THE INFERNAL CREATURE
“Let go the anchor and lower a boat,” said Josephine.
A thick mist rested on the sea, which, along with the darkness of the
night, prevented them from seeing the lights of Etretat. Even the
lamp of Cape Antifer lighthouse could not pierce the impenetrable fog
through which the yacht of Prince Lavosneff was groping its way.
“Why are you sure that we are in sight of land?” Leonard asked.
“Because I desire it so keenly,” said Josephine.
He lost his temper: “This expedition is foolishness--pure foolishness,”
he said. “What? It’s a fortnight since we succeeded and that, thanks
to you, we gained the most extraordinary victory. The whole mass of
those precious stones is safe in the strong-room of a bank in London.
All danger is over. The Countess of Cagliostro, Madam Pellegrini,
Madam Balsamo, the Marquise de Belmonte, are all at the bottom of the
sea, as a result of the shipwreck of the _Glow-worm_ which you had
the admirable idea of organizing and which you directed with such
vigor. Twenty witnesses heard the explosion from the coast. To all the
world you are dead, a hundred times dead, and I as well, and all your
confederates. If anyone succeeded in bringing to light the story of the
treasure of the monks, they would come to the conclusion that it had
been scattered about with the fragments of the _Glow-worm_ at a place
impossible to fix exactly, and that the jewels are strewn about in the
bottom of the sea. And we may well believe that Justice is delighted
with this shipwreck and our deaths, and that it is not going to look
too closely into the matter, such efforts have been made in high
places to hush up the Beaumagnan-Cagliostro affair. Everything then is
going well. You are the mistress of circumstances and victorious over
all your enemies. And it is the moment at which the most elementary
prudence bids us leave France and to get as far as possible away from
Europe. And that’s the very moment you choose to return to the very
place in which you have suffered your worst defeats, and to confront
the only enemy who remains. And what an enemy! A genius of a kind so
exceptional, that, without him you would never have discovered the
treasure. You must admit that it’s madness.”
She murmured: “Love is a madness.”
“Then give it up.”
“I can’t give it up. I love him.”
She rested her elbows on the bulwarks, her head between her hands, and
murmured in despairing accents: “I love him. It’s the first time I have
ever loved. The other men--they don’t count. But as for Ralph--but I
don’t want to talk about him. Thanks to him I have known the only joy
I ever had--but also the greatest suffering. Before I met him I did
not know what happiness was; but I did not know sorrow either. And
then--and then the happiness came to an end; and only the suffering is
left. It’s horrible, Leonard! The idea that he is going to marry--that
another is going to share his life, is more than I can bear. Anything
rather than that! I would rather risk anything--I would rather die!”
He said in a low voice: “My poor Josine.”
They were silent for some time. She leaned on the rail huddled together
and despairing. Then when the boat was lowered, she drew herself
upright, imperious and implacable.
“But I risk nothing, Leonard--neither death nor failure,” she said.
“What are you going to do?” he said in a tone of patient resignation.
“I’m going to carry him off.”
“You hope to do that?”
“Yes. Everything is ready. The smallest details have been worked out.”
“How?” he said in an incredulous tone.
“By the agency of Dominique.”
“Ah! I was wondering what had become of Dominique,” he said.
“Yes; directly after the _coup_, even before Ralph went to La Haie
d’Etigues, Dominique got employed there as a groom.”
“But Ralph knows him.”
“Ralph has seen him once or twice at the most; and you know how clever
Dominique is at disguising his face. It’s impossible that he should
recognize him among all the staff of the château and the stables.
Dominique then, following my instructions, has kept me informed of what
is going on day by day. I know the hours at which Ralph goes to bed and
gets up, how he spends his time, and everything he does. I know that
he has not yet seen Clarice again, but that he has sent for the papers
necessary for the marriage.”
“Does he suspect anything?”
“As far as I’m concerned, he does not. Dominique heard scraps of a
conversation which he had with Godfrey d’Etigues the day he came to
the château. Neither of them had the slightest doubt about my death.
But none the less Ralph wished them to take all possible precautions
against me, though I was dead. Therefore he is on guard over the
château. He is keeping watch, continually on guard, and always
questioning the peasants.”
“And Dominique has let you come?”
“Yes; but only for an hour. One bold swift stroke, at night, and
immediate flight.”
“And it’s to-night, is it?” he said anxiously.
“Yes, to-night between ten and eleven. Ralph is living at an isolated
keeper’s lodge, not far from the old tower to which Beaumagnan had me
taken. That lodge is let into the big wall of the park. And on the
other side of it, which looks on the country, there is only one window,
on the ground floor, and no door. If the shutters are closed, to get
into it you have to go round through the park gates and along the
inside of the wall. The two keys will be under a stone close to the
park gates to-night. When Ralph is asleep we shall roll him up in his
mattress and blankets and bring him here. The moment we’ve got him, we
set sail.”
“Is that all?” said Leonard.
Josephine hesitated before she replied: “That’s all.”
“And what about Dominique?”
“He will go with us.”
Leonard bent forward, tried to see her face clearly in the darkness,
and said: “You haven’t given him any special orders?”
“What about?”
“About Clarice. You hate that girl. Therefore I’m afraid that you may
have entrusted Dominique with some job.”
She hesitated again before replying: “That’s no business of yours.”
“Nevertheless----” he said doubtfully.
The ladder was let down for them to get into the boat. Josephine
said in a mocking tone: “Listen, Leonard. Since I created you Prince
Lavosneff and provided you with a yacht splendidly fitted out, you have
become extraordinarily discreet. But we’ll stick to our agreement,
if you don’t mind. I command: you obey. You have the right to an
explanation. I have given it to you. Act as if it was sufficient.”
“It is sufficient,” said Leonard glumly. “And I recognize that you have
laid your plans admirably.”
“All the better. Let’s be starting.”
She led the way down the ladder and settled herself in the stern of the
boat.
Leonard and four of their confederates followed him. Two of them took
the oars, another the rudder-strings, she directed their course in a
low voice.
A quarter of an hour later, though her followers had the impression
that they were moving forward blindly, she said: “We’re passing Amont
harbor.”
From time to time she warned the steersman of rocks that rose above
the surface of the sea and directed his course by landmarks invisible
to the rest of them. The crunching of the keel upon the pebbles was
the first thing to inform them that they had reached the beach. They
carried her ashore, then beached the boat.
“You’re quite certain that we shan’t meet any coast-guards?” whispered
Leonard.
“Quite certain. Dominique’s last telegram was quite definite.”
“Isn’t he coming to meet us?” asked Leonard.
“No. I wrote to him to remain at the château among the other servants.
He will meet us at eleven.”
“Where?”
“Near Ralph’s lodge. Don’t talk any more.”
All of them were lost to sight in the priest’s staircase. Once in it,
Josephine lit a bull’s-eye lantern she had brought with her. They
mounted the staircase, in silence.
On the top of the cliff the mist was much thinner. At intervals there
were gaps in it through which they could see the stars. Therefore
Josephine was at once able to point out to them La Haie d’Etigues, many
of the front windows of which were lit up. The clock of Benouville
church struck ten. Josephine shivered.
“Oh, the striking of that clock! How well I recognize it! Ten strokes
like the last time I heard it--ten strokes--one after the other! I
counted them as I was going to my death.”
“Well, you avenged yourself all right,” said Leonard.
“On Beaumagnan, yes. But the others----”
“On the others too. The two cousins are half mad.”
“It’s true,” she said. “But I shall not feel myself fully avenged for
an hour. Then I shall be able to rest.”
They waited for the mist to drift over again in order that their
figures might not stand out against the bare plain they had to
traverse. Then Josephine led the way along the path, along which
Godfrey and his friends had carried her to the priest’s staircase. The
others followed in single file without saying a word. The grass had
been cut; here and there stood large haycocks.
As they drew near to La Haie d’Etigues the path ran between high banks
covered with bushes between which they marched with growing carefulness.
The wall rose in front of them. A few more steps, and the lodge, in
which Ralph had taken up his abode, came into view. Josephine halted
them with a gesture.
“Wait for me,” she said.
“Shall I come with you?” Leonard asked.
“No. I will come back for you and we will go into the park together
through the gate which is on the other side of it, on our left.”
She went forward alone, therefore, setting down her feet so carefully
that no stone rolled under her sole and no leaf rustled at the contact
of her skirt. She came to the window of the keeper’s lodge.
She took hold of the shutters very gently. The fastenings, with which
Dominique had tampered, did not hold them together. She opened them
till a little light came through the opening. Then she glued her eye to
it and looked into a room, on the further side of which was a recess
with a bed in it.
Ralph was in the bed. A lamp, with a crystal globe and a cardboard
shade on the top of it, showed clearly in the circle of its light his
face, his shoulders, the book he was reading, and his clothes heaped
up on the chair beside the bed. He looked young indeed, with something
of the air of a boy who is giving all his attention to a task, but at
the same time struggling against sleep. Several times his head dropped
forward. He awoke, forced himself to read, and again dozed off.
At length he shut his book and put out the lamp.
Having seen what she wanted to see, Josephine left her post and
returned to her confederates. She had already given her instructions,
but she took the precaution of repeating them.
“Above all, no unnecessary roughness,” she insisted. “You understand,
Leonard? Since he has no weapon within reach with which to defend
himself, there will be no need for you to use your weapons. There are
five of you; and that’s enough.”
“But suppose he does resist?” said Leonard.
“It’s for you to act in such a manner that he can’t resist,” she said
coldly with a touch of menace in her tone.
She had learned her way about so thoroughly, from the maps with which
Dominique had supplied her, that she led them without hesitating a
moment to the principal entry into the park. They found the keys, of
the park gate and the door of Ralph’s lodge, at the place agreed upon.
They opened the park gate and took their way along the wall to the
lodge.
The key turned in the well-oiled lock of its door without a sound;
noiselessly the door opened on well-oiled hinges. Followed by her
confederates, she entered. On the other side of the tiled hall was the
door of the bedroom. She pushed it open with infinite slowness.
It was the decisive moment. If Ralph had not been awakened but was
sleeping still, Josephine’s plot would be successful. She listened.
Nothing stirred. Then she stepped aside to make way for the five men
and by letting the ray from the bull’s-eye fall on the bed, gave the
signal to her pack.
The assault was so swift that the sleeper could not have awakened
before all resistance was useless. The gang had rolled him up in his
blankets and pulled the mattress round him, and wound a rope round it
in less than ten seconds. In less than twenty seconds the rope was
securely tied. There had not been a cry; not a piece of furniture had
been knocked out of its place.
Once more Josephine was victorious.
“Splendid!” she said in a tone of excitement which revealed the
importance she attached to this victory. “Splendid! We’ve got him. And
this time every precaution shall be taken to prevent him from getting
away.”
“What are we to do now?” Leonard asked.
“Carry him to the boat.”
“Suppose he shouts for help?”
“Gag him. But he can’t shout. Off you go!”
The four men stood up, bearing on their shoulders a burden which looked
like a great bundle of linen. Leonard came to Josephine.
“Aren’t you coming with us?” he asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I told you: I’m waiting for Dominique.”
She lit the lamp and raised the shade of it.
“How pale you’re looking,” he said in a low voice.
“Perhaps I am,” she said defiantly.
“I suppose it’s about that girl.”
“Yes.”
“Dominique’s at work, is he?”
She nodded.
“Who knows? There may still be time to stop him!”
“Even if there were, I should not change my mind. It’s made up. What
will be, will be. Besides, the thing is done. Off you go!”
“But why shouldn’t we wait for you?”
“The only danger comes from Ralph. Once he’s safe on the boat, we’ve
nothing more to fear. Be off and leave me.”
She opened the window. They passed through it with their burden and
disappeared in the darkness.
She closed the shutters and shut the window.
A few minutes passed and the church clock struck. She counted the
strokes--eleven. At the eleventh stroke she went to the door of the
lodge, opened it, and listened. There came a low whistle. She answered
it by stamping on the tiles of the hall.
Dominique came hurrying to her. They went into the bedroom.
On the instant, without waiting for her to ask the question, he said:
“I’ve done it.”
“Oh,” she said in a shaky voice; and she was so upset that she tottered
and sank into a chair.
They stared at one another in silence.
Then Dominique uttered: “She felt nothing.”
“She felt nothing?” she repeated.
“No. She was asleep.”
“Are you quite sure that--that----”
“That she’s dead? You may take your oath to it I am! I drove the knife
into her heart--three times. Besides I had the nerve to wait to make
sure. There was no need. She had stopped breathing and her hands were
cold.”
“Suppose they were to discover it?”
“It’s impossible. No one goes into her bedroom except in the morning.
Till then--they won’t see.”
They did not dare to look one another in the face. Dominique held out
his hand. She drew from her bosom ten thousand-franc notes and held
them out to him.
He almost snatched them from her and said: “Thanks. If it were to be
done again, I should refuse. What am I to do now?”
“Get away. If you run, you’ll catch the others up before they get back
to the boat.”
“They’ve got Ralph d’Andresy?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a good thing. He’s been giving me a lot of trouble during the
last fortnight. He was very suspicious. By the way--those jewels of the
monks.”
“We have them,” said Josephine.
“Are they safe?”
“In the strong-room of a bank in London.”
“Are there many of them?” he said greedily.
“A trunk full.”
“Good! More than a hundred thousand francs for me, what?”
“Much more. But hurry up--unless you prefer to wait for me,” she said.
“No, no. I want to get away from here as soon as possible and as far as
possible. But what about you?”
“I’m just going to make sure that there are no papers here which would
be dangerous for us, and I’ll catch up with you.”
Dominique followed the others out through the window. At once Josephine
ransacked all the drawers in the room, and finding nothing, hunted
through the pockets of Ralph’s clothes.
She emptied his pocket-book out on to the table. It contained
bank-notes, visiting cards and a photograph--the photograph of Clarice
d’Etigues.
Josephine looked at it earnestly with an expression no longer of hate,
but cold and unforgiving. Then she stood still wearing the air of one
who gazed upon some painful spectacle, while her lips retained their
sweet smile.
The mirror on the toilet table was in front of her and she caught sight
of her image in it. She sat down with her head resting on her hands
and gazed at herself. Her eyes grew brighter and her smile sweeter,
as if she was enjoying to the full her consciousness of her beauty.
She drew forward on to her forehead the thin veil which always covered
her hair and arranged it to bring out her resemblance to the Virgin of
Bernardino Luini.
She looked at herself for a minute or two, then seemed to relapse into
her painful reverie. The village clock chimed the quarter past the
hour; but still she did not stir. You would almost have said that she
was asleep, asleep with her eyes open, unwinking. Presently, however,
her eyes grew less vague, as they gazed fixedly at something in the
mirror over her shoulder. Just as it sometimes happens in a dream that
one’s ideas, thronging and incoherent, crystallize into one idea more
and more precise, into an image more and more clear, so it happened to
her now. What was that disconcerting image that she seemed to perceive,
to which she tried vainly to grow used? It was in the alcove in which
the bed was set, the walls of which were hung all round with curtains.
Between those curtains and the wall there must have been a space, for
one would have said that a hand was moving them.
Then a hand actually appeared, then an arm, then, above the arm, a head.
Josephine, accustomed to spiritist séances in which phantoms were
materialized, gave a name to this spirit which her terrified
imagination had summoned from the shadows. It was clothed in white; she
could not be sure whether its lips were wreathed with an affectionate
smile, or drawn back in an angry snarl.
She stammered: “Ralph--Ralph--what do you want of me?”
The phantom parted the curtains and came round the bed. Josephine shut
her eyes with a groan, then opened them again. The hallucination was
still there; and the phantom drew nearer with movements which moved a
chair and made a noise. She wished to fly, but could not. Then she felt
on her shoulder the grip of a hand which was certainly not that of a
spirit; and a cheerful voice said:
“My dear Josephine, I should really advise you to get Prince Lavosneff
to take you for a short, restful cruise. You need one, my dear
Josephine. What? You take me for a ghost, me, Ralph d’Andresy! I may be
in pants and a night-shirt, nevertheless you ought to know me.”
He began to put on his clothes quickly. She stared at him and muttered:
“You? You?”
“Goodness, yes: me.”
He laughed gently at her frowning face and went on in a jeering tone.
“Now, don’t go pitching into Prince Lavosneff under the impression that
he has let me escape again. He has not. What he and his friends carried
away was simply a dummy stuffed with bran, rolled up in my blankets and
mattress. As for me, I did not stir from the shelter in which I took
refuge as soon as you left your post on the other side of the shutters.”
Josephine remained inert and as incapable of taking action as if she
had been beaten to a jelly.
“Hang it! You don’t seem to be quite yourself,” he went on, in the same
jeering tone. “Would you like a little glass of liquor to buck you
up? I quite understand that you’re very much upset and I admit that
I should not like to be in your place--all your little play-fellows
gone--no help possible for quite a while--securely shut up in this room
with a gentleman named Ralph. It certainly is not a time to see the
world in rose-color. Unlucky Josephine. What a mess you have made of
it!”
He stooped down and picked up the photograph of Clarice: “How pretty my
fiancée is, isn’t she? It gave me the greatest pleasure to see how you
were admiring her just now. You know that we’re going to get married in
a few days?”
“She’s dead,” said Josephine.
“As a matter of fact, I heard about that,” he said calmly. “Your little
friend who was here just now stabbed her in her bed, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“With a dagger, wasn’t it?”
“Three times--through the heart,” she said.
“Once ought to have been enough, you know,” he suggested.
She said slowly, as if striving to assure herself of the fact: “She’s
dead. She’s dead.”
He chuckled: “What can you expect? It happens every day. But you can’t
expect me to change all my plans for a little thing like that. Dead or
alive, I’m going to marry her. And we must manage as best we can. _You_
managed splendidly.”
“What do you mean?” said Josephine sharply, beginning to grow yet more
uneasy at his careless bantering tone.
“What do I mean? Why look at you. First of all the Baron drowned you,
next you were blown up and then drowned in the wreck of your vessel
the _Glow-worm_. But all that drowning doesn’t prevent you from being
here. Therefore the fact that Clarice has been stabbed through the
heart three times is no reason for my not marrying her. Besides are you
quite sure that your statement is accurate?”
“One of my own men stabbed her,” she said.
“Or at any rate he told you that he’d stabbed her.”
“Why should he have lied?”
“Why, to get hold of the ten bank-notes you handed over to him.”
“Dominique is incapable of betraying me! He would not betray me for a
hundred thousand francs! Besides he knows quite well that I can lay
hands on him. He’s waiting for me with the others,” she said fiercely.
“Are you quite sure that he’s waiting for you, Josine?” said Ralph; and
the jeering note in his voice was louder.
She shivered. She had a feeling that she was struggling in a narrowing
circle.
He shook his head and said thoughtfully: “It’s odd, the blunders
we’ve made, you and I, with regard to one another. You must be
uncommonly simple to think that the blowing up of the _Glow-worm_, the
Pellegrini-Cagliostro shipwreck, and the rubbish related by Prince
Lavosneff took me in for an instant. How on earth did you fail to
guess that a fellow who is not an imbecile to begin with, and has had
the advantage of a course at your school--and what a school!--would
read your game as easily as he would an open Bible? That shipwreck
was really much too convenient. One is accused of dozens of crimes,
one’s hands are red with blood, the police are hunting one hard. Then
one blows up an old vessel; and all the past, the crimes, the stolen
treasure, the wealth of the monks, all sink in a lump along with it.
One passes for dead. One grows a new skin. And then one begins again, a
little further off, under another name, to murder, to torture, and to
bathe one’s hands in blood. That may take in other people, old girl,
but not me. When I read about your shipwreck, I said ‘It’s time to keep
one’s eyes open--wide,’ and I came here.”
He paused, smiling at her, a chilling smile; then went on: “But hang
it all, Josephine, your visit was inevitable! And it was inevitable
that you must clear the way for it by the help of some confederate. It
was inevitable that the yacht of Prince Lavosneff should come cruising
off this coast one night. It was inevitable that you must climb the
staircase in the cliff which you had once descended on a stretcher.
Well, I took my precautions; and my first care was to look about to see
if there wasn’t somebody I knew in the neighborhood. A confederate,
it’s the very first step in the art. And at once I recognized our young
friend Dominique, since I had happened to see him, a detail of which
you were ignorant, on the box of your carriage waiting at the door of
Bridget Rousselin. Dominique is a faithful servant; but the fear of
the police and a sound thrashing softened him to such a degree that
he transferred all his faithfulness to me; and he gave proof of it by
sending you false reports and by digging for your feet, in concert with
me, the pitfall into which you have stumbled. As for his reward: why,
there are the ten bank-notes, out of _your_ pocket, which you will
never see again, for your faithful servant has gone back to the château
and is under my protection. That’s how we stand, my dear Josephine. I
might indeed have spared you this little comedy and welcomed you here
openly, for the mere pleasure of shaking you by the hand. But I wished
to see how you would direct the operation, remaining myself in the
background, and above all I wished to see how you would receive the
news of the supposed murder of Clarice d’Etigues.”
Josephine shrank away from him. He was no longer joking; bending
over her he said quietly: “Just a trace of feeling--just a slightest
trace--that was all you showed. You believed that the child was dead,
dead by your order; and it did not move you at all. With you the death
of others does not count. One is twenty, with all one’s life before
one ... with charm and beauty.... You crush all that, as if you were
cracking a nut. Your conscience does not make one protest. It is true
that you do not laugh; but none the more do you weep. In reality you do
not give it a thought. I remember that Beaumagnan called you a daughter
of Hell--a designation that revolted me. Now I see that he was right.
Hell is in you. You are a kind of monster about whom I can never think
again without horror. But what about you, Josephine? Aren’t there times
when you feel that horror yourself?”
Still sitting at the toilet table, her head resting on her hands,
in the attitude of which she was so fond, she did not stir. Ralph’s
pitiless words did not provoke that access of indignation and fury for
which he was looking. He felt that she was at one of those moments in
life at which one sees into the deepest depths of one’s soul and cannot
turn one’s eyes from the sight.
He was not greatly surprised. Without being frequent, such moments
could not be very uncommon in the life of this unbalanced creature,
whose nature, impassible on the surface, was now and again ravaged
by nervous convulsions in its depths. Matters were turning out so
different from what she had expected, and the apparition of Ralph was
so disconcerting that she was unable to rise to struggle with the enemy
who was so cruelly outraging her.
He took advantage of her weakness, and went on in a voice that demanded
an answer: “Isn’t it a fact, Josine, that at times you terrify
yourself? Aren’t there times when you are full of horror at yourself?”
The distress of Josephine was so profound that she murmured: “Yes--yes
sometimes. But you’re not to speak to me about it. I don’t _want_ to
know. Be quiet--be quiet!”
“But on the contrary, it is necessary that you should know,” said
Ralph. “If such acts fill you with horror, why do you commit them?”
“I can’t help it,” she said faintly in an extreme lassitude.
“You do try then?”
“Yes. I try--I struggle--but it is never any use. I was taught evil. I
do evil as other people do good. I do evil just as I breathe. That was
what they willed.”
“Who?”
“My mother,” she muttered in a low voice.
“Your mother? The spy? The woman who made up all this Cagliostro story?”
“Yes. But you’re not to blame her. She was very fond of me. Only she
had not succeeded.... She had become poor and wretched and she wished
me to succeed ... and grow rich.”
“Yet you were beautiful. And for a woman beauty is riches. Beauty is
enough.”
“My mother was beautiful too; and yet her beauty was of no use to her,”
she retorted.
“You were like her?”
“You could not tell one from the other. And that was my ruin. She
wished to carry out through me her great idea--Cagliostro’s legacy.”
“And had she documents?”
“A scrap of paper ... the list of the four enigmas. One of her friends
had found it in an old book; and it really seemed to be in Cagliostro’s
handwriting. She was intoxicated by it and by her success with the
Empress Eugenie, from whom she got most of her information. So I had
to carry on the work. She put that into my head when I was quite a
child. My brain was trained to hold only that idea. That was to be my
livelihood--my destiny. I was the daughter of Cagliostro. I was to take
up the life she had led, the life he had led--a life as brilliant as he
leads in the romances in which he figures--the life of an adventuress,
adored by everyone and dominating the world. No scruples--no
conscience. I was to take vengeance for all that she had suffered. On
her death-bed her last words to me were ‘Avenge me.’”
Ralph reflected. Then he said: “But your crimes--this lust to kill?”
He could not catch her answer, and again he did not catch it when he
said: “Your mother was not the only person to bring you up and equip
you for evil. Who was your father?”
He fancied he caught the name of Leonard. But did she mean that Leonard
was her father, the man who had been expelled from France in the days
of the second empire--it was likely enough--or that Leonard had trained
her in crime?
He learned no more. He had loved her; and he had not the heart to
force his way into those obscure regions in which evil instincts
come to birth and are fostered, in which ferments everything that
unbalances, ruins, and disintegrates, all the vices, the vanities, and
blood-thirsty appetites, all the cruel and inexorable passions which
escape from our control. He asked no more.
Weeping silently, she caught his hands; and he was weak enough to
abandon them to her. He felt her kisses and her tears rain on them.
Insensibly pity filled his heart. The evil creature became a human
being, a woman delivered over to a diseased instinct, the victim of the
law of irresistible forces, one whom he ought perhaps to regard with at
least a little indulgence.
“Do not drive me from you,” she said. “You are the only being in the
world who might have saved me from evil. I felt it at once. There is
something so sane and healthy about you. Love is the only thing that
has ever appeased me; and I have never loved anyone but you. So if you
cast me off----”
Her lips filled Ralph with an infinite languor. Pleasure and desire
embellished that dangerous compassion which weakens the wills of men.
And perhaps if Josephine had contented herself with that humble caress,
he might have succumbed of himself to the temptation to bend down and
once again taste the savor of those lips which offered themselves to
him. But she raised her head, slipped her arms round his neck, and
gazed into his eyes. And that gaze sufficed to enable him to see in her
no longer the woman who implored, but the woman who desired to seduce
and was employing the tenderness of her eyes and the enchantment of her
lips to that end.
Looks link lovers. But Ralph knew so well what lay behind that
charming, ingenuous, and dolorous expression. The clearness of the
mirror did not redeem all the ugliness and ignominy which he saw
so plainly in it. Little by little he recovered. He withdrew from
temptation and releasing himself from the siren who enlaced him he said:
“Do you remember, one day on the barge, that we feared one another, as
if we were trying to strangle one another? It is the same to-day. If
I fall again into your arms, I am lost. To-morrow--the day after, it
would be death.”
She drew herself up of a sudden hostile and dangerous. Once more pride
took possession of her and the storm once more rose suddenly, causing
them to pass without any transition from the kind of torpor in which
the memory of their love lulled them, to a bitter constraint of enmity
and hatred.
“Yes,” Ralph went on. “At the bottom of our hearts, from the very
first day, we have been ferocious enemies. Neither of us thought of
anything but the defeat of the other. Especially you! I was the rival
and intruder. In your brain my image was mixed with the idea of death.
Voluntarily or not, you condemned me.”
She shook her head and said in an aggressive tone: “Not till now.”
“But now you have, haven’t you? Only a new fact presents itself; and
that is that _now_ I can laugh at you, Josephine! The pupil has become
the master; and that was what I wished to demonstrate to you by letting
you come here and accepting the battle. I offered myself, alone, to
your attack and to the attack of your gang. And now that we are face to
face with one another, you can do nothing to me. Defeat all along the
line. What? Clarice alive. Myself free. Come, my dear: clear out of my
life. You are hopelessly beaten; and I have a contempt for you.”
He flung these insults at her like the blows of a scourge which scarred
her. She was deathly pale; her face was distorted; and for the first
time her unchangeable beauty showed signs of withering and decay.
“I shall avenge myself,” she said between her clenched teeth.
“Impossible!” said Ralph with a careless laugh. “I have cut your claws.
You’re afraid of me. That is the real miracle I have worked to-day: you
are afraid of me.”
“I’ll devote my whole life to avenging myself,” she muttered, scowling
at him.
“Nothing doing,” he said confidently. “I know all your tricks. You have
failed. It’s all over.”
She shook her head and said fiercely: “I have other means.”
“What are they?” he asked contemptuously.
“That incalculable fortune--those riches I have won.”
“Thanks to whom?” he said lightly. “If ever there was a spark of real
intelligence in that strange adventure, didn’t I supply it?”
“Perhaps. But it was I who knew how to act and to take. And that’s
everything. As far as words went, you were never at a loss for them.
But what was wanted was deeds; and those deeds I did. Because Clarice
is alive and you are free, you shout: ‘Victory!’ But Clarice’s life and
your liberty are but little things beside the great thing which was the
stake for which we fought. That is to say the thousands and thousands
of precious stones. The real battle was there; and I won it, for the
treasure is mine.”
“Can one ever be quite sure?” said Ralph in a mocking tone.
“Yes: the treasure is mine. With my own hands I heaped the countless
stones into a portmanteau, which was fastened and sealed before my
eyes, which I carried to Havre, which I hid in the bottom of the hold
of the _Glow-worm_, and took away before I blew the vessel up. It is
now in London in the strong-room of a bank, tied up and sealed as it
was at the beginning.”
“Yes, yes,” agreed Ralph readily. “The rope is unbroken, still tight
in its place.... There are five seals, the sealing-wax is violet, with
the initials J.B.--Josephine Balsamo--on them. As for the trunk it’s
of plaited wicker-work, with leather straps and handles--one of those
simple things which attract no one’s attention----”
Josephine stared at him with frightened eyes and said: “You know?...
How do you know?”
“We spent a few hours together, I and that trunk,” he said, laughing.
“Lies!” she cried. “You’re talking at random. The portmanteau did not
leave me for a second between the meadow of Mesnil-sous-Jumièges and
the strong-room in London.”
“Yes it did, since you let it down into the hold of the _Glow-worm_.”
“I sat on the iron hatch which closed the hold and one of my men kept
watch over the port through which you might have entered it, all the
time we were in the roadstead at Havre,” she declared.
“I know that.”
“How can you know it?”
“I was in the hold.”
It was an alarming sentence! He repeated it and then, thoroughly
enjoying his narrative he said to the stupefied Josephine: “In the
face of the shattered block this was my reasoning: ‘If I hunt for my
good Josephine, I shall not find her. What I’ve got to do is to guess
the place where she will be at the end of the day, to get there before
her, to be there when she arrives, and to avail myself of the first
opportunity of scooping up the precious stones.’ For, with the police
on your trail, hunted by me, eager to get the treasure into a safe
place, it was inevitable that you must take to flight, that is to say,
get away abroad. How? Why, by means of your vessel, the _Glow-worm_.
“At noon I was at Havre; at one o’clock the three members of the crew
who were on board went off, to drink their coffee at a bar. I slipped
across the gangway into the hold and hid myself behind a heap of cases,
barrels, and sacks of provisions. At six o’clock you arrived and let
the portmanteau down by a rope, so putting it under my protection.”
“You lie! You lie!” stuttered Josephine in a furious voice.
He went quietly on: “At ten o’clock Leonard joined you. He had read
the evening papers and learned about Beaumagnan’s suicide. At eleven
o’clock you weighed anchor. At midnight, out at sea, a yacht met you.
Leonard, who became Prince Lavosneff, presided over the disembarkation.
The crew and the packages containing everything of value were
transferred from the deck of one vessel to the deck of the other, in
especial the portmanteau which you hauled up from the bottom of the
hold. And then to hell with the _Glow-worm_!
“I must admit that I spent some devilishly unpleasant minutes. I was
alone. There was no longer any crew or helmsmen. The _Glow-worm_
seemed to be steered by a drunken man, holding himself up by her wheel.
One would have said that she was a child’s toy which has been wound up
and which goes round and round. And then I guessed your plan--the bomb
in one of the cabins, the mechanism exploded it, the explosion.
“I was perspiring freely, I can tell you. Was I to throw myself into
the sea? I had just made up my mind to do so, when, as I was untying my
shoelaces, I nearly fainted with joy at the sight of a dinghy in the
wake of the _Glow-worm_ fastened to her by a rope. It was my salvation.
Ten minutes later sitting quietly in it, I saw a flame leap up in the
darkness about three hundred yards away, and heard a roar roll across
the sea like a peal of thunder. The _Glow-worm_ had blown up.
“The next night, after having been tossed about a bit, I came in sight
of shore not far from Cape Antifer. I slipped into the water and swam
to it, and that very day I came here--to get everything ready for your
visit, my dear Josephine.”
She had listened to him without interrupting with an air of serenity.
She had the air of saying: “Words again--nothing but words.” The
essential thing was the portmanteau. Supposing that he had hidden
himself on the vessel and afterwards escaped shipwreck. It was of no
importance.
She hesitated however to ask a definite question. She knew very well
that Ralph was not the kind of man to risk everything to obtain no
other result than to save himself. She was very pale.
“Well, haven’t you any questions to ask me?” he said.
“What questions? You said yourself that I had taken the portmanteau.
And afterwards I put it in a safe place.”
“And you didn’t make sure that it was all right?”
“Gracious, no. What was the point in opening it? The ropes and seals
were intact.”
“You didn’t notice the mark of a hole in the side--an opening made
between the strands of wicker-work?”
“An opening?” she said faintly.
“Goodness, you don’t suppose that I spent two hours with a portmanteau
full of jewels without doing anything? Come: I’m not such a fool as
that.”
“Then--then----” she said in a yet fainter voice.
“Then, my poor friend, little by little, patiently, I extracted all the
contents of the portmanteau with the result that----”
“With the result that?”
“--when you open it you will find nothing inside but a roughly
equivalent weight of trifles of no great value--just what I had to
hand, finding them in the sacks of provisions--a good many pounds of
lentils and haricot beans--merchandise for which it is hardly worth
your while perhaps, to pay the rent of a strong-room in a London bank.”
She struggled not to believe him and protested: “It isn’t true! You
can’t have been able----” Her voice died away before this paralyzing
revelation.
He reached up to a shelf and took down a little wooden bowl, from which
he poured into the palm of his hand two or three dozen diamonds and
rubies and sapphires and carelessly made them dance and sparkle and
clink.
“And there are others,” he said with an air of satisfaction.
“Undoubtedly the imminence of the explosion prevented me from bringing
the lot of them away; and the bulk of the treasure of the monks
is scattered about the bottom of the sea. But all the same there’s
something to amuse a young man and help him to bear up. What do you
think, Josine? You don’t answer.... But hang it all! What’s the matter
now, confound it? You’re never going to faint! Oh, these infernal
women! They can’t even lose a thousand millions without going off. What
milksops they are!”
Josephine did not “go off,” as Ralph had phrased it. She drew herself
up, livid with raised arms. She wished to insult him. She wished to
strike him. But she was suffocating. Her hands beat the air like the
hands of a drowning man waving above the surface of the sea; and she
fell upon the bed, moaning hoarsely.
Unmoved, he waited for the end of the attack. But he had still
something to say to her.
“Well, have I beaten you? Have madam’s shoulders touched the mat? Are
you knocked out? Defeat all along the line. What? That’s what I wanted
to bring home to you, Josephine. You will go away from here completely
convinced that you can do nothing against me and that it is best to
give up all idea of plotting against me. I shall be happy in spite of
you, and so will Clarice, and we shall have lots and lots of children.
So you will have to make up your mind to face these facts.”
He began to walk up and down and went on in accents that grew more and
more cheerful: “Moreover what would you? You struck a streak of bad
luck when you went to war with a stout young fellow who is ten times
as strong and smart as you, my poor girl. I’m often astonished myself
at my strength and smartness. Heavens! What a marvel of cleverness,
cunning, intuition, energy, and clearsightedness! A veritable genius!
Nothing escapes me. I read the minds of my enemies like an open book.
Their slightest thoughts are known to me. So, at this very moment
you’ve got your back to me, haven’t you? You’re spread out on the bed
and I cannot see your charming face. All the same I’m perfectly well
aware that you’re slipping your hand into your bodice and pulling out a
revolver and that you’re going----”
The sentence was not finished. Suddenly Josephine twisted round,
revolver in hand.
The report rang out. But Ralph, who was ready had time to grasp her
wrist and twist it back--towards herself. She fell back wounded in the
bosom.
The scene had been so brutal and the dénouement so unexpected that he
stood speechless before this suddenly inert form which lay before him,
the face colorless.
However he felt no anxiety. He did not believe that she was dead; and
as a matter of fact, when he bent down and looked into it, he found
that her heart was beating steadily. He cut away the top of her bodice
with his nail-scissors. The bullet, striking aslant, had glanced off
after ploughing through the flesh, a little above the black mark on top
of her breast.
“It isn’t a serious wound,” he said to himself, thinking that the death
of such a creature would have been only right and desirable.
He stood over her, still holding the scissors in his hand, and asking
himself if it was not his duty to destroy this too perfect beauty,
to mangle that charming face and so to rob the siren of her power to
injure. A scar in the shape of a deep cross across her face, which
raised ridges of skin would render indelible, what a just punishment
and what a valuable precaution! What evil deeds avoided and what crimes
prevented!
He had not the courage to do so; he did not wish to arrogate to himself
the right to do so. Besides he had loved her too well.
He stood for a long time motionless, gazing down at her with infinite
sadness. The struggle had exhausted him. He found himself full of
bitterness and disgust. She was his first love, his first real love,
and that passion to which the innocent heart brings so much freshness
and of which it retains so sweet a memory, had brought him in the end
nothing but rancor and hate. All his life his lips would retain a
slight curl of disenchantment and his soul the impression of a scar.
She breathed more easily and opened her eyes.
At once he felt an irresistible urge never to see her again, never even
to think of her.
Opening the window, he listened. He fancied that he heard hurrying
steps from the direction of the shore. Leonard must have discovered,
on reaching the beach, that all the fruits of the expedition had been
the capture of a dummy, and doubtless, anxious about Josephine, he was
returning to help her.
“Let him find her here; let him carry her away!” he said to himself.
“Let her die or let her live! Let her be happy or unhappy! I don’t care
a rap. I don’t want to hear anything more about her. Enough of this
hell!”
And without a word, without a glance at the woman who held out her
hands and implored him not to leave her, he went away.
Next morning he paid a visit to Clarice. In order not to reopen wounds
which he knew must be so very painful, he had not yet seen her again.
But she had known that he was there; and at once he perceived that time
had already done its work. A warmer color mantled her cheeks; her eyes
were shining with hope.
“Clarice,” he said to her, “from the very first day you promised to
forgive me everything.”
“I have nothing to forgive you, Ralph,” she said, with the remembrance
of her father’s crimes in her mind.
“Yes you have, Clarice. I have hurt you cruelly,” he protested. “I have
hurt myself very little less; and it is not only your love that I ask
but also your care and your protection. I need you to help me to forget
horrible memories, to restore my confidence in life, and to combat many
ugly qualities in me which urge me to a path I do not wish to tread.
With your help I am sure I can be honest; I am certainly going to try
hard. And I promise you that you shall be happy. Will you be my wife?”
She held out her hand.
_EPILOGUE_
As Ralph had supposed all the vast network of intrigue woven to acquire
the legendary treasure was never brought to the light of day. The
suicide of Beaumagnan; the crimes of Madam Pellegrini, the mysterious
personality of the Countess of Cagliostro, her flight, the shipwreck
of the _Glow-worm_, all these divers facts, Justice could not, or
would not, link together. The memorandum of the Cardinal Bishop was
destroyed, or disappeared. The associates of Beaumagnan disbanded and
did not speak. The world knew nothing.
Necessarily the part that Ralph had played in the affair could not even
be suspected; and his marriage passed unnoticed. By what miracle did he
succeed in marrying under the name of the Vicomte d’Andresy? Doubtless
one must attribute this exploit to the formidable means of action
afforded him by the two or three handfuls of precious stones saved from
the treasure. With those means one can get many things winked at.
And it was by those means evidently that one day the name of Lupin was
found to have vanished. On no register and on no documents was there
any longer any trace of Arsène Lupin, or of his father, Theophrastus
Lupin. Legally there was only the Vicomte Ralph d’Andresy; and that
Vicomte went on his travels through Europe with the Vicomtesse, née
Clarice d’Etigues.
In the course of their travels news came to them of the death of the
Baron d’Etigues. He perished, along with his cousin Oscar de Bennetot,
while they were out rowing. Was it an accident? Was it suicide? During
the last days of their lives the two cousins had been reckoned mad;
and it was generally agreed that they had committed suicide. But there
was also another version which hinted at crime. There were people who
declared that a yacht had run down the boat and disappeared. But of
this there was no proof.
Whatever the facts might be, Clarice would not touch her father’s
fortune. She divided it among charitable institutions.
The years rolled on, delightful and careless years. Ralph kept one of
the promises which he had made to Clarice: she was profoundly happy.
The other promise he did not keep: he was not honest.
Honesty seemed to be beyond his power. He had in his blood the need
to take, to scheme, to mystify, to dupe, to amuse himself at other
people’s expense. He was by instinct smuggler, filibuster, marauder,
pirate, plotter, and above all chief of a gang. Besides, in the school
of Josephine, he had discovered, not without pride, really exceptional
qualities in himself which rendered him practically without peer.
He believed in his genius. He conferred on himself the right to a
fantastic destiny, and one contrary to the destiny of all the men who
were his contemporaries. He would be above all of them. He would be the
master.
Without the knowledge of Clarice then, without indeed the young woman’s
having the least suspicion of it, he carried on enterprises and brought
to success affairs in which his authority grew stronger and stronger
and his really superhuman gifts developed.[D]
But before everything he told himself, the repose and happiness of
Clarice! He respected his wife. That she should be, and that she should
know herself to be the wife of a thief, that he could not allow.
Their happiness lasted five years; at the beginning of the sixth year
Clarice died in giving birth to a son called Jean.
The very day after her death that son disappeared, without the
slightest clue which allowed Ralph to discover who had entered the
little house at Auteuil in which he lived or how they had been able to
enter it.
As for the matter of guessing whose hand had struck the blow, there was
no need to hesitate about that. Ralph, who had never doubted that the
drowning of the two cousins had been brought about by the Countess of
Cagliostro, Ralph, who yet later had learned that Dominique had died of
poison, Ralph regarded it as settled that the Countess of Cagliostro
was the author of the abduction. His grief transformed him. Having no
longer either wife or son to restrain him, he flung himself with all
his heart into the course to which so many forces impelled him. From
that day on he was Arsène Lupin. There was no longer any reservation,
any compromise. On the contrary: scandals, challenges, arrogance, an
unbridled display of vanity and mockery, his name written on the walls,
his visiting-card in strong-rooms. Arsène Lupin, what!
But whether he was passing under this name or under any other of the
different names it pleased him to assume, whether he called himself
Count Bernard d’Andresy (he had stolen the papers of a cousin of his
family, who had died abroad) or Horace Velmont, or Colonel Sparmiento,
or the Duke of Charmerace, or Prince Sernine, or Don Luis Perenna,
always and everywhere, in all his avatars and beneath all his masks,
he hunted for the Countess of Cagliostro, he hunted for his son Jean.
He did not find his son. He never saw Josephine again. Was she still
alive? Did she dare to risk entering France? Did she continue to
persecute and to kill? Could he admit, considering what she was, that
the menace eternally held over him since the very moment of their
rupture would not take effect in some vengeance yet more cruel than the
abduction of his son?
All the life of Arsène Lupin, wild enterprises, superhuman trials,
unheard of triumphs, unmeasured passions extravagant ambitions, all
these had to run their course before events permitted him to answer
this formidable question.
And so it came about that his first adventure linked itself, more than
a quarter of a century later, to the adventure which it pleases him to
consider to-day his last.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] The first enigma was solved by a young girl (see “The Secret Tomb,”
by Maurice Leblanc). The two next were solved by Arsène Lupin (see “The
Island of the Thirty Shrouds” and “The Hollow Needle”). The solving of
the fourth is the theme of this book.
[B] Hitherto none of the biographies of Josephine have given any
explanation of the fact that she in a way fled from Fontainebleau. Only
Monsieur Frederic Masson, scenting the truth, writes: “Perhaps one
day some letter will be found which will demonstrate the _physical_
necessity of this departure.”
[C] There is no doubt that the well-known legend of the Thousand
Millions of the Congregations had its origin in this tithe.
[D] The acquisition of the treasure of the Kings of France, the second
enigma of Cagliostro, and the discovery of that impenetrable retreat
from which, fifteen years later, he could only be dislodged by the help
of a flotilla of torpedo-boats, dates from this epoch.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.