Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17)

by Maurice Leblanc

  Isilda looked at the sheet of paper, when he showed it to her, and turned away her head, with a vacant air.

  “No bite!” said the count, satirically.

  Lupin wrote the letters “APOON.”

  Isilda paid no more attention than before.

  He did not give up the experiment, but kept on writing the same letters, each time watching the girl’s face.

  She did not stir, but kept her eyes fixed on the paper with an indifference which nothing seemed to disturb. Then, all at once, she seized the pencil, snatched the last sheet out of Lupin’s hands and, as though acting under a sudden inspiration, wrote two “L’s” in the middle of a space left open by Lupin.

  He felt a thrill.

  A word had been formed: “APOLLON.”

  Meanwhile, Isilda clung to both pencil and paper and, with clutching fingers and a strained face, was struggling to make her hand submit to the hesitating orders of her poor little brain.

  Lupin waited, feverishly.

  She rapidly wrote another word, the word “DIANE.”

  “Another word! . . . Another word!” shouted Lupin.

  She twisted her fingers round the pencil, broke the lead, made a big “J” with the stump and, now utterly exhausted, dropped the pencil.

  “Another word! I must have another word!” said Lupin, in a tone of command, catching her by the arm.

  But he saw by her eyes, which had once more become indifferent, that that fleeting gleam of intelligence could not shine out again.

  “Let us go,” he said.

  He was walking away, when she ran after him and stood in his path. He stopped:

  “What is it?”

  She held out the palm of her hand.

  “What? Money? . . . Is she in the habit of begging?” he asked the count.

  “No,” said Waldemar, “and I can’t understand.”

  Isilda took two gold coins from her pocket and chinked them together, gleefully.

  Lupin looked at them. They were French coins, quite new, bearing the date of that year.

  “Where did you get these?” asked Lupin, excitedly.

  “French money! . . . Who gave it you? . . . And when? . . . Was it to-day? Speak! . . . Answer! . . .” He shrugged his shoulders. “Fool that I am! As though she could answer! . . . My dear count, would you mind lending me forty marks? . . . Thanks . . . Here, Isilda, that’s for you.”

  She took the two coins, jingled them with the others in the palm of her hand and then, putting out her arm, pointed to the ruins of the Renascence palace, with a gesture that seemed to call attention more particularly to the left wing and to the top of that wing.

  Was it a mechanical movement? Or must it be looked upon as a grateful acknowledgment for the two gold coins?

  He glanced at the count. Waldemar was smiling again.

  “What makes the brute keep on grinning like that?” said Lupin to himself. “Any one would think that he was having a game with me.”

  He went to the palace on the off-chance, attended by his escort.

  The ground-floor consisted of a number of large reception-rooms, running one into the other and containing the few pieces of furniture that had escaped the fire.

  On the first floor, on the north side, was a long gallery, out of which twelve handsome rooms opened all exactly alike.

  There was a similar gallery on the second floor, but with twenty-four smaller rooms, also resembling one another. All these apartments were empty, dilapidated, wretched to look at.

  Above, there was nothing. The attics had been burnt down.

  For an hour, Lupin walked, ran, rushed about indefatigably, with his eyes on the look-out.

  When it began to grow dusk, he hurried to one of his twelve rooms on the first floor, as if he were selecting it for special reasons known to himself alone. He was rather surprised to find the Emperor there, smoking and seated in an arm-chair which he had sent for.

  Taking no notice of his presence, Lupin began an inspection of the room, according to the methods which he was accustomed to employ in such cases, dividing the room into sections, each of which he examined in turn.

  After twenty minutes of this work, he said:

  “I must beg you, Sire, to be good enough to move. There is a fireplace here. . . .”

  The Emperor tossed his head:

  “Is it really necessary for me to move?”

  “Yes, Sire, this fireplace . . .”

  “The fireplace is just the same as the others and the room is no different from its fellows.”

  Lupin looked at the Emperor without understanding. The Emperor rose and said, with a laugh:

  “I think, M. Lupin, that you have been making just a little fun of me.”

  “How do you mean, Sire?”

  “Oh, it’s hardly worth mentioning! You obtained your release on the condition of handing me certain papers in which I am interested and you have not the smallest notion as to where they are. I have been thoroughly — what do you call it, in French? — roulé ‘done’!”

  “Do you think so, Sire?”

  “Why, what a man knows he doesn’t have to hunt for! And you have been hunting for ten good hours! Doesn’t it strike you as a case for an immediate return to prison?”

  Lupin seemed thunderstruck:

  “Did not Your Imperial Majesty fix twelve o’clock to-morrow as the last limit?”

  “Why wait?”

  “Why? Well, to allow me to complete my work!”

  “Your work? But it’s not even begun, M. Lupin.”

  “There Your Imperial Majesty is mistaken.”

  “Prove it . . . and I will wait until to-morrow.”

  Lupin reflected and, speaking in a serious tone:

  “Since Your Imperial Majesty requires proofs in order to have confidence in me, I will furnish them. The twelve rooms leading out of this gallery each bear a different name, which is inscribed in French — obviously by a French decorative artist — over the various doors. One of the inscriptions, less damaged by the fire than the others, caught my eye as I was passing along the gallery. I examined the other doors: all of them bore hardly legible traces of names caned over the pediments. Thus I found a ‘D’ and an ‘E’ the first and last letters of ‘Diane.’ I found an ‘A’ and ‘LON’ which pointed to ‘Apollon.’ These are the French equivalents of Diana and Apollo, both of them mythological deities. The other inscriptions presented similar characteristics. I discovered traces of such names as Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, Saturn and so on. This part of the problem was solved: each of the twelve rooms bears the name of an Olympian god or goddess; and the letters APOON, completed by Isilda, point to the Apollo Room or Salle d’Apollon. So it is here, in the room in which we now are, that the letters are hidden. A few minutes, perhaps, will suffice in which to discover them.”

  “A few minutes or a few years . . . or even longer!” said the Emperor, laughing.

  He seemed greatly amused; and the count also displayed a coarse merriment.

  Lupin asked:

  “Would Your Imperial Majesty be good enough to explain?”

  “M. Lupin, the exciting investigation which you have conducted to-day and of which you are telling us the brilliant results has already been made by me . . . yes, a fortnight ago, in the company of your friend Holmlock Shears. Together we questioned little Isilda; together, we employed the same method in dealing with her that you did; and together we observed the names in the gallery and got as far as this room, the Apollo Room.”

  Lupin turned livid. He spluttered:

  “Oh, did Shears get . . . as far as . . . this?”

  “Yes, after four days’ searching. True, it did not help us, for we found nothing. All the same, I know that the letters are not here.”

  Trembling with rage, wounded in his innermost pride, Lupin fired up under the gibe, as though he had been lashed with a whip. He had never felt humiliated to such a degree as this. In this fury, he could have strangled the fat Waldemar, whose laughter incens
ed him. Containing himself with an effort, he said:

  “It took Shears four days, Sire, and me only four hours. And I should have required even less, if I had not been thwarted in my search.”

  “And by whom, bless my soul? By my faithful count? I hope he did not dare . . . !”

  “No, Sire, but by the most terrible and powerful of my enemies, by that infernal being who killed his own accomplice Altenheim.”

  “Is he here? Do you think so?” exclaimed the Emperor, with an agitation which showed that he was familiar with every detail of the dramatic story.

  “He is wherever I am. He threatens me with his constant hatred. It was he who guessed that I was M. Lenormand, the chief of the detective-service; it was he who had me put in prison; it was he, again, who pursued me, on the day when I came out. Yesterday, aiming at me in the motor, he wounded Count von Waldemar.”

  “But how do you know, how can you be sure that he is at Veldenz?”

  “Isilda has received two gold coins, two French coins!”

  “And what is he here for? With what object?”

  “I don’t know, Sire, but he is the very spirit of evil. Your Imperial Majesty must be on your guard: he is capable of anything and everything.”

  “It is impossible! I have two hundred men in the ruins. He cannot have entered. He would have been seen.”

  “Some one has seen him, beyond a doubt.”

  “Who?”

  “Isilda.”

  “Let her be questioned! Waldemar, take your prisoner to where the girl is.”

  Lupin showed his bound hands:

  “It will be a tough battle. Can I fight like this?”

  The Emperor said to the count:

  “Unfasten him. . . . And keep me informed.”

  In this way, by a sudden effort, bringing the hateful vision of the murder into the discussion, boldly, without evidence, Arsène Lupin gained time and resumed the direction of the search:

  “Sixteen hours still,” he said to himself, “it’s more than I want.”

  He reached the premises occupied by Isilda, at the end of the old out-buildings. These buildings served as barracks for the two hundred soldiers guarding the ruins; and the whole of this, the left wing, was reserved for the officers.

  Isilda was not there. The count sent two of his men to look for her. They came back. No one had seen the girl.

  Nevertheless, she could not have left the precincts of the ruins. As for the Renascence palace, it was, so to speak, invested by one-half of the troops; and no one was able to obtain admittance.

  At last, the wife of a subaltern who lived in the next house declared that she had been sitting at her window all day and that the girl had not been out.

  “If she hadn’t gone out,” said Waldemar, “she would be here now: and she is not here.”

  Lupin observed:

  “Is there a floor above?”

  “Yes, but from this room to the upper floor there is no staircase.”

  “Yes, there is.”

  He pointed to a little door opening on a dark recess. In the shadow, he saw the first treads of a staircase as steep as a ladder.

  “Please, my dear count,” he said to Waldemar, who wanted to go up, “let me have the honor.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s danger.”

  He ran up and at once sprang into a low and narrow loft. A cry escaped him:

  “Oh!”

  “What is it?” asked the count, emerging in his turn.

  “Here . . . on the floor. . . . Isilda. . . .”

  He knelt down beside the girl, but, at the first glance, saw that she was simply stunned and that she bore no trace of a wound, except a few scratches on the wrists and hands. A handkerchief was stuffed into her mouth by way of a gag.

  “That’s it,” he said. “The murderer was here with her. When we came, he struck her a blow with his fist and gagged her so that we should not hear her moans.”

  “But how did he get away?”

  “Through here . . . look . . . there is a passage connecting all the attics on the first floor.”

  “And from there?”

  “From there, he went down the stairs of one of the other dwellings.”

  “But he would have been seen!”

  “Pooh, who knows? The creature’s invisible. Never mind! Send your men to look. Tell them to search all the attics and all the ground-floor lodgings.”

  He hesitated. Should he also go in pursuit of the murderer?

  But a sound brought him back to the girl’s side. She had got up from the floor and a dozen pieces of gold money had dropped from her hands. He examined them. They were all French.

  “Ah,” he said, “I was right! Only, why so much gold? In reward for what?”

  Suddenly, he caught sight of a book on the floor and stooped to pick it up. But the girl darted forward with a quicker movement, seized the book and pressed it to her bosom with a fierce energy, as though prepared to defend it against any attempt to take hold of it.

  “That’s it,” he said. “The money was offered her for the book, but she refused to part with it. Hence the scratches on the hands. The interesting thing would be to know why the murderer wished to possess the book. Was he able to look through it first?”

  He said to Waldemar:

  “My dear count, please give the order.”

  Waldemar made a sign to his men. Three of them threw themselves on the girl and, after a hard tussle, in which the poor thing stamped, writhed and screamed with rage, they took the volume from her.

  “Gently, child,” said Lupin, “be calm. . . . It’s all in a good cause. . . . Keep an eye on her, will you? Meanwhile, I will have a look at the object in dispute.”

  It was an odd volume of Montesquieu’s Voyage au temple de Guide, in a binding at least a century old. But Lupin had hardly opened it before he exclaimed:

  “I say, I say, this is queer! There is a sheet of parchment stuck on each right hand page; and those sheets are covered with a very close, small handwriting.”

  He read, at the beginning:

  “Diary of the Chevalier Gilles de Malrêche, French servant to His Royal Highness the Prince of Zweibruckenveldenz, begun in the Year of Our Lord 1794.”

  “What! Does it say that?” asked the count.

  “What surprises you?”

  “Isilda’s grandfather, the old man who died two years ago, was called Malreich, which is the German form of the same name.”

  “Capital! Isilda’s grandfather must have been the son or the grandson of the French servant who wrote his diary in an odd volume of Montesquieu’s works. And that is how the diary came into Isilda’s hands.”

  He turned the pages at random:

  “15 September, 1796. His Royal Highness went hunting.

  “20 September, 1796. His Royal Highness went out riding. He was mounted on Cupidon.”

  “By Jove!” muttered Lupin. “So far, it’s not very exciting.”

  He turned over a number of pages and read:

  “12 March, 1803. I have remitted ten crowns to Hermann. He is giving music-lessons in London.”

  Lupin gave a laugh:

  “Oho! Hermann is dethroned and our respect comes down with a rush!”

  “Yes,” observed Waldemar, “the reigning grand-duke was driven from his dominions by the French troops.”

  Lupin continued:

  “1809. Tuesday. Napoleon slept at Veldenz last night. I made His Majesty’s bed and this morning I emptied his slops.”

  “Oh, did Napoleon stop at Veldenz?”

  “Yes, yes, on his way back to the army, at the time of the Austrian campaign, which ended with the battle of Wagram. It was an honor of which the grand-duchal family were very proud afterwards.”

  Lupin went on reading:

  “28 October, 1814. His Royal Highness returned to his dominions.

  “29 October, 1814. I accompanied His Royal Highness to the hiding-place last night and was happy to be able to show him that n
o one had guessed its existence. For that matter, who would have suspected that a hiding-place could be contrived in . . .”

  Lupin stopped, with a shout. Isilda had suddenly escaped from the men guarding her, made a grab at him and taken to flight, carrying the book with her.

  “Oh, the little mischief! Quick, you! . . . Go round by the stairs below. I’ll run after her by the passage.”

  But she had slammed the door behind her and bolted it. He had to go down and run along the buildings with the others, looking for a staircase which would take them to the first floor.

  The fourth house was the only one open. He went upstairs. But the passage was empty and he had to knock at doors, force locks and make his way into unoccupied rooms, while Waldemar, showing as much ardor in the pursuit as himself, pricked the curtains and hangings with the point of his sword.

  A voice called out from the ground-floor, towards the right wing. They rushed in that direction. It was one of the officers’ wives, who beckoned to them at the end of a passage and told them that the girl must be in her lodging.

  “How do you know?” asked Lupin.

  “I wanted to go to my room. The door was shut and I could not get in.”

  Lupin tried and found the door locked:

  “The window!” he cried. “There must be a window!”

  He went outside, took the count’s sword and smashed the panes. Then, helped up by two men, he hung on to the wall, passed his arm through the broken glass, turned the latch and stumbled into the room.

  He saw Isilda huddled before the fireplace, almost in the midst of the flames:

  “The little beast!” he said. “She has thrown it into the fire!”

  He pushed her back savagely, tried to take the book and burnt his hands in the attempt. Then, with the tongs, he pulled it out of the grate and threw the table cloth over it to stifle the blaze.

  But it was too late. The pages of the old manuscript, all burnt up, were falling into ashes.

  Lupin gazed at her in silence. The count said:

  “One would think that she knew what she was doing.”

  “No, she does not know. Only, her grandfather must have entrusted her with that book as a sort of treasure, a treasure which no one was ever to set eyes on, and, with her stupid instinct, she preferred to throw it into the fire rather than part with it.”