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

by Maurice Leblanc

  However, Lupin remained held back by the stubborn hope of some incident that would give him the opportunity of acting.

  The clock struck half-past twelve.

  It struck one.

  The waiting became terrible, all the more so as an icy mist rose from the valley and Lupin felt the cold penetrate to his very marrow.

  He heard the trot of a horse in the distance:

  “Sebastiani returning from the station,” he thought.

  But the son who was watching in the torture-chamber, having finished his packet of tobacco, opened the door and asked his brothers if they had a pipeful for him. They made some reply; and he went out to go to the lodge.

  And Lupin was astounded. No sooner was the door closed than Daubrecq, who had been so sound asleep, sat up on his couch, listened, put one foot to the ground, followed by the other, and, standing up, tottering a little, but firmer on his legs than one would have expected, tried his strength.

  “Well” said Lupin, “the beggar doesn’t take long recovering. He can very well help in his own escape. There’s just one point that ruffles me: will he allow himself to be convinced? Will he consent to go with me? Will he not think that this miraculous assistance which comes to him straight from heaven is a trap laid by the marquis?”

  But suddenly Lupin remembered the letter which he had made Daubrecq’s old cousins write, the letter of recommendation, so to speak, which the elder of the two sisters Rousselot had signed with her Christian name, Euphrasie.

  It was in his pocket. He took it and listened. Not a sound, except the faint noise of Daubrecq’s footsteps on the flagstones. Lupin considered that the moment had come. He thrust his arm through the bars and threw the letter in.

  Daubrecq seemed thunderstruck.

  The letter had fluttered through the room and lay on the floor, at three steps from him. Where did it come from? He raised his head toward the window and tried to pierce the darkness that hid all the upper part of the room from his eyes. Then he looked at the envelope, without yet daring to touch it, as though he dreaded a snare. Then, suddenly, after a glance at the door, he stooped briskly, seized the envelope and opened it.

  “Ah,” he said, with a sigh of delight, when he saw the signature.

  He read the letter half-aloud:

  “Rely implicitly on the bearer of this note. He has succeeded

  in discovering the marquis’ secret, with the money which we gave

  him, and has contrived a plan of escape. Everything is prepared

  for your flight.

  “EUPHRASIE ROUSSELOT”

  He read the letter again, repeated, “Euphrasie... Euphrasie...” and raised his head once more.

  Lupin whispered:

  “It will take me two or three hours to file through one of the bars. Are Sebastiani and his sons coming back?”

  “Yes, they are sure to,” replied Daubrecq, in the same low voice, “but I expect they will leave me to myself.”

  “But they sleep next door?”

  “Yes.”

  “Won’t they hear?”

  “No, the door is too thick.”

  “Very well. In that case, it will soon be done. I have a rope-ladder. Will you be able to climb up alone, without my assistance?”

  “I think so... I’ll try... It’s my wrists that they’ve broken... Oh, the brutes! I can hardly move my hands... and I have very little strength left. But I’ll try all the same... needs must...”

  He stopped, listened and, with his finger to his mouth, whispered:

  “Hush!”

  When Sebastiani and his sons entered the room, Daubrecq, who had hidden the letter and lain down on his bed, pretended to wake with a start.

  The huntsman brought him a bottle of wine, a glass and some food:

  “How goes it, monsieur le depute?” he cried. “Well, perhaps we did squeeze a little hard... It’s very painful, that thumbscrewing. Seems they often did it at the time of the Great Revolution and Bonaparte... in the days of the chauffeurs. [*] A pretty invention! Nice and clean... no bloodshed... And it didn’t last long either! In twenty minutes, you came out with the missing word!” Sebastiani burst out laughing. “By the way, monsieur le depute, my congratulations! A capital hiding-place. Who would ever suspect it?... You see, what put us off, monsieur le marquis and me, was that name of Marie which you let out at first. You weren’t telling a lie; but there you are, you know: the word was only half-finished. We had to know the rest. Say what you like, it’s amusing! Just think, on your study-table! Upon my word, what a joke!”

  * The name given to the brigands in the Vendee, who tortured

  their victims with fire to make them confess where their

  money was hidden. — Translator’s Note.

  The huntsman rose and walked up and down the room, rubbing his hands:

  “Monsieur le marquis is jolly well pleased, so pleased, in fact, that he himself is coming to-morrow evening to let you out. Yes, he has thought it over; there will be a few formalities: you may have to sign a cheque or two, stump up, what, and make good monsieur le marquis’ expense and trouble. But what’s that to you? A trifle! Not to mention that, from now on, there will be no more chains, no more straps round your wrists; in short, you will be treated like a king! And I’ve even been told — look here! — to allow you a good bottle of old wine and a flask of brandy.”

  Sebastiani let fly a few more jests, then took the lamp, made a last examination of the room and said to his sons:

  “Let’s leave him to sleep. You also, take a rest, all three of you. But sleep with one eye open. One never can tell...” They withdrew.

  Lupin waited a little longer and asked, in a low voice:

  “Can I begin?”

  “Yes, but be careful. It’s not impossible that they may go on a round in an hour or two.”

  Lupin set to work. He had a very powerful file; and the iron of the bars, rusted and gnawed away by time, was, in places, almost reduced to dust. Twice Lupin stopped to listen, with ears pricked up. But it was only the patter of a rat over the rubbish in the upper story, or the flight of some night-bird; and he continued his task, encouraged by Daubrecq, who stood by the door, ready to warn him at the least alarm.

  “Oof!” he said, giving a last stroke of the file. “I’m glad that’s over, for, on my word, I’ve been a bit cramped in this cursed tunnel... to say nothing of the cold...”

  He bore with all his strength upon the bar, which he had sawn from below, and succeeded in forcing it down sufficiently for a man’s body to slip between the two remaining bars. Next, he had to go back to the end of the embrasure, the wider part, where he had left the rope-ladder. After fixing it to the bars, he called Daubrecq:

  “Psst!... It’s all right... Are you ready?”

  “Yes... coming... One more second, while I listen... All right... They’re asleep... give me the ladder.”

  Lupin lowered it and asked:

  “Must I come down?”

  “No... I feel a little weak... but I shall manage.”

  Indeed, he reached the window of the embrasure pretty quickly and crept along the passage in the wake of his rescuer. The open air, however, seemed to make him giddy. Also, to give himself strength, he had drunk half the bottle of wine; and he had a fainting-fit that kept him lying on the stones of the embrasure for half an hour. Lupin, losing patience, was fastening him to one end of the rope, of which the other end was knotted round the bars and was preparing to let him down like a bale of goods, when Daubrecq woke up, in better condition:

  “That’s over,” he said. “I feel fit now. Will it take long?”

  “Pretty long. We are a hundred and fifty yards up.”

  “How was it that d’Albufex did not foresee that it was possible to escape this way?”

  “The cliff is perpendicular.”

  “And you were able to...”

  “Well, your cousins insisted... And then one has to live, you know, and they were free with their money.”

&n
bsp; “The dear, good souls!” said Daubrecq. “Where are they?”

  “Down below, in a boat.”

  “Is there a river, then?”

  “Yes, but we won’t talk, if you don’t mind. It’s dangerous.”

  “One word more. Had you been there long when you threw me the letter?”

  “No, no. A quarter of an hour or so. I’ll tell you all about it... Meanwhile, we must hurry.”

  Lupin went first, after recommending Daubrecq to hold tight to the rope and to come down backward. He would give him a hand at the difficult places.

  It took them over forty minutes to reach the platform of the ledge formed by the cliff; and Lupin had several times to help his companion, whose wrists, still bruised from the torture, had lost all their strength and suppleness.

  Over and over again, he groaned:

  “Oh, the swine, they’ve done for me!... The swine!... Ah, d’Albufex, I’ll make you pay dear for this!...”

  “Ssh!” said Lupin.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “A noise... up above...”

  Standing motionless on the platform, they listened. Lupin thought of the Sire de Tancarville and the sentry who had killed him with a shot from his harquebus. He shivered, feeling all the anguish of the silence and the darkness.

  “No,” he said, “I was mistaken... Besides, it’s absurd... They can’t hit us here.”

  “Who would hit us?”

  “No one... no one... it was a silly notion...”

  He groped about till he found the uprights of the ladder; then he said:

  “There, here’s the ladder. It is fixed in the bed of the river. A friend of mine is looking after it, as well as your cousins.”

  He whistled:

  “Here I am,” he said, in a low voice. “Hold the ladder fast.” And, to Daubrecq, “I’ll go first.”

  Daubrecq objected:

  “Perhaps it would be better for me to go down first.”

  “Why?”

  “I am very tired. You can tie your rope round my waist and hold me... Otherwise, there is a danger that I might...”

  “Yes, you are right,” said Lupin. “Come nearer.”

  Daubrecq came nearer and knelt down on the rock. Lupin fastened the rope to him and then, stooping over, grasped one of the uprights in both hands to keep the ladder from shaking:

  “Off you go,” he said.

  At the same moment, he felt a violent pain in the shoulder:

  “Blast it!” he said, sinking to the ground.

  Daubrecq had stabbed him with a knife below the nape of the neck, a little to the right.

  “You blackguard! You blackguard!”

  He half-saw Daubrecq, in the dark, ridding himself of his rope, and heard him whisper:

  “You’re a bit of a fool, you know!... You bring me a letter from my Rousselot cousins, in which I recognize the writing of the elder, Adelaide, but which that sly puss of an Adelaide, suspecting something and meaning to put me on my guard, if necessary, took care to sign with the name of the younger sister, Euphrasie Rousselot. You see, I tumbled to it! So, with a little reflection... you are Master Arsène Lupin, are you not? Clarisse’s protector, Gilbert’s saviour... Poor Lupin, I fear you’re in a bad way... I don’t use the knife often; but, when I do, I use it with a vengeance.”

  He bent over the wounded man and felt in his pockets:

  “Give me your revolver, can’t you? You see, your friends will know at once that it is not their governor; and they will try to secure me... And, as I have not much strength left, a bullet or two... Good-bye, Lupin. We shall meet in the next world, eh? Book me a nice flat, with all the latest conveniences.

  “Good-bye, Lupin. And my best thanks. For really I don’t know what I should have done without you. By Jove, d’Albufex was hitting me hard! It’ll be a joke to meet the beggar again!”

  Daubrecq had completed his preparations. He whistled once more. A reply came from the boat.

  “Here I am,” he said.

  With a last effort, Lupin put out his arm to stop him. But his hand touched nothing but space. He tried to call out, to warn his accomplices: his voice choked in his throat.

  He felt a terrible numbness creep over his whole being. His temples buzzed.

  Suddenly, shouts below. Then a shot. Then another, followed by a triumphant chuckle. And a woman’s wail and moans. And, soon after, two more shots.

  Lupin thought of Clarisse, wounded, dead perhaps; of Daubrecq, fleeing victoriously; of d’Albufex; of the crystal stopper, which one or other of the two adversaries would recover unresisted. Then a sudden vision showed him the Sire de Tancarville falling with the woman he loved. Then he murmured, time after time:

  “Clarisse... Clarisse... Gilbert...” A great silence overcame him; an infinite peace entered into him; and, without the least revolt, he received the impression that his exhausted body, with nothing now to hold it back, was rolling to the very edge of the rock, toward the abyss.

  CHAPTER IX. IN THE DARK

  AN HOTEL BEDROOM at Amiens.

  Lupin was recovering a little consciousness for the first time. Clarisse and the Masher were seated by his bedside.

  Both were talking; and Lupin listened to them, without opening his eyes. He learned that they had feared for his life, but that all danger was now removed. Next, in the course of the conversation, he caught certain words that revealed to him what had happened in the tragic night at Mortepierre: Daubrecq’s descent; the dismay of the accomplices, when they saw that it was not the governor; then the short struggle: Clarisse flinging herself on Daubrecq and receiving a wound in the shoulder; Daubrecq leaping to the bank; the Growler firing two revolver-shots and darting off in pursuit of him; the Masher clambering up the ladder and finding the governor in a swoon:

  “True as I live,” said the Masher, “I can’t make out even now how he did not roll over. There was a sort of hollow at that place, but it was a sloping hollow; and, half dead as he was, he must have hung on with his ten fingers. Crikey, it was time I came!”

  Lupin listened, listened in despair. He collected his strength to grasp and understand the words. But suddenly a terrible sentence was uttered: Clarisse, weeping, spoke of the eighteen days that had elapsed, eighteen more days lost to Gilbert’s safety.

  Eighteen days! The figure terrified Lupin. He felt that all was over, that he would never be able to recover his strength and resume the struggle and that Gilbert and Vaucheray were doomed... His brain slipped away from him. The fever returned and the delirium.

  And more days came and went. It was perhaps the time of his life of which Lupin speaks with the greatest horror. He retained just enough consciousness and had sufficiently lucid moments to realize the position exactly. But he was not able to coordinate his ideas, to follow a line of argument nor to instruct or forbid his friends to adopt this or that line of conduct.

  Often, when he emerged from his torpor, he found his hand in Clarisse’s and, in that half-slumbering condition in which a fever keeps you, he would address strange words to her, words of love and passion, imploring her and thanking her and blessing her for all the light and joy which she had brought into his darkness.

  Then, growing calmer and not fully understanding what he had said, he tried to jest:

  “I have been delirious, have I not? What a heap of nonsense I must have talked!”

  But Lupin felt by Clarisse’s silence that he could safely talk as much nonsense as ever his fever suggested to him. She did not hear. The care and attention which she lavished on the patient, her devotion, her vigilance, her alarm at the least relapse: all this was meant not for him, but for the possible saviour of Gilbert. She anxiously watched the progress of his convalescence. How soon would he be fit to resume the campaign? Was it not madness to linger by his side, when every day carried away a little hope?

  Lupin never ceased repeating to himself, with the inward belief that, by so doing, he could influence the course of his illness:

  �
��I will get well... I will get well...”

  And he lay for days on end without moving, so as not to disturb the dressing of his wound nor increase the excitement of his nerves in the smallest degree.

  He also strove not to think of Daubrecq. But the image of his dire adversary haunted him; and he reconstituted the various phases of the escape, the descent of the cliff.... One day, struck by a terrible memory, he exclaimed:

  “The list! The list of the Twenty-seven! Daubrecq must have it by now... or else d’Albufex. It was on the table!”

  Clarisse reassured him:

  “No one can have taken it,” she declared. “The Growler was in Paris that same day, with a note from me for Prasville, entreating him to redouble his watch in the Square Lamartine, so that no one should enter, especially d’Albufex...”

  “But Daubrecq?”

  “He is wounded. He cannot have gone home.”

  “Ah, well,” he said, “that’s all right!... But you too were wounded...”

  “A mere scratch on the shoulder.”

  Lupin was easier in his mind after these revelations. Nevertheless, he was pursued by stubborn notions which he was unable either to drive from his brain or to put into words. Above all, he thought incessantly of that name of “Marie” which Daubrecq’s sufferings had drawn from him. What did the name refer to? Was it the title of one of the books on the shelves, or a part of the title? Would the book in question supply the key to the mystery? Or was it the combination word of a safe? Was it a series of letters written somewhere: on a wall, on a paper, on a wooden panel, on the mount of a drawing, on an invoice?

  These questions, to which he was unable to find a reply, obsessed and exhausted him.

  One morning Arsène Lupin woke feeling a great deal better. The wound was closed, the temperature almost normal. The doctor, a personal friend, who came every day from Paris, promised that he might get up two days later. And, on that day, in the absence of his accomplices and of Mme. Mergy, all three of whom had left two days before, in quest of information, he had himself moved to the open window.