THE VILLA B. IS BURGLED
“If there is one principle to which I always cling,” said Arsène Lupin
to me, when, many years later, he told me the story of the girl with
the green eyes, “it is never to attempt the solution of a problem
before the proper hour for doing so has arrived. To get to the bottom
of certain enigmas, you must wait till luck, or your own cleverness,
has brought you a sufficient number of the actual facts. You must only
advance along the road to the truth, with the greatest care, step by
step, following the course of events.”
This reasoning applies to such an affair as this, in which there was
nothing but contradictions, absurdities, isolated acts, apparently
linked to one another by no connection of any kind; without a scrap of
unity in it; without a directing thought; every one playing a lone
hand. Never had Ralph felt so strongly how deeply he ought to distrust
any kind of precipitousness in any adventure of this kind. Deductions,
intuitions, analyses, explorations were just so many snares you must be
careful not to fall into.
All day therefore he remained under the tarpaulin of the truck while
the freight train rolled southwards through sunny landscapes. He
dreamed pleasantly, eating the apples to appease his hunger, without
wasting his time on building fragile hypotheses about the pretty girl,
about her crimes and her dark soul. He enjoyed the pleasure of the
memory of her lips, the tenderest and most exquisite lips he had ever
kissed. That was the unique fact which he chose to bear in mind. To
avenge the English girl and punish the guilty one, to catch the third
murderer and regain possession of his stolen notes would undoubtedly
have been interesting; but to find again the green eyes and the lips
which yielded to his, what a joy!
The examination of the red leather wallet did not give him much
information. There was a list of names and addresses, of confederates
doubtless, some letters from associates in different parts of Europe.
They were written with a certain discretion, though a more careful
person would have destroyed one or two of them; but in view of what
Marescal had told him, they proved beyond doubt that Miss Bakersfield
was indeed a thief. Among them were letters from Lord Bakersfield full
of a father’s frank affection. But there was nothing which gave a clue
to the part played by the girl in this affair of the express, nothing
which showed any connection between the adventure in which the English
girl was engaged and the crime of the three train-robbers; that is to
say between Miss Bakersfield and the murderess with the green eyes.
A single document, the document of which Marescal had spoken, the
letter addressed to the English girl touching the matter of burgling
Villa B., was of real value. It ran:
“You will find Villa B. on the right hand side of the road from
Nice to Cimiez, just above the Roman arena. It’s a massive building
in a large, walled garden.
“On the fourth Wednesday in every month the old Comte de B. settles
himself on the back seat of his carriage and goes down to Nice with
his man, his two maids, and some baskets for provisions. Therefore
the house is empty from three o’clock till five.
“Go round the garden walls to the wall which looks down upon the
valley of Paillon. You will come to a small, worm-eaten, wooden
door, of which I send you the key by the same messenger.
“It is certain that the Comte de B. who has quarrelled with his
wife, has not found the packet of deeds which she hid. But a letter
written by the dead lady to a friend, speaks of a broken violin
case which is lying in a kind of little tower used as a lumber
room. Why this allusion which seems to mean nothing? The friend
died on the very day on which she received the letter, which was
mislaid and only fell into my hands two years later.
“Enclosed herein is the plan of the house and garden. The turret is
situated at the top of the staircase and is in a tumble-down
condition. Two persons are necessary for the expedition, one to
keep watch, for you have to look out for the laundress, who often
comes by another garden door fastened by a padlock of which she has
the key.
“Fix the date (a note in blue pencil on the margin fixes it as the
28th of April) and let me know that we may meet at the same hotel.
G.
“P.S. My information with regard to the great enigma of which I
spoke to you is still uncommonly vague. Is it a matter of a
considerable treasure, or of a scientific secret? I do not yet
know. The journey for which I am getting ready will therefore
settle the matter. How useful your help will be then!”
For the time being Ralph paid little attention to this somewhat strange
postscript. He saw in it, according to a phrase he affected, one of
those jungles into which one can only penetrate by means of dangerous
suppositions. But the burgling of Villa B.——
This burglary little by little excited his keen interest. He considered
it at length. A kickshaw perhaps; but there are kickshaws as nourishing
as a substantial dish. And since he was rolling towards the South, it
would be rather foolish to neglect such a good opportunity. That night
he slipped out of his truck at the railway station at Marseilles and
took an ordinary train to Nice, where he arrived on the morning of
Wednesday the 28th of April, after having relieved a good gentleman of
some bank notes, which permitted him to buy a suit-case, clothes, and
linen, and to establish himself in one of the best hotels on the front.
There he breakfasted, and over his breakfast he read in the local
papers more or less fantastic accounts of the murders in the express.
At two o’clock in the afternoon he left the hotel, so changed in dress
and countenance that it would have been almost impossible for Marescal
to recognize him. But how should Marescal suspect that the man who had
tricked him would have the audacity to substitute himself for Miss
Bakersfield in the burglary at the Villa?
“When a fruit is ripe, one gathers it,” Ralph said to himself. “And
this one seems to me quite ripe and I should certainly be too stupid
for anything if I let it rot. And I’m sure that that unfortunate Miss
Bakersfield would never forgive me if I did so.”
The Villa Faradoni stands on the edge of the road and looks over a vast
stretch of mountainous country covered with olive trees. Stony paths,
almost always empty, run beside the other three walls which surround
it. Ralph made a careful inspection of them, observed the small,
worm-eaten, wooden door and further on a padlocked door. He perceived
also in a neighboring field the cottage which must be that of the
laundress, and came back to the high road in time to see a rackety old
carriage on its way to Nice. The Count Faradoni and his staff were
going shopping. It was three o’clock.
“The house is empty,” thought Ralph. “It’s hardly probable that Miss
Bakersfield’s correspondent, who cannot be ignorant of the murder of
his accomplice, is likely to try to do the job himself. The broken
violin-case therefore belongs to me.”
He retraced his steps nearly to the little worm-eaten door, to a spot
at which he had observed that some projections in the wall would make
it easy to climb. Forthwith he climbed over it easily enough and took
his way towards the house along little-used paths. All the long windows
of the ground floor were open. That of the hall led him to the
staircase at the top of which rose the turret. But even as he set foot
on the first step of it an electric bell rang.
“Confound it!” he said to himself. “Is the house full of burglar
alarms? Can the Count be on his guard against something?”
The bell which was ringing in the hall, with a sustained and
disquieting ring, stopped, without Ralph’s having stirred. Wishing to
make sure, he examined the bell which was fixed near the ceiling,
followed the wire which ran along the moulding, and ascertained that it
went through the outside wall of the house. The ringing therefore was
not the result of any action of his; but someone outside had set it
going.
He went out of the house. The wire ran through the air at a good
height, fastened to branches of trees, and in the very direction from
which he himself had come. It did not take him long to understand what
had happened.
“When one opens the little worm-eaten door, the bell is set in action.
Consequently some one was on the point of entering and stopped on
hearing the bell ring.”
He went quickly and quietly to the top of a hillock on his left,
covered with shrubs, from which one had a view of the house, most of
the garden, and some parts of the wall. The part in which the little
door was set was one of them.
He waited. There would soon be a second attempt if any one were trying,
like himself, to get into the Villa and take advantage of the Count’s
absence. He was right; but the attempt was made in a manner he had not
expected. A man came on to the top of the wall, as he had done himself
and at the same place, straddled it, unhooked the end of the bell-wire,
and dropped to the ground.
Then the door was pushed open from outside; the bell did not ring;
another person entered, a woman.
In the lives of great adventurers and above all at the beginning of
their enterprises, chance plays the part of a veritable collaborator.
Ralph who knew this, never missed the opportunity of making use of it,
and the instant he saw who this woman was he attributed her presence to
this obliging collaborator. But, astonishing as it was, was it really
by chance that the girl with the green eyes was there and that she was
there in the company of a man who could only be the good William? The
rapidity of their flight, their sudden intrusion into this garden on
this day, the 28th of April, and at this hour of the afternoon, surely
made it clear that they also knew all about the Villa and that they
were going straight to the same goal with the same sureness as himself.
Was it not even allowable to see here what he was seeking? A certain
connection between the enterprises of the English girl, the victim, and
of the French girl her murderess? Provided with their tickets, their
luggage registered at Paris, the confederates had quite naturally gone
on with their expedition.
They came, together, along the little-used path, the man rather thin,
clean-shaven, with the appearance of an actor, and an unpleasant actor
at that, held a plan in his hand and advanced with an anxious air and
watchful eye.
As for the young woman, though he did not doubt for a moment that it
was she, Ralph recognized her with difficulty. How changed it was, that
pretty face, smiling and happy, which he had so admired a day or two
before in the confectioner’s on the Boulevard Haussmann! It was no
longer the tragic countenance he had seen in the corridor of the
express but a poor little shrunken face, miserable, fearful, which hurt
him to look upon.
She was wearing a very simple gray frock, without ornaments, and a
close-fitting straw hat which hid her fair hair. Then, as they came
along the bottom of the hillock, from which, crouching among the shrubs
he was watching, Ralph had a sudden vision, as brief as a flash of
light, of a head which rose above the wall, at a place where he had
climbed it, a man’s head, hatless, the black hair sticking up above a
face of the vulgarest.
Was it the third confederate posted on the path, or was it an enemy
spying on the two of them?
Ralph accepted this second explanation when he saw the couple halt a
little way beyond the hillock, at the fork of the road to the door of
the house, and the path to the padlocked door, and William hand a
whistle to the girl, post her on guard behind a screen of shrubs,
pointing to the padlocked door as to a place on which she was to keep
watch. It was plain therefore that to William there was only one peril
to guard against and that was the coming of the laundress; it was
evident that at the door there was an enemy, some agent of Marescal
perhaps, laying a trap for them.
Having given his instructions, William set out at a run towards the
house. He left the girl, alone, exposed to a danger of which he was
ignorant and which she did not suspect.
Ralph, who was at a distance of about fifty yards from her, gazed at
her greedily, and reflected that another gaze, that of the hidden man
must also be fixed on her through the cracks of the worm-eaten door.
What was he to do? Warn her? Carry her off, as at Beaucourt, and
protect her against unknown dangers?
But stronger than his perplexity was his curiosity. He wished to know.
In the midst of this imbroglio in which was a very entanglement of
opposing actions in which attacks came from opposing quarters, without
its being possible to see from which quarter one would come first, he
hoped some guiding thread would present itself and allow him, at a
given moment, to choose one path rather than another and no longer act
haphazardly from an impulse of pity or the lust to avenge.
The girl remained leaning against a tree and played idly with the
whistle which she was to use in case of surprise. The youngness of her
face, almost a child’s face, though she was certainly not less than
twenty, surprised Ralph. At that distance he could not see the color of
her strange eyes, but her hair beneath her hat, which she had pushed
back a little, shone like curls of gold and formed a halo of light and
gaiety.
The moments slipped by. All at once Ralph heard the hinges of the
padlocked door creak, and saw, on the other side of the hillock, a
country-woman who came up the path, singing, and took her way towards
the house, a basket of linen on her arm. The girl with the green eyes
had also heard her. She tottered, sank to the ground under the tree,
and raised the whistle to her lips. She was so overcome with terror
that she had not the strength to blow it; the laundress went on up the
path without having perceived that figure, hidden behind the trunks of
the shrubs which stood at the fork of the path.
Terrible minutes slipped away. There is nothing more terrifying than to
wait for an event which every circumstance foretells will be dramatic.
What would William do, disturbed in the very middle of his burglary and
confronted with this intruder? Did not the thief’s actions during the
attack in the express enable one to guess the dénouement?
Ralph made ready to intervene, when there came an unexpected happening:
the laundress entered the house by a side door; and the moment she
disappeared, William came out of the front door, carrying a newspaper
parcel of the shape of a violin case. He and the laundress did not
meet.
The girl, hidden among the trees did not at once see this, and during
the stealthy approach of her confederate, who was walking noiselessly
on the turf, she wore the mask of terror she had worn at Beaucourt,
after the murder of Miss Bakersfield and the two men. Ralph filled with
detestation of her.
William, if William it was, rejoined the girl, and Ralph saw her tell
him of the coming of the laundress. He caught her roughly by the arm
and hurried her along into the cover of the path to the worm-eaten
door. As they passed the hillock Ralph saw that they were both shaken
by this narrow escape and he felt an immense contempt for them.
“All right,” he said to himself. “If it is Marescal or his agents who
are in ambush behind that door all the better. Let them collar the two
of them and stick them into prison! That girl isn’t worth taking any
trouble about.”
It may be that he might yet have yielded to a sudden impulse, to an
irresistible need to impose his will on these puppets and force an
affair he had started to the end he desired. It may be. But this was a
day of surprises, on which the events falsified all his predictions, so
that he was driven to act almost in spite of himself and at any rate
without a moment’s reflection.
Some twenty yards from the door, that is to say some twenty yards from
the spot at which he supposed the agents of Marescal to be lurking, the
man whose head Ralph had seen rise above the wall, sprang out of the
bushes which hung over the path, knocked William out with a swing to
the jaw, gripped the young girl and tucked her under his arm as if she
had been a parcel, snatched up the violin-case, and started to run, not
in the direction of the wooden door, but through the plantation of
olive trees at the bottom of the garden, and away from the house. Ralph
at once grasped the fact that the man had made a circuit round the
walls and entered the garden through some breach in the wall, or some
accident of the ground. He dashed off in pursuit. His quarry was at
once swift and powerful; he ran at a good pace, without looking behind
him, as if he had no doubt whatever that no one would be able to
prevent him from reaching his goal.
He came out of the olive plantation and plunged into a plantation of
lemon trees. The ground on which they were planted sloped gently
upwards nearly to the top of the wall so that not more than three feet
of it rose above the top of the slope. He set the young girl on the top
of the wall, gripped her wrists, lowered her over it to the full length
of his arms, and let her drop; then he dropped the violin-case over the
wall and let himself drop from it.
“Splendid!” said Ralph to himself. “He must have hidden a car at the
end of the lane which runs along this side of the wall. Then, having
spied upon the girl and then captured her, he is returning to the point
from which he started and will drop her, inert and helpless, on to the
seat of the car.”
Running on, Ralph learned that he had been right. He saw a large open
car at the end of the lane. The abductor of the girl lost no time: he
laid her on the seat, cranked up the car, jumped in beside her, and
started.
The lane was ploughed up in deep ruts. The car bumped along, needing
all the driver’s attention. Ralph caught up to it, sprang on to the
back, slipped over the hood and crouched down under a rug which was
hanging over the back of the driver’s seat. The driver, all his
attention given to getting the car over this awkward piece of ground,
had heard nothing.
Three minutes brought them to the end of the garden wall on to the high
road. Before accelerating, the man took hold of the girl’s neck with a
sinewy and powerful hand and growled:
“If you stir, you’re lost. I’ll wring your neck as I wrung the other
girl’s—you know what that means.” He laughed a sinister laugh and
added: “Besides, you’ve no more desire to call for help than I have.
What?”
Country folk were walking along the footpath; they saw a man and a girl
taking a joy-ride in a car. It skirted Nice and turned off towards the
mountains.
Ralph had no difficulty in piecing together the facts, or in
understanding the meaning of the ruffian’s words. In the midst of this
confusion of events, none of which seemed connected with any other, he
grasped the fact that the man was the third of the train-robbers on the
express, the man who had wrung the neck of the other girl, that is to
say of Constance Bakersfield.
“That’s as clear as paint,” he said to himself, “it doesn’t require any
more thinking out. And here’s another proof that there is a connection
between this burglary at the Villa and the coup of the three
train-robbers. Undoubtedly Marescal was right in maintaining that the
English girl was killed by mistake. But all the same all these
different people were on their way to Nice with the same object in
view; the burgling of the Villa B. It was William, the obvious writer
of the letter signed ‘G,’ who planned the burglary, William who was a
member of both gangs, William who was the confederate of the English
girl in the burglary and was at the same time seeking the solution of
the enigma of which he speaks in his postscript. As clear as paint it
is. Consequently when the English girl was murdered William had to
execute alone the burglary he had planned. He brings with him his
friend with the green eyes since the burglary demanded a confederate;
and he would have brought off his coup if the third train robber who
was keeping an eye on the pair of them, had not snatched the spoil from
him and seized the opportunity also to carry off little Green Eyes.
With what object? Are he and William rivals in love? But for the moment
we won’t ask any more questions.”
Some miles further on the car turned to the right. Ralph knew this
country well. It scaled the slopes which lead to the curious village of
Falicon, descended by a steep, abruptly zigzagging road, then turned on
to the Levens Road, by which one can reach the gorges of the Var, or
the region of the high mountains. And then?
“Yes; and then?” he said to himself. “What am I to do if the journey
ends in some robbers’ lair? Ought I to wait to find myself facing alone
half a dozen jail-birds whom I shall have to fight for the girl? Or had
I better get to work now?”
A sudden movement of the young girl forced a decision. In an access of
despair she tried to spring from the car at the risk of killing
herself. The man caught her and held her with a grip of steel.
“No foolishness!” he cried. “If you’ve got to die, you’ll die by my
hand and at the appointed hour. Have you forgotten what I told you on
the express, before you and William did in the two brothers? So I
advise——”
He did not finish. There suddenly appeared a head and bust separating
him from the girl. A grinning head and a shoving bust which pressed him
into his corner.
“And how are you, old friend?” snarled a voice.
The ruffian was dumfounded. A wrong turn of the wheel must throw all
three of them into a ravine.
“Cristi de Cristi!” he stammered. “Who on earth is this blighter? Where
did he come from?”
“What?” said Ralph. “You don’t remember me? But since you were speaking
of the express, you must remember me—the first gentleman you knocked on
the head—the unfortunate chap from whom you collared twenty-three notes
and two rings. The lady recognizes me perfectly, don’t you,
mademoiselle? You recognize the kind gentleman who carried you away in
his arms that night and whom you quitted without a word of thanks.”
The girl said nothing; she crouched lower, shrinking away from him. The
dumfounded driver babbled on: “Who the devil is the blighter? Where the
hell did he come from?”
“From the Villa Faradoni, where I was keeping an eye on you. And now
it’s time to stop and let Mademoiselle get down.”
The ruffian did not answer. He accelerated.
“Are you going to be naughty? You’re wrong, my friend,” said Ralph.
“You must have seen in the papers the care I took of you. I never
whispered a word about you; and the consequence is that everybody is
accusing me of being the leader of the gang. Me! An inoffensive
passenger who only did his best to save everybody. Come, comrade, take
a pull at the reins and slow down.”
The road was winding down a defile, on one side the walls of the cliff,
on the other a parapet which ran along the top of another cliff which
dropped sheer to a torrent beneath. Very narrow, it was made narrower
still by a street-car line. Ralph decided that the situation was
reversible. Standing nearly upright he had a better view of the road
than the driver as they came round each turn. Of a sudden he raised
himself to his full height, bent down, opened his arms, passed them to
the right and left of his enemy, dropped down heavily on him and over
his shoulder seized the wheel with both hands.
The startled ruffian yielded a little as he stammered: “Cristi! The
blighter’s mad! Damnation! He’s going to pitch us into the ravine.
Loose me, you fool!”
He tried to free himself but the two arms gripped him like a sheath.
Ralph laughed and said: “You’ve got to choose, my dear sir, the ravine
or getting smashed up by the car. Look! There it comes bucketting along
to meet you. You must stop, my friend. If you don’t——”
In truth the heavy car came round a corner sixty yards away. At the
pace at which they were moving the stop must be instantaneous. The
driver grasped this and put on the brakes, while Ralph bent down over
the wheel and brought the auto to a standstill on the two rails of the
car line. The two vehicles came to a stop nose to nose.
The driver was still raging; he cried: “Cristi de Cristi! Who the hell
is this blighter? Ah, you shall pay for this!”
“Make out your bill. Have you got a fountain pen? No? Then, if you
don’t mean to spend the night in front of the car let’s get out of the
way.”
He held out his hand to the girl, who refused his help and sprang down
and stood waiting by the side of the road. The passengers on the car
began to grow impatient. The driver and conductor shouted. Ralph and
the ruffian started to get the auto out of the way; and as soon as it
was clear the car went on.
Ralph stepped away from the car and said to the driver in imperious
accents: “You’ve seen how I operate, comrade. Well, if you venture to
molest the young lady any more, I’ll hand you over to the police. It
was you who planned the coup on the express and strangled the English
girl.”
The driver turned, paling. In his hairy face, its skin already riddled
with wrinkles, the lips were twitching. He stammered: “It’s a lie! I
never t-t-t-touched her!”
“It was you all right. I’ve got the proofs,” snarled Ralph. “If you’re
caught, it’s the scaffold. So clear out. You can leave me your car.
I’ll take it back to Nice with the girl. Come, get!”
He cleared him out of the way with a savage thrust of his shoulder,
sprang into the car and picked up the wrapped-up violin case. Then he
swore and cried: “She’s bolted!”
In truth the girl with the green eyes was no longer by the roadside.
The street car was disappearing round the corner. Taking advantage of
their being busy clearing the auto out of the way, she must have jumped
on to it.
Ralph’s fury turned on the driver.
“Who are you? Eh? You know that girl? What’s her name? And what’s your
name?”
The driver no less furious sprang at him and tried to snatch the
violin-case from his hands. There was a fierce struggle and in the
middle of it a second street car came by. Ralph staggered his opponent
with a left hook to the temple, sprang away from him and sprang on to
the car. The ruffian recovered as it went round the corner and started
to stagger after it. It left him behind.
Ralph returned to his hotel in the worst of tempers. Fortunately he had
by way of compensation the deeds of the Countess Faradoni.
He unwrapped the newspaper. Although it had lost its neck and bridge
and strings, the violin was much heavier than it should have been.
On examining it Ralph discovered that the chest had been deftly sawn
through all the way round then replaced and glued on. He unglued it.
The violin only contained a bundle of old newspapers. They made it
clear that either the Countess had hidden her fortunes somewhere else
or that the Count, having discovered its hiding-place, was peaceably
enjoying the income of which she had wished to rob him.
“Defeated all along the line!” growled Ralph. “This girl with the green
eyes is beginning to get on my nerves! And she refused to touch my
hand, confound her! What? Is she really furious with me for having
stolen a kiss? To the devil with the little prude!”