Sheer terror ensued. The passengers no longer dared stay alone in their cabins nor wander unaccompanied to the remoter parts of the ship. Those who felt sure of one another kept prudently together. And even here an instinctive mistrust divided those who knew one another best. The danger no longer threatened from a solitary individual kept under observation and therefore less dangerous. Arsène Lupin now seemed to be… to be everybody. Our over-excited imaginations ascribed to him the possession of a miraculous and boundless power. We supposed him capable of assuming the most unexpected disguises, of being by turns the most respectable Major Rawson, or the most noble Marquis de Raverdan, or even—for we no longer stopped at the accusing initial—this or that person known to all, and travelling with wife, children, and servants.
The wireless telegrams brought us no news; at least, the captain did not communicate them to us. And this silence was not calculated to reassure us.
It was small wonder, therefore, that the last day appeared interminable. The passengers lived in the anxious expectation of a tragedy. This time it would not be a theft; it would not be a mere assault; it would be crime—murder. No one was willing to admit that Arsène Lupin would rest content with those two insignificant acts of larceny. He was absolute master of the ship; he reduced the officers to impotence; he had but to wreak his will upon us. He could do as he pleased; he held our lives and property in his hands.
These were delightful hours to me, I confess, for they won for me the confidence of Nellie Underdown. Naturally timid and impressed by all these events, she spontaneously sought at my side the protection which I was happy to offer her.
In my heart, I blessed Arsène Lupin. Was it not he who had brought us together? Was it not to him that I owed the right to abandon myself to my fondest dreams? Dreams of love and dreams more practical: why not confess it? The d’Andrézys are of good Poitevin stock, but the gilt of their blazon is a little worn; and it did not seem to me unworthy of a man of family to think of restoring the lost lustre of his name.
Nor, I was convinced, did these dreams offend Nellie. Her smiling eyes gave me leave to indulge them. Her soft voice bade me hope.
And we remained side by side until the last moment, with our elbows resting on the bulwark rail, while the outline of the American coast grew more and more distinct.
The search had been abandoned. All seemed expectation. From the first-class saloon to the steerage, with its swarm of emigrants, every one was waiting for the supreme moment when the insoluble riddle would be explained. Who was Arsène Lupin? Under what name, under what disguise was the famous Arsène Lupin lurking?
The supreme moment came. If I live to be a hundred, never shall I forget its smallest detail.
“How pale you look, Nellie!” I said, as she leaned, almost fainting, on my arm.
“And you, too. Oh, how you have changed!” she replied.
“Think what an exciting minute this is and how happy I am to pass it at your side. I wonder, Nellie, if your memory will sometimes linger…”
All breathless and fevered, she was not listening. The gangplank was lowered. But, before we were allowed to cross it, men came on board: custom-house officers, men in uniform, postmen.
Nellie murmured:
“I shouldn’t be surprised even if we heard that Arsène Lupin had escaped during the crossing!”
“He may have preferred death to dishonor, and plunged into the Atlantic rather than submit to arrest!”
“Don’t jest about it,” said she, in a tone of vexation.
Suddenly I gave a start and, in answer to her question, I replied:
“Do you see that little old man standing by the gang-plank?”
“The one in a green frock-coat with an umbrella?”
“That’s Ganimard.”
“Ganimard?”
“Yes, the famous detective who swore that he would arrest Arsène Lupin with his own hand. Ah, now I understand why we received no news from this side of the ocean. Ganimard was here, and he does not care to have any one interfering in his little affairs.”
“So Arsène Lupin is sure of being caught?”
“Who can tell? Ganimard has never seen him, I believe, except made-up and disguised. Unless he knows the name under which he is travelling…”
“Ah,” she said, with a woman’s cruel curiosity, “I should love to see the arrest!”
“Have patience,” I replied. “No doubt Arsène Lupin has already observed his enemy’s presence. He will prefer to leave among the last, when the old man’s eyes are tired.”
The passengers began to cross the gang-plank. Leaning on his umbrella with an indifferent air, Ganimard seemed to pay no attention to the throng that crowded past between the two hand-rails. I noticed that one of the ship’s officers, standing behind him, whispered in his ear from time to time.
The Marquis de Raverdan, Major Rawson, Rivolta, the Italian, went past, and others and many more. Then I saw Rozaine approaching.
Poor Rozaine! He did not seem to have recovered from his misadventures!
“It may be he, all the same,” said Nellie. “What do you think?”
“I think it would be very interesting to have Ganimard and Rozaine in one photograph. Would you take the camera? My hands are so full.”
I gave it to her, but too late for her to use it. Rozaine crossed. The officer bent over to Ganimard’s ear; Ganimard gave a shrug of the shoulders; and Rozaine passed on.
But then who, in Heaven’s name, was Arsène Lupin?
“Yes,” she said, aloud, “who is it?”
There were only a score of people left. Nellie looked at them, one after the other, with the bewildered dread that he was not one of the twenty.
I said to her:
“We cannot wait any longer.”
She moved on. I followed her. But we had not taken ten steps when Ganimard barred our passage.
“What does this mean?” I exclaimed.
“One moment, sir. What’s your hurry?”
“I am escorting this young lady.”
“One moment,” he repeated, in a more mysterious voice.
He stared hard at me, and then, looking me straight in the eyes, said:
“Arsène Lupin, I believe.”
I gave a laugh.
“No, Bernard d’Andrézy, simply.”
“Bernard d’Andrézy died in Macedonia, three years ago.”
“If Bernard d’Andrézy were dead I could not be here. And it’s not so. Here are my papers.”
“They are his papers. And I shall be pleased to tell you how you became possessed of them.”
“But you are mad! Arsène Lupin took his passage under a name beginning with R.”
“Yes, another of your tricks—a false scent upon which you put the people on the other side. Oh, you have no lack of brains, my lad! But, this time, your luck has turned. Come, Lupin, show that you’re a good loser.”
I hesitated for a second. He struck me a smart blow on the right forearm. I gave a cry of pain. He had hit the unhealed wound mentioned in the telegram.
There was nothing for it but to submit. I turned to Miss Un-derdown. She was listening, with a white face, staggering where she stood.
Her glance met mine, and then fell upon the Kodak which I had handed her. She made a sudden movement, and I received the impression, the certainty, that she had understood. Yes, it was there—between the narrow boards covered with black morocco, inside the little camera which I had taken the precaution to place in her hands before Ganimard arrested me—it was there that Rozaine’s twenty thousand francs and Lady Gerland’s pearls and diamonds lay concealed.
Now I swear that, at this solemn moment, with Ganimard and two of his minions around me, everything was indifferent to me—my arrest, the hostility of my fellow-men, everything, save only this: the resolve which Nellie Underdown would take in regard to the object I had given into her charge.
Whether they had this material and decisive piece of evidence against me, what cared I? The only question
that obsessed my mind was, would Nelly furnish it or not?
Would she betray me? Would she ruin me? Would she act as an irreconcilable foe, or as a woman who remembers, and whose contempt is softened by a touch of indulgence—a shade of sympathy?
She passed before me. I bowed very low, without a word. Mingling with the other passengers, she moved towards the gang-board, carrying my Kodak in her hand.
“Of course,” I thought, “she will not dare to, in public. She will hand it over presently—in an hour.”
But, on reaching the middle of the plank, with a pretended movement of awkwardness, she dropped the Kodak in the water, between the landing-stage and the ship’s side.
Then I watched her walk away.
Her charming profile was lost in the crowd, came into view again, and disappeared. It was over—over for good and all.
For a moment I stood rooted to the deck, sad and, at the same time, pervaded with a sweet and tender emotion. Then, to Ganimard’s great astonishment, I sighed:
“Pity, after all, that I’m a rogue!”
It was in these words that Arsène Lupin, one winter’s evening, told me the story of his arrest.6 Chance and a series of incidents which I will some day describe had established between us bonds of… shall I say friendship? Yes, I venture to think that Arsène Lupin honors me with a certain friendship; and it is owing to this friendship that he occasionally drops in upon me unexpectedly, bringing into the silence of my study his youthful gayety, the radiance of his eager life, his high spirits—the spirits of a man for whom fate has little but smiles and favors in store.
His likeness? How can I trace it? I have seen Arsène Lupin a score of times, and each time a different being has stood before me… or rather the same being under twenty distorted images reflected by as many mirrors, each image having its special eyes, its particular facial outline, its own gestures, profile, and character.
“I myself,” he once said to me, “have forgotten what I am really like. I no longer recognize myself in a glass.”
A paradoxical whim of the imagination, no doubt; and yet true enough as regards those who come into contact with him, and who are unaware of his infinite resources, his patience, his unparalleled skill in make-up, and his prodigious faculty for changing even the proportions of his face and altering the relations of his features one to the other.
“Why,” he asked, “should I have a definite, fixed appearance? Why not avoid the dangers attendant upon a personality that is always the same? My actions constitute my identity sufficiently.”
And he added, with a touch of pride:
“It is all the better if people are never able to say with certainty: ‘There goes Arsène Lupin.’ The great thing is that they should say without fear of being mistaken: ‘That action was performed by Arsène Lupin.’ “
It is some of those actions of his, some of those exploits, that I will endeavor to narrate, thanks to the confidences with which he has had the kindness to favor me on certain winter evenings in the silence of my study….
ARSÈNE LUPIN IN PRISON
Every tripper by the banks of the Seine must have noticed, between the ruins of Jumièges and those of Saint-Wandrille,1 the curious little feudal castle of the Malaquis, proudly seated on its rock in mid-stream. A bridge connects it with the road. The base of its turrets seem to make one with the granite that bears it—a huge block detached from a mountain-top, and flung where it stands by some formidable convulsion of nature. All around the calm water of the broad river ripples among the reeds, while water-wagtails perch trembling on the top of the moist pebbles.
The history of the Malaquis is as rough as its name, as harsh as its outlines, and consists of endless fights, sieges, assaults, sacks, and massacres. Stories are told in the Caux district,2 late at night, with a shiver, of the crimes committed there. Mysterious legends are conjured up. There is talk of a famous underground passage that led to the Abbey of Jumièges and to the manor-house of Agnés Sorel, once the favorite of Charles VII.
This erstwhile haunt of heroes and robbers is now occupied by Baron Nathan Cahorn—or Baron Satan, as he used to be called on the Bourse, where he made his fortune a little too suddenly. The ruined owners of the Malaquis had to sell the abode of their ancestors to him for a song. Here he installed his wonderful collections of pictures and furniture, of pottery and carved wood. He lives here alone, with three old servants. No one ever enters the doors. No one has ever beheld, in the setting of these ancient halls, his three Rubens, his two Watteaus, his pulpit carved by Jean Goujon, and all the other marvels snatched by force of money from before the eyes of the wealthiest frequenters of the public salesrooms.
Baron Satan leads a life of fear. He is afraid, not for himself, but for the treasures which he has accumulated with so tenacious a passion and with the perspicacity of a collector whom not the most cunning of dealers can boast of having ever taken in. He loves his curiosities with all the greed of a miser, with all the jealousy of a lover.
Daily, at sunset, the four iron-barred doors that command both ends of the bridge and the entrance to the principal court are locked and bolted. At the least touch electric bells would ring through the surrounding silence. There is nothing to be feared on the side of the Seine, where the rock rises sheer from the water.
One Friday in September the postman appeared as usual at the bridge-head, and, in accordance with his daily rule, the baron himself opened the heavy door.
He examined the man as closely as if he had not for years known that good jolly face and those crafty peasant’s eyes. And the man said, with a laugh:
“It’s me all right, monsieur le baron. It’s not another chap in my cap and blouse.”
“One never knows,” muttered Cahorn.
The postman handed him a pile of newspapers. Then he added:
“And now, monsieur le baron, I have something special for you.”
“Something special! What do you mean?”
“A letter… and a registered letter at that!”
Living cut off from everybody, with no friends nor any one that took an interest in him, the baron never received letters; and this suddenly struck him as an ill-omened event which gave him good cause for nervousness. Who was the mysterious correspondent that came to worry him in his retreat?
“I shall want your signature, monsieur le baron.”
He signed the receipt, cursing as he did so. Then he took the letter, waited until the postman had disappeared round the turn of the road, and, after taking a few steps to and fro, leaned against the parapet of the bridge and opened the envelope. It contained a sheet of ruled paper, headed, in writing:
“Prison de la Santé, Paris.”3
He looked at the signature:
“ARSÈNE LUPIN.”
Utterly dumbfounded, he read:
“MONSIEUR LE BARON,—In the gallery that connects your two drawing-rooms there is a picture by Philippe de Champaigne, an excellent piece of work, which I admire greatly. I also like your Rubens pictures and the smaller of your two Watteaus. In the drawing-room on the right I note the Louis XIII. credence-table, the Beauvais tapestries, the Empire stand, signed by Jacob, and the Renaissance chest. In the room on the left the whole of the case of trinkets and miniatures.
“This time I will be satisfied with these objects, which, I think, can be easily turned into cash. I will therefore ask you to have them properly packed, and to send them to my name, carriage paid, to the Gare de Batignolles, on or before this day week, failing which I will myself see to their removal on the night of Wednesday, the 27th instant. In the latter case, as is only fair, I shall not be content with the above-mentioned objects.
“Pray excuse the trouble which I am giving you, and believe me to be
Yours very truly,
“ARSÈNE LUPIN.”
“P.S.—Be sure not to send me the larger of the two Watteaus. Although you paid thirty thousand francs for it at the salesrooms, it is only a copy, the original having been burned under th
e Directory, by Barras, in one of his orgies. See Garat’s unpublished Memoirs.
“I do not care either to have the Louis XV. chatelaine, which appears to me to be of doubtful authenticity.”
This letter thoroughly upset Baron Cahorn. It would have alarmed him considerably had it been signed by any other hand. But signed by Arsène Lupin!…
He was a regular reader of the newspapers, knew of everything that went on in the way of theft and crime, and had heard all about the exploits of the infernal housebreaker. He was quite aware that Lupin had been arrested in America by his enemy, Ganimard; that he was safely under lock and key; and that the preliminaries to his trial were now being conducted… with great difficulty, no doubt! But he also knew that one could always expect anything of Arsène Lupin. Besides, this precise knowledge of the castle, of the arrangement of the pictures and furniture was a very formidable sign. Who had informed Lupin of things which nobody had ever seen?
The baron raised his eyes and gazed at the frowning outline of the Malaquis, its abrupt pedestal, the deep water that surrounds it. He shrugged his shoulders. No, there was no possible danger. No one in the world could penetrate to the inviolable sanctuary that contained his collections.
No one in the world, perhaps; but Arsène Lupin? Did doors, draw-bridges, walls, so much as exist for Arsène Lupin? Of what use were the most ingeniously contrived obstacles, the most skilful precautions, once that Arsène Lupin had decided to attain a given object?…
That same evening he wrote to the public prosecutor at Rouen. He enclosed the threatening letter, and demanded police protection.
The reply came without delay: the said Arsène Lupin was at that moment a prisoner at the Santé, where he was kept under strict surveillance and not allowed to write. The letter, therefore, could only be the work of a hoaxer. Everything went to prove this: logic, common sense, and the actual facts. However, so as to make quite sure, the letter had been submitted to a handwriting expert, who declared that, notwithstanding certain points of resemblance, it was not in the prisoner’s writing.
Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-thief (Penguin Classics) Page 4