THE FAMILY ARRIVES
In carrying out Victoire, the inspector had left the door of the
drawing-room open. After he had watched M. Formery reflect for two
minutes, Guerchard faded—to use an expressive Americanism—through it.
The Duke felt in the breast-pocket of his coat, murmured softly, “My
cigarettes,” and followed him.
He caught up Guerchard on the stairs and said, “I will come with you,
if I may, M. Guerchard. I find all these investigations extraordinarily
interesting. I have been observing M. Formery’s methods—I should like
to watch yours, for a change.”
“By all means,” said Guerchard. “And there are several things I want to
hear about from your Grace. Of course it might be an advantage to
discuss them together with M. Formery, but—” and he hesitated.
“It would be a pity to disturb M. Formery in the middle of the process
of reconstruction,” said the Duke; and a faint, ironical smile played
round the corners of his sensitive lips.
Guerchard looked at him quickly: “Perhaps it would,” he said.
They went through the house, out of the back door, and into the garden.
Guerchard moved about twenty yards from the house, then he stopped and
questioned the Duke at great length. He questioned him first about the
Charolais, their appearance, their actions, especially about Bernard’s
attempt to steal the pendant, and the theft of the motor-cars.
“I have been wondering whether M. Charolais might not have been Arsène
Lupin himself,” said the Duke.
“It’s quite possible,” said Guerchard. “There seem to be no limits
whatever to Lupin’s powers of disguising himself. My colleague,
Ganimard, has come across him at least three times that he knows of, as
a different person. And no single time could he be sure that it was the
same man. Of course, he had a feeling that he was in contact with some
one he had met before, but that was all. He had no certainty. He may
have met him half a dozen times besides without knowing him. And the
photographs of him—they’re all different. Ganimard declares that Lupin
is so extraordinarily successful in his disguises because he is a great
actor. He actually becomes for the time being the person he pretends to
be. He thinks and feels absolutely like that person. Do you follow me?”
“Oh, yes; but he must be rather fluid, this Lupin,” said the Duke; and
then he added thoughtfully, “It must be awfully risky to come so often
into actual contact with men like Ganimard and you.”
“Lupin has never let any consideration of danger prevent him doing
anything that caught his fancy. He has odd fancies, too. He’s a
humourist of the most varied kind—grim, ironic, farcical, as the mood
takes him. He must be awfully trying to live with,” said Guerchard.
“Do you think humourists are trying to live with?” said the Duke, in a
meditative tone. “I think they brighten life a good deal; but of course
there are people who do not like them—the middle-classes.”
“Yes, yes, they’re all very well in their place; but to live with they
must be trying,” said Guerchard quickly.
He went on to question the Duke closely and at length about the
household of M. Gournay-Martin, saying that Arsène Lupin worked with
the largest gang a burglar had ever captained, and it was any odds that
he had introduced one, if not more, of that gang into it. Moreover, in
the case of a big affair like this, Lupin himself often played two or
three parts under as many disguises.
“If he was Charolais, I don’t see how he could be one of M.
Gournay-Martin’s household, too,” said the Duke in some perplexity.
“I don’t say that he WAS Charolais,” said Guerchard. “It is quite a
moot point. On the whole, I’m inclined to think that he was not. The
theft of the motor-cars was a job for a subordinate. He would hardly
bother himself with it.”
The Duke told him all that he could remember about the millionaire’s
servants—and, under the clever questioning of the detective, he was
surprised to find how much he did remember—all kinds of odd details
about them which he had scarcely been aware of observing.
The two of them, as they talked, afforded an interesting contrast: the
Duke, with his air of distinction and race, his ironic expression, his
mobile features, his clear enunciation and well-modulated voice, his
easy carriage of an accomplished fencer—a fencer with muscles of
steel—seemed to be a man of another kind from the slow-moving
detective, with his husky voice, his common, slurring enunciation, his
clumsily moulded features, so ill adapted to the expression of emotion
and intelligence. It was a contrast almost between the hawk and the
mole, the warrior and the workman. Only in their eyes were they alike;
both of them had the keen, alert eyes of observers. Perhaps the most
curious thing of all was that, in spite of the fact that he had for so
much of his life been an idler, trifling away his time in the pursuit
of pleasure, except when he had made his expedition to the South Pole,
the Duke gave one the impression of being a cleverer man, of a far
finer brain, than the detective who had spent so much of his life
sharpening his wits on the more intricate problems of crime.
When Guerchard came to the end of his questions, the Duke said: “You
have given me a very strong feeling that it is going to be a deuce of a
job to catch Lupin. I don’t wonder that, so far, you have none of you
laid hands on him.”
“But we have!” cried Guerchard quickly. “Twice Ganimard has caught him.
Once he had him in prison, and actually brought him to trial. Lupin
became another man, and was let go from the very dock.”
“Really? It sounds absolutely amazing,” said the Duke.
“And then, in the affair of the Blue Diamond, Ganimard caught him
again. He has his weakness, Lupin—it’s women. It’s a very common
weakness in these masters of crime. Ganimard and Holmlock Shears, in
that affair, got the better of him by using his love for a woman—‘the
fair-haired lady,’ she was called—to nab him.”
“A shabby trick,” said the Duke.
“Shabby?” said Guerchard in a tone of utter wonder. “How can anything
be shabby in the case of a rogue like this?”
“Perhaps not—perhaps not—still—” said the Duke, and stopped.
The expression of wonder faded from Guerchard’s face, and he went on,
“Well, Holmlock Shears recovered the Blue Diamond, and Ganimard nabbed
Lupin. He held him for ten minutes, then Lupin escaped.”
“What became of the fair-haired lady?” said the Duke.
“I don’t know. I have heard that she is dead,” said Guerchard. “Now I
come to think of it, I heard quite definitely that she died.”
“It must be awful for a woman to love a man like Lupin—the constant,
wearing anxiety,” said the Duke thoughtfully.
“I dare say. Yet he can have his pick of sweethearts. I’ve been offered
thousands of francs by women—women of your Grace’s world and wealthy
Viennese—to make them acquainted with Lupin,” said Guerchard.
“You don’t surprise me,” said the Duke with his ironic smile. “Women
never do stop to think—where one of their heroes is concerned. And did
you do it?”
“How could I? If I only could! If I could find Lupin entangled with a
woman like Ganimard did—well—” said Guerchard between his teeth.
“He’d never get out of YOUR clutches,” said the Duke with conviction.
“I think not—I think not,” said Guerchard grimly. “But come, I may as
well get on.”
He walked across the turf to the foot of the ladder and looked at the
footprints round it. He made but a cursory examination of them, and
took his way down the garden-path, out of the door in the wall into the
space about the house that was building. He was not long examining it,
and he went right through it out into the street on which the house
would face when it was finished. He looked up and down it, and began to
retrace his footsteps.
“I’ve seen all I want to see out here. We may as well go back to the
house,” he said to the Duke.
“I hope you’ve seen what you expected to see,” said the Duke.
“Exactly what I expected to see—exactly,” said Guerchard.
“That’s as it should be,” said the Duke.
They went back to the house and found M. Formery in the drawing-room,
still engaged in the process of reconstruction.
“The thing to do now is to hunt the neighbourhood for witnesses of the
departure of the burglars with their booty. Loaded as they were with
such bulky objects, they must have had a big conveyance. Somebody must
have noticed it. They must have wondered why it was standing in front
of a half-built house. Somebody may have actually seen the burglars
loading it, though it was so early in the morning. Bonavent had better
inquire at every house in the street on which that half-built house
faces. Did you happen to notice the name of it?” said M. Formery.
“It’s Sureau Street,” said Guerchard. “But Dieusy has been hunting the
neighbourhood for some one who saw the burglars loading their
conveyance, or saw it waiting to be loaded, for the last hour.”
“Good,” said M. Formery. “We are getting on.”
M. Formery was silent. Guerchard and the Duke sat down and lighted
cigarettes.
“You found plenty of traces,” said M. Formery, waving his hand towards
the window.
“Yes; I’ve found plenty of traces,” said Guerchard.
“Of Lupin?” said M. Formery, with a faint sneer.
“No; not of Lupin,” said Guerchard.
A smile of warm satisfaction illumined M. Formery’s face:
“What did I tell you?” he said. “I’m glad that you’ve changed your mind
about that.”
“I have hardly changed my mind,” said Guerchard, in his husky, gentle
voice.
There came a loud knocking on the front door, the sound of excited
voices on the stairs. The door opened, and in burst M. Gournay-Martin.
He took one glance round the devastated room, raised his clenched hands
towards the ceiling, and bellowed, “The scoundrels! the dirty
scoundrels!” And his voice stuck in his throat. He tottered across the
room to a couch, dropped heavily to it, gazed round the scene of
desolation, and burst into tears.
Germaine and Sonia came into the room. The Duke stepped forward to
greet them.
“Do stop crying, papa. You’re as hoarse as a crow as it is,” said
Germaine impatiently. Then, turning on the Duke with a frown, she said:
“I think that joke of yours about the train was simply disgraceful,
Jacques. A joke’s a joke, but to send us out to the station on a night
like last night, through all that heavy rain, when you knew all the
time that there was no quarter-to-nine train—it was simply
disgraceful.”
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the Duke quietly.
“Wasn’t there a quarter-to-nine train?”
“Of course there wasn’t,” said Germaine. “The time-table was years old.
I think it was the most senseless attempt at a joke I ever heard of.”
“It doesn’t seem to me to be a joke at all,” said the Duke quietly. “At
any rate, it isn’t the kind of a joke I make—it would be detestable. I
never thought to look at the date of the time-table. I keep a box of
cigarettes in that drawer, and I have noticed the time-table there. Of
course, it may have been lying there for years. It was stupid of me not
to look at the date.”
“I said it was a mistake. I was sure that his Grace would not do
anything so unkind as that,” said Sonia.
The Duke smiled at her.
“Well, all I can say is, it was very stupid of you not to look at the
date,” said Germaine.
M. Gournay-Martin rose to his feet and wailed, in the most heartrending
fashion: “My pictures! My wonderful pictures! Such investments! And my
cabinets! My Renaissance cabinets! They can’t be replaced! They were
unique! They were worth a hundred and fifty thousand francs.”
M. Formery stepped forward with an air and said, “I am distressed, M.
Gournay-Martin—truly distressed by your loss. I am M. Formery,
examining magistrate.”
“It is a tragedy, M. Formery—a tragedy!” groaned the millionaire.
“Do not let it upset you too much. We shall find your masterpieces—we
shall find them. Only give us time,” said M. Formery in a tone of warm
encouragement.
The face of the millionaire brightened a little.
“And, after all, you have the consolation, that the burglars did not
get hold of the gem of your collection. They have not stolen the
coronet of the Princesse de Lamballe,” said M. Formery.
“No,” said the Duke. “They have not touched this safe. It is unopened.”
“What has that got to do with it?” growled the millionaire quickly.
“That safe is empty.”
“Empty ... but your coronet?” cried the Duke.
“Good heavens! Then they HAVE stolen it,” cried the millionaire
hoarsely, in a panic-stricken voice.
“But they can’t have—this safe hasn’t been touched,” said the Duke.
“But the coronet never was in that safe. It was—have they entered my
bedroom?” said the millionaire.
“No,” said M. Formery.
“They don’t seem to have gone through any of the rooms except these
two,” said the Duke.
“Ah, then my mind is at rest about that. The safe in my bedroom has
only two keys. Here is one.” He took a key from his waistcoat pocket
and held it out to them. “And the other is in this safe.”
The face of M. Formery was lighted up with a splendid satisfaction. He
might have rescued the coronet with his own hands. He cried
triumphantly, “There, you see!”
“See? See?” cried the millionaire in a sudden bellow. “I see that they
have robbed me—plundered me. Oh, my pictures! My wonderful pictures!
Such investments!”