Arsène Lupin, super-sleuth

by Maurice Leblanc

He waited. There would soon be a second attempt if any one were trying, like himself, to get into the Villa and take advantage of the Count’s absence. He was right; but the attempt was made in a manner he had not expected. A man came on to the top of the wall, as he had done himself and at the same place, straddled it, unhooked the end of the bell-wire, and dropped to the ground.

Then the door was pushed open from outside; the bell did not ring; another person entered, a woman.

In the lives of great adventurers and above all at the beginning of their enterprises, chance plays the part of a veritable collaborator. Ralph who knew this, never missed the opportunity of making use of it, and the instant he saw who this woman was he attributed her presence to this obliging collaborator. But, astonishing as it was, was it really by chance that the girl with the green eyes was there and that she was there in the company of a man who could only be the good William? The rapidity of their flight, their sudden intrusion [[83]]into this garden on this day, the 28th of April, and at this hour of the afternoon, surely made it clear that they also knew all about the Villa and that they were going straight to the same goal with the same sureness as himself. Was it not even allowable to see here what he was seeking? A certain connection between the enterprises of the English girl, the victim, and of the French girl her murderess? Provided with their tickets, their luggage registered at Paris, the confederates had quite naturally gone on with their expedition.

They came, together, along the little-used path, the man rather thin, clean-shaven, with the appearance of an actor, and an unpleasant actor at that, held a plan in his hand and advanced with an anxious air and watchful eye.

As for the young woman, though he did not doubt for a moment that it was she, Ralph recognized her with difficulty. How changed it was, that pretty face, smiling and happy, which he had so admired a day or two before in the confectioner’s on the Boulevard Haussmann! It was no longer the tragic countenance he had seen in the corridor of the express but a poor little shrunken face, miserable, fearful, which hurt him to look upon.

She was wearing a very simple gray frock, without ornaments, and a close-fitting straw hat which hid her fair hair. Then, as they came along the bottom of the hillock, from which, crouching among the shrubs he [[84]]was watching, Ralph had a sudden vision, as brief as a flash of light, of a head which rose above the wall, at a place where he had climbed it, a man’s head, hatless, the black hair sticking up above a face of the vulgarest.

Was it the third confederate posted on the path, or was it an enemy spying on the two of them?

Ralph accepted this second explanation when he saw the couple halt a little way beyond the hillock, at the fork of the road to the door of the house, and the path to the padlocked door, and William hand a whistle to the girl, post her on guard behind a screen of shrubs, pointing to the padlocked door as to a place on which she was to keep watch. It was plain therefore that to William there was only one peril to guard against and that was the coming of the laundress; it was evident that at the door there was an enemy, some agent of Marescal perhaps, laying a trap for them.

Having given his instructions, William set out at a run towards the house. He left the girl, alone, exposed to a danger of which he was ignorant and which she did not suspect.

Ralph, who was at a distance of about fifty yards from her, gazed at her greedily, and reflected that another gaze, that of the hidden man must also be fixed on her through the cracks of the worm-eaten door. What was he to do? Warn her? Carry her off, as at Beaucourt, and protect her against unknown dangers? [[85]]