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

by Maurice Leblanc

  But he could not sleep; and a good part of the night went in this way.

  At four o’clock in the morning he seemed to hear a noise in the house. He jumped up quickly and, from the top of the staircase, saw Daubrecq go down the first flight and turn toward the garden.

  A minute later, after opening the gate, the deputy returned with a man whose head was buried in an enormous fur collar and showed him into his study.

  Lupin had taken his precautions in view of any such contingency. As the windows of the study and those of his bedroom, both of which were at the back of the house, overlooked the garden, he fastened a rope-ladder to his balcony, unrolled it softly and let himself down by it until it was level with the top of the study windows.

  These windows were closed by shutters; but, as they were bowed, there remained a semi-circular space at the top; and Lupin, though he could not hear, was able to see all that went on inside.

  He then realized that the person whom he had taken for a man was a woman: a woman who was still young, though her dark hair was mingled with gray; a tall woman, elegantly but quite unobtrusively dressed, whose handsome features bore the expression of weariness and melancholy which long suffering gives.

  “Where the deuce have I seen her before?” Lupin asked himself. “For I certainly know that face, that look, that expression.”

  She stood leaning against the table, listening impassively to Daubrecq, who was also standing and who was talking very excitedly. He had his back turned to Lupin; but Lupin, leaning forward, caught sight of a glass in which the deputy’s image was reflected. And he was startled to see the strange look in his eyes, the air of fierce and brutal desire with which Daubrecq was staring at his visitor.

  It seemed to embarrass her too, for she sat down with lowered lids. Then Daubrecq leant over her and it appeared as though he were ready to fling his long arms, with their huge hands, around her. And, suddenly, Lupin perceived great tears rolling down the woman’s sad face.

  Whether or not it was the sight of those tears that made Daubrecq lose his head, with a brusque movement he clutched the woman and drew her to him. She repelled him, with a violence full of hatred. And, after a brief struggle, during which Lupin caught a glimpse of the man’s bestial and contorted features, the two of them stood face to face, railing at each other like mortal enemies.

  Then they stopped. Daubrecq sat down. There was mischief in his face, and sarcasm as well. And he began to talk again, with sharp taps on the table, as though he were dictating terms.

  She no longer stirred. She sat haughtily in her chair and towered over him, absent-minded, with roaming eyes. Lupin, captivated by that powerful and sorrowful countenance, continued to watch her; and he was vainly seeking to remember of what or of whom she reminded him, when he noticed that she had turned her head slightly and that she was imperceptibly moving her arm.

  And her arm strayed farther and farther and her hand crept along the table and Lupin saw that, at the end of the table, there stood a water-bottle with a gold-topped stopper. The hand reached the water-bottle, felt it, rose gently and seized the stopper. A quick movement of the head, a glance, and the stopper was put back in its place. Obviously, it was not what the woman hoped to find.

  “Dash it!” said Lupin. “She’s after the crystal stopper too! The matter is becoming more complicated daily; there’s no doubt about it.”

  But, on renewing his observation of the visitor, he was astounded to note the sudden and unexpected expression of her countenance, a terrible, implacable, ferocious expression. And he saw that her hand was continuing its stealthy progress round the table and that, with an uninterrupted and crafty sliding movement, it was pushing back books and, slowly and surely, approaching a dagger whose blade gleamed among the scattered papers.

  It gripped the handle.

  Daubrecq went on talking. Behind his back, the hand rose steadily, little by little; and Lupin saw the woman’s desperate and furious eyes fixed upon the spot in the neck where she intended to plant the knife:

  “You’re doing a very silly thing, fair lady,” thought Lupin.

  And he already began to turn over in his mind the best means of escaping and of taking Victoire with him.

  She hesitated, however, with uplifted arm. But it was only a momentary weakness. She clenched her teeth. Her whole face, contracted with hatred, became yet further convulsed. And she made the dread movement.

  At the same instant Daubrecq crouched and, springing from his seat, turned and seized the woman’s frail wrist in mid-air.

  Oddly enough, he addressed no reproach to her, as though the deed which she had attempted surprised him no more than any ordinary, very natural and simple act. He shrugged his shoulders, like a man accustomed to that sort of danger, and strode up and down in silence.

  She had dropped the weapon and was now crying, holding her head between her hands, with sobs that shook her whole frame.

  He next came up to her and said a few words, once more tapping the table as he spoke.

  She made a sign in the negative and, when he insisted, she, in her turn, stamped her foot on the floor and exclaimed, loud enough for Lupin to hear:

  “Never!... Never!...”

  Thereupon, without another word, Daubrecq fetched the fur cloak which she had brought with her and hung it over the woman’s shoulders, while she shrouded her face in a lace wrap.

  And he showed her out.

  Two minutes later, the garden-gate was locked again. “Pity I can’t run after that strange person,” thought Lupin, “and have a chat with her about the Daubrecq bird. Seems to me that we two could do a good stroke of business together.”

  In any case, there was one point to be cleared up: Daubrecq the deputy, whose life was so orderly, so apparently respectable, was in the habit of receiving visits at night, when his house was no longer watched by the police.

  He sent Victoire to arrange with two members of his gang to keep watch for several days. And he himself remained awake next night.

  As on the previous morning, he heard a noise at four o’clock. As on the previous morning, the deputy let some one in.

  Lupin ran down his ladder and, when he came to the free space above the shutters, saw a man crawling at Daubrecq’s feet, flinging his arms round Daubrecq’s knees in frenzied despair and weeping, weeping convulsively.

  Daubrecq, laughing, pushed him away repeatedly, but the man clung to him. He behaved almost like one out of his mind and, at last, in a genuine fit of madness, half rose to his feet, took the deputy by the throat and flung him back in a chair. Daubrecq struggled, powerless at first, while his veins swelled in his temples. But soon, with a strength far beyond the ordinary, he regained the mastery and deprived his adversary of all power of movement. Then, holding him with one hand, with the other he gave him two great smacks in the face.

  The man got up, slowly. He was livid and could hardly stand on his legs. He waited for a moment, as though to recover his self-possession. Then, with a terrifying calmness, he drew a revolver from his pocket and levelled it at Daubrecq.

  Daubrecq did not flinch. He even smiled, with a defiant air and without displaying more excitement than if he had been aimed at with a toy pistol.

  The man stood for perhaps fifteen or twenty seconds, facing his enemy, with outstretched arm. Then, with the same deliberate slowness, revealing a self-control which was all the more impressive because it followed upon a fit of extreme excitement, he put up his revolver and, from another pocket, produced his note-case.

  Daubrecq took a step forward.

  The man opened the pocketbook. A sheaf of banknotes appeared in sight.

  Daubrecq seized and counted them. They were thousand-franc notes, and there were thirty of them.

  The man looked on, without a movement of revolt, without a protest. He obviously understood the futility of words. Daubrecq was one of those who do not relent. Why should his visitor waste time in beseeching him or even in revenging himself upon him by uttering vain thre
ats and insults? He had no hope of striking that unassailable enemy. Even Daubrecq’s death would not deliver him from Daubrecq.

  He took his hat and went away.

  At eleven o’clock in the morning Victoire, on returning from her shopping, handed Lupin a note from his accomplices.

  He opened it and read:

  “The man who came to see Daubrecq last night is Langeroux the deputy, leader of the independent left. A poor man, with a large family.”

  “Come,” said Lupin, “Daubrecq is nothing more nor less than a blackmailer; but, by Jupiter, he has jolly effective ways of going to work!”

  Events tended to confirm Lupin’s supposition. Three days later he saw another visitor hand Daubrecq an important sum of money. And, two days after that, one came and left a pearl necklace behind him.

  The first was called Dachaumont, a senator and ex-cabinet-minister. The second was the Marquis d’Albufex, a Bonapartist deputy, formerly chief political agent in France of Prince Napoleon.

  The scene, in each of these cases, was very similar to Langeroux the deputy’s interview, a violent tragic scene, ending in Daubrecq’s victory.

  “And so on and so forth,” thought Lupin, when he received these particulars. “I have been present at four visits. I shall know no more if there are ten, or twenty, or thirty... It is enough for me to learn the names of the visitors from my friends on sentry-go outside. Shall I go and call on them?... What for? They have no reason to confide in me... On the other hand, am I to stay on here, delayed by investigations which lead to nothing and which Victoire can continue just as well without me?”

  He was very much perplexed. The news of the inquiry into the case of Gilbert and Vaucheray was becoming worse and worse, the days were slipping by, and not an hour passed without his asking himself, in anguish, whether all his efforts — granting that he succeeded — would not end in farcical results, absolutely foreign to the aim which he was pursuing.

  For, after all, supposing that he did fathom Daubrecq’s underhand dealings, would that give him the means of rescuing Gilbert and Vaucheray?

  That day an incident occurred which put an end to his indecision. After lunch Victoire heard snatches of a conversation which Daubrecq held with some one on the telephone. Lupin gathered, from what Victoire reported, that the deputy had an appointment with a lady for half-past eight and that he was going to take her to a theatre:

  “I shall get a pit-tier box, like the one we had six weeks ago,” Daubrecq had said. And he added, with a laugh, “I hope that I shall not have the burglars in during that time.”

  There was not a doubt in Lupin’s mind. Daubrecq was about to spend his evening in the same manner in which he had spent the evening six weeks ago, while they were breaking into his villa at Enghien. To know the person whom he was to meet and perhaps thus to discover how Gilbert and Vaucheray had learnt that Daubrecq would be away from eight o’clock in the evening until one o’clock in the morning: these were matters of the utmost importance.

  Lupin left the house in the afternoon, with Victoire’s assistance. He knew through her that Daubrecq was coming home for dinner earlier than usual.

  He went to his flat in the Rue Chateaubriand, telephoned for three of his friends, dressed and made himself up in his favourite character of a Russian prince, with fair hair and moustache and short-cut whiskers.

  The accomplices arrived in a motor-car.

  At that moment, Achille, his man, brought him a telegram, addressed to M. Michel Beaumont, Rue Chateaubriand, which ran:

  “Do not come to theatre this evening. Danger of your

  intervention spoiling everything.”

  There was a flower-vase on the chimney-piece beside him. Lupin took it and smashed it to pieces.

  “That’s it, that’s it,” he snarled. “They are playing with me as I usually play with others. Same behaviour. Same tricks. Only there’s this difference...”

  What difference? He hardly knew. The truth was that he too was baffled and disconcerted to the inmost recesses of his being and that he was continuing to act only from obstinacy, from a sense of duty, so to speak, and without putting his ordinary good humour and high spirits into the work.

  “Come along,” he said to his accomplices.

  By his instructions, the chauffeur set them down near the Square Lamartine, but kept the motor going. Lupin foresaw that Daubrecq, in order to escape the detectives watching the house, would jump into the first taxi; and he did not intend to be outdistanced.

  He had not allowed for Daubrecq’s cleverness.

  At half-past seven both leaves of the garden-gate were flung open, a bright light flashed and a motor-cycle darted across the road, skirted the square, turned in front of the motor-car and shot away toward the Bois at a speed so great that they would have been mad to go in pursuit of it.

  “Good-bye, Daisy!” said Lupin, trying to jest, but really overcome with rage.

  He eyed his accomplices in the hope that one of them would venture to give a mocking smile. How pleased he would have been to vent his nerves on them!

  “Let’s go home,” he said to his companions.

  He gave them some dinner; then he smoked a cigar and they set off again in the car and went the round of the theatres, beginning with those which were giving light operas and musical comedies, for which he presumed that Daubrecq and his lady would have a preference. He took a stall, inspected the lower-tier boxes and went away again.

  He next drove to the more serious theatres: the Renaissance, the Gymnase.

  At last, at ten o’clock in the evening, he saw a pit-tier box at the Vaudeville almost entirely protected from inspection by its two screens; and, on tipping the boxkeeper, was told that it contained a short, stout, elderly gentleman and a lady who was wearing a thick lace veil.

  The next box was free. He took it, went back to his friends to give them their instructions and sat down near the couple.

  During the entr’acte, when the lights went up, he perceived Daubrecq’s profile. The lady remained at the back of the box, invisible. The two were speaking in a low voice; and, when the curtain rose again, they went on speaking, but in such a way that Lupin could not distinguish a word.

  Ten minutes passed. Some one tapped at their door. It was one of the men from the box-office.

  “Are you M. le Depute Daubrecq, sir?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Daubrecq, in a voice of surprise. “But how do you know my name?”

  “There’s a gentleman asking for you on the telephone. He told me to go to Box 22.”

  “But who is it?”

  “M. le Marquis d’Albufex.”

  “Eh?”

  “What am I to say, sir?”

  “I’m coming... I’m coming...”

  Daubrecq rose hurriedly from his seat and followed the clerk to the box-office.

  He was not yet out of sight when Lupin sprang from his box, worked the lock of the next door and sat down beside the lady.

  She gave a stifled cry.

  “Hush!” he said. “I have to speak to you. It is most important.”

  “Ah!” she said, between her teeth. “Arsène Lupin!” He was dumbfounded. For a moment he sat quiet, open-mouthed. The woman knew him! And not only did she know him, but she had recognized him through his disguise! Accustomed though he was to the most extraordinary and unusual events, this disconcerted him.

  He did not even dream of protesting and stammered:

  “So you know?... So you know?...”

  He snatched at the lady’s veil and pulled it aside before she had time to defend herself:

  “What!” he muttered, with increased amazement. “Is it possible?”

  It was the woman whom he had seen at Daubrecq’s a few days earlier, the woman who had raised her dagger against Daubrecq and who had intended to stab him with all the strength of her hatred.

  It was her turn to be taken aback:

  “What! Have you seen me before?...”

  “Yes, the other nig
ht, at his house... I saw what you tried to do...”

  She made a movement to escape. He held her back and, speaking with great eagerness:

  “I must know who you are,” he said. “That was why I had Daubrecq telephoned for.”

  She looked aghast:

  “Do you mean to say it was not the Marquis d’Albufex?”

  “No, it was one of my assistants.”

  “Then Daubrecq will come back?...”

  “Yes, but we have time... Listen to me... We must meet again... He is your enemy... I will save you from him...”

  “Why should you? What is your object?”

  “Do not distrust me... it is quite certain that our interests are identical... Where can I see you? To-morrow, surely? At what time? And where?”

  “Well...”

  She looked at him with obvious hesitation, not knowing what to do, on the point of speaking and yet full of uneasiness and doubt.

  He pressed her:

  “Oh, I entreat you... answer me just one word... and at once... It would be a pity for him to find me here... I entreat you...”

  She answered sharply:

  “My name doesn’t matter... We will see each other first and you shall explain to me... Yes, we will meet... Listen, to-morrow, at three o’clock, at the corner of the Boulevard...”

  At that exact moment, the door of the box opened, so to speak, with a bang, and Daubrecq appeared.

  “Rats!” Lupin mumbled, under his breath, furious at being caught before obtaining what he wanted.

  Daubrecq gave a chuckle:

  “So that’s it... I thought something was up... Ah, the telephone-trick: a little out of date, sir! I had not gone half-way when I turned back.”

  He pushed Lupin to the front of the box and, sitting down beside the lady, said:

  “And, now my lord, who are we? A servant at the police-office, probably? There’s a professional look about that mug of yours.”

  He stared hard at Lupin, who did not move a muscle, and tried to put a name to the face, but failed to recognize the man whom he had called Polonius.