything will be returned. I give you my solemn
pledge."
At three o'clock! And the hands of the great clock in the right wing
pointed to twenty to three. In spite of herself, she kept looking at
it. And she also looked at Velmont, who was swinging peacefully in a
comfortable rocking chair.
Ten minutes to three . . . five minutes to three . . . A sort of
impatience, mingled with a sense of exquisite pain, racked the young
girl's mind. Was it possible for the miracle to be accomplished and to
be accomplished at the fixed time, when the castle, the court-yard, and
the country around were filled with people, and when, at that very
moment, the public prosecutor and the examining magistrate were
pursuing their investigations?
And still . . . still, Arsène Lupin had given such a solemn promise!
"It will happen just as he said," she thought, impressed by all the
man's energy, authority, and certainty.
And it seemed to her no longer a miracle, but a natural event that was
bound to take place in the ordinary course of things.
For a second their eyes met. She blushed, and turned her head away.
Three o'clock. . . . The first stroke rang out, the second, the third.
. . . Horace Velmont took out his watch, glanced up at the clock, and
put his watch back in his pocket. A few seconds elapsed. And then
the crowd opened out around the lawn to make way for two carriages that
had just passed through the park gates, each drawn by two horses. They
were two of those regimental wagons which carry the cooking-utensils of
the officers' mess and the soldier's kits. They stopped in front of
the steps. A quarter-master sergeant jumped down from the box of the
first wagon and asked for M. Devanne.
Devanne ran down the steps. Under the awnings, carefully packed and
wrapped up, were his pictures, his furniture, his works of art of all
kinds.
The sergeant replied to the questions put to him by producing the order
which the adjutant on duty had given him, and which the adjutant
himself received that morning in the orderly room. The order stated
that No. 2 company of the fourth battalion was to see that the goods
and chattels deposited at the Halleux cross-roads, in the Forest of
Arques, were delivered at three o'clock to M. Georges Devanne, the
owner of Thibermesnil Castle. It bore the signature of Colonel
Beauvel.
"I found everything ready for us at the crossroads," added the
sergeant, "laid out on the grass, under the charge of . . . any one
passing. That struck me as queer, but . . . well, sir, the order was
plain enough!"
One of the officers examined the signature: it was a good copy, but
forged.
The band had stopped. The wagons were emptied, and the furniture
carried indoors.
In the midst of this excitement Nellie Underdown was left standing
alone at one end of the terrace. She was grave and anxious, full of
vague thoughts, which she did not seek to formulate. Suddenly she saw
Velmont coming up to her. She wished to avoid him, but the corner of
the balustrade that borders the terrace hemmed her in on two sides, and
a row of great tubs of shrubs -- orange-trees, laurels, and bamboos --
left her no other way of escape than that by which Velmont was
approaching. She did not move. A ray of sunlight quivered on her
golden hair, shaken by the frail leaves of a bamboo-plant. She heard a
soft voice say:
"Have I not kept my promise I made you last night?"
Arsène Lupin stood by her side, and there was no one else near them.
He repeated, in a hesitating attitude and a timid voice:
"Have I not kept my promise I made you last night?"
He expected a word of thanks, a gesture at least, to prove the interest
which she took in his action. She was silent.
Her scorn irritated Arsène Lupin, and at the same time he received a
profound sense of all that separated him from Nellie, now that she knew
the truth. He would have liked to exonerate himself, to seek excuses,
to show his life in its bolder and greater aspects. But the words
jarred upon him before they were uttered, and he felt the absurdity and
the impertinence of any explanation. Then, overcome by a flood of
memories, he murmured, sadly:
"How distant the past seems! Do you remember the long hours on the
deck of the Provence? . . . Ah, stay . . . one day you had a rose in
your hand, as you have today, a pale rose, like this one. . . . I
asked you for it . . . you seemed not to hear. . . . However, when you
had gone below, I found the rose . . . you had forgotten it, no doubt
. . . I have kept it ever since. . . ."
She still made no reply. She seemed very far fro him. He continued:
"For the sake of those dear hours, do not think of what you know. Let
the past be joined to the present! Let me not be the man whom you saw
last night, but your fellow-passenger on that voyage!"
She raised her eyes and looked at him as he had requested. Then,
without saying a word, she pointed to a ring he was wearing on his
forefinger. Only the ring was visible; but the setting, which was
turned toward the palm of his hand, consisted of a magnificent ruby.
Arsène Lupin blushed. The ring belonged to Georges Devanne. He smiled
bitterly, and said:
"You are right. Nothing can be changed. Arsène Lupin is now and
always will be Arsène Lupin. To you, he cannot be even so much as a
memory. Pardon me . . . I should have known that any attention I may
now offer you is simply an insult. Forgive me."
He stepped aside, hat in hand. Nelly passed before him. He was
inclined to detain her and beseech her forgiveness. But his courage
failed, and he contented himself by following her with his eyes, as he
had done when she descended the gangway tot he pier at New York. She
mounted the steps leading to the door, and disappeared within the
house. He saw her no more.
A cloud obscured the sun. Arsène Lupin stood watching the imprints of
her tiny feet in the sand. Suddenly, he gave a start. Upon the box
which contained the bamboo, beside which Nelly had been standing, he
saw the rose, the white rose which he had so coveted but dared not ask
for. Forgotten, no doubt, also! But how -- designedly or through
distraction? He seized it eagerly. Some of its petals fell to the
ground. He picked them up, one by one, like precious relics.
"Come!" he said to himself. "I have nothing more to do here. I must
think of my safety, before Sherlock Holmes arrives."
The park was deserted, but some gendarmes were stationed at the park-
gate. He entered a grove of pine trees, leaped over the wall, and, as
a short cut to the railroad station, followed a path across the
fields. After walking about ten minutes, he arrived at a spot where
the road grew narrower and ran between two steep banks. In this
ravine, he met a man traveling in the opposite direction. It was a man
about fifty years of age, tall, smooth-shaven, and wearing clothes of a
foreign cut. He carried a heavy cane, and a small satchel was strapped
across his shoulder. When they met, the stranger spoke, with a slight
English accent:
"Excuse me, monsieur, is this the way to the castle?"
"Yes, monsieur, straight ahead, and turn to the left when you come to
the wall. They are expecting you."
"Ah!"
"Yes, my friend Devanne told us last night that you were coming, and I
am delighted to be the first to welcome you. Sherlock Holmes has no
more ardent admirer than . . . myself."
There was a touch of irony in his voice that he quickly regretted, for
Sherlock Holmes scrutinized him from head to foot with such a keen,
penetrating eye that Arsène Lupin experienced the sensation of being
seized, imprisoned and registered by that look more thoroughly and
precisely than he had ever been by a camera.
"My negative is taken now," he thought, "and it will be useless to use
a disguise with that man. He would look right through it. But, I
wonder, has he recognized me?"
They bowed to each other as if about to part. But, at that moment,
they heard a sound of horses' feet, accompanied by a clinking of steel.
It was the gendarmes. The two men were obliged to draw back against
the embankment, amongst the bushes, to avoid the horses. The gendarmes
passed by, but, as they followed each other at a considerable distance,
they were several minutes in doing so. And Lupin was thinking:
"It all depends on that question: has he recognized me? If so, he will
probably take advantage of the opportunity. It is a trying situation."
When the last horseman had passed, Sherlock Holmes stepped forth and
brushed the dust from his clothes. His bag caught on a branch and
Lupin leaned forward to help loose him. Then, for a moment, he and
Arsène Lupin gazed at each other; and, if a person could have seen them
at that moment, it would have been an interesting sight, and memorable
as the first meeting of two remarkable men, so strange, so powerfully
equipped, both of superior quality, and destined by fate, through their
peculiar attributes, to hurl themselves one at the other like two equal
forces that nature opposes, one against the other, in the realms of
space.
Then the Englishman said: "Thank you, monsieur."
"You are quite welcome," replied Arsène Lupin.
They parted. Lupin went toward the railway station, and Sherlock
Holmes continued on his way to the castle.
The local officers had given up the investigation after several hours
of fruitless efforts, and the people at the castle were awaiting the
arrival of the English detective with a lively curiosity. At first
sight, they were a little disappointed on account of his commonplace
appearance, which differed so greatly from the picturers they had
formed of him in their own minds. He did not in any way resemble the
romantic hero, the mysterious and diabolical personage that the name of
Sherlock Holmes had evoked in their imaginations. However, M. Devanne
exclaimed, with great gusto:
"Ah! Monsieur, you are here! I am delighted to see you. It is a
long-deferred pleasure. Really, I scarcely regret what has happened,
since it affords me the opportunity to meet you. But, how did you
come?"
"By the train."
"But I sent my automobile to meet you at the station."
"An official reception, eh? With music and fireworks! Oh, no! Not
for me. That is not the way I do business," grumbled the Englishman.
This speech disconcerted Devanne, who replied, with a forced smile:
"Fortunately, the business has been greatly simplified since I wrote to
you."
"In what way?"
"The robbery took place last night."
"If you had not announced my intended visit, it is probable the robbery
would not have been committed last night."
"When, then?"
"Tomorrow, or some other day."
"And in that case?"
"Lupin would have been trapped."
"And my furniture?"
"Would not have been carried away."
"Ah! But my goods are here. They were brought back at three o'clock."
"By Lupin?"
"By two army-wagons."
Sherlock Holmes put on his cap and adjusted his satchel. Devanne
exclaimed anxiously:
"But, monsieur, what are you going to do?"
"I am going home."
"Why?"
"Your goods have been returned; Arsène Lupin is far away -- there is
nothing for me to do."
"Yes, there is. I need your assistance. What happened yesterday may
happen again tomorrow, as we do not know how he entered, or how he
escaped, or why, a few hours later, he returned the goods."
"Ah! You don't know--"
The idea of a problem to be solved quickened the interest of Sherlock
Holmes.
"Very well, let us make a search -- at once -- and alone, if possible."
Devanne understood, and conducted the Englishman to the salon. In a
dry, crisp voice, in sentences that seemed to have been prepared in
advance, Holmes asked a number of questions about the events of the
preceding evening, and enquired also concerning the guests and the
members of the household. Then he examined the two volumes of the
"Chronique," compared the plans of the subterranean passage, requested
a repetition of the sentences discovered by Father Gélis, and then
asked:
"Was yesterday the first time you have spoken of those two sentences to
anyone?"
"Yes."
"You have never communicated them to Horace Velmont?"
"No."
"Well, order the automobile. I must leave in an hour."
"In an hour?"
"Yes; within that time, Arsène Lupin solved the problem that you placed
before him."
"I . . . I placed before him--"
"Yes, Arsène Lupin or Horace Velmont -- same thing."
"I thought so. Ah! The scoundrel!"
"Now, let us see," said Holmes, "last night at ten o'clock, you
furnished Lupin with the information that he lacked, and that he had
been seeking for many weeks. During the night, he found time to solve
the problem, collect his men, and rob the castle. I shall be quite as
expeditious."
He walked from end to end of the room, in deep thought, then sat down,
crossed his long legs, and closed his eyes.
Devanne waited, quite embarrassed. Thought he:
"Is the man asleep? Or is he only meditating?"
However, he left the room to give some orders, and when he returned he
found the detective on his knees scrutinizing the carpet at the foot of
the stairs in the gallery.
"What is it?" he enquired.
"Look . . . there . . . spots from a candle."
"You are right -- and quite fresh."
"And you will also find them at the top of the stairs, and around the
cabinet that Arsène Lupin broke into, and from which he took the knick-
knacks that he afterwards placed in this armchair."
"What do you conclude from that?"
"Nothing. These facts would doubtless explain the cause for the
restitution, but that is a side issue that I cannot wait to
investigate. The main question is the secret passage. First, tell me,
is there a chapel some two or three hundred metres from the castle?"
"Yes, a ruined chapel, containing the tomb of Duke Rollo."
"Tell your chauffeur to wait for us near the chapel."
"My chauffeur hasn't returned. If he had, they would have informed me.
Do you think the secret passage runs to the chapel? What reason
have--"
"I would ask you, monsieur," interrupted the detective, "to furnish me
with a ladder and a lantern."
"What! Do you require a ladder and a lantern?"
"Certainly, or I shouldn't have asked for them."
Devanne, somewhat disconcerted by this crude logic, rang the bell. The
two articles were brought. The succeeding orders were given with the
sternness and precision of military commands.
"Place the ladder against the bookcase, to the left of the word
Thibermesnil."
Devanne placed the ladder as directed, and the Englishman continued:
"More to the left . . . to the right . . . there! Now, climb up. . . .
All the letters are in relief, aren't they?"
"Yes."
"First, turn the letter "I" one way or the other."
"Which one?" There are two of them."
"The first one."
Devanne took hold of the letter, and exclaimed:
"Ah! Yes, it turns toward the right. Who told you that?"
Sherlock Holmes did not reply to the question, but continued his
directions:
"Now, take the letter 'B'. Move it back and forth as you would a
bolt."
Devanne did so, and, to his great surprise, it produced a clicking
sound.
"Quite right," said Holmes. "Now, we will go to the other end of the
word Thibermesnil, try the letter 'I', and see if it will open like a
wicket."
With a certain degree of solemnity, Devanne seized the letter. It
opened, but Devanne fell from the ladder, for the entire section of the
bookcase, lying between the first and last letters of the word, turned
on a pivot and disclosed the subterranean passage.
Sherlock Holmes said, coolly:
"You are not hurt?"
"No, no," said Devanne, as he rose to his feet, "not hurt, only
bewildered. I can't understand how . . . those letters turn . . . the
secret passage opens . . ."
"Certainly. Doesn't that agree exactly with the formula given by
Sully? Turn one eye on the bee that shakes, the other eye will lead to
God."
"But Louis the Sixteenth?"
"Louis the Sixteenth was a clever locksmith. I have read a book he
wrote about combination locks. It was a good idea on the part of the
owner of Thibermesnil to show to His Majesty a clever bit of mechanism.
As an aid to his memory, the king wrote: 3-4-11, that is to say, the
third, fourth, and eleventh letters of the word." (4)
[4. see endnotes]
"Exactly. I understand that. It explains how Lupin got out of the
room, but it does not explain how he entered. And it is certain that
he came from the outside."
Sherlock Holmes lighted his lantern, and stepped into the passage.
"Look! All the mechanism is exposed here, like the works of a clock,
and the reverse side of the letters can be reached. Lupin worked the
combination from this side -- that is all."
"What proof is there of that?"
"Proof? Why, look at the puddle of oil. Lupin foresaw even that the
wheels would require oiling."
"Did he know about the other entrance?"
"As well as I know it," said Holmes. "Follow me."
"Into that dark passage?"
"Are you afraid?"
"No, but are you sure you can find the way out?"
"With my eyes closed."
At first, they descended twelve steps, then twelve more, and, farther
on, two other flights of twelve steps each. Then they walked through a
long passageway, the brick walls of which showed the marks of
successive restorations, and, in spots, were dripping with water. The
earth, also, was very damp.
"We are passing under the pond," said Devanne, somewhat nervously.
At last, they came to a stairway of twelve steps, followed by three
others of twelve steps each, which they mounted with difficulty, and
then found themselves in a small cavity cut into the rock. They could
go no farther.
"The deuce!" muttered Holmes, "nothing but bare walls. This is
provoking."
"Let us go back," said Devanne. "I have seen enough to satisfy me."
But the Englishman raised his eyes and uttered a sigh of relief.
There, he saw the same mechanism and the same word as before. He had
merely to work the three letters. He did so, and a block of granite
swung out of place. On the other side, this granite block formed the
tombstone of Duke Rollo, and the word "Thibermesnil" was engraved on it
in relief. Now, they were in the little ruined chapel, and the
detective said:
"The other eye leads to God; that means, to the chapel."
"It is marvelous!" exclaimed Devanne, amazed at the clairvoyance and
vivacity of the Englishman. "Can it be possible that those few words
were sufficient for you?"
"Bah!" declared Holmes. "They weren't even necessary. In the chart in
the book of the Bibliothéque Nationale, the drawing terminates at the
left, as you know, in a circle, and at the right, as you do not know,
in a cross. Now, that cross must refer to the chapel in which we now
stand."
Poor Devanne could not believe his ears. It was all so new, so novel
to him. He exclaimed:
"It is incredible, miraculous, and yet of a childish simplicity! How
is it that no one has ever solved the mystery?"
"Because no one has ever united the essential elements, that is to say,
the two books and the two sentences. No one, but Arsène Lupin and
myself."
"But, Father Gélis and I new all about those things, and, likewise--"
Holmes smiled, and said:
"Monsieur Devanne, not everybody can solve riddles."
"I have been trying for ten years to accomplish what you did in ten
minutes."
"Bah! I am used to it."
They emerged from the chapel, and found an automobile.
"Ah! There's an auto waiting for us."
"Yes, it is mine," said Devanne.
"Yours? You said your chauffeur hadn't returned."
They approached the machine, and M. Devanne questioned the chauffeur:
"Edouard, who gave you orders to come here?"
"Why, it was Monsieur Velmont."
"M. Velmont? Did you meet him?"
"Near the railway station, and he told me to come to the chapel."
"To come to the chapel! What for?"
"To wait for you, monsieur, and your friend."
Devanne and Holmes exchanged looks, and M. Devanne said:
"He knew the mystery would be a simple one for you. It is a delicate
compliment."
A smile of satisfaction lighted up the detective's serious features for
a moment. The compliment pleased him. He shook his head, as he said:
"A clever man! I knew that when I saw him."
"Have you seen him?"
"I met him a short time ago -- on my way from the station."
"And you knew it was Horace Velmont -- I mean, Arsène Lupin?"
"No, but I supposed it was -- from a certain ironical speech he made."
"And you allowed him to escape?"
"Of course I did. And yet I had everything on my side, such as five
gendarmes who passed us."
"Sacrebleu!" cried Devanne. "You should have taken advantage of the
opportunity."
"Really, monsieur," said the Englishman, haughtily, "when I encounter an
adversary like Arsène Lupin, I do not take advantage of chance
opportunities, I create them."
But time pressed, and since Lupin had been so kind as to send the
automobile, they resolved to profit by it. They seated themselves in
the comfortable limousine; Edouard took his place at the wheel, and
away they went toward the railway station. Suddenly, Devanne's eyes
fell upon a small package in one of the pockets of the carriage.
"Ah! What is that? A package! Whose is it? Why, it is for you."
"For me?"
"Yes, it is addressed: 'Sherlock Holmes, from Arsène Lupin.'"
"The Englishman took the package, opened it, and found that it
contained a watch.
"Ah!" he exclaimed, with an angry gesture.
"A watch, said Devanne. "How did it come there?"
The detective did not reply.
"Oh! It is your watch! Arsène Lupin returns your watch! But, in
order to return it, he must have taken it. Ah! I see! He took your
watch! That is a good one! Sherlock Holmes' watch stolen by Arsène
Lupin! Mon Dieu! That is funny! Really . . . you must excuse me . .
. I can't help it."
He roared with laughter, unable to control himself. After which, he
said, in a tone of earnest conviction: "A clever man, indeed!"
The Englishman never moved a muscle. On the way to Dieppe, he never
spoke a word, but fixed his gaze on the flying landscape. His silence
was terrible, unfathomable, more violent than the wildest rage. At the
railway station, he spoke calmly, but in a voice that impressed one
with the vast energy and will power of that famous man. He said:
"Yes, he is a clever man, but some day I shall have the pleasure of
placing on his shoulder the hand I now offer to you, Monsieur Devanne.
And I believe that Arsène Lupin and Sherlock Holmes will meet again
some day. Yes, the world is too small -- we will meet -- we must meet
-- and then--"
FOOTNOTES (be advised, it's best to finish the story before reading
these translation notes)
[3. The translation here is changed almost entirely during this
conversation to give the English reader a better understanding of how
the story works. The other translation says:
'La hache tournoie dans l'air qui frémit, mais l'aile s'ouvre et l'on
va jusqu' à Dieu.' (The axe turns on the air that shakes, but the wing
opens and leads one to God.)
A silence followed, and Velmont laughed:
"It's not as clear as daylight, is it?"
"That's what I say. The rector maintains that Sully set down the key
to the puzzle by means of those words, without betraying the secret to
the scribes to whom he dictated his memoirs."
"It's an ingenious supposition."
"True. But what is the axe that turns? What bird is it whose wing
opens?"
"And who goes to God?"
"Goodness knows!"
"And what about our good King Louis the Sixteenth? Was it also to
receive a lady that he caused the passage to be opened?" asked Velmont.
"I don't know," said M. Devanne. "All I can say is Louis the Sixteenth
stayed at Thibermesnil in 1784, and the famous Iron Cupboard discovered
at the Louvre on the information of the Gamain, the locksmith,
contained a paper with these words written in the king's hand:
'Thibermesnil, 2-6-12.'"
Horace Velmont laughed aloud.
"Victory! The darkness is dispelled. Twice six are twelve!"]
[4. The other translation continutes:
"First, turn the letter 'H' one way or the other."
Devanne took hold of the letter, and exclaimed:
"Ah! Yes, it turns toward the right. Who told you that?"
Sherlock Holmes did not reply to the question, but continued his
directions:
"Now, take the letter 'R'. Move it back and forth as you would a
bolt."
Devanne did so, and, to his great surprise, it produced a clicking
sound.
"Quite right," said Holmes. "Now, we will go to the other end of the
word Thibermesnil, try the letter 'L', and see if it will open like a
wicket."
With a certain degree of solemnity, Devanne seized the letter. . . .
(Holmes:) "Doesn't that agree exactly with the formula given by Sully?
La hache tournoie dans l'air qui frémit, mais l'aile s'ouvre et l'on
va jusqu' à Dieu -- The axe turns on the air that shakes, but the wing
opens and leads one to God."
(At this point, the explanation is more apparent. The French word
'hache', or axe, sounds like the French pronunciation of the letter
'H', the French word 'air', also air in English, sounds like the French
pronunciation of the letter 'R', and the French word 'aile', or wing,
sounds like the French pronunciation for the letter 'L'. The
translation used here changed those letters and words to English
equivalents in a pattern that still makes sense.)
"But Louis the Sixteenth?"
"Louis the Sixteenth was a clever locksmith. I have read a book he
wrote about combination locks. It was a good idea on the part of the
owner of Thibermesnil to show to His Majesty a clever bit of mechanism.
As an aid to his memory, the king wrote: 2-6-12, that is to say, the
second, sixth, and twelfth letters of the word."]
FINIS (
geocities.com/marieldechagny)