“And he,” said Lupin, finishing Clarisse’s thought, “lying in wait for the prey which he desires . . . for the woman whom he has never ceased to love . . . whom he loves . . . and whom he covets with all his might and with all his furious passion....”
She lowered her head and said, simply:
“Yes.”
A strange duel indeed was that which brought face to face those two beings separated by so many implacable things! How unbridled must Daubrecq’s passion be for him to risk that perpetual threat of death and to introduce to the privacy of his house this woman whose life he had shattered! But also how absolutely safe he must feel himself!
“And your search ended . . . how?” asked Lupin.
“My search,” she replied, “long remained without fruit. You know the methods of investigation which you have followed and which the police have followed on their side. Well, I myself employed them, years before either of you did, and in vain. I was beginning to despair. Then, one day, when I had gone to see Daubrecq in his villa at Enghien, I picked up under his writing-table a letter which he had begun to write, crumpled up and thrown into the waste-paper-basket. It consisted of a few lines in bad English; and I was able to read this: ‘Empty the crystal within, so as to leave a void which it is impossible to suspect.’ Perhaps I should not have attached to this sentence all the importance which it deserved, if Daubrecq, who was out in the garden, had not come running in and begun to turn out the waste-paper-basket, with an eagerness which was very significant. He gave me a suspicious look: ‘There was a letter there,’ he said. I pretended not to understand. He did not insist, but his agitation did not escape me; and I continued my quest in this direction. A month later, I discovered, among the ashes in the drawing-room fireplace, the torn half of an English invoice. I gathered that a Stourbridge glass-blower, of the name of John Howard, had supplied Daubrecq with a crystal bottle made after a model. The word ‘crystal’ struck me at once. I went to Stourbridge, got round the foreman of the glass-works and learnt that the stopper of this bottle had been hollowed out inside, in accordance with the instruction in the order, so as to leave a cavity, the existence of which would escape observation.”
Lupin nodded his head:
“The thing tallies beyond a doubt. Nevertheless, it did not seem to me, that, even under the gilt layer.... And then the hiding-place would be very tiny!”
“Tiny, but large enough,” she said. “On my return from England, I went to the police-office to see Prasville, whose friendship for me had remained unchanged. I did not hesitate to tell him, first, the reasons which had driven my husband to suicide and, secondly, the object of revenge which I was pursuing. When I informed him of my discoveries, he jumped for joy; and I felt that his hatred for Daubrecq was as strong as ever. I learnt from him that the list was written on a slip of exceedingly thin foreign-post-paper, which, when rolled up into a sort of pellet, would easily fit into an exceedingly limited space. Neither he nor I had the least hesitation. We knew the hiding-place. We agreed to act independently of each other, while continuing to correspond in secret. I put him in touch with Clémence, the portress in the Square Lamartine, who was entirely devoted to me....”
“But less so to Prasville,” said Lupin, “for I can prove that she betrays him.”