"THE SNARE IS LAID. BEWARE, LUPIN!"
The power that had impelled Don Luis to battle and victory was so intense
that it suffered, so to speak, no cheek. Disappointment, rage,
humiliation, torture, were all swallowed up in an immediate desire for
action and information, together with a longing to continue the chase.
The rest was but an incident of no importance, which would soon be very
simply explained.
The petrified taxi-driver was gazing wildly at the peasants coming from
the distant farms, attracted by the sound of the aeroplane. Don Luis took
him by the throat and put the barrel of his revolver to the man's temple:
"Tell me what you know--or you're a dead man."
And when the unhappy wretch began to stammer out entreaties:
"It's no use moaning, no use hoping for assistance.... Those people won't
get here in time. So there's only one way of saving yourself: speak! Last
night a gentleman came to Versailles from Paris in a taxi, left it and
took yours: is that it?"
"Yes."
"The gentleman had a lady with him?"
"Yes."
"And he engaged you to take him to Nantes?"
"Yes."
"But he changed his mind on the way and told you to put him down?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"Before we got to Mans, in a little road on the right, with a sort of
coach-house, looking like a shed, a hundred yards down it. They both got
out there."
"And you went on?"
"He paid me to."
"How much?"
"Five hundred francs. And there was another fare waiting at Nantes that I
was to pick up and bring back to Paris for a thousand francs more."
"Do you believe in that other fare?"
"No. I think he wanted to put people off the scent by sending them after
me to Nantes while he branched off. Still, I had my money."
"And, when you left them, weren't you curious to see what happened?"
"No."
"Take care! A movement of my finger and I blow out your brains. Speak!"
"Well, yes, then. I went back on foot, behind a bank covered with trees.
The man had opened the coach-house and was starting a small limousine
car. The lady did not want to get in. They argued pretty fiercely. He
threatened and begged by turns. But I could not hear what they said. She
seemed very tired. He gave her a glass of water, which he drew from a tap
in the wall. Then she consented. He closed the door on her and took his
seat at the wheel."
"A glass of water!" cried Don Luis. "Are you sure he put nothing else
into the glass?"
The driver seemed surprised at the question and then answered:
"Yes, I think he did. He took something from his pocket."
"Without the lady's knowledge?"
"Yes, she didn't see."
Don Luis mastered his horror. After all it was impossible that the
villain had poisoned Florence in that way, at that place, without
anything to warrant so great a hurry. No, it was more likely that he had
employed a narcotic, a drug of some sort which would dull Florence's
brain and make her incapable of noticing by what new roads and through
what towns he was taking her.
"And then," he repeated, "she decided to step in?"
"Yes; and he shut the door and got into the driver's seat. I went
away then."
"Before knowing which direction they took?"
"Yes."
"Did you suspect on the way that they thought that they were being
followed?"
"Certainly. He did nothing but put his head out of the window."
"Did the lady cry out at all?"
"No."
"Would you know him again if you saw him?"
"No, I'm sure I shouldn't. At Versailles it was dark. And this morning I
was too far away. Besides, it's curious, but the first time he struck me
as very tall, and this morning, on the contrary, he looked quite a short
man, as though bent in two. I can't understand it at all."
Don Luis reflected. It seemed to him that he had asked all the necessary
questions. Moreover, a gig drawn by a quick-trotting horse was
approaching the crossroads. There were two others behind it. And the
groups of peasants were now quite near. He must finish the business.
He said to the chauffeur:
"I can see by your face that you intend to talk about me. Don't do that,
my man: it would be foolish of you. Here's a thousand-franc note for
you. Only, if you blab, I'll make you repent it. That's all I have to
say to you."
He turned to Davanne, whose machine was beginning to block the traffic,
and asked:
"Can we start?"
"Whenever you like. Where are we going?"
Paying no attention to the movements of the people coming from every
side, Don Luis unfolded his map of France and spread it out before him.
He experienced a few seconds of anxiety at seeing the complicated tangle
of roads and picturing the infinite number of places to which the villain
might carry Florence. But he pulled himself together. He did not allow
himself to hesitate. He refused even to reflect.
He was determined to find out, and to find out everything, at once,
without clues, without useless consideration, simply by the marvellous
intuition which invariably guided him at any crisis in his life.
And his self-respect also required that he should give Davanne his answer
without delay, and that the disappearance of those whom he was pursuing
should not seem to embarrass him. With his eyes glued to the map, he
placed one finger on Paris and another on Le Mans and, even before he had
asked himself why the scoundrel had chosen that Paris-Le Mans-Angers
route, he knew the answer to the question.
The name of a town had struck him and made the truth appear like a flash
of lightning: Alençon! Then and there, by the light of his memory, he
penetrated the mystery.
He repeated:
"Where are we going? Back again, bearing to the left."
"Any particular place?"
"Alençon."
"All right," said Davanne. "Lend a hand, some of you. I can make an easy
start from that field just there."
Don Luis and a few others helped him, and the preparations were soon
made. Davanne tested his engine. Everything was in perfect order.
At that moment a powerful racing car, with a siren yelling like a vicious
animal, came tearing along the Angers Road and promptly stopped. Three
men got out and rushed up to the driver of the yellow taxicab. Don Luis
recognized them. They were Weber, the deputy chief, and the men who had
taken him to the lockup the night before, sent by the Prefect of Police
to follow up the scoundrel's tracks.
They had a brief interchange of words with the cab-driver, which seemed
to put them out; and they kept on gesticulating and plying him with fresh
questions while looking at their watches and consulting their road maps.
Don Luis went up to them. He was unrecognizable, with his head wrapped
in his aviation cap and his face concealed by his goggles. Changing
his voice:
"The birds have flown, Mr. Deputy Chief," he said.
Weber looked at him in utter amazement,
Don Luis grinned.
"Yes, flown. Our friend from the Ile Saint Louis is an artful dodger,
you know. My lord's in his third motor. After the yellow car of which
you heard at Versailles last night, he took another at Le
Mans--destination unknown."
The deputy chief opened his eyes in amazement. Who was this person who
was mentioning facts that had been telephoned to police headquarters only
at two o'clock that morning? He gasped:
"But who are you, Monsieur?"
"What? Don't you know me? What's the good of making appointments with
people? You strain every nerve to be punctual, and then they ask you who
you are! Come, Weber, confess that you're doing it to annoy me. Must you
gaze on my features in broad daylight? Here goes!"
He raised his mask.
"Arsène Lupin!" spluttered the detective.
"At your service, young fellow: on foot, in the saddle, and in mid air.
That's where I'm going now. Good-bye."
And so great was Weber's astonishment at seeing Arsène Lupin, whom he had
taken to the lockup twelve hours before, standing in front of him, free,
at two hundred and forty miles from Paris, that Don Luis, as he went back
to Davanne, thought:
"What a crusher! I've knocked him out in one round. There's no hurry. The
referee will count ten at least three times before Weber can say
'Mother!'"
* * * * *
Davanne was ready. Don Luis climbed into the monoplane. The peasants
pushed at the wheels. The machine started.
"North-northeast," Don Luis ordered. "Ninety miles an hour. Ten
thousand francs."
"We've the wind against us," said Davanne.
"Five thousand francs extra for the wind," shouted Don Luis.
He admitted no obstacle in his haste to reach Damigni. He now understood
the whole thing and, harking back to the very beginning, he was surprised
that his mind had never perceived the connection between the two
skeletons hanging in the barn and the series of crimes resulting from the
Mornington inheritance. Stranger still, how was it that the almost
certain murder of Langernault, Hippolyte Fauville's old friend, had not
afforded him all the clues which it contained? The crux of the sinister
plot lay in that.
Who could have intercepted, on Fauville's behalf, the letters of
accusation which Fauville was supposed to write to his old friend
Langernault, except some one in the village or some one who had lived in
the village?
And now everything was clear. It was the nameless scoundrel who had
started his career of crime by killing old Langernault and then the
Dedessuslamare couple. The method was the same as later on: it was not
direct murder, but anonymous murder, murder by suggestion. Like
Mornington the American, like Fauville the engineer, like Marie, like
Gaston Sauverand, old Langernault had been craftily done away with and
the Dedessuslamare couple driven to commit suicide in the barn.
It was from there that the tiger had come to Paris, where later he was to
find Fauville and Cosmo Mornington and plot the tragic affair of the
inheritance.
And it was there that he was now returning!
There was no doubt about that. To begin with, the fact that he had
administered a narcotic to Florence constituted an indisputable proof.
Was he not obliged to put Florence to sleep in order to prevent her from
recognizing the landscape at Alençon and Damigni, or the Old Castle,
which she had explored with Gaston Sauverand?
On the other hand, the Le Mans-Angers-Nantes route, which had been taken
to put the police on a false track, meant only an extra hour or two, at
most, for any one motoring to Alençon. Lastly, that coach-house near a
big town, that limousine waiting, ready charged with petrol, showed that
the villain, when he intended to visit his retreat, took the precaution
of stopping at Le Mans, in order to go from there, in his limousine, to
Langernault's deserted estate.
He would therefore reach his lair at ten o'clock that morning. And he
would arrive there with Florence Levasseur dead asleep!
The question forced itself upon him, the terrible persistent
question--what did he mean to do with Florence Levasseur?
"Faster! Faster!" cried Don Luis.
Now that he knew the scoundrel's haunt, the man's scheme became
hideously evident to him. Feeling himself hunted down, lost, an object
of hatred and terror to Florence, whose eyes were now opened to the true
state of things, what plan could he have in mind except his invariable
plan of murder?
"Faster!" cried Don Luis. "We're making no headway. Go faster,
can't you?"
Florence murdered! Perhaps the crime was not yet accomplished. No, it
could not be! Killing takes time. It is preceded by words, by the offer
of a bargain, by threats, by entreaties, by a wholly unspeakable scene.
But the thing was being prepared, Florence was going to die!
Florence was going to die by the hand of the brute who loved her. For he
loved her: Don Luis had an intuition of that monstrous love; and he was
bound to believe that such a love could only end in torture and
bloodshed.
Sablé ... Sillé-le-Guillaume....
The earth sped beneath them. The trees and houses glided by like shadows.
And then Alençon.
It was hardly more than a quarter to two when they landed in a meadow
between the town and Damigni. Don Luis made inquiries. A number of motor
cars had passed along the road to Damigni, including a small limousine
driven by a gentleman who had turned down a crossroad. And this crossroad
led to the woods at the back of Langernault's estate, the Old Castle.
Don Luis's conviction was so firm that, after taking leave of Davanne, he
helped him to start on his homeward flight. He had no further need of
him. He needed nobody. The final duel was at hand.
He ran along, guided by the tracks of the tires in the dust, and followed
the crossroad. To his great surprise this road went nowhere near the wall
behind the barn from which he had jumped a few weeks before. After
clearing the woods, Don Luis came out into a large untilled space where
the road turned back toward the estate and ended at an old two-winged
gate protected with iron sheets and bars.
The limousine had gone in that way.
"And I must get in this way, too," thought Don Luis. "I must get in at
all costs and immediately, without wasting time in looking for an opening
or a handy tree."
Now the wall was thirteen feet high at this spot. Don Luis got in. How he
managed it, by what superhuman effort, he himself could not have said
after he had done it.
Somehow or other, by hanging on to invisible projections, by digging a
knife which he had borrowed from Davanne into the interstices between the
stones, he managed it.
And when he was on the other side he discovered the tracks of the tires
running to the left, toward a part of the grounds which he did not know,
more undulating than the other and broken up with little hills and ruined
buildings covered with thick curtains of ivy.
Deserted though the rest of the park was, this portion seemed much more
uncivilized, in spite of the ragged remains of box and laurel hedges
that stood here and there amidst the nettles and brambles, and the
luxuriant swarm of tall wild-flowers, valerian, mullein, hemlock,
foxglove, and angelica.
Suddenly, on turning the corner of an old hedge of clipped yews, Don Luis
saw the limousine, which had been left, or, rather, hidden there in a
hollow. The door was open. The disorder of the inside of the car, the rug
hanging over the footboard, a broken window, a cushion on the floor, all
bore witness to a struggle. The scoundrel had no doubt taken advantage of
the fact that Florence was asleep to tie her up; and on arriving, when he
tried to take her out of the car, Florence must have clutched at
everything that offered.
Don Luis at once verified the correctness of his theory. As he went along
the very narrow, grass-grown path that led up the slope, he saw that the
grass was uniformly pressed down.
"Oh, the villain!" he thought. "The villain! He doesn't carry his victim,
he drags her!"
If he had listened only to his instinct, he would have rushed to
Florence's rescue. But his profound sense of what to do and what to avoid
saved him from committing any such imprudence. At the first alarm, at the
least sound, the tiger would have throttled his prey. To escape this
hideous catastrophe, Don Luis must take him by surprise and then and
there deprive him of his power of action. He controlled himself,
therefore, and slowly and cautiously mounted the incline.
The path ran upward between heaps of stones and fallen buildings, and
among clumps of shrubs overtopped by beeches and oaks. The place was
evidently the site of the old feudal castle which had given the estate
its name; and it was here, near the top, that the scoundrel had selected
one of his retreats.
The trail continued over the trampled herbage. And Don Luis even caught
sight of something shining on the ground, in a tuft of grass. It was a
ring, a tiny and very simple ring, consisting of a gold circlet and two
small pearls, which he had often noticed on Florence's finger. And the
fact that caught his attention was that a blade of grass passed and
repassed and passed a third time through the inside of the ring, like a
ribbon that had been rolled round it deliberately.
"It's a clear signal," said Perenna to himself. "The villain probably
stopped here to rest; and Florence, bound up; but with her fingers free,
was able to leave this evidence of her passage."
So the girl still hoped. She expected assistance. And Don Luis reflected
with emotion that it was perhaps to him that this last desperate appeal
was addressed.
Fifty steps farther--and this detail pointed to the rather curious
fatigue experienced by the scoundrel--there was a second halt and a
second clue, a flower, a field-sage, which the poor little hand had
picked and plucked of its petals. Next came the print of the five fingers
dug into the ground, and next a cross drawn with a pebble. And in this
way he was able to follow, minute by minute, all the successive stages of
the horrible journey.
The last stopping-place was near. The climb became steeper and rougher.
The fallen stones occasioned more frequent obstacles. On the right the
Gothic arches, the remains of a chapel, stood out against the blue sky.
On the left was a strip of wall with a mantelpiece still clinging to it.
Twenty steps farther Don Luis stopped. He seemed to hear something.
He listened. He was not mistaken. The sound was repeated, and it was the
sound of laughter. But such an awful laugh! A strident laugh, evil as the
laughter of a devil, and so shrill! It was more like the laugh of a
woman, of a madwoman.
Again silence. Then another noise, the noise of an implement striking the
ground, then silence again.
And this was happening at a distance which Don Luis estimated at a
hundred yards.
The path ended in three steps cut in the earth. At the top was a fairly
large plateau, also encumbered with rubbish and ruins. In the centre,
opposite Don Luis, stood a screen of immense laurels planted in a
semicircle. The marks of trodden grass led up to it.
Don Luis was a little surprised, for the screen presented an impenetrable
outline. He walked on and found that there had once been a cutting, and
that the branches had ended by meeting again. They were easy to push
aside; and it was through here that the scoundrel must have passed. To
all appearances he was there now, at the end of his journey, not far
away, occupied in some sinister task.
Indeed the air was rent by a chuckle, so close by that Don Luis gave a
start and felt as if the scoundrel were laughing beforehand at his
intervention. He remembered the letter with the words written in red ink:
There's still time, Lupin. Retire from the contest. If not, it means your
death, too. When you think that your object is attained, when your hand
is raised against me and you utter words of triumph, at the same moment
the ground will open beneath your feet. The place of your death is
chosen. The snare is laid. Beware, Lupin!
The whole letter passed through his brain, with its formidable threat.
And he felt a shiver of fear. But no fear could stay the man that he was.
He had already taken hold of the branches with his hands and was clearing
a way for himself.
He stopped. A last bulwark of leaves hid him from sight. He pulled some
of them aside at the level of his eyes.
And he saw ...
First of all, he saw Florence, alone at this moment, lying on the
ground, bound, at thirty yards in front of him; and he at once
perceived, to his intense delight, from certain movements of her head
that she was still alive. He had come in time. Florence was not dead.
She would not die. That was a certainty against which nothing could
prevail. Florence would not die.
Then he examined the things around. To the right and left of where he
stood the screen of laurels curved and embraced a sort of arena in which,
among yews that had once been clipped into cones, lay capitals, columns,
broken pieces of arches and vaults, obviously placed there to adorn the
formal garden that had been laid out on the ruins of the ancient
donjon-keep.
In the middle was a small circular space reached by two narrow paths, one
of which presented the same traces of trodden grass and was a
continuation of that by which Don Luis had come, while the other
intersected the first at right angles and joined the two ends of the
screen of shrubs.
Opposite was a confused heap of broken stones and natural rocks, cemented
with clay, bound together by the roots of gnarled trees, the whole
forming at the back of the picture a small, shallow grotto, full of
crevices that admitted the light. The floor, which Don Luis could easily
distinguish, consisted of three or four flagstones.
Florence Levasseur lay inside this grotto, bound hand and foot, looking
like the victim of some mysterious sacrifice about to be performed on the
altar of the grotto, in the amphitheatre of this old garden closed by the
wall of tall laurels and overlooked by a pile of ancestral ruins.
In spite of the distance, Don Luis was able to make out every detail of
her pale face. Though convulsed with anguish, it still retained a certain
serenity, an expression of waiting and even of expectancy, as if
Florence, believing, until the last moment, in the possibility of a
miracle, had not yet relinquished all hope of life.
Nevertheless, though she was not gagged, she did not call for help.
Perhaps she thought that it was useless, and that the road which she had
strewn with the marks of her passing was more likely to bring assistance
to her side than cries, which the villain would soon have stifled.
Strange to say, it seemed to Don Luis as if the girl's eyes were
obstinately fixed on the very spot where he was hiding. Possibly she
suspected his presence. Possibly she foresaw his help.
Suddenly Don Luis clutched one of his revolvers and half raised his arm,
ready to take aim. The sacrificer, the butcher, had just appeared, not
far from the altar on which the victim lay.
He came from between two rocks, of which a bush marked the intervening
space, which apparently afforded but a very low outlet, for he still
walked as though bent double, with his head bowed and his long arms
swinging so low as to touch the ground.
He went to the grotto and gave his horrible chuckle:
"You're still there, I see," he said. "No sign of the rescuer? Perseus is
a little late, I fear. He'd better hurry!"
The tone of his voice was so shrill that Don Luis heard every word, and
so odd, so unhuman, that it gave him a feeling of physical discomfort.
He gripped his revolver tightly, prepared to shoot at the first
suspicious movement.
"He'd better hurry!" repeated the scoundrel, with a laugh. "If not, all
will be over in five minutes. You see that I'm a man of method, eh,
Florence, my darling?"
He picked up something from the ground. It was a stick shaped like a
crutch. He put it under his left arm and, still bent in two, began to
walk like a man who has not the strength to stand erect. Then suddenly
and with no apparent cause to explain his change of attitude, he drew
himself up and used his crutch as he would a cane. He then walked round
the outside of the grotto, making a careful inspection, the meaning of
which escaped Don Luis for the time.
He was of a good height in this position; and Don Luis easily
understood why the driver of the yellow taxi, who had seen him under
two such different aspects, was unable to say whether he was very tall
or very short.
But his legs, slack and unsteady, gave way beneath him, as if any
prolonged exertion were beyond his power. He relapsed into his
first attitude.
The man was a cripple, smitten with some disease that affected his powers
of locomotion. He was excessively thin. Don Luis also saw his pallid
face, his cavernous cheeks, his hollow temples, his skin the colour of
parchment: the face of a sufferer from consumption, a bloodless face.
When he had finished his inspection, he came up to Florence and said:
"Though you've been very good, baby, and haven't screamed so far, we'd
better take our precautions and remove any possibility of a surprise by
giving you a nice little gag to wear, don't you think?"
He stooped over her and wound a large handkerchief round the lower part
of her face. Then, bending still farther down, he began to speak to her
in a very low voice, talking almost into her ear. But wild bursts of
laughter, horrible to hear, interrupted this whispering.
Feeling the imminence of the danger, dreading some movement on the
wretch's part, a sudden murderous attack, the prompt prick of a poisoned
needle, Don Luis had levelled his revolver and, confident of his skill,
waited events.
What was happening over there? What were the words spoken? What infamous
bargain was the villain proposing to Florence? At what shameful price
could she obtain her release?
The cripple stepped back angrily, shouting in furious accents:
"But don't you understand that you are done for? Now that I have nothing
more to fear, now that you have been silly enough to come with me and
place yourself in my power, what hope have you left? To move me, perhaps:
is that it? Because I'm burning with passion, you imagine--? Oh, you
never made a greater mistake, my pet! I don't care a fig if you do die.
Once dead, you cease to count....
"What else? Perhaps you consider that, being crippled, I shall not have
the strength to kill you? But there's no question of my killing you,
Florence. Have you ever known me kill people? Never! I'm much too big a
coward, I should be frightened, I should shake all over. No, no,
Florence, I shan't touch you, and yet--
"Here, look what's going to happen, see for yourself. I tell you the
thing's managed in my own style.... And, whatever you do, don't be
afraid. It's only a preliminary warning."
He had moved away and, helping himself with his hands, holding on to the
branches of a tree, he climbed up the first layers of rock that formed
the grotto on the right. Here he knelt down. There was a small pickaxe
lying beside him. He took it and gave three blows to the nearest heap of
stones. They came tumbling down in front of the grotto.
Don Luis sprang from his hiding-place with a roar of terror. He had
suddenly realized the position: The grotto, the accumulation of boulders,
the piles of granite, everything was so placed that its equilibrium could
be shattered at any moment, and that Florence ran the risk of being
buried under the rubbish. It was not a question, therefore, of slaying
the villain, but of saving Florence on the spot.
He was halfway across in two or three seconds. But here, in one of those
mental flashes which are even quicker than the maddest rush, he became
aware that the tracks of trampled grass did not cross the central circus
and that the scoundrel had gone round it. Why? That was one of the
questions which instinct, ever suspicious, puts, but which reason has not
the time to answer. Don Luis went straight ahead. And he had no sooner
set foot on the place than the catastrophe occurred.
It all happened with incredible suddenness, as though he had tried to
walk on space and found himself hurled into it. The ground gave way
beneath him. The clods of grass separated, and he fell.
He fell down a hole which was none other than the mouth of a well four
feet wide at most, the curb of which had been cut down level with the
ground. Only this was what took place: as he was running very fast, his
impetus flung him against the opposite wall in such a way that his
forearms lay on the outer ledge and his hands were able to clutch at the
roots of plants.
So great was his strength that he might just have been able to drag
himself up by his wrists. But responding to the attack, the scoundrel had
at once hurried to meet his assailant and was now standing at ten paces
from Don Luis, threatening him with his revolver:
"Don't move!" he cried, "or I'll smash you!"
Don Luis was thus reduced to helplessness, at the risk of receiving the
enemy's fire.
Their eyes met for a few seconds. The cripple's were burning with fever,
like the eyes of a sick man.
Crawling along, watching Don Luis's slightest movement, he came and
squatted beside the well. The revolver was levelled in his outstretched
hand. And his infernal chuckle rang out again:
"Lupin! Lupin! That's done it! Lupin's dive!... What a mug you must be! I
warned you, you know, warned you in blood-red ink. Remember my words:
'The place of your death is chosen. The snare is laid. Beware, Lupin!'
And here you are! So you're not in prison? You warded off that stroke,
you rogue, you! Fortunately, I foresaw events and took my precautions.
What do you say to it? What do you think of my little scheme? I said to
myself, 'All the police will come rushing at my heels. But there's only
one who's capable of catching me, and that's Lupin. So we'll show him the
way, we'll lead him on the leash all along a little path scraped clean by
the victim's body.'
"And then a few landmarks, scattered here and there. First, the fair
damsel's ring, with a blade of grass twisted round it; farther on a
flower without its petals; farther on the marks of five fingers in the
ground; next, the sign of the cross.' No mistaking them, was there? Once
you thought me fool enough to give Florence time to play
Hop-o'-my-Thumb's game, it was bound to lead you straight to the mouth of
the well, to the clods of turf which I dabbed across it, last month, in
anticipation of this windfall.
"Remember: 'The snare is laid.' And a snare after my own style, Lupin;
one of the best! Oh, I love getting rid of people with their kind
assistance. We work together like friends and partners. You've caught the
notion, haven't you?
"I don't do my own job. The others do it for me, hanging themselves or
giving themselves careless injections--unless they prefer the mouth of a
well, as you seem to do, Lupin. My poor old chap, what a sticky mess
you're in! I never saw such a face, never, on my word! Florence, do look
at the expression on your swain's mobile features!"
He broke off, seized with a fit of laughter that shook his outstretched
arm, imparted the most savage look to his face, and set his legs jerking
under his body like the legs of a dancing doll. His enemy was growing
weaker before his eyes. Don Luis's fingers, which had first gripped the
roots of the grass, were now vainly clutching the stones of the wall. And
his shoulders were sinking lower and lower into the well.
"We've done it!" spluttered the villain, in the midst of his convulsions
of merriment. "Lord, how good it is to laugh! Especially when one so
seldom does. Yes, I'm a wet blanket, I am; a first-rate man at a funeral!
You've never seen me laugh, Florence, have you? But this time it's really
too amusing. Lupin in his hole and Florence in her grotto; one dancing a
jig above the abyss and the other at her last gasp under her mountain.
What a sight!
"Come, Lupin, don't tire yourself! What's the use of those grimaces?
You're not afraid of eternity, are you? A good man like you, the Don
Quixote of modern times! Come, let yourself go. There's not even any
water in the well to splash about in. No, it's just a nice little slide
into infinity. You can't so much as hear the sound of a pebble when you
drop it in; and just now I threw a piece of lighted paper down and lost
sight of it in the dark. Brrrr! It sent a cold shiver down my back!
"Come, be a man. It'll only take a moment; and you've been through worse
than that! ... Good, you nearly did it then. You're making up your mind
to it.... I say, Lupin! ... Lupin! ... Aren't you going to say good-bye?
Not a smile, not a word of thanks? Au revoir, Lupin, an revoir--"
He ceased. He watched for the appalling end which he had so cleverly
prepared and of which all the incidents were following close on one
another in accordance with his inflexible will.
It did not take long. The shoulders had gone down; the chin; and then the
mouth convulsed with the death-grin; and then the eyes, drunk with
terror; and then the forehead and the hair: the whole head, in short, had
disappeared.
The cripple sat gazing wildly, as though in ecstasy, motionless, with an
expression of fierce delight, and without a word that could trouble the
silence and interrupt his hatred.
At the edge of the abyss nothing remained but the hands, the obstinate,
stubborn, desperate, heroic hands, the poor, helpless hands which alone
still lived, and which, gradually, retreating toward death, yielded and
fell back and let go.
The hands had slipped. For a moment the fingers held on like claws. So
natural was the effort which they made that it looked as if they did not
even yet despair, unaided, of resuscitating and bringing back to the
light of day the corpse already entombed in the darkness. And then they
in their turn gave way. And then--and then, suddenly, there was nothing
more to be seen and nothing more to be heard.
The cripple started to his feet, as though released by a spring, and
yelled with delight:
"Oof! That's done it! Lupin in the bottomless pit! One more adventure
finished! Oof!"
Turning in Florence's direction, he once more danced his dance of death.
He raised himself to his full height and then suddenly crouched down
again, throwing about his legs like the grotesque, ragged limbs of a
scarecrow. And he sang and whistled and belched forth insults and hideous
blasphemies.
Then he came back to the yawning mouth of the well and, standing some way
off, as if still afraid to come nearer, he spat into it three times.
Nor was this enough for his hatred. There were some broken pieces of
statuary on the ground. He took a carved head, rolled it along the grass,
and sent it crashing down the well. A little farther away was a stack of
old, rusty cannon balls. These also he rolled to the edge and pushed in.
Five, ten, fifteen cannon balls went scooting down, one after the other,
banging against the walls with a loud and sinister noise which the echo
swelled into the angry roar of distant thunder.
"There, take that, Lupin! I'm sick of you, you dirty cad!
That's for the spokes you put in my wheel, over that damned
inheritance! ... Here, take this, too!... And this!... And
this!... Here's a chocolate for you in case you're hungry.... Do you
want another? Here you are, old chap! catch!"
He staggered, seized with a sort of giddiness, and had to squat on his
haunches. He was utterly spent. However, obeying a last convulsion, he
still found the strength to kneel down by the well, and leaning over the
darkness, he stammered, breathlessly:
"Hi! I say! Corpse! Don't go knocking at the gate of hell at once!... The
little girl's joining you in twenty minutes.... Yes, that's it, at four
o'clock.... You know I'm a punctual man and keep my appointments to the
minute.... She'll be with you at four o'clock exactly.
"By the way, I was almost forgetting: the inheritance--you know,
Mornington's hundred millions--well, that's mine. Why, of course! You
can't doubt that I took all my precautions! Florence will explain
everything presently.... It's very well thought out--you'll
see--you'll see--"
He could not get out another word. The last syllables sounded more
like hiccoughs. The sweat poured from his hair and his forehead, and
he sank to the ground, moaning like a dying man tortured by the last
throes of death.
He remained like that for some minutes, with his head in his hands,
shivering all over his body. He appeared to be suffering everywhere, in
each anguished muscle, in each sick nerve. Then, under the influence of a
thought that seemed to make him act unconsciously, one of his hands crept
spasmodically down his side, and, groping, uttering hoarse cries of pain,
he managed to take from his pocket and put to his lips a phial out of
which he greedily drank two or three mouthfuls.
He at once revived, as though he had swallowed warmth and strength. His
eyes grew calmer, his mouth shaped itself into a horrible smile. He
turned to Florence and said:
"Don't flatter yourself, pretty one; I'm not gone yet, and I've plenty of
time to attend to you. And then, after that, there'll be no more worries,
no more of that scheming and fighting that wears one out. A nice, quiet,
uneventful life for me! ... With a hundred millions one can afford to
take life easy, eh, little girl? ... Come on, I'm feeling much better!"