The two boats fastened to the little
pier that jutted out from the garden lay rocking in
its shadow. Here and there lighted windows showed
through the thick mist on the margins of the lake.
The Enghien Casino opposite blazed with light, though
it was late in the season, the end of September.
A few stars appeared through the clouds. A light
breeze ruffled the surface of the water.
Arsène Lupin left the summer-house
where he was smoking a cigar and, bending forward
at the end of the pier:
“Growler?” he asked. “Masher?...
Are you there?”
A man rose from each of the boats, and one of them
answered:
“Yes, governor.”
“Get ready. I hear the car coming with
Gilbert and Vaucheray.”
He crossed the garden, walked round
a house in process of construction, the scaffolding
of which loomed overhead, and cautiously opened the
door on the Avenue de Ceinture. He was not mistaken:
a bright light flashed round the bend and a large,
open motor-car drew up, whence sprang two men in great-coats,
with the collars turned up, and caps.
It was Gilbert and Vaucheray:
Gilbert, a young fellow of twenty or twenty-two, with
an attractive cast of features and a supple and sinewy
frame; Vaucheray, older, shorter, with grizzled hair
and a pale, sickly face.
“Well,” asked Lupin, “did you see
him, the deputy?”
“Yes, governor,” said
Gilbert, “we saw him take the 7.40 tram for Paris,
as we knew he would.”
“Then we are free to act?”
“Absolutely. The Villa Marie-Therese is
ours to do as we please with.”
The chauffeur had kept his seat. Lupin gave him
his orders:
“Don’t wait here.
It might attract attention. Be back at half-past
nine exactly, in time to load the car unless the whole
business falls through.”
“Why should it fall through?” observed
Gilbert.
The motor drove away; and Lupin, taking
the road to the lake with his two companions, replied:
“Why? Because I didn’t
prepare the plan; and, when I don’t do a thing
myself, I am only half-confident.”
“Nonsense, governor! I’ve
been working with you for three years now...
I’m beginning to know the ropes!”
“Yes, my lad, you’re beginning,”
said Lupin, “and that’s just why I’m
afraid of blunders... Here, get in with me...
And you, Vaucheray, take the other boat... That’s
it... And now push off, boys... and make as little
noise as you can.”
Growler and Masher, the two oarsmen,
made straight for the opposite bank, a little to the
left of the casino.
They met a boat containing a couple
locked in each other’s arms, floating at random,
and another in which a number of people were singing
at the top of their voices. And that was all.
Lupin shifted closer to his companion
and said, under his breath:
“Tell me, Gilbert, did you think
of this job, or was it Vaucheray’s idea?”
“Upon my word, I couldn’t
tell you: we’ve both of us been discussing
it for weeks.”
“The thing is, I don’t
trust Vaucheray: he’s a low ruffian when
one gets to know him... I can’t make out
why I don’t get rid of him...”
“Oh, governor!”
“Yes, yes, I mean what I say:
he’s a dangerous fellow, to say nothing of the
fact that he has some rather serious peccadilloes on
his conscience.”
He sat silent for a moment and continued:
“So you’re quite sure that you saw Daubrecq
the deputy?”
“Saw him with my own eyes, governor.”
“And you know that he has an appointment in
Paris?”
“He’s going to the theatre.”
“Very well; but his servants
have remained behind at the Enghien villa....”
“The cook has been sent away.
As for the valet, Leonard, who is Daubrecq’s
confidential man, he’ll wait for his master in
Paris. They can’t get back from town before
one o’clock in the morning. But...”
“But what?”
“We must reckon with a possible
freak of fancy on Daubrecq’s part, a change
of mind, an unexpected return, and so arrange to have
everything finished and done with in an hour.”
“And when did you get these details?”
“This morning. Vaucheray
and I at once thought that it was a favourable moment.
I selected the garden of the unfinished house which
we have just left as the best place to start from;
for the house is not watched at night. I sent
for two mates to row the boats; and I telephoned to
you. That’s the whole story.”
“Have you the keys?”
“The keys of the front-door.”
“Is that the villa which I see from here, standing
in its own grounds?”
“Yes, the Villa Marie-Therese;
and as the two others, with the gardens touching it
on either side, have been unoccupied since this day
week, we shall be able to remove what we please at
our leisure; and I swear to you, governor, it’s
well worth while.”
“The job’s much too simple,” mumbled
Lupin. “No charm about it!”
They landed in a little creek whence
rose a few stone steps, under cover of a mouldering
roof. Lupin reflected that shipping the furniture
would be easy work. But, suddenly, he said:
“There are people at the villa. Look...
a light.”
“It’s a gas-jet, governor. The light’s
not moving.”
The Growler stayed by the boats, with
instructions to keep watch, while the Masher, the
other rower, went to the gate on the Avenue de Ceinture,
and Lupin and his two companions crept in the shadow
to the foot of the steps.
Gilbert went up first. Groping
in the dark, he inserted first the big door-key and
then the latch-key. Both turned easily in their
locks, the door opened and the three men walked in.
A gas-jet was flaring in the hall.
“You see, governor...” said Gilbert.
“Yes, yes,” said Lupin,
in a low voice, “but it seems to me that the
light which I saw shining did not come from here...”
“Where did it come from then?”
“I can’t say... Is this the drawing-room?”
“No,” replied Gilbert,
who was not afraid to speak pretty loudly, “no.
By way of precaution, he keeps everything on the first
floor, in his bedroom and in the two rooms on either
side of it.”
“And where is the staircase?”
“On the right, behind the curtain.”
Lupin moved to the curtain and was
drawing the hanging aside when, suddenly, at four
steps on the left, a door opened and a head appeared,
a pallid man’s head, with terrified eyes.
“Help! Murder!” shouted the man.
And he rushed back into the room.
“It’s Leonard, the valet!” cried
Gilbert.
“If he makes a fuss, I’ll out him,”
growled Vaucheray.
“You’ll jolly well do
nothing of the sort, do you hear, Vaucheray?”
said Lupin, peremptorily. And he darted off in
pursuit of the servant. He first went through
a dining-room, where he saw a lamp still lit, with
plates and a bottle around it, and he found Leonard
at the further end of a pantry, making vain efforts
to open the window:
“Don’t move, sportie! No kid!
Ah, the brute!”
He had thrown himself flat on the
floor, on seeing Leonard raise his arm at him.
Three shots were fired in the dusk of the pantry; and
then the valet came tumbling to the ground, seized
by the legs by Lupin, who snatched his weapon from
him and gripped him by the throat:
“Get out, you dirty brute!”
he growled. “He very nearly did for me...
Here, Vaucheray, secure this gentleman!”
He threw the light of his pocket-lantern
on the servant’s face and chuckled:
“He’s not a pretty gentleman
either... You can’t have a very clear conscience,
Leonard; besides, to play flunkey to Daubrecq the deputy...!
Have you finished, Vaucheray? I don’t want
to hang about here for ever!”
“There’s no danger, governor,” said
Gilbert.
“Oh, really?... So you think that shots
can’t be heard?...”
“Quite impossible.”
“No matter, we must look sharp.
Vaucheray, take the lamp and let’s go upstairs.”
He took Gilbert by the arm and, as he dragged him
to the first floor:
“You ass,” he said, “is
that the way you make inquiries? Wasn’t
I right to have my doubts?”
“Look here, governor, I couldn’t
know that he would change his mind and come back to
dinner.”
“One’s got to know everything
when one has the honour of breaking into people’s
houses. You numskull! I’ll remember
you and Vaucheray... a nice pair of gossoons!...”
The sight of the furniture on the
first floor pacified Lupin and he started on his inventory
with the satisfied air of a collector who has looked
in to treat himself to a few works of art:
“By Jingo! There’s
not much of it, but what there is is pucka! There’s
nothing the matter with this representative of the
people in the question of taste. Four Aubusson
chairs... A bureau signed ‘Percier-Fontaine,’
for a wager... Two inlays by Gouttières...
A genuine Fragonard and a sham Nattier which any American
millionaire will swallow for the asking: in short,
a fortune... And there are curmudgeons who pretend
that there’s nothing but faked stuff left.
Dash it all, why don’t they do as I do?
They should look about!”
Gilbert and Vaucheray, following Lupin’s
orders and instructions, at once proceeded methodically
to remove the bulkier pieces. The first boat
was filled in half an hour; and it was decided that
the Growler and the Masher should go on ahead and
begin to load the motor-car.
Lupin went to see them start.
On returning to the house, it struck him, as he passed
through the hall, that he heard a voice in the pantry.
He went there and found Leonard lying flat on his
stomach, quite alone, with his hands tied behind his
back:
“So it’s you growling,
my confidential flunkey? Don’t get excited:
it’s almost finished. Only, if you make
too much noise, you’ll oblige us to take severer
measures... Do you like pears? We might give
you one, you know: a choke-pear!...”
As he went upstairs, he again heard
the same sound and, stopping to listen, he caught
these words, uttered in a hoarse, groaning voice,
which came, beyond a doubt, from the pantry:
“Help!... Murder!...
Help!... I shall be killed!... Inform the
commissary!”
“The fellow’s clean off
his chump!” muttered Lupin. “By Jove!...
To disturb the police at nine o’clock in the
evening: there’s a notion for you!”
He set to work again. It took
longer than he expected, for they discovered in the
cupboards all sorts of valuable knick-knacks which
it would have been very wrong to disdain and, on the
other hand, Vaucheray and Gilbert were going about
their investigations with signs of laboured concentration
that nonplussed him.
At long last, he lost his patience:
“That will do!” he said.
“We’re not going to spoil the whole job
and keep the motor waiting for the sake of the few
odd bits that remain. I’m taking the boat.”
They were now by the waterside and
Lupin went down the steps. Gilbert held him back:
“I say, governor, we want one
more look round five minutes, no longer.”
“But what for, dash it all?”
“Well, it’s like this:
we were told of an old reliquary, something stunning...”
“Well?”
“We can’t lay our hands
on it. And I was thinking... There’s
a cupboard with a big lock to it in the pantry...
You see, we can’t very well...” He
was already on his way to the villa. Vaucheray
ran back too.
“I’ll give you ten minutes,
not a second longer!” cried Lupin. “In
ten minutes, I’m off.”
But the ten minutes passed and he was still waiting.
He looked at his watch:
“A quarter-past nine,” he said to himself.
“This is madness.”
And he also remembered that Gilbert
and Vaucheray had behaved rather queerly throughout
the removal of the things, keeping close together and
apparently watching each other. What could be
happening?
Lupin mechanically returned to the
house, urged by a feeling of anxiety which he was
unable to explain; and, at the same time, he listened
to a dull sound which rose in the distance, from the
direction of Enghien, and which seemed to be coming
nearer... People strolling about, no doubt...
He gave a sharp whistle and then went
to the main gate, to take a glance down the avenue.
But, suddenly, as he was opening the gate, a shot rang
out, followed by a yell of pain. He returned at
a run, went round the house, leapt up the steps and
rushed to the dining-room:
“Blast it all, what are you doing there, you
two?”
Gilbert and Vaucheray, locked in a
furious embrace, were rolling on the floor, uttering
cries of rage. Their clothes were dripping with
blood. Lupin flew at them to separate them.
But already Gilbert had got his adversary down and
was wrenching out of his hand something which Lupin
had no time to see. And Vaucheray, who was losing
blood through a wound in the shoulder, fainted.
“Who hurt him? You, Gilbert?” asked
Lupin, furiously.
“No, Leonard.”
“Leonard? Why, he was tied up!”
“He undid his fastenings and got hold of his
revolver.”
“The scoundrel! Where is he?”
Lupin took the lamp and went into the pantry.
The man-servant was lying on his back,
with his arms outstretched, a dagger stuck in his
throat and a livid face. A red stream trickled
from his mouth.
“Ah,” gasped Lupin, after examining him,
“he’s dead!”
“Do you think so?... Do
you think so?” stammered Gilbert, in a trembling
voice.
“He’s dead, I tell you.”
“It was Vaucheray... it was Vaucheray who did
it...”
Pale with anger, Lupin caught hold of him:
“It was Vaucheray, was it?...
And you too, you blackguard, since you were there
and didn’t stop him! Blood! Blood!
You know I won’t have it... Well, it’s
a bad lookout for you, my fine fellows... You’ll
have to pay the damage! And you won’t get
off cheaply either... Mind the guillotine!”
And, shaking him violently, “What was it?
Why did he kill him?”
“He wanted to go through his
pockets and take the key of the cupboard from him.
When he stooped over him, he saw that the man unloosed
his arms. He got frightened... and he stabbed
him...”
“But the revolver-shot?”
“It was Leonard... he had his
revolver in his hand... he just had strength to take
aim before he died...”
“And the key of the cupboard?”
“Vaucheray took it....”
“Did he open it?”
“And did he find what he was after?”
“Yes.”
“And you wanted to take the
thing from him. What sort of thing was it?
The reliquary? No, it was too small for that....
Then what was it? Answer me, will you?...”
Lupin gathered from Gilbert’s
silence and the determined expression on his face
that he would not obtain a reply. With a threatening
gesture, “I’ll make you talk, my man.
Sure as my name’s Lupin, you shall come out
with it. But, for the moment, we must see about
decamping. Here, help me. We must get Vaucheray
into the boat...”
They had returned to the dining-room
and Gilbert was bending over the wounded man, when
Lupin stopped him:
“Listen.”
They exchanged one look of alarm...
Some one was speaking in the pantry ... a very low,
strange, very distant voice... Nevertheless, as
they at once made certain, there was no one in the
room, no one except the dead man, whose dark outline
lay stretched upon the floor.
And the voice spake anew, by turns
shrill, stifled, bleating, stammering, yelling, fearsome.
It uttered indistinct words, broken syllables.
Lupin felt the top of his head covering
with perspiration. What was this incoherent voice,
mysterious as a voice from beyond the grave?
He had knelt down by the man-servant’s
side. The voice was silent and then began again:
“Give us a better light,” he said to Gilbert.
He was trembling a little, shaken
with a nervous dread which he was unable to master,
for there was no doubt possible: when Gilbert
had removed the shade from the lamp, Lupin realized
that the voice issued from the corpse itself, without
a movement of the lifeless mass, without a quiver
of the bleeding mouth.
“Governor, I’ve got the shivers,”
stammered Gilbert.
Again the same voice, the same snuffling whisper.
Suddenly, Lupin burst out laughing,
seized the corpse and pulled it aside:
“Exactly!” he said, catching
sight of an object made of polished metal. “Exactly!
That’s it!... Well, upon my word, it took
me long enough!”
On the spot on the floor which he
had uncovered lay the receiver of a telephone, the
cord of which ran up to the apparatus fixed on the
wall, at the usual height.
Lupin put the receiver to his ear.
The noise began again at once, but it was a mixed
noise, made up of different calls, exclamations, confused
cries, the noise produced by a number of persons questioning
one another at the same time.
“Are you there?... He won’t
answer. It’s awful... They must have
killed him. What is it?... Keep up your
courage. There’s help on the way... police...
soldiers...”
“Dash it!” said Lupin, dropping the receiver.
The truth appeared to him in a terrifying
vision. Quite at the beginning, while the things
upstairs were being moved, Leonard, whose bonds were
not securely fastened, had contrived to scramble to
his feet, to unhook the receiver, probably with his
teeth, to drop it and to appeal for assistance to
the Enghien telephone-exchange.
And those were the words which Lupin
had overheard, after the first boat started:
“Help!... Murder!... I shall be killed!”
And this was the reply of the exchange.
The police were hurrying to the spot. And Lupin
remembered the sounds which he had heard from the
garden, four or five minutes earlier, at most:
“The police! Take to your
heels!” he shouted, darting across the dining
room.
“What about Vaucheray?” asked Gilbert.
“Sorry, can’t be helped!”
But Vaucheray, waking from his torpor, entreated him
as he passed:
“Governor, you wouldn’t leave me like
this!”
Lupin stopped, in spite of the danger,
and was lifting the wounded man, with Gilbert’s
assistance, when a loud din arose outside:
“Too late!” he said.
At that moment, blows shook the hall-door
at the back of the house. He ran to the front
steps: a number of men had already turned the
corner of the house at a rush. He might have
managed to keep ahead of them, with Gilbert, and reach
the waterside. But what chance was there of embarking
and escaping under the enemy’s fire?
He locked and bolted the door.
“We are surrounded... and done for,” spluttered
Gilbert.
“Hold your tongue,” said Lupin.
“But they’ve seen us, governor. There,
they’re knocking.”
“Hold your tongue,” Lupin repeated.
“Not a word. Not a movement.”
He himself remained unperturbed, with
an utterly calm face and the pensive attitude of one
who has all the time that he needs to examine a delicate
situation from every point of view. He had reached
one of those minutes which he called the “superior
moments of existence,” those which alone give
a value and a price to life. On such occasions,
however threatening the danger, he always began by
counting to himself, slowly “One...
Two... Three... Four.... Five...
Six” until the beating of his heart
became normal and regular. Then and not till then,
he reflected, but with what intensity, with what perspicacity,
with what a profound intuition of possibilities!
All the factors of the problem were present in his
mind. He foresaw everything. He admitted
everything. And he took his resolution in all
logic and in all certainty.
After thirty or forty seconds, while
the men outside were banging at the doors and picking
the locks, he said to his companion:
“Follow me.”
Returning to the dining-room, he softly
opened the sash and drew the Venetian blinds of a
window in the side-wall. People were coming and
going, rendering flight out of the question.
Thereupon he began to shout with all his might, in
a breathless voice:
“This way!... Help!... I’ve
got them!... This way!”
He pointed his revolver and fired
two shots into the tree-tops. Then he went back
to Vaucheray, bent over him and smeared his face and
hands with the wounded man’s blood. Lastly,
turning upon Gilbert, he took him violently by the
shoulders and threw him to the floor.
“What do you want, governor? There’s
a nice thing to do!”
“Let me do as I please,”
said Lupin, laying an imperative stress on every syllable.
“I’ll answer for everything... I’ll
answer for the two of you... Let me do as I like
with you... I’ll get you both out of prison
... But I can only do that if I’m free.”
Excited cries rose through the open window.
“This way!” he shouted. “I’ve
got them! Help!”
And, quietly, in a whisper:
“Just think for a moment...
Have you anything to say to me?... Something
that can be of use to us?”
Gilbert was too much taken aback to
understand Lupin’s plan and he struggled furiously.
Vaucheray showed more intelligence; moreover, he had
given up all hope of escape, because of his wound;
and he snarled:
“Let the governor have his way,
you ass!... As long as he gets off, isn’t
that the great thing?”
Suddenly, Lupin remembered the article
which Gilbert had put in his pocket, after capturing
it from Vaucheray. He now tried to take it in
his turn.
“No, not that! Not if I
know it!” growled Gilbert, managing to release
himself.
Lupin floored him once more.
But two men suddenly appeared at the window; and Gilbert
yielded and, handing the thing to Lupin, who pocketed
it without looking at it, whispered:
“Here you are, governor...
I’ll explain. You can be sure that...”
He did not have time to finish...
Two policemen and others after them and soldiers who
entered through every door and window came to Lupin’s
assistance.
Gilbert was at once seized and firmly
bound. Lupin withdrew:
“I’m glad you’ve
come,” he said. “The beggar’s
given me a lot of trouble. I wounded the other;
but this one...”
The commissary of police asked him, hurriedly:
“Have you seen the man-servant? Have they
killed him?”
“I don’t know,” he answered.
“You don’t know?...”
“Why, I came with you from Enghien,
on hearing of the murder! Only, while you were
going round the left of the house, I went round the
right. There was a window open. I climbed
up just as these two ruffians were about to jump down.
I fired at this one,” pointing to Vaucheray,
“and seized hold of his pal.”
How could he have been suspected?
He was covered with blood. He had handed over
the valet’s murderers. Half a score of people
had witnessed the end of the heroic combat which he
had delivered. Besides, the uproar was too great
for any one to take the trouble to argue or to waste
time in entertaining doubts. In the height of
the first confusion, the people of the neighbourhood
invaded the villa. One and all lost their heads.
They ran to every side, upstairs, downstairs, to the
very cellar. They asked one another questions,
yelled and shouted; and no one dreamt of checking
Lupin’s statements, which sounded so plausible.
However, the discovery of the body
in the pantry restored the commissary to a sense of
his responsibility. He issued orders, had the
house cleared and placed policemen at the gate to
prevent any one from passing in or out. Then,
without further delay, he examined the spot and began
his inquiry. Vaucheray gave his name; Gilbert
refused to give his, on the plea that he would only
speak in the presence of a lawyer. But, when
he was accused of the murder, he informed against Vaucheray,
who defended himself by denouncing the other; and the
two of them vociferated at the same time, with the
evident wish to monopolize the commissary’s
attention. When the commissary turned to Lupin,
to request his evidence, he perceived that the stranger
was no longer there.
Without the least suspicion, he said
to one of the policemen:
“Go and tell that gentleman
that I should like to ask him a few questions.”
They looked about for the gentleman.
Some one had seen him standing on the steps, lighting
a cigarette. The next news was that he had given
cigarettes to a group of soldiers and strolled toward
the lake, saying that they were to call him if he
was wanted.
They called him. No one replied.
But a soldier came running up.
The gentleman had just got into a boat and was rowing
away for all he was worth. The commissary looked
at Gilbert and realized that he had been tricked:
“Stop him!” he shouted.
“Fire on him! He’s an accomplice!...”
He himself rushed out, followed by
two policemen, while the others remained with the
prisoners. On reaching the bank, he saw the gentleman,
a hundred yards away, taking off his hat to him in
the dusk.
One of the policemen discharged his
revolver, without thinking.
The wind carried the sound of words
across the water. The gentleman was singing as
he rowed:
“Go, little bark,
Float in the dark...”
But the commissary saw a skiff fastened
to the landing-stage of the adjoining property.
He scrambled over the hedge separating the two gardens
and, after ordering the soldiers to watch the banks
of the lake and to seize the fugitive if he tried
to put ashore, the commissary and two of his men pulled
off in pursuit of Lupin.
It was not a difficult matter, for
they were able to follow his movements by the intermittent
light of the moon and to see that he was trying to
cross the lakes while bearing toward the right that
is to say, toward the village of Saint-Gratien.
Moreover, the commissary soon perceived that, with
the aid of his men and thanks perhaps to the comparative
lightness of his craft, he was rapidly gaining on the
other. In ten minutes he had decreased the interval
between them by one half.
“That’s it!” he
cried. “We shan’t even need the soldiers
to keep him from landing. I very much want to
make the fellow’s acquaintance. He’s
a cool hand and no mistake!”
The funny thing was that the distance
was now diminishing at an abnormal rate, as though
the fugitive had lost heart at realizing the futility
of the struggle. The policemen redoubled their
efforts. The boat shot across the water with
the swiftness of a swallow. Another hundred yards
at most and they would reach the man.
“Halt!” cried the commissary.
The enemy, whose huddled shape they
could make out in the boat, no longer moved.
The sculls drifted with the stream. And this absence
of all motion had something alarming about it.
A ruffian of that stamp might easily lie in wait for
his aggressors, sell his life dearly and even shoot
them dead before they had a chance of attacking him.
“Surrender!” shouted the commissary.
The sky, at that moment, was dark.
The three men lay flat at the bottom of their skiff,
for they thought they perceived a threatening gesture.
The boat, carried by its own impetus,
was approaching the other.
The commissary growled:
“We won’t let ourselves
be sniped. Let’s fire at him. Are you
ready?” And he roared, once more, “Surrender...
if not...!”
No reply.
The enemy did not budge.
“Surrender!... Hands up!...
You refuse?... So much the worse for you...
I’m counting... One... Two...”
The policemen did not wait for the
word of command. They fired and, at once, bending
over their oars, gave the boat so powerful an impulse
that it reached the goal in a few strokes.
The commissary watched, revolver in
hand, ready for the least movement. He raised
his arm:
“If you stir, I’ll blow out your brains!”
But the enemy did not stir for a moment;
and, when the boat was bumped and the two men, letting
go their oars, prepared for the formidable assault,
the commissary understood the reason of this passive
attitude: there was no one in the boat.
The enemy had escaped by swimming, leaving in the
hands of the victor a certain number of the stolen
articles, which, heaped up and surmounted by a jacket
and a bowler hat, might be taken, at a pinch, in the
semi-darkness, vaguely to represent the figure of
a man.
They struck matches and examined the
enemy’s cast clothes. There were no initials
in the hat. The jacket contained neither papers
nor pocketbook. Nevertheless, they made a discovery
which was destined to give the case no little celebrity
and which had a terrible influence on the fate of
Gilbert and Vaucheray: in one of the pockets was
a visiting-card which the fugitive had left behind...
the card of Arsène Lupin.
At almost the same moment, while the
police, towing the captured skiff behind them, continued
their empty search and while the soldiers stood drawn
up on the bank, straining their eyes to try and follow
the fortunes of the naval combat, the aforesaid Arsène
Lupin was quietly landing at the very spot which he
had left two hours earlier.
He was there met by his two other
accomplices, the Growler and the Masher, flung them
a few sentences by way of explanation, jumped into
the motor-car, among Daubrecq the deputy’s armchairs
and other valuables, wrapped himself in his furs and
drove, by deserted roads, to his repository at Neuilly,
where he left the chauffeur. A taxicab brought
him back to Paris and put him down by the church of
Saint-Philippe-du-Roule, not far from which, in the
Rue Matignon, he had a flat, on the entresol-floor,
of which none of his gang, excepting Gilbert, knew,
a flat with a private entrance. He was glad to
take off his clothes and rub himself down; for, in
spite of his strong constitution, he felt chilled
to the bone. On retiring to bed, he emptied the
contents of his pockets, as usual, on the mantelpiece.
It was not till then that he noticed, near his pocketbook
and his keys, the object which Gilbert had put into
his hand at the last moment.
And he was very much surprised.
It was a decanter-stopper, a little crystal stopper,
like those used for the bottles in a liqueur-stand.
And this crystal stopper had nothing particular about
it. The most that Lupin observed was that the
knob, with its many facets, was gilded right down
to the indent. But, to tell the truth, this detail
did not seem to him of a nature to attract special
notice.
“And it was this bit of glass
to which Gilbert and Vaucheray attached such stubborn
importance!” he said to himself. “It
was for this that they killed the valet, fought each
other, wasted their time, risked prison... trial...
the scaffold!...”
Too tired to linger further upon this
matter, exciting though it appeared to him, he replaced
the stopper on the chimney-piece and got into bed.
He had bad dreams. Gilbert and
Vaucheray were kneeling on the flags of their cells,
wildly stretching out their hands to him and yelling
with fright:
“Help!... Help!” they cried.
But, notwithstanding all his efforts,
he was unable to move. He himself was fastened
by invisible bonds. And, trembling, obsessed by
a monstrous vision, he watched the dismal preparations,
the cutting of the condemned men’s hair and
shirt-collars, the squalid tragedy.
“By Jove!” he said, when
he woke after a series of nightmares. “There’s
a lot of bad omens! Fortunately, we don’t
err on the side of superstition. Otherwise...!”
And he added, “For that matter, we have a talisman
which, to judge by Gilbert and Vaucheray’s behaviour,
should be enough, with Lupin’s help, to frustrate
bad luck and secure the triumph of the good cause.
Let’s have a look at that crystal stopper!”
He sprang out of bed to take the thing
and examine it more closely. An exclamation escaped
him. The crystal stopper had disappeared...