That he most certainly understood! It was homicidal madness. Under the obsession of an object toward which she was drawn automatically, she killed, thirsting for blood, unconsciously, infernally.
She killed because she wanted something, she killed in self-defence, she killed because she had killed before. But she killed also and especially for the sake of killing. Murder satisfied sudden and irresistible appetites that arose in her. At certain seconds in her life, in certain circumstances, face to face with this or that being who had suddenly become the foe, her arm had to strike.
And she struck, drunk with rage, ferociously, frenziedly.
A strange madwoman, not answerable for her murders, and yet so lucid in her blindness, so logical in her mental derangement, so intelligent in her absurdity! What skill, what perseverance, what cunning contrivances, at once abominable and admirable!
And Lupin, in a rapid view, with prodigious keenness of outlook, saw the long array of bloodthirsty adventures and guessed the mysterious paths which Dolores had pursued.
He saw her obsessed and possessed by her husband’s scheme, a scheme which she evidently understood only in part. He saw her, on her side, looking for that same Pierre Leduc whom her husband was seeking, looking for him in order to marry him and to return, as queen, to that little realm of Veldenz from which her parents had been ignominiously driven.
And he saw her at the Palace Hotel, in the room of her brother, Altenheim, at the time when she was supposed to be at Monte Carlo. He saw her, for days together, spying upon her husband, creeping along the walls, one with the darkness, undistinguishable and unseen in her shadowy disguise.
And, one night, she found Mr. Kesselbach fastened up . . . and she stabbed him.
And, in the morning, when on the point of being denounced by the floor-waiter . . . she stabbed him.
And, an hour later, when on the point of being denounced by Chapman, she dragged him to her brother’s room . . . and stabbed him.
All this pitilessly, savagely, with diabolical skill.
And, with the same skill, she communicated by telephone with her two maids, Gertrude and Suzanne, both of whom had arrived from Monte Carlo, where one of them had enacted the part of her mistress. And Dolores, resuming her feminine attire, discarding the fair wig that altered her appearance beyond recognition, went down to the ground-floor, joined Gertrude at the moment when the maid entered the hotel and pretended herself to have just arrived, all ignorant of the tragedy that awaited her.
An incomparable actress, she played the part of the wife whose life is shattered. Every one pitied her. Every one wept for her. Who could have suspected her?
And then came the war with him, Lupin, that barbarous contest, that unparalleled contest which she waged, by turns, against M. Lenormand and Prince Sernine, spending her days stretched on her sofa, ill and fainting, but her nights on foot, scouring the roads indefatigable and terrible.
And the diabolical contrivances: Gertrude and Suzanne, frightened and subdued accomplices, both of them serving her as emissaries, disguising themselves to represent her, perhaps, as on the day when old Steinweg was carried off by Baron Altenheim, in the middle of the Palais de Justice.
And the series of murders: Gourel drowned; Altenheim, her brother, stabbed. Oh, the implacable struggle in the underground passages of the Villa des Glycines, the invisible work performed by the monster in the dark: how clear it all appeared to-day!
And it was she who tore off his mask as Prince Sernine, she who betrayed him to the police, she who sent him to prison, she who thwarted all his plans, spending her millions to win the battle.
And then events followed faster: Suzanne and Gertrude disappeared, dead, no doubt! Steinweg, assassinated! Isilda, the sister, assassinated!
“Oh, the ignominy, the horror of it!” stammered Lupin, with a start of revulsion and hatred.
He execrated her, the abominable creature. He would have liked to crush her, to destroy her. And it was a stupefying sight, those two beings, clinging to each other, lying motionless in the pale dawn that began to mingle with the shades of the night.
“Dolores. . . . Dolores. . . .” he muttered, in despair.
He leapt back, terror-stricken, wild-eyed. What was it? What was that? What was that hideous feeling of cold which froze his hands?
“Octave! Octave?” he shouted, forgetting that the chauffeur was not there.
Help, he needed help, some one to reassure him and assist him. He shivered with fright. Oh, that coldness, that coldness of death which he had felt! Was it possible? . . . Then, during those few tragic minutes, with his clenched fingers, he had. . . .
Violently, he forced himself to look. Dolores did not stir.
He flung himself on his knees and drew her to him.
She was dead.
He remained for some seconds a prey to a sort of numbness in which his grief seemed to be swallowed up. He no longer suffered. He no longer felt rage nor hatred nor emotion of any kind . . . nothing but a stupid prostration, the sensation of a man who has received a blow with a club and who does not know if he is still alive, if he is thinking, or if he is the sport of a nightmare.
Nevertheless, it seemed to him that an act of justice had taken place, and it did not for a second occur to him that it was he who had taken life. No, it was not he. It was outside him and his will. It was destiny, inexorable destiny that had accomplished the work of equity by slaying the noxious beast.
Outside, the birds were singing. Life was recommencing under the old trees, which the spring was preparing to bring into bud. And Lupin, waking from his torpor, felt gradually welling up within him an indefinable and ridiculous compassion for the wretched woman, odious, certainly, abject and twenty times criminal, but so young still and now . . . dead.
And he thought of the tortures which she must have undergone in her lucid moments, when reason returned to the unspeakable madwoman and brought the sinister vision of her deeds.
“Protect me. . . . I am so unhappy!” she used to beg.
It was against herself that she asked to be protected, against her wild-beast instincts, against the monster that dwelt within her and forced her to kill, always to kill.
“Always?” Lupin asked himself.
And he remembered the night, two days since, when, standing over him, with her dagger raised against the enemy who had been harassing her for months, against the indefatigable enemy who had run her to earth after each of her crimes, he remembered that, on that night, she had not killed. And yet it would have been easy: the enemy lay lifeless and powerless. One blow and the implacable struggle was over. No, she had not killed, she too had given way to feelings stronger than her own cruelty, to mysterious feelings of pity, of sympathy, of admiration for the man who had so often mastered her.
No, she had not killed, that time. And now, by a really terrifying vicissitude of fate, it was he who had killed her.
“I have taken life!” he thought, shuddering from head to foot. “These hands have killed a living being; and that creature is Dolores! . . . Dolores! . . . Dolores! . . .”
He never ceased repeating her name, her name of sorrow, and he never ceased staring at her, a sad, lifeless thing, harmless now, a poor hunk of flesh, with no more consciousness than a little heap of withered leaves or a little dead bird by the roadside.
Oh! how could he do other than quiver with compassion, seeing that of those two, face to face, he was the murderer, and she, who was no more, the victim?
“Dolores! . . . Dolores! . . . Dolores! . . .”
The daylight found Lupin seated beside the dead woman, remembering and thinking, while his lips, from time to time, uttered the disconsolate syllables:
“Dolores! . . . Dolores! . . .”
He had to act, however, and, in the disorder of his ideas, he did not know how to act nor with what act to begin:
“I must close her eyes first,” he said.
The eyes, all empty, filled only with death, those beautiful gold-span
gled eyes, had still the melancholy softness that gave them their charm. Was it possible that those eyes were the eyes of a monster? In spite of himself and in the face of the implacable reality, Lupin was not yet able to blend into one single being those two creatures whose images remained so distinct at the back of his brain.
He stooped swiftly, lowered the long, silky eyelids, and covered the poor distorted face with a veil.
Then it seemed to him that Dolores was farther away and that the man in black was really there, this time, in his dark clothes, in his murderer’s disguise.
He now ventured to touch her, to feel in her clothes. In an inside pocket were two pocket-books. He took one of them and opened it. He found first a letter signed by Steinweg, the old German. It contained the following lines:
“Should I die before being able to reveal the terrible secret, let it be known that the murderer of my friend Kesselbach is his wife, whose real name is Dolores de Malreich, sister to Altenheim and sister to Isilda.
“The initials L. and M. relate to her. Kesselbach never, in their private life, called his wife Dolores, which is the name of sorrow, but Letitia, which denotes joy. L. M. — Letitia de Malreich — were the initials inscribed on all the presents which he used to give her, for instance, on the cigarette-case which was found at the Palace Hotel and which belonged to Mrs. Kesselbach. She had contracted the smoking-habit on her travels.
“Letitia! She was indeed the joy of his life for four years, four years of lies and hypocrisy, in which she prepared the death of the man who loved her so well and who trusted her so whole-heartedly.
“Perhaps I ought to have spoken at once. I had not the courage, in memory of my old friend Kesselbach, whose name she bore.
“And then I was afraid. . . . On the day when I unmasked her, at the Palais de Justice, I read my doom in her eyes.
“Will my weakness save me?”
“Him also,” thought Lupin, “him also she killed! . . . Why, of course, he knew too much! . . . The initials . . . that name, Letitia . . . the secret habit of smoking!”
And he remembered the previous night, that smell of tobacco in her room.
He continued his inspection of the first pocket-book. There were scraps of letters, in cipher, no doubt handed to Dolores by her accomplices, in the course of their nocturnal meetings. There were also addresses on bits of paper, addresses of milliners and dressmakers, but addresses also of low haunts, of common hotels. . . . And names . . . twenty, thirty names . . . queer names: Hector the Butcher, Armand of Grenelle, the Sick Man . . .
But a photograph caught Lupin’s eye. He looked at it. And, at once, as though shot from a spring, dropping the pocket-book, he bolted out of the room, out of the chalet and rushed into the park.
He had recognized the portrait of Louis de Malreich, the prisoner at the Santé!
Not till then, not till that exact moment did he remember: the execution was to take place next day.
And, as the man in black, as the murderer was none other than Dolores Kesselbach, Louis de Malreich’s name was really and truly Leon Massier and he was innocent!
Innocent? But the evidence found in his house, the Emperor’s letters, all, all the things that accused him beyond hope of denial, all those incontrovertible proofs?
Lupin stopped for a second, with his brain on fire:
“Oh,” he cried, “I shall go mad, I, too! Come, though, I must act . . . the sentence is to be executed . . . to-morrow . . . to-morrow at break of day.”
He looked at his watch:
“Ten o’clock. . . . How long will it take me to reach Paris? Well . . . I shall be there presently . . . yes, presently, I must. . . . And this very evening I shall take measures to prevent. . . . But what measures? How can I prove his innocence? . . . How prevent the execution? Oh, never mind! Once I am there, I shall find a way. My name is not Lupin for nothing! . . . Come on! . . .”
He set off again at a run, entered the castle and called out:
“Pierre! Pierre! . . . Has any one seen M. Pierre Leduc? . . . Oh, there you are! . . . Listen. . . .”
He took him on one side and jerked out, in imperious tones:
“Listen, Dolores is not here. . . . Yes, she was called away on urgent business . . . she left last night in my motor. . . . I am going too. . . . Don’t interrupt, not a word! . . . A second lost means irreparable harm. . . . You, send away all the servants, without any explanation. Here is money. In half an hour from now, the castle must be empty. And let no one enter it until I return. . . . Not you either, do you understand? . . . I forbid you to enter the castle. . . . I’ll explain later . . . serious reasons. Here, take the key with you. . . . Wait for me in the village. . . .”
And once more, he darted away.
Five minutes later, he was with Octave. He jumped into the car:
“Paris!”
The journey was a real race for life or death. Lupin, thinking that Octave was not driving fast enough, took the steering-wheel himself and drove at a furious, break-neck speed. On the road, through the villages, along the crowded streets of the towns they rushed at sixty miles an hour. People whom they nearly upset roared and yelled with rage: the meteor was far away, was out of sight.
“G — governor,” stammered Octave, livid with dismay, “we shall be stuck!”
“You, perhaps, the motor, perhaps; but I shall arrive!” said Lupin.
He had a feeling as though it were not the car that was carrying him, but he carrying the car and as though he were cleaving space by dint of his own strength, his own will-power. Then what miracle could prevent his arriving, seeing that his strength was inexhaustible, his will-power unbounded?
“I shall arrive because I have got to arrive,” he repeated.
And he thought of the man who would die, if he did not arrive in time to save him, of the mysterious Louis de Malreich, so disconcerting with his stubborn silence and his expressionless face.
And amid the roar of the road, under the trees whose branches made a noise as of furious waves, amid the buzzing of his thoughts, Lupin, all the same, strove to set up an hypothesis. And this hypothesis became gradually more defined, logical, probable, certain, he said to himself, now that he knew the hideous truth about Dolores and saw all the resources and all the odious designs of that crazy mind:
“Yes, it was she who contrived that most terrible plot against Malreich. What was it she wanted? To marry Pierre Leduc, whom she had bewitched, and to become the sovereign of the little principality from which she had been banished. The object was attainable, within reach of her hand. There was one sole obstacle. . . . I, Lupin, who, for weeks and weeks, persistently barred her road; I, whom she encountered after every murder; I, whose perspicacity she dreaded; I, who would never lay down my arms before I had discovered the culprit and found the letters stolen from the Emperor. . . . Well, the culprit should be Louis de Malreich, or rather, Leon Massier. Who was this Leon Massier? Did she know him before her marriage? Had she been in love with him? It is probable; but this, no doubt, we shall never know. One thing is certain, that she was struck by the resemblance to Leon Massier in figure and stature which she might attain by dressing up like him, in black clothes, and putting on a fair wig. She must have noticed the eccentric life led by that lonely man, his nocturnal expeditions, his manner of walking in the streets and of throwing any who might follow him off the scent. And it was in consequence of these observations and in anticipation of possible eventualities that she advised Mr. Kesselbach to erase the name of Dolores from the register of births and to replace it by the name of Louis, so that the initials might correspond with those of Leon Massier. . . . The moment arrived at which she must act; and thereupon she concocted her plot and proceeded to put it into execution. Leon lived in the Rue Delaizement. She ordered her accomplices to take up their quarters in the street that backed on to it. And she herself told me the address of Dominique the head-waiter, and put me on the track of the seven scoundrels, knowing perfectly well that, once on the tr
ack, I was bound to follow it to the end, that is to say, beyond the seven scoundrels, till I came up with their leader, the man who watched them and who commanded them, the man in black, Leon Massier, Louis de Malreich. . . . As a matter of fact, I came up with the seven scoundrels first. Then what would happen? Either I should be beaten or we should all destroy one another, as she must have hoped, that night in the Rue des Vignes. In either case Dolores would have been rid of me. But what really happened was this: I captured the seven scoundrels. Dolores fled from the Rue des Vignes. I found her in the Broker’s shed. She sent me after Leon Massier, that is to say, Louis de Malreich. I found in his house the Emperor’s letters, which she herself had placed there, and I delivered him to justice and I revealed the secret communication, which she herself had caused to be made, between the two coach-houses, and I produced all the evidence which she herself had prepared, and I proved, by means of documents which she herself had forged, that Leon Massier had stolen the social status of Leon Massier and that his real name was Louis de Malreich. . . . And Louis de Malreich was sentenced to death. . . . And Dolores de Malreich, victorious at last, safe from all suspicion once the culprit was discovered, released from her infamous and criminal past, her husband dead, her brother dead, her sister dead, her two maids dead, Steinweg dead, delivered by me from her accomplices, whom I handed over to Weber all packed up, delivered, lastly, from herself by me, who was sending the innocent man whom she had substituted for herself to the scaffold, Dolores de Malreich, triumphant, rich with the wealth of her millions and loved by Pierre Leduc, Dolores de Malreich would sit upon the throne of her native grand-duchy. . . . Ah,” cried Lupin, beside himself with excitement, “that man shall not die! I swear it as I live: he shall not die!”
“Look out, governor,” said Octave, scared, “we are near the town now. . . . the outskirts . . . the suburbs. . . .”
“What shall I care?”
“But we shall topple over. . . . And the pavement is greasy . . . we are skidding. . . .”
Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17) Page 116