THE CHIEF OF THE ENEMIES
“Poor boy!” murmured Lupin, when his eyes fell on Gilbert’s letter
next morning. “How he must feel it!”
On the very first day when he saw him, he had taken a liking to
that well-set-up youngster, so careless, gay and fond of life.
Gilbert was devoted to him, would have accepted death at a sign
from his master. And Lupin also loved his frankness, his good
humour, his simplicity, his bright, open face.
“Gilbert,” he often used to say, “you are an honest man. Do you
know, if I were you, I should chuck the business and become an
honest man for good.”
“After you, governor,” Gilbert would reply, with a laugh.
“Won’t you, though?”
“No, governor. An honest man is a chap who works and grinds. It’s a
taste which I may have had as a nipper; but they’ve made me lose it
since.”
“Who’s they?”
Gilbert was silent. He was always silent when questioned about his
early life; and all that Lupin knew was that he had been an orphan
since childhood and that he had lived all over the place, changing
his name and taking up the queerest jobs. The whole thing was a
mystery which no one had been able to fathom; and it did not look
as though the police would make much of it either.
Nor, on the other hand, did it look as though the police would
consider that mystery a reason for delaying proceedings. They would
send Vaucheray’s accomplice for trial--under his name of Gilbert or
any other name--and visit him with the same inevitable punishment.
“Poor boy!” repeated Lupin. “They’re persecuting him like this
only because of me. They are afraid of his escaping and they
are in a hurry to finish the business: the verdict first and
then . . . the execution.... Oh, the butchers!... A lad of twenty,
who has committed no murder, who is not even an accomplice in the
murder....”
Alas, Lupin well knew that this was a thing impossible to prove and
that he must concentrate his efforts upon another point. But upon
which? Was he to abandon the trail of the crystal stopper?
He could not make up his mind to that. His one and only diversion
from the search was to go to Enghien, where the Growler and the
Masher lived, and make sure that nothing had been seen of them
since the murder at the Villa Marie-Thérèse. Apart from this, he
applied himself to the question of Daubrecq and nothing else.
He refused even to trouble his head about the problems set before
him: the treachery of the Growler and the Masher; their connection
with the gray-haired lady; the spying of which he himself was the
object.
“Steady, Lupin,” he said. “One only argues falsely in a fever.
So hold your tongue. No inferences, above all things! Nothing is
more foolish than to infer one fact from another before finding
a certain starting-point. That’s where you get up a tree. Listen
to your instinct. Act according to your instinct. And as you are
persuaded, outside all argument, outside all logic, one might say,
that this business turns upon that confounded stopper, go for it
boldly. Have at Daubrecq and his bit of crystal!”
Lupin did not wait to arrive at these conclusions before settling
his actions accordingly. At the moment when he was stating them
in his mind, three days after the scene at the Vaudeville, he was
sitting, dressed like a retired tradesman, in an old overcoat, with
a muffler round his neck, on a bench in the Avenue Victor-Hugo,
at some distance from the Square Lamartine. Victoire had his
instructions to pass by that bench at the same hour every morning.
“Yes,” he repeated to himself, “the crystal stopper: everything
turns on that.... Once I get hold of it....”
Victoire arrived, with her shopping-basket on her arm. He at once
noticed her extraordinary agitation and pallor:
“What’s the matter?” asked Lupin, walking beside his old nurse.
She went into a big grocer’s, which was crowded with people, and,
turning to him:
“Here,” she said, in a voice torn with excitement. “Here’s what
you’ve been hunting for.”
And, taking something from her basket, she gave it to him.
Lupin stood astounded: in his hand lay the crystal stopper.
“Can it be true? Can it be true?” he muttered, as though the ease
of the solution had thrown him off his balance.
But the fact remained, visible and palpable. He recognized by its
shape, by its size, by the worn gilding of its facets, recognized
beyond any possible doubt the crystal stopper which he had seen
before. He even remarked a tiny, hardly noticeable little scratch
on the stem which he remembered perfectly.
However, while the thing presented all the same characteristics,
it possessed no other that seemed out of the way. It was a crystal
stopper, that was all. There was no really special mark to
distinguish it from other stoppers. There was no sign upon it, no
stamp; and, being cut from a single piece, it contained no foreign
object.
“What then?”
And Lupin received a quick insight into the depth of his mistake.
What good could the possession of that crystal stopper do him so
long as he was ignorant of its value? That bit of glass had no
existence in itself; it counted only through the meaning that
attached to it. Before taking it, the thing was to be certain. And
how could he tell that, in taking it, in robbing Daubrecq of it, he
was not committing an act of folly?
It was a question which was impossible of solution, but which
forced itself upon him with singular directness.
“No blunders!” he said to himself, as he pocketed the stopper. “In
this confounded business, blunders are fatal.”
He had not taken his eyes off Victoire. Accompanied by a shopman,
she went from counter to counter, among the throng of customers.
She next stood for some little while at the pay-desk and passed in
front of Lupin.
He whispered her instructions:
“Meet me behind the Lycée Janson.”
She joined him in an unfrequented street:
“And suppose I’m followed?” she said.
“No,” he declared. “I looked carefully. Listen to me. Where did you
find the stopper?”
“In the drawer of the table by his bed.”
“But we had felt there already.”
“Yes; and I did so again this morning. I expect he put it there
last night.”
“And I expect he’ll want to take it from there again,” said Lupin.
“Very likely.”
“And suppose he finds it gone?”
Victoire looked frightened.
“Answer me,” said Lupin. “If he finds it gone, he’ll accuse you of
taking it, won’t he?”
“Certainly.”
“Then go and put it back, as fast as you can.”
“Oh dear, oh dear!” she moaned. “I hope he won’t have had time to
find out. Give it to me, quick.”
“Here you are,” said Lupin.
He felt in the pocket of his overcoat.
“Well?” said Victoire, holding out her hand.
“Well,” he said, after a moment, “it’s gone.”
“What!”
“Yes, upon my word, it’s gone . . . somebody’s taken it from me.”
He burst into a peal of laughter, a laughter which, this time, was
free from all bitterness.
Victoire flew out at him:
“Laugh away!... Putting me in such a predicament!...”
“How can I help laughing? You must confess that it’s funny. It’s
no longer a tragedy that we’re acting, but a fairy-tale, as much a
fairy-tale as _Puss in Boots_ or _Jack and the Beanstalk_. I must
write it when I get a few weeks to myself: _The Magic Stopper; or,
The Mishaps of Poor Arsène._”
“Well . . . who has taken it from you?”
“What are you talking about?... It has flown away . . . vanished
from my pocket: hey presto, begone!”
He gave the old servant a gentle push and, in a more serious tone:
“Go home, Victoire, and don’t upset yourself. Of course, some one
saw you give me the stopper and took advantage of the crowd in the
shop to pick my pocket of it. That only shows that we are watched
more closely than I thought and by adversaries of the first rank.
But, once more, be easy. Honest men always come by their own....
Have you anything else to tell me?”
“Yes. Some one came yesterday evening, while M. Daubrecq was out. I
saw lights reflected upon the trees in the garden.”
“The portress’ bedroom?”
“The portress was up.”
“Then it was some of those detective-fellows; they are still
hunting. I’ll see you later, Victoire. You must let me in again.”
“What! You want to....”
“What do I risk? Your room is on the third floor. Daubrecq suspects
nothing.”
“But the others!”
“The others? If it was to their interest to play me a trick, they’d
have tried before now. I’m in their way, that’s all. They’re not
afraid of me. So till later, Victoire, at five o’clock exactly.”
One further surprise awaited Lupin. In the evening his old nurse
told him that, having opened the drawer of the bedside table from
curiosity, she had found the crystal stopper there again.
Lupin was no longer to be excited by these miraculous incidents. He
simply said to himself:
“So it’s been brought back. And the person who brought it back and
who enters this house by some unexplained means considered, as I
did, that the stopper ought not to disappear. And yet Daubrecq,
who knows that he is being spied upon to his very bedroom, has
once more left the stopper in a drawer, as though he attached no
importance to it at all! Now what is one to make of that?”
Though Lupin did not make anything of it, nevertheless he could
not escape certain arguments, certain associations of ideas that
gave him the same vague foretaste of light which one receives on
approaching the outlet of a tunnel.
“It is inevitable, as the case stands,” he thought, “that there
must soon be an encounter between myself and the others. From that
moment I shall be master of the situation.”
Five days passed, during which Lupin did not glean the slightest
particular. On the sixth day Daubrecq received a visit, in the
small hours, from a gentleman, Laybach the deputy, who, like his
colleagues, dragged himself at his feet in despair and, when all
was done, handed him twenty thousand francs.
Two more days; and then, one night, posted on the landing of the
second floor, Lupin heard the creaking of a door, the front-door,
as he perceived, which led from the hall into the garden. In the
darkness he distinguished, or rather divined, the presence of two
persons, who climbed the stairs and stopped on the first floor,
outside Daubrecq’s bedroom.
What were they doing there? It was not possible to enter the room,
because Daubrecq bolted his door every night. Then what were they
hoping?
Manifestly, a handiwork of some kind was being performed, as Lupin
discovered from the dull sounds of rubbing against the door. Then
words, uttered almost beneath a whisper, reached him:
“Is it all right?”
“Yes, quite, but, all the same, we’d better put it off till
to-morrow, because....”
Lupin did not hear the end of the sentence. The men were already
groping their way downstairs. The hall-door was closed, very
gently, and then the gate.
“It’s curious, say what one likes,” thought Lupin. “Here is a house
in which Daubrecq carefully conceals his rascalities and is on
his guard, not without good reason, against spies; and everybody
walks in and out as in a booth at a fair. Victoire lets me in,
the portress admits the emissaries of the police: that’s well and
good; but who is playing false in these people’s favour? Are we to
suppose that they are acting alone? But what fearlessness! And how
well they know their way about!”
In the afternoon, during Daubrecq’s absence, he examined the
door of the first-floor bedroom. And, at the first glance, he
understood: one of the lower panels had been skilfully cut out and
was only held in place by invisible tacks. The people, therefore,
who had done this work were the same who had acted at his two
places, in the Rue Matignon and the Rue Chateaubriand.
He also found that the work dated back to an earlier period and
that, as in his case, the opening had been prepared beforehand, in
anticipation of favourable circumstances or of some immediate need.
The day did not seem long to Lupin. Knowledge was at hand. Not only
would he discover the manner in which his adversaries employed
those little openings, which were apparently unemployable, since
they did not allow a person to reach the upper bolts, but he would
learn who the ingenious and energetic adversaries were with whom he
repeatedly and inevitably found himself confronted.
One incident annoyed him. In the evening Daubrecq, who had
complained of feeling tired at dinner, came home at ten o’clock
and, contrary to his usual custom, pushed the bolts of the
hall-door. In that case, how would the others be able to carry
out their plan and go to Daubrecq’s room? Lupin waited for an
hour after Daubrecq put out his light. Then he went down to the
deputy’s study, opened one of the windows ajar and returned to the
third floor and fixed his rope-ladder so that, in case of need, he
could reach the study without passing though the house. Lastly, he
resumed his post on the second-floor landing.
He did not have to wait long. An hour earlier than on the previous
night some one tried to open the hall-door. When the attempt
failed, a few minutes of absolute silence followed. And Lupin
was beginning to think that the men had abandoned the idea, when
he gave a sudden start. Some one had passed, without the least
sound to interrupt the silence. He would not have known it, so
utterly were the thing’s steps deadened by the stair-carpet, if the
baluster-rail, which he himself held in his hand, had not shaken
slightly. Some one was coming upstairs.
And, as the ascent continued, Lupin became aware of the uncanny
feeling that he heard nothing more than before. He knew, because of
the rail, that a thing was coming and he could count the number of
steps climbed by noting each vibration of the rail; but no other
indication gave him that dim sensation of presence which we feel in
distinguishing movements which we do not see, in perceiving sounds
which we do not hear. And yet a blacker darkness ought to have
taken shape within the darkness and something ought, at least, to
modify the quality of the silence. No, he might well have believed
that there was no one there.
And Lupin, in spite of himself and against the evidence of his
reason, ended by believing it, for the rail no longer moved and he
thought that he might have been the sport of an illusion.
And this lasted a long time. He hesitated, not knowing what to do,
not knowing what to suppose. But an odd circumstance impressed him.
A clock struck two. He recognized the chime of Daubrecq’s clock.
And the chime was that of a clock from which one is not separated
by the obstacle of a door.
Lupin slipped down the stairs and went to the door. It was closed,
but there was a space on the left, at the bottom, a space left by
the removal of the little panel.
He listened. Daubrecq, at that moment, turned in his bed; and his
breathing was resumed, evenly and a little stertorously. And Lupin
plainly heard the sound of rumpling garments. Beyond a doubt, the
thing was there, fumbling and feeling through the clothes which
Daubrecq had laid beside his bed.
“Now,” thought Lupin, “we shall learn something. But how the deuce
did the beggar get in? Has he managed to draw the bolts and open
the door? But, if so, why did he make the mistake of shutting it
again?”
Not for a second--a curious anomaly in a man like Lupin, an anomaly
to be explained only by the uncanny feeling which the whole
adventure produced in him--not for a second did he suspect the very
simple truth which was about to be revealed to him. Continuing his
way down, he crouched on one of the bottom steps of the staircase,
thus placing himself between the door of the bedroom and the
hall-door, on the road which Daubrecq’s enemy must inevitably take
in order to join his accomplices.
He questioned the darkness with an unspeakable anguish. He was on
the point of unmasking that enemy of Daubrecq’s, who was also his
own adversary. He would thwart his plans. And the booty captured
from Daubrecq he would capture in his turn, while Daubrecq slept
and while the accomplices lurking behind the hall-door or outside
the garden-gate vainly awaited their leader’s return.
And that return took place. Lupin knew it by the renewed vibration
of the balusters. And, once more, with every sense strained and
every nerve on edge, he strove to discern the mysterious thing
that was coming toward him. He suddenly realized it when only a
few yards away. He himself, hidden in a still darker recess, could
not be seen. And what he saw--in the very vaguest manner--was
approaching stair by stair, with infinite precautions, holding on
to each separate baluster.
“Whom the devil have I to do with?” said Lupin to himself, while
his heart thumped inside his chest.
The catastrophe was hastened. A careless movement on Lupin’s part
was observed by the stranger, who stopped short. Lupin was afraid
lest the other should turn back and take to flight. He sprang at
the adversary and was stupefied at encountering nothing but space
and knocking against the stair-rail without seizing the form which
he saw. But he at once rushed forward, crossed the best part of the
hall and caught up his antagonist just as he was reaching the door
opening on the garden.
There was a cry of fright, answered by other cries on the further
side of the door.
“Oh, hang it, what’s this?” muttered Lupin, whose arms had closed,
in the dark, round a little, tiny, trembling, whimpering thing.
Suddenly understanding, he stood for a moment motionless and
dismayed, at a loss what to do with his conquered prey. But the
others were shouting and stamping outside the door. Thereupon,
dreading lest Daubrecq should wake up, he slipped the little thing
under his jacket, against his chest, stopped the crying with his
handkerchief rolled into a ball and hurried up the three flights of
stairs.
[Illustration: “Here, I’ve brought you the indomitable chief of our
enemies. Have you a feeding bottle?”]
“Here,” he said to Victoire, who woke with a start. “I’ve brought
you the indomitable chief of our enemies, the Hercules of the gang.
Have you a feeding-bottle about you?”
He put down in the easy-chair a child of six or seven years of age,
the tiniest little fellow in a gray jersey and a knitted woollen
cap, whose pale and exquisitely pretty features were streaked with
the tears that streamed from the terrified eyes.
“Where did you pick that up?” asked Victoire, aghast.
“At the foot of the stairs, as it was coming out of Daubrecq’s
bedroom,” replied Lupin, feeling the jersey in the hope that the
child had brought a booty of some kind from that room.
Victoire was stirred to pity:
“Poor little dear! Look, he’s trying not to cry!... Oh, saints
above, his hands are like ice! Don’t be afraid, sonnie, we sha’n’t
hurt you: the gentleman’s all right.”
“Yes,” said Lupin, “the gentleman’s quite all right, but there’s
another very wicked gentleman who’ll wake up if they go on making
such a rumpus outside the hall-door. Do you hear them, Victoire?”
“Who is it?”
“The satellites of our young Hercules, the indomitable leader’s
gang.”
“Well...?” stammered Victoire, utterly unnerved.
“Well, as I don’t want to be caught in the trap, I shall start by
clearing out. Are you coming, Hercules?”
He rolled the child in a blanket, so that only its head remained
outside, gagged its mouth as gently as possible and made Victoire
fasten it to his shoulders:
“See, Hercules? We’re having a game. You never thought you’d find
gentlemen to play pick-a-back with you at three o’clock in the
morning! Come, whoosh, let’s fly away! You don’t get giddy, I hope?”
He stepped across the window-ledge and set foot on one of the rungs
of the ladder. He was in the garden in a minute.
He had never ceased hearing and now heard more plainly still the
blows that were being struck upon the front-door. He was astounded
that Daubrecq was not awakened by so violent a din:
“If I don’t put a stop to this, they’ll spoil everything,” he said
to himself.
He stood in an angle of the house, invisible in the darkness, and
measured the distance between himself and the gate. The gate was
open. To his right, he saw the steps, on the top of which the
people were flinging themselves about; to his left, the building
occupied by the portress.
The woman had come out of her lodge and was standing near the
people, entreating them:
“Oh, do be quiet, do be quiet! He’ll come!”
“Capital!” said Lupin. “The good woman is an accomplice of these as
well. By Jingo, what a pluralist!”
He rushed across to her and, taking her by the scruff of the neck,
hissed:
“Go and tell them I’ve got the child.... They can come and fetch it
at my place, Rue Chateaubriand.”
A little way off, in the avenue, stood a taxi which Lupin presumed
to be engaged by the gang. Speaking authoritatively, as though he
were one of the accomplices, he stepped into the cab and told the
man to drive him home.
“Well,” he said to the child, “that wasn’t much of a shake-up, was
it?... What do you say to going to bye-bye on the gentleman’s bed?”
As his servant, Achille, was asleep, Lupin made the little chap
comfortable and stroked his hair for him. The child seemed numbed.
His poor face was as though petrified into a stiff expression made
up, at one and the same time, of fear and the wish not to show
fear, of the longing to scream and a pitiful effort not to scream.
“Cry, my pet, cry,” said Lupin. “It’ll do you good to cry.”
The child did not cry, but the voice was so gentle and so kind that
he relaxed his tense muscles; and, now that his eyes were calmer
and his mouth less contorted, Lupin, who was examining him closely,
found something that he recognized, an undoubted resemblance.
This again confirmed certain facts which he suspected and which he
had for some time been linking in his mind. Indeed, unless he was
mistaken, the position was becoming very different and he would
soon assume the direction of events. After that....
A ring at the bell followed, at once, by two others, sharp ones.
“Hullo!” said Lupin to the child. “Here’s mummy come to fetch you.
Don’t move.”
He ran and opened the door.
A woman entered, wildly:
“My son!” she screamed. “My son! Where is he?”
“In my room,” said Lupin.
Without asking more, thus proving that she knew the way, she rushed
to the bedroom.
“As I thought,” muttered Lupin. “The youngish woman with the gray
hair: Daubrecq’s friend and enemy.”
He walked to the window and looked through the curtains. Two men
were striding up and down the opposite pavement: the Growler and
the Masher.
“And they’re not even hiding themselves,” he said to himself.
“That’s a good sign. They consider that they can’t do without me
any longer and that they’ve got to obey the governor. There remains
the pretty lady with the gray hair. That will be more difficult.
It’s you and I now, mummy.”
He found the mother and the boy clasped in each other’s arms; and
the mother, in a great state of alarm, her eyes moist with tears,
was saying:
“You’re not hurt? You’re sure? Oh, how frightened you must have
been, my poor little Jacques!”
“A fine little fellow,” said Lupin.
She did not reply. She was feeling the child’s jersey, as Lupin had
done, no doubt to see if he had succeeded in his nocturnal mission;
and she questioned him in a whisper.
“No, mummy,” said the child. “No, really.”
She kissed him fondly and petted him, until, in a little while,
the child, worn out with fatigue and excitement, fell asleep. She
remained leaning over him for a long time. She herself seemed very
much worn out and in need of rest.
Lupin did not disturb her contemplation. He looked at her
anxiously, with an attention which she did not perceive, and he
noticed the wider rings round her eyes and the deeper marks of
wrinkles. Yet he considered her handsomer than he had thought, with
that touching beauty which habitual suffering gives to certain
faces that are more human, more sensitive than others.
She wore so sad an expression that, in a burst of instinctive
sympathy, he went up to her and said: “I do not know what your
plans are, but, whatever they may be, you stand in need of help.
You cannot succeed alone.”
“I am not alone.”
“The two men outside? I know them. They’re no good. I beseech you,
make use of me. You remember the other evening, at the theatre, in
the private box? You were on the point of speaking. Do not hesitate
to-day.”
She turned her eyes on him, looked at him long and fixedly and, as
though unable to escape that opposing will, she said:
“What do you know exactly? What do you know about me?”
“There are many things that I do not know. I do not know your name.
But I know....”
She interrupted him with a gesture; and, resolutely, in her turn,
dominating the man who was compelling her to speak:
“It doesn’t matter,” she exclaimed. “What you know, after all,
is not much and is of no importance. But what are your plans?
You offer me your help: with what view? For what work? You have
flung yourself headlong into this business; I have been unable to
undertake anything without meeting you on my path: you must be
contemplating some aim.... What aim?”
“What aim? Upon my word, it seems to me that my conduct....”
“No, no,” she said, emphatically, “no phrases! What you and I want
is certainties; and, to achieve them, absolute frankness. I will
set you the example. M. Daubrecq possesses a thing of unparalleled
value, not in itself, but for what it represents. That thing you
know. You have twice held it in your hands. I have twice taken
it from you. Well, I am entitled to believe that, when you tried
to obtain possession of it, you meant to use the power which you
attribute to it and to use it to your own advantage....”
“What makes you say that?”
“Yes, you meant to use it to forward your schemes, in the interest
of your own affairs, in accordance with your habits as a....”
“As a burglar and a swindler,” said Lupin, completing the sentence
for her.
She did not protest. He tried to read her secret thoughts in the
depths of her eyes. What did she want with him? What was she afraid
of? If she mistrusted him, had he not also reasons to mistrust
that woman who had twice taken the crystal stopper from him to
restore it to Daubrecq? Mortal enemy of Daubrecq’s though she were,
up to what point did she remain subject to that man’s will? By
surrendering himself to her, did he not risk surrendering himself
to Daubrecq? And yet he had never looked upon graver eyes nor a
more honest face.
Without further hesitation, he stated:
“My object is simple enough. It is the release of my friends
Gilbert and Vaucheray.”
“Is that true? Is that true?” she exclaimed, quivering all over and
questioning him with an anxious glance.
“If you knew me....”
“I do know you.... I know who you are. For months, I have taken
part in your life, without your suspecting it . . . and yet, for
certain reasons, I still doubt....”
He said, in a more decisive tone:
“You do not know me. If you knew me, you would know that there can
be no peace for me before my two companions have escaped the awful
fate that awaits them.”
She rushed at him, took him by the shoulders and positively
distraught, said:
“What? What did you say? The awful fate?... Then you believe . . .
you believe....”
“I really believe,” said Lupin, who felt how greatly this threat
upset her, “I really believe that, if I am not in time, Gilbert and
Vaucheray are done for.”
[Illustration: “Be quiet!... Be quiet!” she cried, clutching him
fiercely. “You mustn’t say that.”]
“Be quiet!... Be quiet!” she cried, clutching him fiercely. “Be
quiet!... You mustn’t say that.... There is no reason.... It’s just
you who suppose....”
“It’s not only I, it’s Gilbert as well....”
“What? Gilbert? How do you know?”
“From himself?”
“From him?”
“Yes, from Gilbert, who has no hope left but in me; from Gilbert,
who knows that only one man in the world can save him and who, a
few days ago, sent me a despairing appeal from prison. Here is his
letter.”
She snatched the paper greedily and read in stammering accents:
“Help, governor!... I am frightened!... I am frightened!...”
She dropped the letter. Her hands fluttered in space. It was as
though her staring eyes beheld the sinister vision which had
already so often terrified Lupin. She gave a scream of horror,
tried to rise and fainted.