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

by Maurice Leblanc

  Lupin, without taking his eyes from Daubrecq either, reflected. He would not for anything in the world have thrown up the game at that point or neglected this favourable opportunity of coming to an understanding with his mortal enemy.

  The woman sat in her corner, motionless, and watched them both.

  Lupin said:

  “Let us go outside, sir. That will make our interview easier.”

  “No, my lord, here,” grinned the deputy. “It will take place here, presently, during the entr’acte. Then we shall not be disturbing anybody.”

  “But...”

  “Save your breath, my man; you sha’n’t budge.”

  And he took Lupin by the coat-collar, with the obvious intention of not letting go of him before the interval.

  A rash move! Was it likely that Lupin would consent to remain in such an attitude, especially before a woman, a woman to whom he had offered his alliance, a woman — and he now thought of it for the first time — who was distinctly good-looking and whose grave beauty attracted him. His whole pride as a man rose at the thought.

  However, he said nothing. He accepted the heavy weight of the hand on his shoulder and even sat bent in two, as though beaten, powerless, almost frightened.

  “Eh, clever!” said the deputy, scoffingly. “We don’t seem to be swaggering quite so much.”

  The stage was full of actors who were arguing and making a noise.

  Daubrecq had loosened his grasp slightly and Lupin felt that the moment had come. With the edge of his hand, he gave him a violent blow in the hollow of the arm, as he might have done with a hatchet.

  The pain took Daubrecq off his guard. Lupin now released himself entirely and sprang at the other to clutch him by the throat. But Daubrecq had at once put himself on the defensive and stepped back and their four hands seized one another.

  They gripped with superhuman energy, the whole force of the two adversaries concentrating in those hands. Daubrecq’s were of monstrous size; and Lupin, caught in that iron vise, felt as though he were fighting not with a man, but with some terrible beast, a huge gorilla.

  They held each other against the door, bending low, like a pair of wrestlers groping and trying to lay hold of each other. Their bones creaked. Whichever gave way first was bound to be caught by the throat and strangled. And all this happened amid a sudden silence, for the actors on the stage were now listening to one of their number, who was speaking in a low voice.

  The woman stood back flat against the partition, looking at them in terror. Had she taken sides with either of them, with a single movement, the victory would at once have been decided in that one’s favour. But which of them should she assist? What could Lupin represent in her eyes? A friend? An enemy?

  She briskly made for the front of the box, forced back the screen and, leaning forward, seemed to give a signal. Then she returned and tried to slip to the door.

  Lupin, as though wishing to help her, said:

  “Why don’t you move the chair?”

  He was speaking of a heavy chair which had fallen down between him and Daubrecq and across which they were struggling.

  The woman stooped and pulled away the chair. That was what Lupin was waiting for. Once rid of the obstacle, he caught Daubrecq a smart kick on the shin with the tip of his patent-leather boot. The result was the same as with the blow which he had given him on the arm. The pain caused a second’s apprehension and distraction, of which he at once took advantage to beat down Daubrecq’s outstretched hands and to dig his ten fingers into his adversary’s throat and neck.

  Daubrecq struggled. Daubrecq tried to pull away the hands that were throttling him; but he was beginning to choke and felt his strength decreasing.

  “Aha, you old monkey!” growled Lupin, forcing him to the floor. “Why don’t you shout for help? How frightened you must be of a scandal!”

  At the sound of the fall there came a knocking at the partition, on the other side.

  “Knock away, knock away,” said Lupin, under his breath. “The play is on the stage. This is my business and, until I’ve mastered this gorilla...”

  It did not take him long. The deputy was choking. Lupin stunned him with a blow on the jaw; and all that remained for him to do was to take the woman away and make his escape with her before the alarm was given.

  But, when he turned round, he saw that the woman was gone.

  She could not be far. Darting from the box, he set off at a run, regardless of the programme-sellers and check-takers.

  On reaching the entrance-lobby, he saw her through an open door, crossing the pavement of the Chaussee d’Antin.

  She was stepping into a motor-car when he came up with her.

  The door closed behind her.

  He seized the handle and tried to pull at it.

  But a man jumped up inside and sent his fist flying into Lupin’s face, with less skill but no less force than Lupin had sent his into Daubrecq’s face.

  Stunned though he was by the blow, he nevertheless had ample time to recognize the man, in a sudden, startled vision, and also to recognize, under his chauffeur’s disguise, the man who was driving the car. It was the Growler and the Masher, the two men in charge of the boats on the Enghien night, two friends of Gilbert and Vaucheray: in short, two of Lupin’s own accomplices.

  When he reached his rooms in the Rue Chateaubriand, Lupin, after washing the blood from his face, sat for over an hour in a chair, as though overwhelmed. For the first time in his life he was experiencing the pain of treachery. For the first time his comrades in the fight were turning against their chief.

  Mechanically, to divert his thoughts, he turned to his correspondence and tore the wrapper from an evening paper. Among the late news he found the following paragraphs:

  “THE VILLA MARIE-THERESE CASE”

  “The real identity of Vaucheray, one of the alleged

  murderers of Leonard the valet, has at last been ascertained.

  He is a miscreant of the worst type, a hardened criminal who

  has already twice been sentenced for murder, in default, under

  another name.

  “No doubt, the police will end by also discovering the real name

  of his accomplice, Gilbert. In any event, the examining-magistrate

  is determined to commit the prisoners for trial as soon as possible.

  “The public will have no reason to complain of the delays of the law.”

  In between other newspapers and prospectuses lay a letter.

  Lupin jumped when he saw it. It was addressed:

  “Monsieur de Beaumont, Michel.”

  “Oh,” he gasped, “a letter from Gilbert!”

  It contained these few words:

  “Help, governor!... I am frightened. I am frightened...”

  Once again, Lupin spent a night alternating between sleeplessness and nightmares. Once again, he was tormented by atrocious and terrifying visions.

  CHAPTER IV. THE CHIEF OF THE ENEMIES

  “POOR BOY!” MURMURED Lupin, when his eyes fell on Gilbert’s letter next morning. “How he must feel it!”

  On the very first day when he saw him, he had taken a liking to that well-set-up youngster, so careless, gay and fond of life. Gilbert was devoted to him, would have accepted death at a sign from his master. And Lupin also loved his frankness, his good humour, his simplicity, his bright, open face.

  “Gilbert,” he often used to say, “you are an honest man. Do you know, if I were you, I should chuck the business and become an honest man for good.”

  “After you, governor,” Gilbert would reply, with a laugh.

  “Won’t you, though?”

  “No, governor. An honest man is a chap who works and grinds. It’s a taste which I may have had as a nipper; but they’ve made me lose it since.”

  “Who’s they?”

  Gilbert was silent. He was always silent when questioned about his early life; and all that Lupin knew was that he had been an orphan since childhood and that
he had lived all over the place, changing his name and taking up the queerest jobs. The whole thing was a mystery which no one had been able to fathom; and it did not look as though the police would make much of it either.

  Nor, on the other hand, did it look as though the police would consider that mystery a reason for delaying proceedings. They would send Vaucheray’s accomplice for trial — under his name of Gilbert or any other name — and visit him with the same inevitable punishment.

  “Poor boy!” repeated Lupin. “They’re persecuting him like this only because of me. They are afraid of his escaping and they are in a hurry to finish the business: the verdict first and then... the execution.

  “Oh, the butchers!... A lad of twenty, who has committed no murder, who is not even an accomplice in the murder...”

  Alas, Lupin well knew that this was a thing impossible to prove and that he must concentrate his efforts upon another point. But upon which? Was he to abandon the trail of the crystal stopper?

  He could not make up his mind to that. His one and only diversion from the search was to go to Enghien, where the Growler and the Masher lived, and make sure that nothing had been seen of them since the murder at the Villa Marie-Therese. Apart from this, he applied himself to the question of Daubrecq and nothing else.

  He refused even to trouble his head about the problems set before him: the treachery of the Growler and the Masher; their connection with the gray-haired lady; the spying of which he himself was the object.

  “Steady, Lupin,” he said. “One only argues falsely in a fever. So hold your tongue. No inferences, above all things! Nothing is more foolish than to infer one fact from another before finding a certain starting-point. That’s where you get up a tree. Listen to your instinct. Act according to your instinct. And as you are persuaded, outside all argument, outside all logic, one might say, that this business turns upon that confounded stopper, go for it boldly. Have at Daubrecq and his bit of crystal!”

  Lupin did not wait to arrive at these conclusions before settling his actions accordingly. At the moment when he was stating them in his mind, three days after the scene at the Vaudeville, he was sitting, dressed like a retired tradesman, in an old overcoat, with a muffler round his neck, on a bench in the Avenue Victor-Hugo, at some distance from the Square Lamartine. Victoire had his instructions to pass by that bench at the same hour every morning.

  “Yes,” he repeated to himself, “the crystal stopper: everything turns on that... Once I get hold of it...”

  Victoire arrived, with her shopping-basket on her arm. He at once noticed her extraordinary agitation and pallor:

  “What’s the matter?” asked Lupin, walking beside his old nurse.

  She went into a big grocer’s, which was crowded with people, and, turning to him:

  “Here,” she said, in a voice torn with excitement. “Here’s what you’ve been hunting for.”

  And, taking something from her basket, she gave it to him.

  Lupin stood astounded: in his hand lay the crystal stopper.

  “Can it be true? Can it be true?” he muttered, as though the ease of the solution had thrown him off his balance.

  But the fact remained, visible and palpable. He recognized by its shape, by its size, by the worn gilding of its facets, recognized beyond any possible doubt the crystal stopper which he had seen before. He even remarked a tiny, hardly noticeable little scratch on the stem which he remembered perfectly.

  However, while the thing presented all the same characteristics, it possessed no other that seemed out of the way. It was a crystal stopper, that was all. There was no really special mark to distinguish it from other stoppers. There was no sign upon it, no stamp; and, being cut from a single piece, it contained no foreign object.

  “What then?”

  And Lupin received a quick insight into the depth of his mistake. What good could the possession of that crystal stopper do him so long as he was ignorant of its value? That bit of glass had no existence in itself; it counted only through the meaning that attached to it. Before taking it, the thing was to be certain. And how could he tell that, in taking it, in robbing Daubrecq of it, he was not committing an act of folly?

  It was a question which was impossible of solution, but which forced itself upon him with singular directness.

  “No blunders!” he said to himself, as he pocketed the stopper. “In this confounded business, blunders are fatal.”

  He had not taken his eyes off Victoire. Accompanied by a shopman, she went from counter to counter, among the throng of customers. She next stood for some little while at the pay-desk and passed in front of Lupin.

  He whispered her instructions:

  “Meet me behind the Lycee Janson.”

  She joined him in an unfrequented street:

  “And suppose I’m followed?” she said.

  “No,” he declared. “I looked carefully. Listen to me. Where did you find the stopper?”

  “In the drawer of the table by his bed.”

  “But we had felt there already.”

  “Yes; and I did so again this morning. I expect he put it there last night.”

  “And I expect he’ll want to take it from there again,” said Lupin.

  “Very likely.”

  “And suppose he finds it gone?”

  Victoire looked frightened.

  “Answer me,” said Lupin. “If he finds it gone, he’ll accuse you of taking it, won’t he?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Then go and put it back, as fast as you can.”

  “Oh dear, oh dear!” she moaned. “I hope he won’t have had time to find out. Give it to me, quick.”

  “Here you are,” said Lupin.

  He felt in the pocket of his overcoat.

  “Well?” said Victoire, holding out her hand.

  “Well,” he said, after a moment, “it’s gone.”

  “What!”

  “Yes, upon my word, it’s gone... somebody’s taken it from me.”

  He burst into a peal of laughter, a laughter which, this time, was free from all bitterness.

  Victoire flew out at him:

  “Laugh away!... Putting me in such a predicament!...”

  “How can I help laughing? You must confess that it’s funny. It’s no longer a tragedy that we’re acting, but a fairy-tale, as much a fairy-tale as Puss in Boots or Jack and the Beanstalk. I must write it when I get a few weeks to myself: The Magic Stopper; or, The Mishaps of Poor Arsène.”

  “Well... who has taken it from you?”

  “What are you talking about?... It has flown away... vanished from my pocket: hey presto, begone!”

  He gave the old servant a gentle push and, in a more serious tone:

  “Go home, Victoire, and don’t upset yourself. Of course, some one saw you give me the stopper and took advantage of the crowd in the shop to pick my pocket of it. That only shows that we are watched more closely than I thought and by adversaries of the first rank. But, once more, be easy. Honest men always come by their own... Have you anything else to tell me?”

  “Yes. Some one came yesterday evening, while M. Daubrecq was out. I saw lights reflected upon the trees in the garden.”

  “The portress’ bedroom?”

  “The portress was up.”

  “Then it was some of those detective-fellows; they are still hunting. I’ll see you later, Victoire. You must let me in again.”

  “What! You want to...”

  “What do I risk? Your room is on the third floor. Daubrecq suspects nothing.”

  “But the others!”

  “The others? If it was to their interest to play me a trick, they’d have tried before now. I’m in their way, that’s all. They’re not afraid of me. So till later, Victoire, at five o’clock exactly.”

  One further surprise awaited Lupin. In the evening his old nurse told him that, having opened the drawer of the bedside table from curiosity, she had found the crystal stopper there again.

  Lupin was no long
er to be excited by these miraculous incidents. He simply said to himself:

  “So it’s been brought back. And the person who brought it back and who enters this house by some unexplained means considered, as I did, that the stopper ought not to disappear. And yet Daubrecq, who knows that he is being spied upon to his very bedroom, has once more left the stopper in a drawer, as though he attached no importance to it at all! Now what is one to make of that?”

  Though Lupin did not make anything of it, nevertheless he could not escape certain arguments, certain associations of ideas that gave him the same vague foretaste of light which one receives on approaching the outlet of a tunnel.

  “It is inevitable, as the case stands,” he thought, “that there must soon be an encounter between myself and the others. From that moment I shall be master of the situation.”

  Five days passed, during which Lupin did not glean the slightest particular. On the sixth day Daubrecq received a visit, in the small hours, from a gentleman, Laybach the deputy, who, like his colleagues, dragged himself at his feet in despair and, when all was done, handed him twenty thousand francs.

  Two more days; and then, one night, posted on the landing of the second floor, Lupin heard the creaking of a door, the front-door, as he perceived, which led from the hall into the garden. In the darkness he distinguished, or rather divined, the presence of two persons, who climbed the stairs and stopped on the first floor, outside Daubrecq’s bedroom.

  What were they doing there? It was not possible to enter the room, because Daubrecq bolted his door every night. Then what were they hoping?

  Manifestly, a handiwork of some kind was being performed, as Lupin discovered from the dull sounds of rubbing against the door. Then words, uttered almost beneath a whisper, reached him:

  “Is it all right?”

  “Yes, quite, but, all the same, we’d better put it off till to-morrow, because...”

  Lupin did not hear the end of the sentence. The men were already groping their way downstairs. The hall-door was closed, very gently, and then the gate.