An hotel bedroom at Amiens.
Lupin was recovering a little consciousness
for the first time. Clarisse and the Masher were
seated by his bedside.
Both were talking; and Lupin listened
to them, without opening his eyes. He learned
that they had feared for his life, but that all danger
was now removed. Next, in the course of the conversation,
he caught certain words that revealed to him what
had happened in the tragic night at Mortepierre:
Daubrecq’s descent; the dismay of the accomplices,
when they saw that it was not the governor; then the
short struggle: Clarisse flinging herself on
Daubrecq and receiving a wound in the shoulder; Daubrecq
leaping to the bank; the Growler firing two revolver-shots
and darting off in pursuit of him; the Masher clambering
up the ladder and finding the governor in a swoon:
“True as I live,” said
the Masher, “I can’t make out even now
how he did not roll over. There was a sort of
hollow at that place, but it was a sloping hollow;
and, half dead as he was, he must have hung on with
his ten fingers. Crikey, it was time I came!”
Lupin listened, listened in despair.
He collected his strength to grasp and understand
the words. But suddenly a terrible sentence was
uttered: Clarisse, weeping, spoke of the eighteen
days that had elapsed, eighteen more days lost to
Gilbert’s safety.
Eighteen days! The figure terrified
Lupin. He felt that all was over, that he would
never be able to recover his strength and resume the
struggle and that Gilbert and Vaucheray were doomed...
His brain slipped away from him. The fever returned
and the delirium.
And more days came and went.
It was perhaps the time of his life of which Lupin
speaks with the greatest horror. He retained just
enough consciousness and had sufficiently lucid moments
to realize the position exactly. But he was not
able to coordinate his ideas, to follow a line of
argument nor to instruct or forbid his friends to adopt
this or that line of conduct.
Often, when he emerged from his torpor,
he found his hand in Clarisse’s and, in that
half-slumbering condition in which a fever keeps you,
he would address strange words to her, words of love
and passion, imploring her and thanking her and blessing
her for all the light and joy which she had brought
into his darkness.
Then, growing calmer and not fully
understanding what he had said, he tried to jest:
“I have been delirious, have
I not? What a heap of nonsense I must have talked!”
But Lupin felt by Clarisse’s
silence that he could safely talk as much nonsense
as ever his fever suggested to him. She did not
hear. The care and attention which she lavished
on the patient, her devotion, her vigilance, her alarm
at the least relapse: all this was meant not for
him, but for the possible saviour of Gilbert.
She anxiously watched the progress of his convalescence.
How soon would he be fit to resume the campaign?
Was it not madness to linger by his side, when every
day carried away a little hope?
Lupin never ceased repeating to himself,
with the inward belief that, by so doing, he could
influence the course of his illness:
“I will get well... I will get well...”
And he lay for days on end without
moving, so as not to disturb the dressing of his wound
nor increase the excitement of his nerves in the smallest
degree.
He also strove not to think of Daubrecq.
But the image of his dire adversary haunted him; and
he reconstituted the various phases of the escape,
the descent of the cliff.... One day, struck by
a terrible memory, he exclaimed:
“The list! The list of
the Twenty-seven! Daubrecq must have it by now...
or else d’Albufex. It was on the table!”
Clarisse reassured him:
“No one can have taken it,”
she declared. “The Growler was in Paris
that same day, with a note from me for Prasville,
entreating him to redouble his watch in the Square
Lamartine, so that no one should enter, especially
d’Albufex...”
“But Daubrecq?”
“He is wounded. He cannot have gone home.”
“Ah, well,” he said, “that’s
all right!... But you too were wounded...”
“A mere scratch on the shoulder.”
Lupin was easier in his mind after
these revelations. Nevertheless, he was pursued
by stubborn notions which he was unable either to drive
from his brain or to put into words. Above all,
he thought incessantly of that name of “Marie”
which Daubrecq’s sufferings had drawn from him.
What did the name refer to? Was it the title of
one of the books on the shelves, or a part of the
title? Would the book in question supply the
key to the mystery? Or was it the combination
word of a safe? Was it a series of letters written
somewhere: on a wall, on a paper, on a wooden
panel, on the mount of a drawing, on an invoice?
These questions, to which he was unable
to find a reply, obsessed and exhausted him.
One morning Arsène Lupin woke feeling
a great deal better. The wound was closed, the
temperature almost normal. The doctor, a personal
friend, who came every day from Paris, promised that
he might get up two days later. And, on that
day, in the absence of his accomplices and of Mme.
Mergy, all three of whom had left two days before,
in quest of information, he had himself moved to the
open window.
He felt life return to him with the
sunlight, with the balmy air that announced the approach
of spring. He recovered the concatenation of
his ideas; and facts once more took their place in
his brain in their logical sequence and in accordance
with their relations one to the other.
In the evening he received a telegram
from Clarisse to say that things were going badly
and that she, the Growler and the Masher were all
staying in Paris. He was much disturbed by this
wire and had a less quiet night. What could the
news be that had given rise to Clarisse’s telegram?
But, the next day, she arrived in
his room looking very pale, her eyes red with weeping,
and, utterly worn out, dropped into a chair:
“The appeal has been rejected,” she stammered.
He mastered his emotion and asked, in a voice of surprise:
“Were you relying on that?”
“No, no,” she said, “but,
all the same... one hopes in spite of one’s
self.”
“Was it rejected yesterday?”
“A week ago. The Masher
kept it from me; and I have not dared to read the
papers lately.”
“There is always the commutation of sentence,”
he suggested.
“The commutation? Do you
imagine that they will commute the sentence of Arsène
Lupin’s accomplices?”
She ejaculated the words with a violence
and a bitterness which he pretended not to notice;
and he said:
“Vaucheray perhaps not...
But they will take pity on Gilbert, on his youth...”
“They will do nothing of the sort.”
“How do you know?”
“I have seen his counsel.”
“You have seen his counsel! And you told
him...”
“I told him that I was Gilbert’s
mother and I asked him whether, by proclaiming my
son’s identity, we could not influence the result...
or at least delay it.”
“You would do that?” he whispered.
“You would admit...”
“Gilbert’s life comes
before everything. What do I care about my name!
What do I care about my husband’s name!”
“And your little Jacques?”
he objected. “Have you the right to ruin
Jacques, to make him the brother of a man condemned
to death?”
She hung her head. And he resumed:
“What did the counsel say?”
“He said that an act of that
sort would not help Gilbert in the remotest degree.
And, in spite of all his protests, I could see that,
as far as he was concerned, he had no illusions left
and that the pardoning commission are bound to find
in favour of the execution.”
“The commission, I grant you;
but what of the president of the Republic?”
“The president always goes by
the advice of the commission.”
“He will not do so this time.”
“And why not?”
“Because we shall bring influence to bear upon
him.”
“How?”
“By the conditional surrender of the list of
the Twenty-seven!”
“Have you it?”
“No, but I shall have it.”
His certainty had not wavered.
He made the statement with equal calmness and faith
in the infinite power of his will.
She had lost some part of her confidence
in him and she shrugged her shoulders lightly:
“If d’Albufex has not
purloined the list, one man alone can exercise any
influence; one man alone: Daubrecq.”
She spoke these words in a low and
absent voice that made him shudder. Was she still
thinking, as he had often seemed to feel, of going
back to Daubrecq and paying him for Gilbert’s
life?
“You have sworn an oath to me,”
he said. “I’m reminding you of it.
It was agreed that the struggle with Daubrecq should
be directed by me and that there would never be a
possibility of any arrangement between you and him.”
She retorted:
“I don’t even know where he is. If
I knew, wouldn’t you know?”
It was an evasive answer. But
he did not insist, resolving to watch her at the opportune
time; and he asked her, for he had not yet been told
all the details:
“Then it’s not known what became of Daubrecq?”
“No. Of course, one of
the Growler’s bullets struck him. For, next
day, we picked up, in a coppice, a handkerchief covered
with blood. Also, it seems that a man was seen
at Aumale Station, looking very tired and walking
with great difficulty. He took a ticket for Paris,
stepped into the first train and that is all...”
“He must be seriously wounded,”
said Lupin, “and he is nursing himself in some
safe retreat. Perhaps, also, he considers it wise
to lie low for a few weeks and avoid any traps on
the part of the police, d’Albufex, you, myself
and all his other enemies.”
He stopped to think and continued:
“What has happened at Mortepierre
since Daubrecq’s escape? Has there been
no talk in the neighbourhood?”
“No, the rope was removed before
daybreak, which proves that Sebastiani or his sons
discovered Daubrecq’s flight on the same night.
Sebastiani was away the whole of the next day.”
“Yes, he will have informed
the marquis. And where is the marquis himself?”
“At home. And, from what
the Growler has heard, there is nothing suspicious
there either.”
“Are they certain that he has
not been inside Daubrecq’s house?”
“As certain as they can be.”
“Nor Daubrecq?”
“Nor Daubrecq.”
“Have you seen Prasville?”
“Prasville is away on leave.
But Chief-inspector Blanchon, who has charge of the
case, and the detectives who are guarding the house
declare that, in accordance with Prasville’s
instructions, their watch is not relaxed for a moment,
even at night; that one of them, turn and turn about,
is always on duty in the study; and that no one, therefore,
can have gone in.”
“So, on principle,” Arsène
Lupin concluded, “the crystal stopper must still
be in Daubrecq’s study?”
“If it was there before Daubrecq’s
disappearance, it should be there now.”
“And on the study-table.”
“On the study-table? Why do you say that?”
“Because I know,” said Lupin, who had
not forgotten Sebastiani’s words.
“But you don’t know the article in which
the stopper is hidden?”
“No. But a study-table,
a writing-desk, is a limited space. One can explore
it in twenty minutes. One can demolish it, if
necessary, in ten.”
The conversation had tired Arsène
Lupin a little. As he did not wish to commit
the least imprudence, he said to Clarisse:
“Listen. I will ask you
to give me two or three days more. This is Monday,
the 4th of March. On Wednesday or Thursday, at
latest, I shall be up and about. And you can
be sure that we shall succeed.”
“And, in the meantime...”
“In the meantime, go back to
Paris. Take rooms, with the Growler and the Masher,
in the Hotel Franklin, near the Trocadero, and keep
a watch on Daubrecq’s house. You are free
to go in and out as you please. Stimulate the
zeal of the detectives on duty.”
“Suppose Daubrecq returns?”
“If he returns, that will be so much the better:
we shall have him.”
“And, if he only passes?”
“In that case, the Growler and the Masher must
follow him.”
“And if they lose sight of him?”
Lupin did not reply. No one felt
more than he how fatal it was to remain inactive in
a hotel bedroom and how useful his presence would have
been on the battlefield! Perhaps even this vague
idea had already prolonged his illness beyond the
ordinary limits.
He murmured:
“Go now, please.”
There was a constraint between them
which increased as the awful day drew nigh. In
her injustice, forgetting or wishing to forget that
it was she who had forced her son into the Enghien
enterprise, Mme. Mergy did not forget that the
law was pursuing Gilbert with such rigour not so much
because he was a criminal as because he was an accomplice
of Arsène Lupin’s. And then, notwithstanding
all his efforts, notwithstanding his prodigious expenditure
of energy, what result had Lupin achieved, when all
was said? How far had his intervention benefited
Gilbert?
After a pause, she rose and left him alone.
The next day he was feeling rather
low. But on the day after, the Wednesday, when
his doctor wanted him to keep quiet until the end of
the week, he said:
“If not, what have I to fear?”
“A return of the fever.”
“Nothing worse?”
“No. The wound is pretty well healed.”
“Then I don’t care.
I’ll go back with you in your car. We shall
be in Paris by mid-day.”
What decided Lupin to start at once
was, first, a letter in which Clarisse told him that
she had found Daubrecq’s traces, and, also, a
telegram, published in the Amiens papers, which stated
that the Marquis d’Albufex had been arrested
for his complicity in the affair of the canal.
Daubrecq was taking his revenge.
Now the fact that Daubrecq was taking
his revenge proved that the marquis had not been able
to prevent that revenge by seizing the document which
was on the writing-desk in the study. It proved
that Chief-inspector Blanchon and the detectives had
kept a good watch. It proved that the crystal
stopper was still in the Square Lamartine.
It was still there; and this showed
either that Daubrecq had not ventured to go home,
or else that his state of health hindered him from
doing so, or else again that he had sufficient confidence
in the hiding-place not to trouble to put himself
out.
In any case, there was no doubt as
to the course to be pursued: Lupin must act and
he must act smartly. He must forestall Daubrecq
and get hold of the crystal stopper.
When they had crossed the Bois de
Boulogne and were nearing the Square Lamartine, Lupin
took leave of the doctor and stopped the car.
The Growler and the Masher, to whom he had wired,
met him.
“Where’s Mme. Mergy?” he asked.
“She has not been back since
yesterday; she sent us an express message to say that
she saw Daubrecq leaving his cousins’ place and
getting into a cab. She knows the number of the
cab and will keep us informed.”
“Nothing further?”
“Nothing further.”
“No other news?”
“Yes, the Paris-Midi says that
d’Albufex opened his veins last night, with
a piece of broken glass, in his cell at the Santé.
He seems to have left a long letter behind him, confessing
his fault, but accusing Daubrecq of his death and
exposing the part played by Daubrecq in the canal
affair.”
“Is that all?”
“No. The same paper stated
that it has reason to believe that the pardoning commission,
after examining the record, has rejected Vaucheray
and Gilbert’s petition and that their counsel
will probably be received in audience by the president
on Friday.”
Lupin gave a shudder.
“They’re losing no time,”
he said. “I can see that Daubrecq, on the
very first day, put the screw on the old judicial
machine. One short week more... and the knife
falls. My poor Gilbert! If, on Friday next,
the papers which your counsel submits to the president
of the Republic do not contain the conditional offer
of the list of the Twenty-seven, then, my poor Gilbert,
you are done for!”
“Come, come, governor, are you losing courage?”
“I? Rot! I shall have
the crystal stopper in an hour. In two hours,
I shall see Gilbert’s counsel. And the
nightmare will be over.”
“Well done, governor! That’s
like your old self. Shall we wait for you here?”
“No, go back to your hotel. I’ll
join you later.”
They parted. Lupin walked straight to the house
and rang the bell.
A detective opened the door and recognized him:
“M. Nicole, I believe?”
“Yes,” he said. “Is Chief-inspector
Blanchon here?”
“He is.”
“Can I speak to him?”
The man took him to the study, where
Chief-inspector Blanchon welcomed him with obvious
pleasure.
“Well, chief-inspector, one would say there
was something new?”
“M. Nicole, my orders are
to place myself entirely at your disposal; and I may
say that I am very glad to see you to-day.”
“Why so?”
“Because there is something new.”
“Something serious?”
“Something very serious.”
“Quick, speak.”
“Daubrecq has returned.”
“Eh, what!” exclaimed
Lupin, with a start. “Daubrecq returned?
Is he here?”
“No, he has gone.”
“And did he come in here, in the study?”
“Yes.”
“This morning.”
“And you did not prevent him?”
“What right had I?”
“And you left him alone?”
“By his positive orders, yes, we left him alone.”
Lupin felt himself turn pale.
Daubrecq had come back to fetch the crystal stopper!
He was silent for some time and repeated to himself:
“He came back to fetch it...
He was afraid that it would be found and he has taken
it... Of course, it was inevitable... with d’Albufex
arrested, with d’Albufex accused and accusing
him, Daubrecq was bound to defend himself. It’s
a difficult game for him. After months and months
of mystery, the public is at last learning that the
infernal being who contrived the whole tragedy of
the Twenty-Seven and who ruins and kills his adversaries
is he, Daubrecq. What would become of him if,
by a miracle, his talisman did not protect him?
He has taken it back.”
And, trying to make his voice sound firm, he asked:
“Did he stay long?”
“Twenty seconds, perhaps.”
“What! Twenty seconds? No longer?”
“No longer.”
“What time was it?”
“Ten o’clock.”
“Could he have known of the Marquis d’Albufex’
suicide by then?”
“Yes. I saw the special edition of the
Paris-Midi in his pocket.”
“That’s it, that’s
it,” said Lupin. And he asked, “Did
M. Prasville give you no special instructions in case
Daubrecq should return?”
“No. So, in M. Prasville’s
absence, I telephoned to the police-office and I am
waiting. The disappearance of Daubrecq the deputy
caused a great stir, as you know, and our presence
here has a reason, in the eyes of the public, as long
as that disappearance continues. But, now that
Daubrecq has returned, now that we have proofs that
he is neither under restraint nor dead, how can we
stay in the house?”
“It doesn’t matter,”
said Lupin, absently. “It doesn’t
matter whether the house is guarded or not. Daubrecq
has been; therefore the crystal stopper is no longer
here.”
He had not finished the sentence,
when a question quite naturally forced itself upon
his mind. If the crystal stopper was no longer
there, would this not be obvious from some material
sign? Had the removal of that object, doubtless
contained within another object, left no trace, no
void?
It was easy to ascertain. Lupin
had simply to examine the writing-desk, for he knew,
from Sebastiani’s chaff, that this was the spot
of the hiding-place. And the hiding-place could
not be a complicated one, seeing that Daubrecq had
not remained in the study for more than twenty seconds,
just long enough, so to speak, to walk in and walk
out again.
Lupin looked. And the result
was immediate. His memory had so faithfully recorded
the picture of the desk, with all the articles lying
on it, that the absence of one of them struck him
instantaneously, as though that article and that alone
were the characteristic sign which distinguished this
particular writing-table from every other table in
the world.
“Oh,” he thought, quivering
with delight, “everything fits in! Everything!
... Down to that half-word which the torture drew
from Daubrecq in the tower at Mortepierre! The
riddle is solved. There need be no more hesitation,
no more groping in the dark. The end is in sight.”
And, without answering the inspector’s
questions, he thought of the simplicity of the hiding-place
and remembered Edgar Allan Poe’s wonderful story
in which the stolen letter, so eagerly sought for,
is, in a manner of speaking, displayed to all eyes.
People do not suspect what does not appear to be hidden.
“Well, well,” said Lupin,
as he went out, greatly excited by his discovery,
“I seem doomed, in this confounded adventure,
to knock up against disappointments to the finish.
Everything that I build crumbles to pieces at once.
Every victory ends in disaster.”
Nevertheless, he did not allow himself
to be cast down. On the one hand, he now knew
where Daubrecq the deputy hid the crystal stopper.
On the other hand, he would soon learn from Clarisse
Mergy where Daubrecq himself was lurking. The
rest, to him, would be child’s play.
The Growler and the Masher were waiting
for him in the drawing-room of the Hotel Franklin,
a small family-hotel near the Trocadero. Mme.
Mergy had not yet written to him.
“Oh,” he said, “I
can trust her! She will hang on to Daubrecq until
she is certain.”
However, toward the end of the afternoon,
he began to grow impatient and anxious. He was
fighting one of those battles the last,
he hoped in which the least delay might
jeopardize everything. If Daubrecq threw Mme.
Mergy off the scent, how was he to be caught again?
They no longer had weeks or days, but only a few hours,
a terribly limited number of hours, in which to repair
any mistakes that they might commit.
He saw the proprietor of the hotel and asked him:
“Are you sure that there is no express letter
for my two friends?”
“Quite sure, sir.”
“Nor for me, M. Nicole?”
“No, sir.”
“That’s curious,”
said Lupin. “We were certain that we should
hear from Mme. Audran.”
Audran was the name under which Clarisse was staying
at the hotel.
“But the lady has been,” said the proprietor.
“What’s that?”
“She came some time ago and,
as the gentlemen were not there, left a letter in
her room. Didn’t the porter tell you?”
Lupin and his friends hurried upstairs. There
was a letter on the table.
“Hullo!” said Lupin.
“It’s been opened! How is that?
And why has it been cut about with scissors?”
The letter contained the following lines:
“Daubrecq has spent the week at the Hotel
Central. This morning
he had his luggage taken to the Gare de
– and telephoned to
reserve a berth in the sleeping-car –
for –
“I do not know when the train starts.
But I shall be at the
station all the afternoon. Come as soon
as you can, all three
of you. We will arrange to kidnap him.”
“What next?” said the
Masher. “At which station? And where’s
the sleeping-car for? She has cut out just the
words we wanted!”
“Yes,” said the Growler.
“Two snips with the scissors in each place; and
the words which we most want are gone. Who ever
saw such a thing? Has Mme. Mergy lost her
head?”
Lupin did not move. A rush of
blood was beating at his temples with such violence
that he glued his fists to them and pressed with all
his might. His fever returned, burning and riotous,
and his will, incensed to the verge of physical suffering,
concentrated itself upon that stealthy enemy, which
must be controlled then and there, if he himself did
not wish to be irretrievably beaten.
He muttered, very calmly:
“Daubrecq has been here.”
“Daubrecq!”
“We can’t suppose that
Mme. Mergy has been amusing herself by cutting
out those two words. Daubrecq has been here.
Mme. Mergy thought that she was watching him.
He was watching her instead.”
“How?”
“Doubtless through that hall-porter
who did not tell us that Mme. Mergy had been
to the hotel, but who must have told Daubrecq.
He came. He read the letter. And, by way
of getting at us, he contented himself with cutting
out the essential words.”
“We can find out... we can ask...”
“What’s the good?
What’s the use of finding out how he came, when
we know that he did come?”
He examined the letter for some time,
turned it over and over, then stood up and said:
“Come along.”
“Where to?”
“Gare de Lyon.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am sure of nothing with Daubrecq.
But, as we have to choose, according to the contents
of the letter, between the Gare de l’Est
and the Gare de Lyon, I am presuming
that his business, his pleasure and his health are
more likely to take Daubrecq in the direction of Marseilles
and the Riviera than to the Gare de l’Est.”
These are the only two main-line
stations in Paris with the word de in their name.
The others have du, as the Gare du Nord
or the Gare du Luxembourg, d’ as the
Gare d’Orléans, or no participle at
all, as the Gare Saint-Lazare or the Gare
Montparnasse. Translator’s Note.
It was past seven when Lupin and his
companions left the Hotel Franklin. A motor-car
took them across Paris at full speed, but they soon
saw that Clarisse Mergy was not outside the station,
nor in the waiting-rooms, nor on any of the platforms.
“Still,” muttered Lupin,
whose agitation grew as the obstacles increased, “still,
if Daubrecq booked a berth in a sleeping-car, it can
only have been in an evening train. And it is
barely half-past seven!”
A train was starting, the night express.
They had time to rush along the corridor. Nobody...
neither Mme. Mergy nor Daubrecq...
But, as they were all three going,
a porter accosted them near the refreshment-room:
“Is one of you gentlemen looking for a lady?”
“Yes, yes,... I am,” said Lupin.
“Quick, what is it?”
“Oh, it’s you, sir!
The lady told me there might be three of you or two
of you.... And I didn’t know...”
“But, in heaven’s name, speak, man!
What lady?”
“The lady who spent the whole
day on the pavement, with the luggage, waiting.”
“Well, out with it! Has she taken a train?”
“Yes, the train-de-luxe, at
six-thirty: she made up her mind at the last
moment, she told me to say. And I was also to
say that the gentleman was in the same train and that
they were going to Monte Carlo.”
“Damn it!” muttered Lupin.
“We ought to have taken the express just now!
There’s nothing left but the evening trains,
and they crawl! We’ve lost over three hours.”
The wait seemed interminable.
They booked their seats. They telephoned to the
proprietor of the Hotel Franklin to send on their letters
to Monte Carlo. They dined. They read the
papers. At last, at half-past nine, the train
started.
And so, by a really tragic series
of circumstances, at the most critical moment of the
contest, Lupin was turning his back on the battlefield
and going away, at haphazard, to seek, he knew not
where, and beat, he knew not how, the most formidable
and elusive enemy that he had ever fought.
And this was happening four days,
five days at most, before the inevitable execution
of Gilbert and Vaucheray.
It was a bad and painful night for
Lupin. The more he studied the situation the
more terrible it appeared to him. On every side
he was faced with uncertainty, darkness, confusion,
helplessness.
True, he knew the secret of the crystal
stopper. But how was he to know that Daubrecq
would not change or had not already changed his tactics?
How was he to know that the list of the Twenty-seven
was still inside that crystal stopper or that the
crystal stopper was still inside the object where
Daubrecq had first hidden it?
And there was a further serious reason
for alarm in the fact that Clarisse Mergy thought
that she was shadowing and watching Daubrecq at a
time when, on the contrary, Daubrecq was watching her,
having her shadowed and dragging her, with diabolical
cleverness, toward the places selected by himself,
far from all help or hope of help.
Oh, Daubrecq’s game was clear
as daylight! Did not Lupin know the unhappy woman’s
hesitations? Did he not know and the
Growler and the Masher confirmed it most positively that
Clarisse looked upon the infamous bargain planned
by Daubrecq in the light of a possible, an acceptable
thing? In that case, how could he, Lupin, succeed?
The logic of events, so powerfully moulded by Daubrecq,
led to a fatal result: the mother must sacrifice
herself and, to save her son, throw her scruples,
her repugnance, her very honour, to the winds!
“Oh, you scoundrel!” snarled
Lupin, in a fit of rage. “If I get hold
of you, I’ll make you dance to a pretty tune!
I wouldn’t be in your shoes for a great deal,
when that happens.”
They reached Monte Carlo at three
o’clock in the afternoon. Lupin was at
once disappointed not to see Clarisse on the platform
at the station.
He waited. No messenger came up to him.
He asked the porters and ticket-collectors
if they had noticed, among the crowd, two travellers
answering to the description of Daubrecq and Clarisse.
They had not.
He had, therefore, to set to work
and hunt through all the hotels and lodging-houses
in the principality. Oh, the time wasted!
By the following evening, Lupin knew,
beyond a doubt, that Daubrecq and Clarisse were not
at Monte Carlo, nor at Monaco, nor at the Cap d’Ail,
nor at La Turbie, nor at Cap Martin.
“Where can they be then?”
he wondered, trembling with rage.
At last, on the Saturday, he received,
at the poste restante, a telegram which
had been readdressed from the Hotel Franklin and which
said:
“He got out at Cannes and is
going on to San Remo, Hotel Palace
des Ambassadeurs.
“Clarisse.”
The telegram was dated the day before.
“Hang it!” exclaimed Lupin.
“They passed through Monte Carlo. One of
us ought to have remained at the station. I did
think of it; but, in the midst of all that bustle...”
Lupin and his friends took the first train for Italy.
They crossed the frontier at twelve
o’clock. The train entered the station
at San Remo at twelve-forty.
They at once saw an hotel-porter,
with “Ambassadeurs-Palace” on his braided
cap, who seemed to be looking for some one among the
arrivals.
Lupin went up to him:
“Are you looking for M. Nicole?”
“Yes, M. Nicole and two gentlemen.”
“From a lady?”
“Yes, Mme. Mergy.”
“Is she staying at your hotel?”
“No. She did not get out.
She beckoned to me, described you three gentlemen
and told me to say that she was going on to Genoa,
to the Hotel Continental.”
“Was she by herself?”
“Yes.”
Lupin tipped the man, dismissed him and turned to
his friends:
“This is Saturday. If the
execution takes place on Monday, there’s nothing
to be done. But Monday is not a likely day...
What I have to do is to lay hands on Daubrecq to-night
and to be in Paris on Monday, with the document.
It’s our last chance. Let’s take it.”
The Growler went to the booking-office
and returned with three tickets for Genoa.
The engine whistled.
Lupin had a last hesitation:
“No, really, it’s too
childish! What are we doing? We ought to
be in Paris, not here!... Just think!...”
He was on the point of opening the
door and jumping out on the permanent way. But
his companions held him back. The train started.
He sat down again.
And they continued their mad pursuit,
travelling at random, toward the unknown...
And this happened two days before
the inevitable execution of Gilbert and Vaucheray.