813

by Maurice Leblanc

  He must have heard the noise which Marco made at the other end of the wire in breaking the glass, for he shouted, in triumph.

  “Didn’t I tell you, Mr. Kesselbach, that we should find something? … Hullo! Have you done it? … Well? … A letter? Victory! All the diamonds in the Cape and old man Kesselbach’s secret into the bargain!”

  He took down the second receiver, carefully put the two discs to his ears and continued:

  “Read it to me, Marco, read it to me slowly … The envelope first … Good … Now, repeat.” He himself repeated, “‘Copy of the letter contained in the black morocco case.’ And next? Tear the envelope, Marco … Have I your permission, Mr. Kesselbach? It’s not very good form, but, however … Go on, Marco, Mr. Kesselbach gives you leave … Done it? … Well, then, read it out.”

  He listened and, with a chuckle:

  “The deuce! That’s not quite as clear as a pikestaff! Listen. I’ll repeat: a plain sheet of paper folded in four, the folds apparently quite fresh … Good … At the top of the page, on the right, these words: ‘Five feet nine, left little finger cut.’ And so on … Yes, that’s the description of Master Pierre Leduc. In Kesselbach’s handwriting, I suppose? … Good … And, in the middle of the page, this word in printed capitals: ‘APOON.’ Marco, my lad, leave the paper as it is and don’t touch the box or the diamonds. I shall have done with our friend here in ten minutes and I shall be with you in twenty … Oh, by the way, did you send back the motor for me? Capital! So long!”

  He replaced the instrument, went into the lobby and into the bedroom, made sure that the secretary and the manservant had not unloosed their bonds and, on the other hand, that they were in no danger of being choked by their gags. Then he returned to his chief prisoner.

  He wore a determined and relentless look:

  “We’ve finished joking, Kesselbach. If you don’t speak, it will be the worse for you. Have you made up your mind?”

  “What about?”

  “No nonsense, please. Tell me what you know.”

  “I know nothing.”

  “You lie. What does this word ‘APOON’ mean?”

  “If I knew, I should not have written it down.”

  “Very well; but whom or what does it refer to? Where did you copy it? Where did you get it from?”

  Mr. Kesselbach made no reply. Lupin, now speaking in nervous, jerky tones, resumed:

  “Listen, Kesselbach, I have a proposal to make to you. Rich man, big man though you may be, there is not so much difference between us. The son of the Augsburg ironmonger and Arsène Lupin, prince of burglars, can come to an understanding without shame on either side. I do my thieving indoors; you do yours on the Stock Exchange. It’s all much of a muchness. So here we are, Kesselbach. Let’s be partners in this business. I have need of you, because I don’t know what it’s about. You have need of me, because you will never be able to manage it alone. Barbareux is an ass. I am Lupin. Is it a bargain?”

  No answer. Lupin persisted, in a voice shaking with intensity:

  “Answer, Kesselbach, is it a bargain? If so, I’ll find your Pierre Leduc for you in forty-eight hours. For he’s the man you’re after, eh? Isn’t that the business? Come along, answer! Who is the fellow? Why are you looking for him? What do you know about him?”

  He calmed himself suddenly, laid his hand on Kesselbach’s shoulder and, harshly:

  “One word only. Yes or no?”

  “No!”

  He drew a magnificent gold watch from Kesselbach’s fob and placed it on the prisoner’s knees. He unbuttoned Kesselbach’s waistcoat, opened his shirt, uncovered his chest and, taking a steel dagger, with a gold-crusted handle, that lay on the table beside him, he put the point of it against the place where the pulsations of the heart made the bare flesh throb:

  “For the last time?”

  “No!”

  “Mr. Kesselbach, it is eight minutes to three. If you don’t answer within eight minutes from now, you are a dead man!”

  The next morning, Sergeant Gourel walked into the Palace Hotel punctually at the appointed hour. Without stopping, scorning to take the lift, he went up the stairs. On the fourth floor he turned to the right, followed the passage and rang at the door of 415.

  Hearing no sound, he rang again. After half-a-dozen fruitless attempts, he went to the floor office. He found a head-waiter there:

  “Mr. Kesselbach did not sleep here last night. We have not seen him since yesterday afternoon.”

  “But his servant? His secretary?”

  “We have not seen them either.”

  “Then they also did not sleep in the hotel?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “You suppose not? But you ought to be certain.”

  “Why? Mr. Kesselbach is not staying in the hotel; he is at home here, in his private flat. He is not waited on by us, but by his own man; and we know nothing of what happens inside.”

  “That’s true … That’s true …”

  Gourel seemed greatly perplexed. He had come with positive orders, a precise mission, within the limits of which his mind was able to exert itself. Outside those limits he did not quite know how to act:

  “If the chief were here,” he muttered, “if the chief were here …”

  He showed his card and stated his quality. Then he said, on the off-chance:

  “So you have not seen them come in?”

  “No.”

  “But you saw them go out?”

  “No, I can’t say I did.”

  “In that case, how do you know that they went out?”

  “From a gentleman who called yesterday afternoon.”

  “A gentleman with a dark mustache?”

  “Yes. I met him as he was going away, about three o’clock. He said: ‘The people in 415 have gone out. Mr. Kesselbach will stay at Versailles to-night, at the Reservoirs; you can send his letters on to him there.’”

  “But who was this gentleman? By what right did he speak?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Gourel felt uneasy. It all struck him as rather queer.

  “Have you the key?”

  “No. Mr. Kesselbach had special keys made.”

  “Let’s go and look.”

  Gourel rang again furiously. Nothing happened. He was about to go when, suddenly, he bent down and clapped his ear to the keyhole:

  “Listen … I seem to hear … Why, yes … it’s quite distinct … I hear moans …”

  He gave the door a tremendous blow with his fist.

  “But, sir, you have not the right …”

  “Oh, hang the right!”

  He struck the door with renewed force, but to so little purpose that he abandoned the attempt forthwith:

  “Quick, quick, a locksmith!”

  One of the waiters started off at a run. Gourel, blustering and undecided, walked to and fro. The servants from the other floors collected in groups. People from the office, from the manager’s department arrived. Gourel cried:

  “But why shouldn’t we go in though the adjoining rooms? Do they communicate with this suite?”

  “Yes; but the communicating doors are always bolted on both sides.”

  “Then I shall telephone to the detective-office,” said Gourel, to whose mind obviously there existed no salvation without his chief.

  “And to the commissary of police,” observed some one.

  “Yes, if you like,” he replied, in the tone of a gentleman who took little or no interest in that formality.

  When he returned from the telephone, the locksmith had nearly finished trying the keys. The last worked the lock. Gourel walked briskly in.

  He at once hastened in the direction from which the moans came and hit against the bodies of Chapman the secretary, and Edwards the manservant. One of them, Chapman, had succeeded, by dint of patience, in loosening his gag a little and was uttering short, stifled moans. The other seemed asleep.

  They
were released. But Gourel was anxious:

  “Where’s Mr. Kesselbach?”

  He went into the sitting-room. Mr. Kesselbach was sitting strapped to the back of the arm-chair, near the table. His head hung on his chest.

  “He has fainted,” said Gourel, going up to him. “He must have exerted himself beyond his strength.”

  Swiftly he cut the cords that fastened the shoulders. The body fell forward in an inert mass. Gourel caught it in his arms and started back with a cry of horror:

  “Why, he’s dead! Feel … his hands are ice-cold! And look at his eyes!”

  Some one ventured the opinion:

  “An apoplectic stroke, no doubt … or else heart-failure.”

  “True, there’s no sign of a wound … it’s a natural death.”

  They laid the body on the sofa and unfastened the clothes. But red stains at once appeared on the white shirt; and, when they pushed it back, they saw that, near the heart, the chest bore a little scratch through which had trickled a thin stream of blood.

  And on the shirt was pinned a card. Gourel bent forward. It was Arsène Lupin’s card, bloodstained like the rest.

  Then Gourel drew himself up, authoritatively and sharply:

  “Murdered! … Arsène Lupin! … Leave the flat … Leave the flat, all of you! … No one must stay here or in the bedroom … Let the two men be removed and seen to elsewhere! … Leave the flat … and don’t touch a thing …

  “The chief is on his way! …”

  CHAPTER II

  THE BLUE-EDGED LABEL

  “ARSÈNE LUPIN!”

  Gourel repeated these two fateful words with an absolutely petrified air. They rang within him like a knell. Arsène Lupin! The great, the formidable Arsène Lupin. The burglar-king, the mighty adventurer! Was it possible?

  “No, no,” he muttered, “it’s not possible, because he’s dead!”

  Only that was just it … was he really dead?

  Arsène Lupin!

  Standing beside the corpse, he remained dull and stunned, turning the card over and over with a certain dread, as though he had been challenged by a ghost. Arsène Lupin! What ought he to do? Act? Take the field with his resources? No, no … better not act … He was bound to make mistakes if he entered the lists with an adversary of that stamp. Besides, the chief was on his way!

  The chief was on his way! All Gourel’s intellectual philosophy was summed up in that short sentence. An able, persevering officer, full of courage and experience and endowed with Herculean strength, he was one of those who go ahead only when obeying directions and who do good work only when ordered. And this lack of initiative had become still more marked since M. Lenormand had taken the place of M. Dudouis in the detective-service. M. Lenormand was a chief indeed! With him, one was sure of being on the right track. So sure, even, that Gourel stopped the moment that the chief’s incentive was no longer behind him.

  But the chief was on his way! Gourel took out his watch and calculated the exact time when he would arrive. If only the commissary of police did not get there first, if only the examining-magistrate, who was no doubt already appointed, or the divisional surgeon, did not come to make inopportune discoveries before the chief had time to fix the essential points of the case in his mind!

  “Well, Gourel, what are you dreaming about?”

  “The chief!”

  M. Lenormand was still a young man, if you took stock only of the expression of his face and his eyes gleaming through his spectacles; but he was almost an old man when you saw his bent back, his skin dry and yellow as wax, his grizzled hair and beard, his whole decrepit, hesitating, unhealthy appearance. He had spent his life laboriously in the colonies as government commissary, in the most dangerous posts. He had there acquired a series of fevers; an indomitable energy, notwithstanding his physical weariness; the habit of living alone, of talking little and acting in silence; a certain misanthropy; and, suddenly, at the age of fifty-five, in consequence of the famous case of the three Spaniards at Biskra, a great and well-earned notoriety.

  The injustice was then repaired; and he was straightway transferred to Bordeaux, was next appointed deputy in Paris, and lastly, on the death of M. Dudouis, chief of the detective-service. And in each of these posts he displayed such a curious faculty of inventiveness in his proceedings, such resourcefulness, so many new and original qualities; and above all, he achieved such correct results in the conduct of the last four or five cases with which public opinion had been stirred, that his name was quoted in the same breath with those of the most celebrated detectives.

  Gourel, for his part, had no hesitation. Himself a favourite of the chief, who liked him for his frankness and his passive obedience, he set the chief above them all. The chief to him was an idol, an infallible god.

  M. Lenormand seemed more tired than usual that day. He sat down wearily, parted the tails of his frock-coat—an old frock-coat, famous for its antiquated cut and its olive-green hue—untied his neckerchief—an equally famous maroon-coloured neckerchief, rested his two hands on his stick, and said:

  “Speak!”

  Gourel told all that he had seen, and all that he had learnt, and told it briefly, according to the habit which the chief had taught him.

  But, when he produced Lupin’s card, M. Lenormand gave a start:

  “Lupin!”

  “Yes, Lupin. The brute’s bobbed up again.”

  “That’s all right, that’s all right,” said M. Lenormand, after a moment’s thought.

  “That’s all right, of course,” said Gourel, who loved to add a word of his own to the rare speeches of a superior whose only fault in his eyes was an undue reticence. “That’s all right, for at last you will measure your strength with an adversary worthy of you … And Lupin will meet his master … Lupin will cease to exist … Lupin …”

  “Ferret!” said M. Lenormand, cutting him short.

  It was like an order given by a sportsman to his dog. And Gourel ferreted after the manner of a good dog, a lively and intelligent animal, working under his master’s eyes. M. Lenormand pointed his stick to a corner, to an easy chair, just as one points to a bush or a tuft of grass, and Gourel beat up the bush or the tuft of grass with conscientious thoroughness.

  “Nothing,” said the sergeant, when he finished.

  “Nothing for you!” grunted M. Lenormand.

  “That’s what I meant to say … I know that, for you, chief, there are things that talk like human beings, real living witnesses. For all that, here is a murder well and duly added to our score against Master Lupin.”

  “The first,” observed M. Lenormand.

  “The first, yes … But it was bound to come. You can’t lead that sort of life without, sooner or later, being driven by circumstances to serious crime. Mr. Kesselbach must have defended himself …”

  “No, because he was bound.”

  “That’s true,” owned Gourel, somewhat disconcertedly, “and it’s rather curious too … Why kill an adversary who has practically ceased to exist? … But, no matter, if I had collared him yesterday, when we were face to face at the hall-door …”

  M. Lenormand had stepped out on the balcony. Then he went to Mr. Kesselbach’s bedroom, on the right, and tried the fastenings of the windows and doors.

  “The windows of both rooms were shut when I came in,” said Gourel.

  “Shut, or just pushed to?”

  “No one has touched them since. And they are shut, chief.”

  A sound of voices brought them back to the sitting-room. Here they found the divisional surgeon, engaged in examining the body, and M. Formerie, the magistrate. M. Formerie exclaimed:

  “Arsène Lupin! I am glad that at last a lucky chance has brought me into touch with that scoundrel again! I’ll show the fellow the stuff I’m made of! … And this time it’s a murder! … It’s a fight between you and me now, Master Lupin!”

  M. Formerie had not forgotten the strange adventure of the Prin
cesse de Lamballe’s diadem, nor the wonderful way in which Lupin had tricked him a few years before. The thing had remained famous in the annals of the law-courts. People still laughed at it; and in M. Formerie it had left a just feeling of resentment, combined with the longing for a striking revenge.

  “The nature of the crime is self-evident,” he declared, with a great air of conviction, “and we shall have no difficulty in discovering the motive. So all is well … M. Lenormand, how do you do? … I am delighted to see you …”

  M. Formerie was not in the least delighted. On the contrary, M. Lenormand’s presence did not please him at all, seeing that the chief detective hardly took the trouble to disguise the contempt in which he held him. However, the magistrate drew himself up and, in his most solemn tones:

  “So, doctor, you consider that death took place about a dozen hours ago, perhaps more! … That, in fact, was my own idea … We are quite agreed … And the instrument of the crime?”

  “A knife with a very thin blade, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction,” replied the surgeon. “Look, the blade has been wiped on the dead man’s own handkerchief …”

  “Just so … just so … you can see the mark … And now let us go and question Mr. Kesselbach’s secretary and man-servant. I have no doubt that their examination will throw some more light on the case.”

  Chapman, who together with Edwards, had been moved to his own room, on the left of the sitting-room, had already recovered from his experiences. He described in detail the events of the previous day, Mr. Kesselbach’s restlessness, the expected visit of the Colonel and, lastly, the attack of which they had been the victims.