[Illustration: Had she taken sides with either of them, with a single
movement, the victory would have been decided in that one’s favor.
_Frontispiece_]
THE CRYSTAL STOPPER
by Maurice LeBlanc
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE ARRESTS
II. EIGHT FROM NINE LEAVES ONE
III. THE HOME LIFE OF ALEXIS DAUBRECO
IV. THE CHIEF OF THE ENEMIES
V. THE TWENTY-SEVEN
VI. THE DEATH-SENTENCE
VII. THE PROFILE OF NAPOLEON
VIII. THE LOVERS’ TOWER
IX. IN THE DARK
X. EXTRA-DRY?
XI. THE CROSS OF LORRAINE
XII. THE SCAFFOLD
XIII. THE LAST BATTLE
ILLUSTRATIONS
Had she taken sides with either of them, with a single movement,
the victory would have been decided in that one’s favor.
_Frontispiece_
Lupin took his servant by the shoulders and shook him: “It said
‘de’ Beaumont? Are you sure?” 40
“Here, I’ve brought you the indomitable chief of our enemies.
Have you a feeding bottle?” 78
“Be quiet!... Be quiet!” she cried, clutching him fiercely. “You
mustn’t say that.” 84
Lupin sprang to his feet. He was prepared for every upshot except
this. 118
“What we have to do is to stop the mischief and to-night, you
understand, to-night the thing will be done.” 138
The sight which she beheld struck her with stupefaction. 214
Daubrecq ran up to Prasville out of breath and caught hold of him
with his two enormous hands. 278
CHAPTER I.
THE ARRESTS
The two boats fastened to the little pier that jutted out from the
garden lay rocking in its shadow. Here and there lighted windows
showed through the thick mist on the margins of the lake. The
Enghien Casino opposite blazed with light, though it was late in
the season, the end of September. A few stars appeared through the
clouds. A light breeze ruffled the surface of the water.
Arsène Lupin left the summer-house where he was smoking a cigar
and, bending forward at the end of the pier:
“Growler?” he asked. “Masher?... Are you there?”
A man rose from each of the boats, and one of them answered:
“Yes, governor.”
“Get ready. I hear the car coming with Gilbert and Vaucheray.”
He crossed the garden, walked round a house in process of
construction, the scaffolding of which loomed overhead, and
cautiously opened the door on the Avenue de Ceinture. He was not
mistaken: a bright light flashed round the bend and a large, open
motor-car drew up, whence sprang two men in great-coats, with the
collars turned up, and caps.
It was Gilbert and Vaucheray: Gilbert, a young fellow of twenty or
twenty-two, with an attractive cast of features and a supple and
sinewy frame; Vaucheray, older, shorter, with grizzled hair and a
pale, sickly face.
“Well,” asked Lupin, “did you see him, the deputy?”
“Yes, governor,” said Gilbert, “we saw him take the 7.40 tram for
Paris, as we knew he would.”
“Then we are free to act?”
“Absolutely. The Villa Marie-Thérèse is ours to do as we please
with.”
The chauffeur had kept his seat. Lupin gave him his orders:
“Don’t wait here. It might attract attention. Be back at half-past
nine exactly, in time to load the car unless the whole business
falls through.”
“Why should it fall through?” observed Gilbert.
The motor drove away; and Lupin, taking the road to the lake with
his two companions, replied:
“Why? Because I didn’t prepare the plan; and, when I don’t do a
thing myself, I am only half-confident.”
“Nonsense, governor! I’ve been working with you for three years
now.... I’m beginning to know the ropes!”
“Yes, my lad, you’re beginning,” said Lupin, “and that’s just
why I’m afraid of blunders.... Here, get in with me.... And you,
Vaucheray, take the other boat.... That’s it.... And now push off,
boys . . . and make as little noise as you can.”
Growler and Masher, the two oarsmen, made straight for the opposite
bank, a little to the left of the casino.
They met a boat containing a couple locked in each other’s arms,
floating at random, and another in which a number of people were
singing at the top of their voices. And that was all.
Lupin shifted closer to his companion and said, under his breath:
“Tell me, Gilbert, did you think of this job, or was it Vaucheray’s
idea?”
“Upon my word, I couldn’t tell you: we’ve both of us been discussing
it for weeks.”
“The thing is, I don’t trust Vaucheray: he’s a low ruffian when
one gets to know him.... I can’t make out why I don’t get rid of
him....”
“Oh, governor!”
“Yes, yes, I mean what I say: he’s a dangerous fellow, to say
nothing of the fact that he has some rather serious peccadilloes on
his conscience.”
He sat silent for a moment and continued:
“So you’re quite sure that you saw Daubrecq the deputy?”
“Saw him with my own eyes, governor.”
“And you know that he has an appointment in Paris?”
“He’s going to the theatre.”
“Very well; but his servants have remained behind at the Enghien
villa....”
“The cook has been sent away. As for the valet, Léonard, who is
Daubrecq’s confidential man, he’ll wait for his master in Paris.
They can’t get back from town before one o’clock in the morning.
But....”
“But what?”
“We must reckon with a possible freak of fancy on Daubrecq’s part,
a change of mind, an unexpected return, and so arrange to have
everything finished and done with in an hour.”
“And when did you get these details?”
“This morning. Vaucheray and I at once thought that it was a
favourable moment. I selected the garden of the unfinished house
which we have just left as the best place to start from; for the
house is not watched at night. I sent for two mates to row the
boats; and I telephoned to you. That’s the whole story.”
“Have you the keys?”
“The keys of the front-door.”
“Is that the villa which I see from here, standing in its own
grounds?”
“Yes, the Villa Marie-Thérèse; and as the two others, with the
gardens touching it on either side, have been unoccupied since this
day week, we shall be able to remove what we please at our leisure;
and I swear to you, governor, it’s well worth while.”
“The job’s much too simple,” mumbled Lupin. “No charm about it!”
They landed in a little creek whence rose a few stone steps, under
cover of a mouldering roof. Lupin reflected that shipping the
furniture would be easy work. But, suddenly, he said:
“There are people at the villa. Look . . . a light.”
“It’s a gas-jet, governor. The light’s not moving.”
The Growler stayed by the boats, with instructions to keep watch,
while the Masher, the other rower, went to the gate on the Avenue
de Ceinture, and Lupin and his two companions crept in the shadow
to the foot of the steps.
Gilbert went up first. Groping in the dark, he inserted first the
big door-key and then the latch-key. Both turned easily in their
locks, the door opened and the three men walked in.
A gas-jet was flaring in the hall.
“You see, governor....” said Gilbert.
“Yes, yes,” said Lupin, in a low voice, “but it seems to me that the
light which I saw shining did not come from here....”
“Where did it come from then?”
“I can’t say.... Is this the drawing-room?”
“No,” replied Gilbert, who was not afraid to speak pretty loudly,
“no. By way of precaution, he keeps everything on the first floor,
in his bedroom and in the two rooms on either side of it.”
“And where is the staircase?”
“On the right, behind the curtain.”
Lupin moved to the curtain and was drawing the hanging aside when,
suddenly, at four steps on the left, a door opened and a head
appeared, a pallid man’s head, with terrified eyes.
“Help! Murder!” shouted the man.
And he rushed back into the room.
“It’s Léonard, the valet!” cried Gilbert.
“If he makes a fuss, I’ll out him,” growled Vaucheray.
“You’ll jolly well do nothing of the sort, do you hear, Vaucheray?”
said Lupin, peremptorily. And he darted off in pursuit of the
servant. He first went through a dining-room, where he saw a lamp
still lit, with plates and a bottle around it, and he found Léonard
at the further end of a pantry, making vain efforts to open the
window:
“Don’t move, sportie! No kid! Ah, the brute!”
He had thrown himself flat on the floor, on seeing Léonard raise
his arm at him. Three shots were fired in the dusk of the pantry;
and then the valet came tumbling to the ground, seized by the legs
by Lupin, who snatched his weapon from him and gripped him by the
throat:
“Get out, you dirty brute!” he growled. “He very nearly did for
me.... Here, Vaucheray, secure this gentleman!”
He threw the light of his pocket-lantern on the servant’s face and
chuckled:
“He’s not a pretty gentleman either.... You can’t have a very clear
conscience, Léonard; besides, to play flunkey to Daubrecq the
deputy...! Have you finished, Vaucheray? I don’t want to hang about
here for ever!”
“There’s no danger, governor,” said Gilbert.
“Oh, really?... So you think that shots can’t be heard?...”
“Quite impossible.”
“No matter, we must look sharp. Vaucheray, take the lamp and let’s
go upstairs.”
He took Gilbert by the arm and, as he dragged him to the first
floor:
“You ass,” he said, “is that the way you make inquiries? Wasn’t I
right to have my doubts?”
“Look here, governor, I couldn’t know that he would change his mind
and come back to dinner.”
“One’s got to know everything when one has the honour of breaking
into people’s houses. You numskull! I’ll remember you and
Vaucheray . . . a nice pair of gossoons!...”
The sight of the furniture on the first floor pacified Lupin and he
started on his inventory with the satisfied air of a collector who
has looked in to treat himself to a few works of art:
“By Jingo! There’s not much of it, but what there is is pucka!
There’s nothing the matter with this representative of the people
in the question of taste. Four Aubusson chairs.... A bureau signed
‘Percier-Fontaine,’ for a wager.... Two inlays by Gouttières.... A
genuine Fragonard and a sham Nattier which any American millionaire
will swallow for the asking: in short, a fortune.... And there are
curmudgeons who pretend that there’s nothing but faked stuff left.
Dash it all, why don’t they do as I do? They should look about!”
Gilbert and Vaucheray, following Lupin’s orders and instructions,
at once proceeded methodically to remove the bulkier pieces. The
first boat was filled in half an hour; and it was decided that the
Growler and the Masher should go on ahead and begin to load the
motor-car.
Lupin went to see them start. On returning to the house, it struck
him, as he passed through the hall, that he heard a voice in the
pantry. He went there and found Léonard lying flat on his stomach,
quite alone, with his hands tied behind his back:
“So it’s you growling, my confidential flunkey? Don’t get excited:
it’s almost finished. Only, if you make too much noise, you’ll
oblige us to take severer measures.... Do you like pears? We might
give you one, you know: a choke-pear!...”
As he went upstairs, he again heard the same sound and, stopping to
listen, he caught these words, uttered in a hoarse, groaning voice,
which came, beyond a doubt, from the pantry:
“Help!... Murder!... Help!... I shall be killed!... Inform the
commissary!”
“The fellow’s clean off his chump!” muttered Lupin. “By Jove!... To
disturb the police at nine o’clock in the evening: there’s a notion
for you!”
He set to work again. It took longer than he expected, for they
discovered in the cupboards all sorts of valuable knick-knacks
which it would have been very wrong to disdain and, on the other
hand, Vaucheray and Gilbert were going about their investigations
with signs of laboured concentration that nonplussed him.
At long last, he lost his patience:
“That will do!” he said. “We’re not going to spoil the whole job
and keep the motor waiting for the sake of the few odd bits that
remain. I’m taking the boat.”
They were now by the waterside and Lupin went down the steps.
Gilbert held him back:
“I say, governor, we want one more look round five minutes, no
longer.”
“But what for, dash it all?”
“Well, it’s like this: we were told of an old reliquary, something
stunning....”
“Well?”
“We can’t lay our hands on it. And I was thinking.... There’s a
cupboard with a big lock to it in the pantry.... You see, we can’t
very well....”
He was already on his way to the villa. Vaucheray ran back too.
“I’ll give you ten minutes, not a second longer!” cried Lupin. “In
ten minutes, I’m off.”
But the ten minutes passed and he was still waiting.
He looked at his watch:
“A quarter-past nine,” he said to himself. “This is madness.”
And he also remembered that Gilbert and Vaucheray had behaved
rather queerly throughout the removal of the things, keeping
close together and apparently watching each other. What could be
happening?
Lupin mechanically returned to the house, urged by a feeling of
anxiety which he was unable to explain; and, at the same time,
he listened to a dull sound which rose in the distance, from the
direction of Enghien, and which seemed to be coming nearer....
People strolling about, no doubt....
He gave a sharp whistle and then went to the main gate, to take
a glance down the avenue. But, suddenly, as he was opening the
gate, a shot rang out, followed by a yell of pain. He returned at
a run, went round the house, leapt up the steps and rushed to the
dining-room:
“Blast it all, what are you doing there, you two?”
Gilbert and Vaucheray, locked in a furious embrace, were rolling on
the floor, uttering cries of rage. Their clothes were dripping with
blood. Lupin flew at them to separate them. But already Gilbert had
got his adversary down and was wrenching out of his hand something
which Lupin had no time to see. And Vaucheray, who was losing blood
through a wound in the shoulder, fainted.
“Who hurt him? You, Gilbert?” asked Lupin, furiously.
“No, Léonard.”
“Léonard? Why, he was tied up!”
“He undid his fastenings and got hold of his revolver.”
“The scoundrel! Where is he?”
Lupin took the lamp and went into the pantry.
The man-servant was lying on his back, with his arms outstretched, a
dagger stuck in his throat and a livid face. A red stream trickled
from his mouth.
“Ah,” gasped Lupin, after examining him, “he’s dead!”
“Do you think so?... Do you think so?” stammered Gilbert, in a
trembling voice.
“He’s dead, I tell you.”
“It was Vaucheray . . . it was Vaucheray who did it....”
Pale with anger, Lupin caught hold of him:
“It was Vaucheray, was it?... And you too, you blackguard, since
you were there and didn’t stop him! Blood! Blood! You know I won’t
have it.... Well, it’s a bad lookout for you, my fine fellows....
You’ll have to pay the damage! And you won’t get off cheaply
either.... Mind the guillotine!” And, shaking him violently, “What
was it? Why did he kill him?”
“He wanted to go through his pockets and take the key of the
cupboard from him. When he stooped over him, he saw that the man
unloosed his arms. He got frightened . . . and he stabbed him....”
“But the revolver-shot?”
“It was Léonard . . . he had his revolver in his hand . . . he just
had strength to take aim before he died....”
“And the key of the cupboard?”
“Vaucheray took it....”
“Did he open it?”
“And did he find what he was after?”
“Yes.”
“And you wanted to take the thing from him. What sort of thing was
it? The reliquary? No, it was too small for that.... Then what was
it? Answer me, will you?...”
Lupin gathered from Gilbert’s silence and the determined expression
on his face that he would not obtain a reply. With a threatening
gesture, “I’ll make you talk, my man. Sure as my name’s Lupin, you
shall come out with it. But, for the moment, we must see about
decamping. Here, help me. We must get Vaucheray into the boat....”
They had returned to the dining-room and Gilbert was bending over
the wounded man, when Lupin stopped him:
“Listen.”
They exchanged one look of alarm.... Some one was speaking in
the pantry . . . a very low, strange, very distant voice....
Nevertheless, as they at once made certain, there was no one in the
room, no one except the dead man, whose dark outline lay stretched
upon the floor.
And the voice spake anew, by turns shrill, stifled, bleating,
stammering, yelling, fearsome. It uttered indistinct words, broken
syllables.
Lupin felt the top of his head covering with perspiration. What was
this incoherent voice, mysterious as a voice from beyond the grave?
He had knelt down by the man-servant’s side. The voice was silent
and then began again:
“Give us a better light,” he said to Gilbert.
He was trembling a little, shaken with a nervous dread which he was
unable to master, for there was no doubt possible: when Gilbert
had removed the shade from the lamp, Lupin realized that the voice
issued from the corpse itself, without a movement of the lifeless
mass, without a quiver of the bleeding mouth.
“Governor, I’ve got the shivers,” stammered Gilbert.
Again the same voice, the same snuffling whisper.
Suddenly, Lupin burst out laughing, seized the corpse and pulled it
aside:
“Exactly!” he said, catching sight of an object made of polished
metal. “Exactly! That’s it!... Well, upon my word, it took me long
enough!”
On the spot on the floor which he had uncovered lay the receiver of
a telephone, the cord of which ran up to the apparatus fixed on the
wall, at the usual height.
Lupin put the receiver to his ear. The noise began again at once,
but it was a mixed noise, made up of different calls, exclamations,
confused cries, the noise produced by a number of persons
questioning one another at the same time.
“Are you there?... He won’t answer. It’s awful.... They must have
killed him. What is it?... Keep up your courage. There’s help on
the way . . . police . . . soldiers....”
“Dash it!” said Lupin, dropping the receiver.
The truth appeared to him in a terrifying vision. Quite at the
beginning, while the things upstairs were being moved, Léonard,
whose bonds were not securely fastened, had contrived to
scramble to his feet, to unhook the receiver, probably with his
teeth, to drop it and to appeal for assistance to the Enghien
telephone-exchange.
And those were the words which Lupin had overheard, after the first
boat started:
“Help!... Murder!... I shall be killed!”
And this was the reply of the exchange. The police were hurrying to
the spot. And Lupin remembered the sounds which he had heard from
the garden, four or five minutes earlier, at most:
“The police! Take to your heels!” he shouted, darting across the
dining room.
“What about Vaucheray?” asked Gilbert.
“Sorry, can’t be helped!”
But Vaucheray, waking from his torpor, entreated him as he passed:
“Governor, you wouldn’t leave me like this!”
Lupin stopped, in spite of the danger, and was lifting the wounded
man, with Gilbert’s assistance, when a loud din arose outside:
“Too late!” he said.
At that moment, blows shook the hall-door at the back of the house.
He ran to the front steps: a number of men had already turned the
corner of the house at a rush. He might have managed to keep ahead
of them, with Gilbert, and reach the waterside. But what chance was
there of embarking and escaping under the enemy’s fire?
He locked and bolted the door.
“We are surrounded . . . and done for,” spluttered Gilbert.
“Hold your tongue,” said Lupin.
“But they’ve seen us, governor. There, they’re knocking.”
“Hold your tongue,” Lupin repeated. “Not a word. Not a movement.”
He himself remained unperturbed, with an utterly calm face and
the pensive attitude of one who has all the time that he needs
to examine a delicate situation from every point of view. He had
reached one of those minutes which he called the “superior moments
of existence,” those which alone give a value and a price to life.
On such occasions, however threatening the danger, he always began
by counting to himself, slowly--“One.... Two.... Three.... Four....
Five.... Six”--until the beating of his heart became normal and
regular. Then and not till then, he reflected, but with what
intensity, with what perspicacity, with what a profound intuition
of possibilities! All the factors of the problem were present in
his mind. He foresaw everything. He admitted everything. And he
took his resolution in all logic and in all certainty.
After thirty or forty seconds, while the men outside were banging
at the doors and picking the locks, he said to his companion:
“Follow me.”
Returning to the dining-room, he softly opened the sash and drew
the Venetian blinds of a window in the side-wall. People were
coming and going, rendering flight out of the question.
Thereupon he began to shout with all his might, in a breathless
voice:
“This way!... Help!... I’ve got them!... This way!”
He pointed his revolver and fired two shots into the tree-tops.
Then he went back to Vaucheray, bent over him and smeared his
face and hands with the wounded man’s blood. Lastly, turning upon
Gilbert, he took him violently by the shoulders and threw him to
the floor.
“What do you want, governor? There’s a nice thing to do!”
“Let me do as I please,” said Lupin, laying an imperative stress on
every syllable. “I’ll answer for everything.... I’ll answer for the
two of you.... Let me do as I like with you.... I’ll get you both
out of prison.... But I can only do that if I’m free.”
Excited cries rose through the open window.
“This way!” he shouted. “I’ve got them! Help!”
And, quietly, in a whisper:
“Just think for a moment.... Have you anything to say to me?...
Something that can be of use to us?”
Gilbert was too much taken aback to understand Lupin’s plan and he
struggled furiously. Vaucheray showed more intelligence; moreover,
he had given up all hope of escape, because of his wound; and he
snarled:
“Let the governor have his way, you ass!... As long as he gets off,
isn’t that the great thing?”
Suddenly, Lupin remembered the article which Gilbert had put in his
pocket, after capturing it from Vaucheray. He now tried to take it
in his turn.
“No, not that! Not if I know it!” growled Gilbert, managing to
release himself.
Lupin floored him once more. But two men suddenly appeared at the
window; and Gilbert yielded and, handing the thing to Lupin, who
pocketed it without looking at it, whispered:
“Here you are, governor.... I’ll explain. You can be sure that....”
He did not have time to finish.... Two policemen and others after
them and soldiers who entered through every door and window came to
Lupin’s assistance.
Gilbert was at once seized and firmly bound. Lupin withdrew:
“I’m glad you’ve come,” he said. “The beggar’s given me a lot of
trouble. I wounded the other; but this one....”
The commissary of police asked him, hurriedly:
“Have you seen the man-servant? Have they killed him?”
“I don’t know,” he answered.
“You don’t know?...”
“Why, I came with you from Enghien, on hearing of the murder! Only,
while you were going round the left of the house, I went round the
right. There was a window open. I climbed up just as these two
ruffians were about to jump down. I fired at this one,” pointing to
Vaucheray, “and seized hold of his pal.”
How could he have been suspected? He was covered with blood. He
had handed over the valet’s murderers. Half a score of people had
witnessed the end of the heroic combat which he had delivered.
Besides, the uproar was too great for any one to take the trouble
to argue or to waste time in entertaining doubts. In the height
of the first confusion, the people of the neighbourhood invaded
the villa. One and all lost their heads. They ran to every side,
upstairs, downstairs, to the very cellar. They asked one another
questions, yelled and shouted; and no one dreamt of checking
Lupin’s statements, which sounded so plausible.
However, the discovery of the body in the pantry restored the
commissary to a sense of his responsibility. He issued orders,
had the house cleared and placed policemen at the gate to prevent
any one from passing in or out. Then, without further delay,
he examined the spot and began his inquiry. Vaucheray gave his
name; Gilbert refused to give his, on the plea that he would only
speak in the presence of a lawyer. But, when he was accused of
the murder, he informed against Vaucheray, who defended himself
by denouncing the other; and the two of them vociferated at the
same time, with the evident wish to monopolize the commissary’s
attention. When the commissary turned to Lupin, to request his
evidence, he perceived that the stranger was no longer there.
Without the least suspicion, he said to one of the policemen:
“Go and tell that gentleman that I should like to ask him a few
questions.”
They looked about for the gentleman. Some one had seen him standing
on the steps, lighting a cigarette. The next news was that he had
given cigarettes to a group of soldiers and strolled toward the
lake, saying that they were to call him if he was wanted.
They called him. No one replied.
But a soldier came running up. The gentleman had just got into
a boat and was rowing away for all he was worth. The commissary
looked at Gilbert and realized that he had been tricked:
“Stop him!” he shouted. “Fire on him! He’s an accomplice!...”
He himself rushed out, followed by two policemen, while the others
remained with the prisoners. On reaching the bank, he saw the
gentleman, a hundred yards away, taking off his hat to him in the
dusk.
One of the policemen discharged his revolver, without thinking.
The wind carried the sound of words across the water. The gentleman
was singing as he rowed:
“Go, little bark,
Float in the dark....”
But the commissary saw a skiff fastened to the landing-stage of
the adjoining property. He scrambled over the hedge separating the
two gardens and, after ordering the soldiers to watch the banks of
the lake and to seize the fugitive if he tried to put ashore, the
commissary and two of his men pulled off in pursuit of Lupin.
It was not a difficult matter, for they were able to follow his
movements by the intermittent light of the moon and to see that he
was trying to cross the lakes while bearing toward the right--that
is to say, toward the village of Saint-Gratien. Moreover, the
commissary soon perceived that, with the aid of his men and thanks
perhaps to the comparative lightness of his craft, he was rapidly
gaining on the other. In ten minutes he had decreased the interval
between them by one half.
“That’s it!” he cried. “We shan’t even need the soldiers to
keep him from landing. I very much want to make the fellow’s
acquaintance. He’s a cool hand and no mistake!”
The funny thing was that the distance was now diminishing at an
abnormal rate, as though the fugitive had lost heart at realizing
the futility of the struggle. The policemen redoubled their
efforts. The boat shot across the water with the swiftness of a
swallow. Another hundred yards at most and they would reach the man.
“Halt!” cried the commissary.
The enemy, whose huddled shape they could make out in the boat,
no longer moved. The sculls drifted with the stream. And this
absence of all motion had something alarming about it. A ruffian of
that stamp might easily lie in wait for his aggressors, sell his
life dearly and even shoot them dead before they had a chance of
attacking him.
“Surrender!” shouted the commissary.
The sky, at that moment, was dark. The three men lay flat at
the bottom of their skiff, for they thought they perceived a
threatening gesture.
The boat, carried by its own impetus, was approaching the other.
The commissary growled:
“We won’t let ourselves be sniped. Let’s fire at him. Are you
ready?” And he roared, once more, “Surrender . . . if not...!”
No reply.
The enemy did not budge.
“Surrender!... Hands up!... You refuse?... So much the worse for
you.... I’m counting.... One.... Two....”
The policemen did not wait for the word of command. They fired and,
at once, bending over their oars, gave the boat so powerful an
impulse that it reached the goal in a few strokes.
The commissary watched, revolver in hand, ready for the least
movement. He raised his arm:
“If you stir, I’ll blow out your brains!”
But the enemy did not stir for a moment; and, when the boat was
bumped and the two men, letting go their oars, prepared for the
formidable assault, the commissary understood the reason of this
passive attitude: there was no one in the boat. The enemy had
escaped by swimming, leaving in the hands of the victor a certain
number of the stolen articles, which, heaped up and surmounted
by a jacket and a bowler hat, might be taken, at a pinch, in the
semi-darkness, vaguely to represent the figure of a man.
They struck matches and examined the enemy’s cast clothes. There
were no initials in the hat. The jacket contained neither papers
nor pocketbook. Nevertheless, they made a discovery which was
destined to give the case no little celebrity and which had a
terrible influence on the fate of Gilbert and Vaucheray: in one
of the pockets was a visiting-card which the fugitive had left
behind . . . the card of Arsène Lupin.
At almost the same moment, while the police, towing the captured
skiff behind them, continued their empty search and while the
soldiers stood drawn up on the bank, straining their eyes to try
and follow the fortunes of the naval combat, the aforesaid Arsène
Lupin was quietly landing at the very spot which he had left two
hours earlier.
He was there met by his two other accomplices, the Growler and the
Masher, flung them a few sentences by way of explanation, jumped
into the motor-car, among Daubrecq the deputy’s armchairs and other
valuables, wrapped himself in his furs and drove, by deserted
roads, to his repository at Neuilly, where he left the chauffeur. A
taxicab brought him back to Paris and put him down by the church of
Saint-Philippe-du-Roule, not far from which, in the Rue Matignon,
he had a flat, on the entresol-floor, of which none of his gang,
excepting Gilbert, knew, a flat with a private entrance. He was
glad to take off his clothes and rub himself down; for, in spite of
his strong constitution, he felt chilled to the bone. On retiring
to bed, he emptied the contents of his pockets, as usual, on the
mantel-piece. It was not till then that he noticed, near his
pocketbook and his keys, the object which Gilbert had put into his
hand at the last moment.
And he was very much surprised. It was a decanter-stopper, a
little crystal stopper, like those used for the bottles in a
liqueur-stand. And this crystal stopper had nothing particular
about it. The most that Lupin observed was that the knob, with its
many facets, was gilded right down to the indent. But, to tell
the truth, this detail did not seem to him of a nature to attract
special notice.
“And it was this bit of glass to which Gilbert and Vaucheray
attached such stubborn importance!” he said to himself. “It was for
this that they killed the valet, fought each other, wasted their
time, risked prison . . . trial . . . the scaffold!...”
Too tired to linger further upon this matter, exciting though it
appeared to him, he replaced the stopper on the chimney-piece and
got into bed.
He had bad dreams. Gilbert and Vaucheray were kneeling on the
flags of their cells, wildly stretching out their hands to him and
yelling with fright:
“Help!... Help!” they cried.
But, notwithstanding all his efforts, he was unable to move. He
himself was fastened by invisible bonds. And, trembling, obsessed
by a monstrous vision, he watched the dismal preparations, the
cutting of the condemned men’s hair and shirt-collars, the squalid
tragedy.
“By Jove!” he said, when he woke after a series of nightmares.
“There’s a lot of bad omens! Fortunately, we don’t err on the side
of superstition. Otherwise...!” And he added, “For that matter,
we have a talisman which, to judge by Gilbert and Vaucheray’s
behaviour, should be enough, with Lupin’s help, to frustrate bad
luck and secure the triumph of the good cause. Let’s have a look at
that crystal stopper!”
He sprang out of bed to take the thing and examine it more closely.
An exclamation escaped him. The crystal stopper had disappeared....