Lupin nodded his head:
“The thing tallies beyond a doubt. Nevertheless, it did not seem to me, that, even under the gilt layer... And then the hiding-place would be very tiny!”
“Tiny, but large enough,” she said. “On my return from England, I went to the police-office to see Prasville, whose friendship for me had remained unchanged. I did not hesitate to tell him, first, the reasons which had driven my husband to suicide and, secondly, the object of revenge which I was pursuing. When I informed him of my discoveries, he jumped for joy; and I felt that his hatred for Daubrecq was as strong as ever. I learnt from him that the list was written on a slip of exceedingly thin foreign-post-paper, which, when rolled up into a sort of pellet, would easily fit into an exceedingly limited space. Neither he nor I had the least hesitation. We knew the hiding-place. We agreed to act independently of each other, while continuing to correspond in secret. I put him in touch with Clemence, the portress in the Square Lamartine, who was entirely devoted to me...”
“But less so to Prasville,” said Lupin, “for I can prove that she betrays him.”
“Now perhaps, but not at the start; and the police searches were numerous. It was at that time, ten months ago, that Gilbert came into my life again. A mother never loses her love for her son, whatever he may do, whatever he may have done. And then Gilbert has such a way with him... well, you know him. He cried, kissed my little Jacques, his brother and I forgave him.”
She stopped and, weary-voiced, with her eyes fixed on the floor, continued:
“Would to Heaven that I had not forgiven him! Ah, if that hour could but return, how readily I should find the horrible courage to turn him away! My poor child... it was I who ruined him!...” And, pensively, “I should have had that or any sort of courage, if he had been as I pictured him to myself and as he himself told me that he had long been: bearing the marks of vice and dissipation, coarse, deteriorated.
“But, though he was utterly changed in appearance, so much so that I could hardly recognize him, there was, from the point of view of — how shall I put it? — from the moral point of view, an undoubted improvement. You had helped him, lifted him; and, though his mode of life was hateful to me, nevertheless he retained a certain self-respect... a sort of underlying decency that showed itself on the surface once more... He was gay, careless, happy... And he used to talk of you with such affection!”
She picked her words, betraying her embarrassment, not daring, in Lupin’s presence, to condemn the line of life which Gilbert had selected and yet unable to speak in favour of it.
“What happened next?” asked Lupin.
“I saw him very often. He would come to me by stealth, or else I went to him and we would go for walks in the country. In this way, I was gradually induced to tell him our story, of his father’s suicide and the object which I was pursuing. He at once took fire. He too wanted to avenge his father and, by stealing the crystal stopper, to avenge himself on Daubrecq for the harm which he had done him. His first idea — from which, I am bound to tell you, he never swerved — was to arrange with you.”
“Well, then,” cried Lupin, “he ought to have...!”
“Yes, I know... and I was of the same opinion. Unfortunately, my poor Gilbert — you know how weak he is! — was under the influence of one of his comrades.”
“Vaucheray?”
“Yes, Vaucheray, a saturnine spirit, full of bitterness and envy, an ambitious, unscrupulous, gloomy, crafty man, who had acquired a great empire over my son. Gilbert made the mistake of confiding in him and asking his advice. That was the origin of all the mischief. Vaucheray convinced him and convinced me as well that it would be better if we acted by ourselves. He studied the business, took the lead and finally organized the Enghien expedition and, under your direction, the burglary at the Villa Marie-Therese, which Prasville and his detectives had been unable to search thoroughly, because of the active watch maintained by Leonard the valet. It was a mad scheme. We ought either to have trusted in your experience entirely, or else to have left you out altogether, taking the risk of fatal mistakes and dangerous hesitations. But we could not help ourselves. Vaucheray ruled us. I agreed to meet Daubrecq at the theatre. During this time the thing took place. When I came home, at twelve o’clock at night, I heard the terrible result: Leonard murdered, my son arrested. I at once received an intuition of the future. Daubrecq’s appalling prophecy was being realized: it meant trial and sentence. And this through my fault, through the fault of me, the mother, who had driven my son toward the abyss from which nothing could extricate him now.”
Clarisse wrung her hands and shivered from head to foot. What suffering can compare with that of a mother trembling for the head of her son? Stirred with pity, Lupin said:
“We shall save him. Of that there is not the shadow of a doubt. But, it is necessary that I should know all the details. Finish your story, please. How did you know, on the same night, what had happened at Enghien?”
She mastered herself and, with a face wrung with fevered anguish, replied:
“Through two of your accomplices, or rather two accomplices of Vaucheray, to whom they were wholly devoted and who had chosen them to row the boats.”
“The two men outside: the Growler and the Masher?”
“Yes. On your return from the villa, when you landed after being pursued on the lake by the commissary of police, you said a few words to them, by way of explanation, as you went to your car. Mad with fright, they rushed to my place, where they had been before, and told me the hideous news. Gilbert was in prison! Oh, what an awful night! What was I to do? Look for you? Certainly; and implore your assistance. But where was I to find you?... It was then that the two whom you call the Growler and the Masher, driven into a corner by circumstances, decided to tell me of the part played by Vaucheray, his ambitions, his plan, which had long been ripening...”
“To get rid of me, I suppose?” said Lupin, with a grin.
“Yes. As Gilbert possessed your complete confidence, Vaucheray watched him and, in this way, got to know all the places which you live at. A few days more and, owning the crystal stopper, holding the list of the Twenty-seven, inheriting all Daubrecq’s power, he would have delivered you to the police, without compromising a single member of your gang, which he looked upon as thenceforth his.”
“The ass!” muttered Lupin. “A muddler like that!” And he added, “So the panels of the doors...”
“Were cut out by his instructions, in anticipation of the contest on which he was embarking against you and against Daubrecq, at whose house he did the same thing. He had under his orders a sort of acrobat, an extraordinarily thin dwarf, who was able to wriggle through those apertures and who thus detected all your correspondence and all your secrets. That is what his two friends revealed to me. I at once conceived the idea of saving my elder son by making use of his brother, my little Jacques, who is himself so slight and so intelligent, so plucky, as you have seen. We set out that night. Acting on the information of my companions, I went to Gilbert’s rooms and found the keys of your flat in the Rue Matignon, where it appeared that you were to sleep. Unfortunately, I changed my mind on the way and thought much less of asking for your help than of recovering the crystal stopper, which, if it had been discovered at Enghien, must obviously be at your flat. I was right in my calculations. In a few minutes, my little Jacques, who had slipped into your bedroom, brought it to me. I went away quivering with hope. Mistress in my turn of the talisman, keeping it to myself, without telling Prasville, I had absolute power over Daubrecq. I could make him do all that I wanted; he would become the slave of my will and, instructed by me, would take every step in Gilbert’s favour and obtain that he should be given the means of escape or else that he should not be sentenced. It meant my boy’s safety.”
“Well?”
Clarisse rose from her seat, with a passionate movement of her whole being, leant over Lupin and said, in a hollow voice:
“There was nothing in that pie
ce of crystal, nothing, do you understand? No paper, no hiding-place! The whole expedition to Enghien was futile! The murder of Leonard was useless! The arrest of my son was useless! All my efforts were useless!”
“But why? Why?”
“Why? Because what you stole from Daubrecq was not the stopper made by his instructions, but the stopper which was sent to John Howard, the Stourbridge glassworker, to serve as a model.”
If Lupin had not been in the presence of so deep a grief, he could not have refrained from one of those satirical outbursts with which the mischievous tricks of fate are wont to inspire him. As it was, he muttered between his teeth:
“How stupid! And still more stupid as Daubrecq had been given the warning.”
“No,” she said. “I went to Enghien on the same day. In all that business Daubrecq saw and sees nothing but an ordinary burglary, an annexation of his treasures. The fact that you took part in it put him off the scent.”
“Still, the disappearance of the stopper...”
“To begin with, the thing can have had but a secondary importance for him, as it is only the model.”
“How do you know?”
“There is a scratch at the bottom of the stem; and I have made inquiries in England since.”
“Very well; but why did the key of the cupboard from which it was stolen never leave the man-servant’s possession? And why, in the second place, was it found afterward in the drawer of a table in Daubrecq’s house in Paris?”
“Of course, Daubrecq takes care of it and clings to it in the way in which one clings to the model of any valuable thing. And that is why I replaced the stopper in the cupboard before its absence was noticed. And that also is why, on the second occasion, I made my little Jacques take the stopper from your overcoat-pocket and told the portress to put it back in the drawer.”
“Then he suspects nothing?”
“Nothing. He knows that the list is being looked for, but he does not know that Prasville and I are aware of the thing in which he hides it.”
Lupin had risen from his seat and was walking up and down the room, thinking. Then he stood still beside Clarisse and asked:
“When all is said, since the Enghien incident, you have not advanced a single step?”
“Not one. I have acted from day to day, led by those two men or leading them, without any definite plan.”
“Or, at least,” he said, “without any other plan than that of getting the list of the Twenty-seven from Daubrecq.”
“Yes, but how? Besides, your tactics made things more difficult for me. It did not take us long to recognize your old servant Victoire in Daubrecq’s new cook and to discover, from what the portress told us, that Victoire was putting you up in her room; and I was afraid of your schemes.”
“It was you, was it not, who wrote to me to retire from the contest?”
“Yes.”
“You also asked me not to go to the theatre on the Vaudeville night?”
“Yes, the portress caught Victoire listening to Daubrecq’s conversation with me on the telephone; and the Masher, who was watching the house, saw you go out. I suspected, therefore, that you would follow Daubrecq that evening.”
“And the woman who came here, late one afternoon...”
“Was myself. I felt disheartened and wanted to see you.”
“And you intercepted Gilbert’s letter?”
“Yes, I recognized his writing on the envelope.”
“But your little Jacques was not with you?”
“No, he was outside, in a motor-car, with the Masher, who lifted him up to me through the drawing-room window; and he slipped into your bedroom through the opening in the panel.”
“What was in the letter?”
“As ill-luck would have it, reproaches. Gilbert accused you of forsaking him, of taking over the business on your own account. In short, it confirmed me in my distrust; and I ran away.”
Lupin shrugged his shoulders with irritation:
“What a shocking waste of time! And what a fatality that we were not able to come to an understanding earlier! You and I have been playing at hide-and-seek, laying absurd traps for each other, while the days were passing, precious days beyond repair.”
“You see, you see,” she said, shivering, “you too are afraid of the future!”
“No, I am not afraid,” cried Lupin. “But I am thinking of all the useful work that we could have done by this time, if we had united our efforts. I am thinking of all the mistakes and all the acts of imprudence which we should have been saved, if we had been working together. I am thinking that your attempt to-night to search the clothes which Daubrecq was wearing was as vain as the others and that, at this moment, thanks to our foolish duel, thanks to the din which we raised in his house, Daubrecq is warned and will be more on his guard than ever.”
Clarisse Mergy shook her head:
“No, no, I don’t think that; the noise will not have roused him, for we postponed the attempt for twenty-four hours so that the portress might put a narcotic in his wine.” And she added, slowly, “And then, you see, nothing can make Daubrecq be more on his guard than he is already. His life is nothing but one mass of precautions against danger. He leaves nothing to chance... Besides, has he not all the trumps in his hand?”
Lupin went up to her and asked:
“What do you mean to convey? According to you, is there nothing to hope for on that side? Is there not a single means of attaining our end?”
“Yes,” she murmured, “there is one, one only...”
He noticed her pallor before she had time to hide her face between her hands again. And again a feverish shiver shook her frame.
He seemed to understand the reason of her dismay; and, bending toward her, touched by her grief:
“Please,” he said, “please answer me openly and frankly. It’s for Gilbert’s sake, is it not? Though the police, fortunately, have not been able to solve the riddle of his past, though the real name of Vaucheray’s accomplice has not leaked out, there is one man, at least, who knows it: isn’t that so? Daubrecq has recognized your son Antoine, through the alias of Gilbert, has he not?”
“Yes, yes...”
“And he promises to save him, doesn’t he? He offers you his freedom, his release, his escape, his life: that was what he offered you, was it not, on the night in his study, when you tried to stab him?”
“Yes... yes... that was it...”
“And he makes one condition, does he not? An abominable condition, such as would suggest itself to a wretch like that? I am right, am I not?”
Clarisse did not reply. She seemed exhausted by her protracted struggle with a man who was gaining ground daily and against whom it was impossible for her to fight. Lupin saw in her the prey conquered in advance, delivered to the victor’s whim. Clarisse Mergy, the loving wife of that Mergy whom Daubrecq had really murdered, the terrified mother of that Gilbert whom Daubrecq had led astray, Clarisse Mergy, to save her son from the scaffold, must, come what may and however ignominious the position, yield to Daubrecq’s wishes. She would be the mistress, the wife, the obedient slave of Daubrecq, of that monster with the appearance and the ways of a wild beast, that unspeakable person of whom Lupin could not think without revulsion and disgust.
Sitting down beside her, gently, with gestures of pity, he made her lift her head and, with his eyes on hers, said:
“Listen to me. I swear that I will save your son: I swear it... Your son shall not die, do you understand?... There is not a power on earth that can allow your son’s head to be touched as long as I am alive.”
“I believe you... I trust your word.”
“Do. It is the word of a man who does not know defeat. I shall succeed. Only, I entreat you to make me an irrevocable promise.”
“What is that?”
“You must not see Daubrecq again.”
“I swear it.”
“You must put from your mind any idea, any fear, however obscure, of an understanding between yours
elf and him... of any sort of bargain...”
“I swear it.”
She looked at him with an expression of absolute security and reliance; and he, under her gaze, felt the joy of devotion and an ardent longing to restore that woman’s happiness, or, at least, to give her the peace and oblivion that heal the worst wounds:
“Come,” he said, in a cheerful tone, rising from his chair, “all will yet be well. We have two months, three months before us. It is more than I need... on condition, of course, that I am unhampered in my movements. And, for that, you will have to withdraw from the contest, you know.”
“How do you mean?”
“Yes, you must disappear for a time; go and live in the country. Have you no pity for your little Jacques? This sort of thing would end by shattering the poor little man’s nerves... And he has certainly earned his rest, haven’t you, Hercules?”
The next day Clarisse Mergy, who was nearly breaking down under the strain of events and who herself needed repose, lest she should fall seriously ill, went, with her son, to board with a friend who had a house on the skirt of the Forest of Saint-Germain. She felt very weak, her brain was haunted by visions and her nerves were upset by troubles which the least excitement aggravated. She lived there for some days in a state of physical and mental inertia, thinking of nothing and forbidden to see the papers.
One afternoon, while Lupin, changing his tactics, was working out a scheme for kidnapping and confining Daubrecq; while the Growler and the Masher, whom he had promised to forgive if he succeeded, were watching the enemy’s movements; while the newspapers were announcing the forthcoming trial for murder of Arsène Lupin’s two accomplices, one afternoon, at four o’clock, the telephone-bell rang suddenly in the flat in the Rue Chateaubriand.
Lupin took down the receiver:
“Hullo!”
A woman’s voice, a breathless voice, said:
“M. Michel Beaumont?”
“You are speaking to him, madame. To whom have I the honour...”
“Quick, monsieur, come at once; Madame Mergy has taken poison.”
Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17) Page 127