In the same way, the death of Mlle. de Saint-Véran will not be definite, unless the sea gives up her corpse.
The sea shall give up the corpse of Mlle. de Saint-Véran.
The difficulty is tremendous. The double obstacle seems insurmountable. Yes, to any one but Lupin, but not to Lupin.
As he had foreseen, I guess the trickery of the chapel, I discover the crypt and I go down into the lair where Lupin has taken refuge. His corpse is there!
Any person who had admitted the death of Lupin as possible would have been baffled. But I had not admitted this eventuality for an instant (first, by intuition and, secondly, by reasoning). Pretense thereupon became useless and every scheme vain. I said to myself at once that the block of stone disturbed by the pickaxe had been placed there with a very curious exactness, that the least knock was bound to make it fall and that, in falling, it must inevitably reduce the head of the false Arsène Lupin to pulp, in such a way as to make it utterly irrecognizable.
Another discovery: half an hour later, I hear that the body of Mlle. de Saint-Véran has been found on the rocks at Dieppe—or rather a body which is considered to be Mlle. de Saint-Véran’s, for the reason that the arm has a bracelet similar to one of that young lady’s bracelets. This, however, is the only mark of identity, for the corpse is irrecognizable.
Thereupon I remember and I understand. A few days earlier, I happened to read in a number of the Vigie de Dieppe that a young American couple staying at Envermeu had committed suicide by taking poison and that their bodies had disappeared on the very night of the death. I hasten to Envermeu. The story is true, I am told, except in so far as concerns the disappearance, because the brothers of the victims came to claim the corpses and took them away after the usual formalities. The name of these brothers, no doubt, was Arsène Lupin & Co.
Consequently, the thing is proved. We know why Lupin shammed the murder of the girl and spread the rumor of his own death. He is in love and does not wish it known. And, to reach his ends, he shrinks from nothing, he even undertakes that incredible theft of the two corpses which he needs in order to impersonate himself and Mlle. de Saint-Véran. In this way, he will be at ease. No one can disturb him. No one will ever suspect the truth which he wishes to suppress.
No one? Yes—three adversaries, at the most, might conceive doubts: Ganimard, whose arrival is hourly expected; Holmlock Shears, who is about to cross the Channel; and I, who am on the spot. This constitutes a threefold danger. He removes it. He kidnaps Ganimard. He kidnaps Holmlock Shears. He has me stabbed by Brédoux.
One point alone remains obscure. Why was Lupin so fiercely bent upon snatching the document about the Hollow Needle from me? He surely did not imagine that, by taking it away, he could wipe out from my memory the text of the five lines of which it consists! Then why? Did he fear that the character of the paper itself, or some other clue, could give me a hint?