FOOTNOTES:
[E] The department of the French excise which holds the monopoly for the manufacture and sale of tobacco, cigars, cigarettes and matches.—Translator’s Note.
[F] The cross of Lorraine is a cross with two horizontal lines or bars across the upper half of the perpendicular beam.—Translator’s Note.
CHAPTER XII
THE SCAFFOLD
“I will save him, I will save him,” Lupin repeated, without ceasing, in the taxicab in which he and Clarisse drove away. “I swear that I will save him.”
Clarisse did not listen, sat as though numbed, as though possessed by some great nightmare of death, which left her ignorant of all that was happening outside her. And Lupin set forth his plans, perhaps more to reassure himself than to convince Clarisse:
“No, no, the game is not lost yet. There is one trump left, a huge trump, in the shape of the letters and documents which Vorenglade, the ex-deputy, is offering to sell to Daubrecq and of which Daubrecq spoke to you yesterday at Nice. I shall buy those letters and documents of Stanislas Vorenglade at whatever price he chooses to name. Then we shall go back to the police-office and I shall say to Prasville, ‘Go to the Élysée at once.... Use the list as though it were genuine, save Gilbert from death and be content to acknowledge to-morrow, when Gilbert is saved, that the list is forged.... Be off, quickly!... If you refuse, well, if you refuse, the Vorenglade letters and documents shall be reproduced to-morrow, Tuesday, morning in one of the leading newspapers.’ Vorenglade will be arrested. And M. Prasville will find himself in prison before night.’”
Lupin rubbed his hands:
“He’ll do as he’s told!... He’ll do as he’s told!... I felt that at once, when I was with him. The thing appeared to me as a dead certainty. And I found Vorenglade’s address in Daubrecq’s pocket-books, so . . . driver, Boulevard Raspail!”
They went to the address given. Lupin sprang from the cab, ran up three flights of stairs.
The servant said that M. Vorenglade was away and would not be back until dinner-time next evening.
“And don’t you know where he is?”
“M. Vorenglade is in London, sir.”
Lupin did not utter a word on returning to the cab. Clarisse, on her side, did not even ask him any questions, so indifferent had she become to everything, so absolutely did she look upon her son’s death as an accomplished fact.
They drove to the Place de Clichy. As Lupin entered the house he passed two men who were just leaving the porter’s box. He was too much engrossed to notice them. They were Prasville’s inspectors.
“No telegram?” he asked his servant.
“No, governor,” replied Achille.
“No news of the Masher and the Growler?”
“No, governor, none.”
“That’s all right,” he said to Clarisse, in a casual tone. “It’s only seven o’clock and we mustn’t reckon on seeing them before eight or nine. Prasville will have to wait, that’s all. I will telephone to him to wait.”
He did so and was hanging up the receiver, when he heard a moan behind him. Clarisse was standing by the table, reading an evening-paper. She put her hand to her heart, staggered and fell.
“Achille, Achille!” cried Lupin, calling his man. “Help me put her on my bed.... And then go to the cupboard and get me the medicine-bottle marked number four, the bottle with the sleeping-draught.”
He forced open her teeth with the point of a knife and compelled her to swallow half the bottle:
“Good,” he said. “Now the poor thing won’t wake till to-morrow . . . after.”
He glanced through the paper, which was still clutched in Clarisse’ hand, and read the following lines:
“The strictest measures have been taken to keep order at the execution of Gilbert and Vaucheray, lest Arsène Lupin should make an attempt to rescue his accomplices from the last penalty. At twelve o’clock to-night a cordon of troops will be drawn across all the approaches to the Santé Prison. As already stated, the execution will take place outside the prison-walls, in the square formed by the Boulevard Arago and the Rue de la Santé.
“We have succeeded in obtaining some details of the attitude of the two condemned men. Vaucheray observes a stolid sullenness and is awaiting the fatal event with no little courage:
“‘Crikey,’ he says, ‘I can’t say I’m delighted; but I’ve got to go through it and I shall keep my end up.’ And he adds, ‘Death I don’t care a hang about! What worries me is the thought that they’re going to cut my head off. Ah, if the governor could only hit on some trick to send me straight off to the next world before I had time to say knife! A drop of Prussic acid, governor, if you please!’
“Gilbert’s calmness is even more impressive, especially when we remember how he broke down at the trial. He retains an unshaken confidence in the omnipotence of Arsène Lupin:
“‘The governor shouted to me before everybody not to be afraid, that he was there, that he answered for everything. Well, I’m not afraid. I shall rely on him until the last day, until the last minute, at the very foot of the scaffold. I know the governor! There’s no danger with him. He has promised and he will keep his word. If my head were off, he’d come and clap it on my shoulders and firmly! Arsène Lupin allow his chum Gilbert to die? Not he! Excuse my humour!’
“There is a certain touching frankness in all this enthusiasm which is not without a dignity of its own. We shall see if Arsène Lupin deserves the confidence so blindly placed in him.”
Lupin was hardly able to finish reading the article for the tears that dimmed his eyes: tears of affection, tears of pity, tears of distress.
No, he did not deserve the confidence of his chum Gilbert. Certainly, he had performed impossibilities; but there are circumstances in which we must perform more than impossibilities, in which we must show ourselves stronger than fate; and, this time, fate had been stronger than he. Ever since the first day and throughout this lamentable adventure, events had gone contrary to his anticipations, contrary to logic itself. Clarisse and he, though pursuing an identical aim, had wasted weeks in fighting each other. Then, at the moment when they were uniting their efforts, a series of ghastly disasters had come one after the other: the kidnapping of little Jacques, Daubrecq’s disappearance, his imprisonment in the Lovers’ Tower, Lupin’s wound, his enforced inactivity, followed by the cunning manoeuvres that dragged Clarisse—and Lupin after her—to the south, to Italy. And then, as a crowning catastrophe, when, after prodigies of will-power, after miracles of perseverance, they were entitled to think that the Golden Fleece was won, it all came to nothing. The list of the Twenty-seven had no more value than the most insignificant scrap of paper.
“The game’s up!” said Lupin. “It’s an absolute defeat. What if I do revenge myself on Daubrecq, ruin him and destroy him? He is the real victor, once Gilbert is going to die.”
He wept anew, not with spite or rage, but with despair. Gilbert was going to die! The lad whom he called his chum, the best of his pals would be gone for ever, in a few hours. He could not save him. He was at the end of his tether. He did not even look round for a last expedient. What was the use?
And his persuasion of his own helplessness was so deep, so definite that he felt no shock of any kind on receiving a telegram from the Masher that said:
“Motor accident. Essential part broken. Long repair. Arrive to-morrow morning.”
It was a last proof to show that fate had uttered its decree. He no longer thought of rebelling against the decision.
He looked at Clarisse. She was peacefully sleeping; and this total oblivion, this absence of all consciousness, seemed to him so enviable that, suddenly yielding to a fit of cowardice, he seized the bottle, still half-filled with the sleeping-draught, and drank it down.
Then he stretched himself on a couch and rang for his man:
“Go to bed, Achille, and don’t wake me on any pretence whatever.”
“Then there’s nothing to be done for Gilbert and Vaucheray, governor?” said Achille.
“Nothing.”
“Are they going through it?”
“They are going through it.”
Twenty minutes later Lupin fell into a heavy sleep. It was ten o’clock in the evening.
The night was full of incident and noise around the prison. At one o’clock in the morning the Rue de la Santé, the Boulevard Arago and all the streets abutting on the gaol were guarded by police, who allowed no one to pass without a regular cross-examination.
For that matter, it was raining in torrents; and it seemed as though the lovers of this sort of show would not be very numerous. The public-houses were all closed by special order. At four o’clock three companies of infantry came and took up their positions along the pavements, while a battalion occupied the Boulevard Arago in case of a surprise. Municipal guards cantered up and down between the lines; a whole staff of police-magistrates, officers and functionaries, brought together for the occasion, moved about among the troops.
The guillotine was set up in silence, in the middle of the square formed by the boulevard and the street; and the sinister sound of hammering was heard.
But, at five o’clock, the crowd gathered, notwithstanding the rain, and people began to sing. They shouted for the footlights, called for the curtain to rise, were exasperated to see that, at the distance at which the barriers had been fixed, they could hardly distinguish the uprights of the guillotine.
Several carriages drove up, bringing official persons dressed in black. There were cheers and hoots, whereupon a troop of mounted municipal guards scattered the groups and cleared the space to a distance of three hundred yards from the square. Two fresh companies of soldiers lined up.
And suddenly there was a great silence. A vague white light fell from the dark sky. The rain ceased abruptly.
Inside the prison, at the end of the passage containing the condemned cells, the men in black were conversing in low voices. Prasville was talking to the public prosecutor, who expressed his fears:
“No, no,” declared Prasville, “I assure you, it will pass without an incident of any kind.”
“Do your reports mention nothing at all suspicious, monsieur le secrétaire;-général?”
“Nothing. And they can’t mention anything, for the simple reason that we have Lupin.”
“Do you mean that?”
“Yes, we know his hiding-place. The house where he lives, on the Place de Clichy, and where he went at seven o’clock last night, is surrounded. Moreover, I know the scheme which he had contrived to save his two accomplices. The scheme miscarried at the last moment. We have nothing to fear, therefore. The law will take its course.”
Meanwhile, the hour had struck.
They took Vaucheray first; and the governor of the prison ordered the door of his cell to be opened. Vaucheray leapt out of bed and cast eyes dilated with terror upon the men who entered.
“Vaucheray, we have come to tell you....”
“Stow that, stow that,” he muttered. “No words. I know all about it. Get on with the business.”
One would have thought that he was in a hurry for it to be over as fast as possible, so readily did he submit to the usual preparations. But he would not allow any of them to speak to him:
“No words,” he repeated. “What? Confess to the priest? Not worth while. I have shed blood. The law sheds my blood. It’s the good old rule. We’re quits.”
Nevertheless, he stopped short for a moment:
“I say, is my mate going through it too?”
And, when he heard that Gilbert would go to the scaffold at the same time as himself, he had two or three seconds of hesitation, glanced at the bystanders, seemed about to speak, was silent and, at last, muttered:
“It’s better so.... They’ll pull us through together . . . we’ll clink glasses together.”
Gilbert was not asleep either, when the men entered his cell.
Sitting on his bed, he listened to the terrible words, tried to stand up, began to tremble frightfully, from head to foot, like a skeleton when shaken, and then fell back, sobbing:
“Oh, my poor mummy, poor mummy!” he stammered.
They tried to question him about that mother, of whom he had never spoken; but his tears were interrupted by a sudden fit of rebellion and he cried:
“I have done no murder.... I won’t die. I have done no murder....”
“Gilbert,” they said, “show yourself a man.”
“Yes, yes . . . but I have done no murder.... Why should I die?”
His teeth chattered so loudly that words which he uttered became unintelligible. He let the men do their work, made his confession, heard mass and then, growing calmer and almost docile, with the voice of a little child resigning itself, murmured:
“Tell my mother that I beg her forgiveness.”
“Your mother?”
“Yes.... Put what I say in the papers.... She will understand.... And then....”
“What, Gilbert?”
“Well, I want the governor to know that I have not lost confidence.”
He gazed at the bystanders, one after the other, as though he entertained the mad hope that “the governor” was one of them, disguised beyond recognition and ready to carry him off in his arms:
“Yes,” he said, gently and with a sort of religious piety, “yes, I still have confidence, even at this moment.... Be sure and let him know, won’t you?... I am positive that he will not let me die. I am certain of it....”
They guessed, from the fixed look in his eyes, that he saw Lupin, that he felt Lupin’s shadow prowling around and seeking an inlet through which to get to him. And never was anything more touching than the sight of that stripling—clad in the strait-jacket, with his arms and legs bound, guarded by thousands of men—whom the executioner already held in his inexorable hand and who, nevertheless, hoped on.
Anguish wrung the hearts of all the beholders. Their eyes were dimmed with tears:
“Poor little chap!” stammered some one.
Prasville, touched like the rest and thinking of Clarisse, repeated, in a whisper:
“Poor little chap!”
But the hour struck, the preparations were finished. They set out.
The two processions met in the passage. Vaucheray, on seeing Gilbert, snapped out:
“I say, kiddie, the governor’s chucked us!”
And he added a sentence which nobody, save Prasville, was able to understand:
“Expect he prefers to pocket the proceeds of the crystal stopper.”
They went down the staircases. They crossed the prison-yards. An endless, horrible distance.
And, suddenly, in the frame of the great doorway, the wan light of day, the rain, the street, the outlines of houses, while far-off sounds came through the awful silence.
They walked along the wall, to the corner of the boulevard.
A few steps farther Vaucheray started back: he had seen!
Gilbert crept along, with lowered head, supported by an executioner’s assistant and by the chaplain, who made him kiss the crucifix as he went.
There stood the guillotine.
“No, no,” shouted Gilbert, “I won’t.... I won’t.... Help! Help!”
A last appeal, lost in space.
The executioner gave a signal. Vaucheray was laid hold of, lifted, dragged along, almost at a run.
And then came this staggering thing: a shot, a shot fired from the other side, from one of the houses opposite.
The assistants stopped short.
The burden which they were dragging had collapsed in their arms.
“What is it? What’s happened?” asked everybody.
“He’s wounded....”
Blood spurted from Vaucheray’s forehead and covered his face.
He spluttered:
“That’s done it . . . one in a thousand! Thank you, governor, thank you.”
“Finish him off! Carry him there!” said a voice, amid the general confusion.
“But he’s dead!”
“Get on with it . . . finish him off!”
Tumult was at its height, in the little group of magistrates, officials and policemen. Every one was giving orders:
“Execute him!... The law must take its course!... We have no right to delay! It would be cowardice!... Execute him!”
“But the man’s dead!”
“That makes no difference!... The law must be obeyed!... Execute him!”
The chaplain protested, while two warders and Prasville kept their eyes on Gilbert. In the meantime, the assistants had taken up the corpse again and were carrying it to the guillotine.
“Hurry up!” cried the executioner, scared and hoarse-voiced. “Hurry up!... And the other one to follow.... Waste no time....”
He had not finished speaking, when a second report rang out. He spun round on his heels and fell, groaning:
“It’s nothing . . . a wound in the shoulder.... Go on.... The next one’s turn!”
But his assistants were running away, yelling with terror. The space around the guillotine was cleared. And the prefect of police, rallying his men, drove everybody back to the prison, helter-skelter, like a disordered rabble: the magistrates, the officials, the condemned man, the chaplain, all who had passed through the archway two or three minutes before.
In the meanwhile, a squad of policemen, detectives and soldiers were rushing upon the house, a little old-fashioned, three-storied house, with a ground-floor occupied by two shops which happened to be empty. Immediately after the first shot, they had seen, vaguely, at one of the windows on the second floor, a man holding a rifle in his hand and surrounded with a cloud of smoke.
Revolver-shots were fired at him, but missed him. He, standing calmly on a table, took aim a second time, fired from the shoulder; and the crack of the second report was heard. Then he withdrew into the room.
Down below, as nobody answered the peal at the bell, the assailants demolished the door, which gave way almost immediately. They made for the staircase, but their onrush was at once stopped, on the first floor, by an accumulation of beds, chairs and other furniture, forming a regular barricade and so close-entangled that it took the aggressors four or five minutes to clear themselves a passage.
Those four or five minutes lost were enough to render all pursuit hopeless. When they reached the second floor they heard a voice shouting from above:
“This way, friends! Eighteen stairs more. A thousand apologies for giving you so much trouble!”
They ran up those eighteen stairs and nimbly at that! But, at the top, above the third story, was the garret, which was reached by a ladder and a trapdoor. And the fugitive had taken away the ladder and bolted the trapdoor.
The reader will not have forgotten the sensation created by this amazing action, the editions of the papers issued in quick succession, the newsboys tearing and shouting through the streets, the whole metropolis on edge with indignation and, we may say, with anxious curiosity.
But it was at the headquarters of police that the excitement developed into a paroxysm. Men flung themselves about on every side. Messages, telegrams, telephone calls followed one upon the other.
At last, at eleven o’clock in the morning, there was a meeting in the office of the prefect of police, and Prasville was there. The chief-detective read a report of his inquiry, the results of which amounted to this: shortly before midnight yesterday some one had rung at the house on the Boulevard Arago. The portress, who slept in a small room on the ground-floor, behind one of the shops pulled the rope. A man came and tapped at her door. He said that he had come from the police on an urgent matter concerning to-morrow’s execution. The portress opened the door and was at once attacked, gagged and bound.
Ten minutes later a lady and gentleman who lived on the first floor and who had just come home were also reduced to helplessness by the same individual and locked up, each in one of the two empty shops. The third-floor tenant underwent a similar fate, but in his own flat and his own bedroom, which the man was able to enter without being heard. The second floor was unoccupied, and the man took up his quarters there. He was now master of the house.
“And there we are!” said the prefect of police, beginning to laugh, with a certain bitterness. “There we are! It’s as simple as shelling peas. Only, what surprises me is that he was able to get away so easily.”
“I will ask you to observe, monsieur le préfet, that, being absolute master of the house from one o’clock in the morning, he had until five o’clock to prepare his flight.”
“And that flight took place...?”
“Over the roofs. At that spot the houses in the next street, the Rue de la Glacière, are quite near and there is only one break in the roofs, about three yards wide, with a drop of one yard in height.”
“Well?”
“Well, our man had taken away the ladder leading to the garret and used it as a foot-bridge. After crossing to the next block of buildings, all he had to do was to look through the windows until he found an empty attic, enter one of the houses in the Rue de la Glacière and walk out quietly with his hands in his pockets. In this way his flight, duly prepared beforehand, was effected very simply and without the least obstacle.”
“But you had taken the necessary measures.”
“Those which you ordered, monsieur le préfet. My men spent three hours last evening visiting all the houses, so as to make sure that there was no stranger hiding there. At the moment when they were leaving the last house I had the street barred. Our man must have slipped through during that few minutes’ interval.”
“Capital! Capital! And there is no doubt in your minds, of course: it’s Arsène Lupin?”
“Not a doubt. In the first place, it was all a question of his accomplices. And then . . . and then . . . no one but Arsène Lupin was capable of contriving such a master-stroke and carrying it out with that inconceivable boldness.”
“But, in that case,” muttered the prefect of police—and, turning to Prasville, he continued—“but, in that case, my dear Prasville, the fellow of whom you spoke to me, the fellow whom you and the chief-detective have had watched since yesterday evening, in his flat in the Place de Clichy, that fellow is not Arsène Lupin?”
“Yes, he is, monsieur le préfet. There is no doubt about that either.”
“Then why wasn’t he arrested when he went out last night?”
“He did not go out.”
“I say, this is getting complicated!”
“It’s quite simple, monsieur le préfet. Like all the houses in which traces of Arsène Lupin are to be found, the house in the Place de Clichy has two outlets.”
“And you didn’t know it?”
“I didn’t know it. I only discovered it this morning, on inspecting the flat.”
“Was there no one in the flat?”
“No. The servant, a man called Achille, went away this morning, taking with him a lady who was staying with Lupin.”
“What was the lady’s name?”
“I don’t know,” replied Prasville, after an imperceptible hesitation.
“But you know the name under which Arsène Lupin passed?”
“Yes. M. Nicole, a private tutor, master of arts and so on. Here is his card.”
As Prasville finished speaking, an office-messenger came to tell the prefect of police that he was wanted immediately at the Élysée. The prime minister was there already.
“I’m coming,” he said. And he added, between his teeth, “It’s to decide upon Gilbert’s fate.”
Prasville ventured:
“Do you think they will pardon him, monsieur le préfet?”
“Never! After last night’s affair, it would make a most deplorable impression. Gilbert must pay his debt to-morrow morning.”
The messenger had, at the same time, handed Prasville a visiting-card. Prasville now looked at it, gave a start and muttered:
“Well, I’m hanged! What a nerve!”
“What’s the matter?” asked the prefect of police.
“Nothing, nothing, monsieur le préfet,” declared Prasville, who did not wish to share with another the honour of seeing this business through. “Nothing . . . an unexpected visit.... I hope soon to have the pleasure of telling you the result.”
And he walked away, mumbling, with an air of amazement:
“Well, upon my word! What a nerve the beggar has! What a nerve!”
The visiting-card which he held in his hand bore these words:
M. Nicole,
Master of Arts, Private Tutor.
CHAPTER XIII
THE LAST BATTLE
When Prasville returned to his office he saw M. Nicole sitting on a bench in the waiting-room, with his bent back, his ailing air, his gingham umbrella, his rusty hat and his single glove:
“It’s he all right,” said Prasville, who had feared for a moment that Lupin might have sent another M. Nicole to see him. “And the fact that he has come in person proves that he does not suspect that I have seen through him.” And, for the third time, he said, “All the same, what a nerve!”
He shut the door of his office and called his secretary:
“M. Lartigue, I am having a rather dangerous person shown in here. The chances are that he will have to leave my office with the bracelets on. As soon as he is in my room, make all the necessary arrangements: send for a dozen inspectors and have them posted in the waiting-room and in your office. And take this as a definite instruction: the moment I ring, you are all to come in, revolvers in hand, and surround the fellow. Do you quite understand?”
“Yes, monsieur le secrétaire;-général.”
“Above all, no hesitation. A sudden entrance, in a body, revolvers in hand. Send M. Nicole in, please.”
As soon as he was alone, Prasville covered the push of an electric bell on his desk with some papers and placed two revolvers of respectable dimensions behind a rampart of books.
“And now,” he said to himself, “to sit tight. If he has the list, let’s collar it. If he hasn’t, let’s collar him. And, if possible, let’s collar both. Lupin and the list of the Twenty-seven, on the same day, especially after the scandal of this morning, would be a scoop in a thousand.”
There was a knock at the door.
“Come in!” said Prasville.
And, rising from his seat:
“Come in, M. Nicole, come in.”
M. Nicole crept timidly into the room, sat down on the extreme edge of the chair to which Prasville pointed and said:
“I have come . . .to resume . . . our conversation of yesterday.... Please excuse the delay, monsieur.”
“One second,” said Prasville. “Will you allow me?”
He stepped briskly to the outer room and, seeing his secretary:
“I was forgetting, M. Lartigue. Have the staircases and passages searched . . . in case of accomplices.”
He returned, settled himself comfortably, as though for a long and interesting conversation, and began:
“You were saying, M. Nicole?”
“I was saying, monsieur le secrétaire;-général, that I must apologize for keeping you waiting yesterday evening. I was detained by different matters. First of all, Mme. Mergy....”
“Yes, you had to see Mme. Mergy home.”
“Just so, and to look after her. You can understand the poor thing’s despair.... Her son Gilbert so near death.... And such a death!... At that time we could only hope for a miracle . . . an impossible miracle. I myself was resigned to the inevitable.... You know as well as I do, when fate shows itself implacable, one ends by despairing.”
“But I thought,” observed Prasville, “that your intention, on leaving me, was to drag Daubrecq’s secret from him at all costs.”
“Certainly. But Daubrecq was not in Paris.”
“Oh?”
“No. He was on his way to Paris in a motor-car.”
“Have you a motor-car, M. Nicole?”
“Yes, when I need it: an out-of-date concern, an old tin kettle of sorts. Well, he was on his way to Paris in a motor-car, or rather on the roof of a motor-car, inside a trunk in which I packed him. But, unfortunately, the motor was unable to reach Paris until after the execution. Thereupon....”
Prasville stared at M. Nicole with an air of stupefaction. If he had retained the least doubt of the individual’s real identity, this manner of dealing with Daubrecq would have removed it. By Jingo! To pack a man in a trunk and pitch him on the top of a motor-car!... No one but Lupin would indulge in such a freak, no one but Lupin would confess it with that ingenuous coolness!
“Thereupon,” echoed Prasville, “you decided what?”
“I cast about for another method.”
“What method?”
“Why, surely, monsieur le secrétaire;-général, you know as well as I do!”
“How do you mean?”
“Why, weren’t you at the execution?”
“I was.”
“In that case, you saw both Vaucheray and the executioner hit, one mortally, the other with a slight wound. And you can’t fail to see....”
“Oh,” exclaimed Prasville, dumbfounded, “you confess it? It was you who fired the shots, this morning?”
“Come, monsieur le secrétaire;-général, think! What choice had I? The list of the Twenty-seven which you examined was a forgery. Daubrecq, who possessed the genuine one, would not arrive until a few hours after the execution. There was therefore but one way for me to save Gilbert and obtain his pardon; and that was to delay the execution by a few hours.”
“Obviously.”
“Well, of course. By killing that infamous brute, that hardened criminal, Vaucheray, and wounding the executioner, I spread disorder and panic; I made Gilbert’s execution physically and morally impossible; and I thus gained the few hours which were indispensable for my purpose.”
“Obviously,” repeated Prasville.
“Well, of course,” repeated Lupin, “it gives us all—the government, the president and myself—time to reflect and to see the question in a clearer light. What do you think of it, monsieur le secrétaire;-général?”
Prasville thought a number of things, especially that this Nicole was giving proof, to use a vulgar phrase, of the most infernal cheek, of a cheek so great that Prasville felt inclined to ask himself if he was really right in identifying Nicole with Lupin and Lupin with Nicole.
“I think, M. Nicole, that a man has to be a jolly good shot to kill a person whom he wants to kill, at a distance of a hundred yards, and to wound another person whom he only wants to wound.”
“I have had some little practice,” said M. Nicole, with modest air.
“And I also think that your plan can only be the fruit of a long preparation.”
“Not at all! That’s where you’re wrong! It was absolutely spontaneous! If my servant, or rather the servant of the friend who lent me his flat in the Place de Clichy, had not shaken me out of my sleep, to tell me that he had once served as a shopman in that little house on the Boulevard Arago, that it did not hold many tenants and that there might be something to be done there, our poor Gilbert would have had his head cut off by now . . . and Mme. Mergy would most likely be dead.”
“Oh, you think so?”
“I am sure of it. And that was why I jumped at that faithful retainer’s suggestion. Only, you interfered with my plans, monsieur le secrétaire;-général.”
“I did?”
“Yes. You must needs go and take the three-cornered precaution of posting twelve men at the door of my house. I had to climb five flights of back stairs and go out through the servants’ corridor and the next house. Such useless fatigue!”
“I am very sorry, M. Nicole. Another time....”
“It was the same thing at eight o’clock this morning, when I was waiting for the motor which was bringing Daubrecq to me in his trunk: I had to march up and down the Place de Clichy, so as to prevent the car from stopping outside the door of my place and your men from interfering in my private affairs. Otherwise, once again, Gilbert and Clarisse Mergy would have been lost.”
“But,” said Prasville, “those painful events, it seems to me, are only delayed for a day, two days, three days at most. To avert them for good and all we should want....”
“The real list, I suppose?”
“Exactly. And I daresay you haven’t got it.”
“Yes, I have.”
“The genuine list?”
“The genuine, the undoubtedly genuine list.”
“With the cross of Lorraine?”
“With the cross of Lorraine.”
Prasville was silent. He was labouring under violent emotion, now that the duel was commencing with that adversary of whose terrifying superiority he was well aware; and he shuddered at the idea that Arsène Lupin, the formidable Arsène Lupin, was there, in front of him, calm and placid, pursuing his aims with as much coolness as though he had all the weapons in his hands and were face to face with a disarmed enemy.
Not yet daring to deliver a frontal attack, feeling almost intimidated, Prasville said:
“So Daubrecq gave it up to you?”
“Daubrecq gives nothing up. I took it.”
“By main force, therefore?”
“Oh, dear, no!” said M. Nicole, laughing. “Of course, I was ready to go to all lengths; and, when that worthy Daubrecq was dug out of the basket in which he had been travelling express, with an occasional dose of chloroform to keep his strength up, I had prepared things so that the fun might begin at once. Oh, no useless tortures . . . no vain sufferings! No.... Death, simply.... You press the point of a long needle on the chest, where the heart is, and insert it gradually, softly and gently. That’s all but the point would have been driven by Mme. Mergy. You understand: a mother is pitiless, a mother whose son is about to die!... ‘Speak, Daubrecq, or I’ll go deeper.... You won’t speak?... Then I’ll push another quarter of an inch . . . and another still.’ And the patient’s heart stops beating, the heart that feels the needle coming.... And another quarter of an inch . . . and one more.... I swear before Heaven that the villain would have spoken!... We leant over him and waited for him to wake, trembling with impatience, so urgent was our hurry.... Can’t you picture the scene, monsieur le secrétaire;-général? The scoundrel lying on a sofa, well bound, bare-chested, making efforts to throw off the fumes of chloroform that dazed him. He breathes quicker.... He gasps.... He recovers consciousness . . . his lips move.... Already, Clarisse Mergy whispers, ‘It’s I . . . it’s I, Clarisse.... Will you answer, you wretch?’ She has put her finger on Daubrecq’s chest, at the spot where the heart stirs like a little animal hidden under the skin. But she says to me, ‘His eyes . . . his eyes.... I can’t see them under the spectacles.... I want to see them.... ‘And I also want to see those eyes which I do not know, I want to see their anguish and I want to read in them, before I hear a word, the secret which is about to burst from the inmost recesses of the terrified body. I want to see. I long to see. The action which I am about to accomplish excites me beyond measure. It seems to me that, when I have seen the eyes, the veil will be rent asunder. I shall know things. It is a presentiment. It is the profound intuition of the truth that keeps me on tenterhooks. The eye-glasses are gone. But the thick opaque spectacles are there still. And I snatch them off, suddenly. And, suddenly, startled by a disconcerting vision, dazzled by the quick light that breaks in upon me and laughing, oh, but laughing fit to break my jaws, with my thumb—do you understand? with my thumb—hop, I force out the left eye!”
M. Nicole was really laughing, as he said, fit to break his jaws. And he was no longer the timid little unctuous and obsequious provincial usher, but a well-set-up fellow, who, after reciting and mimicking the whole scene with impressive ardour, was now laughing with a shrill laughter the sound of which made Prasville’s flesh creep:
“Hop! Jump, Marquis! Out of your kennel, Towzer! What’s the use of two eyes? It’s one more than you want. Hop! I say, Clarisse, look at it rolling over the carpet! Mind Daubrecq’s eye! Be careful with the grate!”
M. Nicole, who had risen and pretended to be hunting after something across the room, now sat down again, took from his pocket a thing shaped like a marble, rolled it in the hollow of his hand, chucked it in the air, like a ball, put it back in his fob and said, coolly:
“Daubrecq’s left eye.”
Prasville was utterly bewildered. What was his strange visitor driving at? What did all this story mean? Pale with excitement, he said:
“Explain yourself.”
“But it’s all explained, it seems to me. And it fits in so well with things as they were, fits in with all the conjectures which I had been making in spite of myself and which would inevitably have led to my solving the mystery, if that damned Daubrecq had not so cleverly sent me astray! Yes, think, follow the trend of my suppositions: ‘As the list is not to be discovered away from Daubrecq,’ I said to myself, ‘it cannot exist away from Daubrecq. And, as it is not to be discovered in the clothes he wears, it must be hidden deeper still, in himself, to speak plainly, in his flesh, under his skin....”
“In his eye, perhaps?” suggested Prasville, by way of a joke....
“In his eye? Monsieur le secrétaire;-général, you have said the word.”
“What?”
“I repeat, in his eye. And it is a truth that ought to have occurred to my mind logically, instead of being revealed to me by accident. And I will tell you why. Daubrecq knew that Clarisse had seen a letter from him instructing an English manufacturer to ‘empty the crystal within, so as to leave a void which it was unpossible to suspect.’ Daubrecq was bound, in prudence, to divert any attempt at search. And it was for this reason that he had a crystal stopper made, ‘emptied within,’ after a model supplied by himself. And it is this crystal stopper which you and I have been after for months; and it is this crystal stopper which I dug out of a packet of tobacco. Whereas all I had to do....”
“Was what?” asked Prasville, greatly puzzled.
M. Nicole burst into a fresh fit of laughter:
“Was simply to go for Daubrecq’s eye, that eye ‘emptied within so as to leave a void which it is impossible to suspect,’ the eye which you see before you.”
And M. Nicole once more took the thing from his pocket and rapped the table with it, producing the sound of a hard body with each rap.
Prasville whispered, in astonishment:
“A glass eye!”
“Why, of course!” cried M. Nicole, laughing gaily. “A glass eye! A common or garden decanter-stopper, which the rascal stuck into his eyesocket in the place of an eye which he had lost—a decanter-stopper, or, if you prefer, a crystal stopper, but the real one, this time, which he faked, which he hid behind the double bulwark of his spectacles and eye-glasses, which contained and still contains the talisman that enabled Daubrecq to work as he pleased in safety.”
Prasville lowered his head and put his hand to his forehead to hide his flushed face: he was almost possessing the list of the Twenty-seven. It lay before him, on the table.
Mastering his emotion, he said, in a casual tone:
“So it is there still?”
“At least, I suppose so,” declared M. Nicole.
“What! You suppose so?”
“I have not opened the hiding-place. I thought, monsieur le secrétaire;-général, I would reserve that honour for you.”
Prasville put out his hand, took the thing up and inspected it. It was a block of crystal, imitating nature to perfection, with all the details of the eyeball, the iris, the pupil, the cornea.
He at once saw a movable part at the back, which slid in a groove. He pushed it. The eye was hollow.
There was a tiny ball of paper inside. He unfolded it, smoothed it out and, quickly, without delaying to make a preliminary examination of the names, the hand-writing or the signatures, he raised his arms and turned the paper to the light from the windows.
“Is the cross of Lorraine there?” asked M. Nicole.
“Yes, it is there,” replied Prasville. “This is the genuine list.”
He hesitated a few seconds and remained with his arms raised, while reflecting what he would do. Then he folded up the paper again, replaced it in its little crystal sheath and put the whole thing in his pocket. M. Nicole, who was looking at him, asked:
“Are you convinced?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then we are agreed?”
“We are agreed.”
There was a pause, during which the two men watched each other without appearing to. M. Nicole seemed to be waiting for the conversation to be resumed. Prasville, sheltered behind the piles of books on the table, sat with one hand grasping his revolver and the other touching the push of the electric bell. He felt the whole strength of his position with a keen zest. He held the list. He held Lupin:
“If he moves,” he thought, “I cover him with my revolver and I ring. If he attacks me, I shoot.”
And the situation appeared to him so pleasant that he prolonged it, with the exquisite relish of an epicure.
In the end, M. Nicole took up the threads:
“As we are agreed, monsieur le secrétaire;-général, I think there is nothing left for you to do but to hurry. Is the execution to take place to-morrow?”
“Yes, to-morrow.”
“In that case, I shall wait here.”
“Wait for what?”
“The answer from the Élysée.”
“Oh, is some one to bring you an answer?”
“Yes.”
“You, monsieur le secrétaire;-général.”
Prasville shook his head:
“You must not count on me, M. Nicole.”
“Really?” said M. Nicole, with an air of surprise. “May I ask the reason?”
“I have changed my mind.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s all. I have come to the conclusion that, as things stand, after this last scandal, it is impossible to try to do anything in Gilbert’s favour. Besides, an attempt in this direction at the Élysée, under present conditions, would constitute a regular case of blackmail, to which I absolutely decline to lend myself.”
“You are free to do as you please, monsieur. Your scruples do you honour, though they come rather late, for they did not trouble you yesterday. But, in that case, monsieur le secrétaire;-général, as the compact between us is destroyed, give me back the list of the Twenty-seven.”
“What for?”
“So that I may apply to another spokesman.”
“What’s the good? Gilbert is lost.”
“Not at all, not at all. On the contrary, I consider that, now that his accomplice is dead, it will be much easier to grant him a pardon which everybody will look upon as fair and humane. Give me back the list.”
“Upon my word, monsieur, you have a short memory and none too nice a conscience. Have you forgotten your promise of yesterday?”
“Yesterday, I made a promise to a M. Nicole.”
“Well?”
“You are not M. Nicole.”
“Indeed! Then, pray, who am I?”
“Need I tell you?”
M. Nicole made no reply, but began to laugh softly, as though pleased at the curious turn which the conversation was taking; and Prasville felt a vague misgiving at observing that fit of merriment. He grasped the butt-end of his revolver and wondered whether he ought not to ring for help.
M. Nicole drew his chair close to the desk, put his two elbows on the table, looked Prasville straight in the face and jeered:
“So, M. Prasville, you know who I am and you have the assurance to play this game with me?”
“I have that assurance,” said Prasville, accepting the sneer without flinching.
“Which proves that you consider me, Arsène Lupin—we may as well use the name: yes, Arsène Lupin—which proves that you consider me fool enough, dolt enough to deliver myself like this, bound hand and foot into your hands.”
“Upon my word,” said Prasville, airily, patting the waistcoat-pocket in which he had secreted the crystal ball, “I don’t quite see what you can do, M. Nicole, now that Daubrecq’s eye is here, with the list of the Twenty-seven inside it.”
“What I can do?” echoed M. Nicole, ironically.
“Yes! The talisman no longer protects you; and you are now no better off than any other man who might venture into the very heart of the police-office, among some dozens of stalwart fellows posted behind each of those doors and some hundreds of others who will hasten up at the first signal.”
M. Nicole shrugged his shoulders and gave Prasville a look of great commiseration:
“Shall I tell you what is happening, monsieur le secrétaire;-général? Well, you too are having your head turned by all this business. Now that you possess the list, your state of mind has suddenly sunk to that of a Daubrecq or a d’Albufex. There is no longer even a question, in your thoughts, of taking it to your superiors, so that this ferment of disgrace and discord may be ended. No, no; a sodden temptation has seized upon you and intoxicated you; and, losing your head, you say to yourself, ‘It is here, in my pocket. With its aid, I am omnipotent. It means wealth, absolute, unbounded power. Why not benefit by it? Why not let Gilbert and Clarisse Mergy die? Why not lock up that idiot of a Lupin? Why not seize this unparalleled piece of fortune by the forelock?’”
He bent toward Prasville and, very softly, in a friendly and confidential tone, said:
“Don’t do that, my dear sir, don’t do it.”
“And why not?”
“It is not to your interest, believe me.”
“Really!”
“No. Or, if you absolutely insist on doing it, have the kindness first to consult the twenty-seven names on the list of which you have just robbed me and reflect, for a moment, on the name of the third person on it.”
“Oh? And what is the name of that third person?”
“It is the name of a friend of yours.”
“What friend?”
“Stanislas Vorenglade, the ex-deputy.”
“And then?” said Prasville, who seemed to be losing some of his self-confidence.
“Then? Ask yourself if an inquiry, however summary, would not end by discovering, behind that Stanislas Vorenglade, the name of one who shared certain little profits with him.”
“And whose name is?”
“Louis Prasville.”
M. Nicole banged the table with his fist.
“Enough of this humbug, monsieur! For twenty minutes, you and I have been beating about the bush. That will do. Let us understand each other. And, to begin with, drop your pistols. You can’t imagine that I am frightened of those playthings! Stand up, sir, stand up, as I am doing, and finish the business: I am in a hurry.”
He put his hand on Prasville’s shoulder and, speaking with great deliberation, said:
“If, within an hour from now, you are not back from the Élysée, bringing with you a line to say that the decree of pardon has been signed; if, within one hour and ten minutes, I, Arsène Lupin, do not walk out of this building safe and sound and absolutely free, this evening four Paris newspapers will receive four letters selected from the correspondence exchanged between Stanislas Vorenglade and yourself, the correspondence which Stanislas Vorenglade sold me this morning. Here’s your hat, here’s your overcoat, here’s your stick. Be off. I will wait for you.”
Then happened this extraordinary and yet easily understood thing, that Prasville did not raise the slightest protest nor make the least show of fight. He received the sudden, far-reaching, utter conviction of what the personality known as Arsène Lupin meant, in all its breadth and fulness. He did not so much as think of carping, of pretending—as he had until then believed—that the letters had been destroyed by Vorenglade the deputy or, at any rate, that Vorenglade would not dare to hand them over, because, in so doing, Vorenglade was also working his own destruction. No, Prasville did not speak a word. He felt himself caught in a vise of which no human strength could force the jaws asunder. There was nothing to do but yield. He yielded.
“Here, in an hour,” repeated M. Nicole.
“In an hour,” said Prasville, tamely. Nevertheless, in order to know exactly where he stood, he added, “The letters, of course, will be restored to me against Gilbert’s pardon?”
“No.”
“How do you mean, no? In that case, there is no object in....”
“They will be restored to you, intact, two months after the day when my friends and I have brought about Gilbert’s escape . . . thanks to the very slack watch which will be kept upon him, in accordance with your orders.”
“Is that all?”
“No, there are two further conditions: first, the immediate payment of a cheque for forty thousand francs.”
“Forty thousand francs?”
“The sum for which Stanislas Vorenglade sold me the letters. It is only fair....”
“And next?”
“Secondly, your resignation, within six months, of your present position.”
“My resignation? But why?”
M. Nicole made a very dignified gesture:
“Because it is against public morals that one of the highest positions in the police-service should be occupied by a man whose hands are not absolutely clean. Make them send you to parliament or appoint you a minister, a councillor of State, an ambassador, in short, any post which your success in the Daubrecq case entitles you to demand. But not secretary-general of police; anything but that! The very thought of it disgusts me.”
Prasville reflected for a moment. He would have rejoiced in the sudden destruction of his adversary and he racked his brain for the means to effect it. But he was helpless.
He went to the door and called:
“M. Lartigue.” And, sinking his voice, but not very low, for he wished M. Nicole to hear, “M. Lartigue, dismiss your men. It’s a mistake. And let no one come into my office while I am gone. This gentleman will wait for me here.”
He came back, took the hat, stick and overcoat which M. Nicole handed him and went out.
“Well done, sir,” said Lupin, between his teeth, when the door was closed. “You have behaved like a sportsman and a gentleman.... So did I, for that matter . . . perhaps with too obvious a touch of contempt . . . and a little too bluntly. But, tush, this sort of business has to be carried through with a high hand! The enemy’s got to be staggered! Besides, when one’s own conscience is clear, one can’t take up too bullying a tone with that sort of individual. Lift your head, Lupin. You have been the champion of outraged morality. Be proud of your work. And now take a chair, stretch out your legs and have a rest. You’ve deserved it.”
When Prasville returned, he found Lupin sound asleep and had to tap him on the shoulder to wake him.
“Is it done?” asked Lupin.
“It’s done. The pardon will be signed presently. Here is the written promise.”
“The forty thousand francs?”
“Here’s your cheque.”
“Good. It but remains for me to thank you, monsieur.”
“So the correspondence....”
“The Stanislas Vorenglade correspondence will be handed to you on the conditions stated. However, I am glad to be able to give you, here and now, as a sign of my gratitude, the four letters which I meant to send to the papers this evening.”
“Oh, so you had them on you?” said Prasville.
“I felt so certain, monsieur le secrétaire;-général, that we should end by coming to an understanding.”
He took from his hat a fat envelope, sealed with five red seals, which was pinned inside the lining, and handed it to Prasville, who thrust it into his pocket. Then he said:
“Monsieur le secrétaire;-général, I don’t know when I shall have the pleasure of seeing you again. If you have the least communication to make to me, one line in the agony column of the Journal will be sufficient. Just head it, ‘M. Nicole.’ Good-day to you.”
And he withdrew.
Prasville, when he was alone, felt as if he were waking from a nightmare during which he had performed incoherent actions over which his conscious mind had no control. He was almost thinking of ringing and causing a stir in the passages; but, just then, there was a tap at the door and one of the office-messengers came hurrying in.
“What’s the matter?” asked Prasville.
“Monsieur le secrétaire;-général, it’s Monsieur le Député Daubrecq asking to see you . . . on a matter of the highest importance.”
“Daubrecq!” exclaimed Prasville, in bewilderment. “Daubrecq here! Show him in.”
Daubrecq ran up to Prasville out of breath and caught hold of him with his two enormous hands.
Daubrecq had not waited for the order. He ran up to Prasville, out of breath, with his clothes in disorder, a bandage over his left eye, no tie, no collar, looking like an escaped lunatic; and the door was not closed before he caught hold of Prasville with his two enormous hands:
“Have you the list?”
“Yes.”
“Have you bought it?”
“Yes.”
“At the price of Gilbert’s pardon?”
“Yes.”
“Is it signed?”
“Yes.”
Daubrecq made a furious gesture:
“You fool! You fool! You’ve been trapped! For hatred of me, I expect? And now you’re going to take your revenge?”
“With a certain satisfaction, Daubrecq. Remember my little friend, the opera-dancer, at Nice.... It’s your turn now to dance.”
“So it means prison?”
“I should think so,” said Prasville. “Besides, it doesn’t matter. You’re done for, anyhow. Deprived of the list, without defence of any kind, you’re bound to fall to pieces of your own weight. And I shall be present at the break-up. That’s my revenge.”
“And you believe that!” yelled Daubrecq, furiously. “You believe that they will wring my neck like a chicken’s and that I shall not know how to defend myself and that I have no claws left and no teeth to bite with! Well, my boy, if I do come to grief, there’s always one who will fall with me and that is Master Prasville, the partner of Stanislas Vorenglade, who is going to hand me every proof in existence against him, so that I may get him sent to gaol without delay. Aha, I’ve got you fixed, old chap! With those letters, you’ll go as I please, hang it all, and there will be fine days yet for Daubrecq the deputy! What! You’re laughing, are you? Perhaps those letters don’t exist?”
Prasville shrugged his shoulders:
“Yes, they exist. But Vorenglade no longer has them in his possession.”
“Since when?”
“Since this morning. Vorenglade sold them, two hours ago, for the sum of forty thousand francs; and I have bought them back at the same price.”
Daubrecq burst into a great roar of laughter:
“Lord, how funny! Forty thousand francs! You’ve paid forty thousand francs! To M. Nicole, I suppose, who sold you the list of the Twenty-seven? Well, would you like me to tell you the real name of M. Nicole? It’s Arsène Lupin!”
“I know that.”
“Very likely. But what you don’t know, you silly ass, is that I have come straight from Stanislas Vorenglade’s and that Stanislas Vorenglade left Paris four days ago! Oh, what a joke! They’ve sold you waste paper! And your forty thousand francs! What an ass! What an ass!”
He walked out of the room, screaming with laughter and leaving Prasville absolutely dumbfounded.
So Arsène Lupin possessed no proof at all; and, when he was threatening and commanding and treating Prasville with that airy insolence, it was all a farce, all bluff!
“No, no, it’s impossible,” thought the secretary-general. “I have the sealed envelope.... It’s here.... I have only to open it.”
He dared not open it. He handled it, weighed it, examined it.... And doubt made its way so swiftly into his mind that he was not in the least surprised, when he did open it, to find that it contained four blank sheets of note-paper.
“Well, well,” he said, “I am no match for those rascals. But all is not over yet.”
And, in point of fact, all was not over. If Lupin had acted so daringly, it showed that the letters existed and that he relied upon buying them from Stanislas Vorenglade. But, as, on the other hand, Vorenglade was not in Paris, Prasville’s business was simply to forestall Lupin’s steps with regard to Vorenglade and obtain the restitution of those dangerous letters from Vorenglade at all costs. The first to arrive would be the victor.
Prasville once more took his hat, coat and stick, went downstairs, stepped into a taxi and drove to Vorenglade’s flat.
Here he was told that the ex-deputy was expected home from London at six o’clock that evening.
It was two o’clock in the afternoon. Prasville therefore had plenty of time to prepare his plan.
He arrived at the Gare du Nord at five o’clock and posted all around, in the waiting-rooms and in the railway-offices, the three or four dozen detectives whom he had brought with him.
This made him feel easy. If M. Nicole tried to speak to Vorenglade, they would arrest Lupin. And, to make assurance doubly sure, they would arrest whosoever could be suspected of being either Lupin or one of Lupin’s emissaries.
Moreover, Prasville made a close inspection of the whole station. He discovered nothing suspicious. But, at ten minutes to six, Chief-inspector Blanchon, who was with him, said:
“Look, there’s Daubrecq.”
Daubrecq it was; and the sight of his enemy exasperated the secretary-general to such a pitch that he was on the verge of having him arrested. But he reflected that he had no excuse, no right, no warrant for the arrest.
Besides, Daubrecq’s presence proved, with still greater force, that everything now depended on Stanislas Vorenglade. Vorenglade possessed the letters: who would end by having them? Daubrecq? Lupin? Or he, Prasville?
Lupin was not there and could not be there. Daubrecq was not in a position to fight. There could be no doubt, therefore, about the result: Prasville would reenter into possession of his letters and, through this very fact, would escape Daubrecq’s threats and Lupin’s threats and recover all his freedom of action against them.
The train arrived.
In accordance with orders, the stationmaster had issued instructions that no one was to be admitted to the platform. Prasville, therefore, walked on alone, in front of a number of his men, with Chief-inspector Blanchon at their head.
The train drew up.
Prasville almost at once saw Stanislas Vorenglade at the window of a first-class compartment, in the middle of the train.
The ex-deputy alighted and then held out his hand to assist an old gentleman who was travelling with him.
Prasville ran up to him and said, eagerly:
“Vorenglade . . . I want to speak to you....”
At the same moment, Daubrecq, who had managed to pass the barrier, appeared and exclaimed:
“M. Vorenglade, I have had your letter. I am at your disposal.”
Vorenglade looked at the two men, recognized Prasville, recognized Daubrecq, and smiled:
“Oho, it seems that my return was awaited with some impatience! What’s it all about? Certain letters, I expect?”
“Yes . . . yes . . .” replied the two men, fussing around him.
“You’re too late,” he declared.
“Eh? What? What do you mean?”
“I mean that the letters are sold.”
“Sold! To whom?”
“To this gentleman,” said Vorenglade, pointing to his travelling-companion, “to this gentleman, who thought that the business was worth going out of his way for and who came to Amiens to meet me.”
The old gentleman, a very old man wrapped in furs and leaning on his stick, took off his hat and bowed.
“It’s Lupin,” thought Prasville, “it’s Lupin, beyond a doubt.”
And he glanced toward the detectives, was nearly calling them, but the old gentleman explained:
“Yes, I thought the letters were good enough to warrant a few hours’ railway journey and the cost of two return tickets.”
“Two tickets?”
“One for me and the other for one of my friends.”
“One of your friends?”
“Yes, he left us a few minutes ago and reached the front part of the train through the corridor. He was in a great hurry.”
Prasville understood: Lupin had taken the precaution to bring an accomplice, and the accomplice was carrying off the letters. The game was lost, to a certainty. Lupin had a firm grip on his victim. There was nothing to do but submit and accept the conqueror’s conditions.
“Very well, sir,” said Prasville. “We shall see each other when the time comes. Good-bye for the present, Daubrecq: you shall hear from me.” And, drawing Vorenglade aside, “As for you, Vorenglade, you are playing a dangerous game.”
“Dear me!” said the ex-deputy. “And why?”
The two men moved away.
Daubrecq had not uttered a word and stood motionless, as though rooted to the ground.
The old gentleman went up to him and whispered:
“I say, Daubrecq, wake up, old chap.... It’s the chloroform, I expect....”
Daubrecq clenched his fists and gave a muttered growl.
“Ah, I see you know me!” said the old gentleman. “Then you will remember our interview, some months ago, when I came to see you in the Square Lamartine and asked you to intercede in Gilbert’s favour. I said to you that day, ‘Lay down your arms, save Gilbert and I will leave you in peace. If not, I shall take the list of the Twenty-seven from you; and then you’re done for.’ Well, I have a strong suspicion that done for is what you are. That comes of not making terms with kind M. Lupin. Sooner or later, you’re bound to lose your boots by it. However, let it be a lesson to you.... By the way, here’s your pocketbook which I forgot to give you. Excuse me if you find it lightened of its contents. There were not only a decent number of bank-notes in it, but also the receipt from the warehouse where you stored the Enghien things which you took back from me. I thought I might as well save you the trouble of taking them out yourself. It ought to be done by now. No, don’t thank me: it’s not worth mentioning. Good-bye, Daubrecq. And, if you should want a louis or two, to buy yourself a new decanter-stopper, drop me a line. Good-bye, Daubrecq.”
He walked away.
He had not gone fifty steps when he heard the sound of a shot.
He turned round.
Daubrecq had blown his brains out.
“De profundis!” murmured Lupin, taking off his hat.
Two months later, Gilbert, whose sentence had been commuted to one of penal servitude for life, made his escape from the Île de Ré, on the day before that on which he was to have been transported to New Caledonia.
It was a strange escape. Its least details remained difficult to understand; and, like the two shots on the Boulevard Arago, it greatly enhanced Arsène Lupin’s prestige.
“Taken all round,” said Lupin to me, one day, after telling me the different episodes of the story, “taken all around, no enterprise has ever given me more trouble or cost me greater exertions than that confounded adventure which, if you don’t mind, we will call, The Crystal Stopper; or, Never Say Die. In twelve hours, between six o’clock in the morning and six o’clock in the evening, I made up for six months of bad luck, blunders, gropings in the dark and reverses. I certainly count those twelve hours among the finest and the most glorious of my life.”
“And Gilbert?” I asked. “What became of him?”
“He is farming his own land, way down in Algeria, under his real name, his only name of Antoine Mergy. He is married to an Englishwoman, and they have a son whom he insisted on calling Arsène. I often receive a bright, chatty, warm-hearted letter from him.”
“And Mme. Mergy?”
“She and her little Jacques are living with them.”
“Did you see her again?”
“I did not.”
“Really!”
Lupin hesitated for a few moments and then said with a smile:
“My dear fellow, I will let you into a secret that will make me seem ridiculous in your eyes. But you know that I have always been as sentimental as a schoolboy and as silly as a goose. Well, on the evening when I went back to Clarisse Mergy and told her the news of the day—part of which, for that matter, she already knew—I felt two things very thoroughly. One was that I entertained for her a much deeper feeling than I thought; the other that she, on the contrary, entertained for me a feeling which was not without contempt, not without a rankling grudge nor even a certain aversion.”
“Nonsense! Why?”
“Why? Because Clarisse Mergy is an exceedingly honest woman and because I am . . . just Arsène Lupin.”
“Oh!”
“Dear me, yes, an attractive bandit, a romantic and chivalrous cracksman, anything you please. For all that, in the eyes of a really honest woman, with an upright nature and a well-balanced mind, I am only the merest riff-raff.”
I saw that the wound was sharper than he was willing to admit, and I said:
“So you really loved her?”
“I even believe,” he said, in a jesting tone, “that I asked her to marry me. After all, I had saved her son, had I not?... So . . . I thought. What a rebuff!... It produced a coolness between us.... Since then....”
“You have forgotten her?”
“Oh, certainly! But it required the consolations of one Italian, two Americans, three Russians, a German grand-duchess and a Chinawoman to do it!”
“And, after that....?”
“After that, so as to place an insuperable barrier between myself and her, I got married.”
“Nonsense! You got married, you, Arsène Lupin?”
“Married, wedded, spliced, in the most lawful fashion. One of the greatest names in France. An only daughter. A colossal fortune.... What! You don’t know the story? Well, it’s worth hearing.”
And, straightway, Lupin, who was in a confidential vein, began to tell me the story of his marriage to Angélique de Sarzeau-Vendôme, Princesse de Bourbon-Condé, to-day Sister Marie-Auguste, a humble nun in the Visitation Convent....[G]
But, after the first few words, he stopped, as though his narrative had suddenly ceased to interest him, and he remained pensive.
“What’s the matter, Lupin?”
“The matter? Nothing.”
“Yes, yes.... There . . . now you’re smiling.... Is it Daubrecq’s secret receptacle, his glass eye, that’s making you laugh?”
“Not at all.”
“What then?”
“Nothing, I tell you . . . only a memory.”
“A pleasant memory?”
“Yes!... Yes, a delightful memory even. It was at night, off the Île de Ré, on the fishing-smack in which Clarisse and I were taking Gilbert away.... We were alone, the two of us, in the stern of the boat.... And I remember.... I talked.... I spoke words and more words.... I said all that I had on my heart.... And then . . . then came silence, a perturbing and disarming silence.”
“Well?”
“Well, I swear to you that the woman whom I took in my arms that night and kissed on the lips—oh, not for long: a few seconds only, but no matter!—I swear before heaven that she was something more than a grateful mother, something more than a friend yielding to a moment of susceptibility, that she was a woman also, a woman quivering with emotion....” And he continued, with a bitter laugh, “Who ran away next day, never to see me again.”
He was silent once more. Then he whispered:
“Clarisse.... Clarisse.... On the day when I am tired and disappointed and weary of life, I will come to you down there, in your little Arab house . . . in that little white house, Clarisse, where you are waiting for me....”