have identified the two names of Arsene Lupin and Horace Velmont."
[D] _The Exploits of Arsene Lupin. IX. Holmlock Shears arrives too
late._
"Yes."
"Therefore she knows who you are."
"Yes."
"And she bows to you?" I exclaimed, in spite of myself.
He caught me by the arm and, fiercely:
"Do you think that I am Lupin to her? Do you think that I am a burglar
in her eyes, a rogue, a cheat?... Why, I might be the lowest of
miscreants, I might be a murderer even ... and still she would bow to
me!"
"Why? Because she loved you once?"
"Rot! That would be an additional reason, on the contrary, why she
should now despise me."
"What then?"
"I am the man who gave her back her son!"
III
THE SIGN OF THE SHADOW
"I received your telegram and here I am," said a gentleman with a grey
moustache, who entered my study, dressed in a dark-brown frock-coat and
a wide-brimmed hat, with a red ribbon in his buttonhole. "What's the
matter?"
Had I not been expecting Arsene Lupin, I should certainly never have
recognized him in the person of this old half-pay officer:
"What's the matter?" I echoed. "Oh, nothing much: a rather curious
coincidence, that's all. And, as I know that you would just as soon
clear up a mystery as plan one...."
"Well?"
"You seem in a great hurry!"
"I am ... unless the mystery in question is worth putting myself out
for. So let us get to the point."
"Very well. Just begin by casting your eye on this little picture, which
I picked up, a week or two ago, in a grimy old shop on the other side
of the river. I bought it for the sake of its Empire frame, with the
palm-leaf ornaments on the mouldings ... for the painting is execrable."
"Execrable, as you say," said Lupin, after he had examined it, "but the
subject itself is rather nice. That corner of an old courtyard, with its
rotunda of Greek columns, its sun-dial and its fish-pond and that ruined
well with the Renascence roof and those stone steps and stone benches:
all very picturesque."
"And genuine," I added. "The picture, good or bad, has never been taken
out of its Empire frame. Besides, it is dated.... There, in the
left-hand bottom corner: those red figures, 15. 4. 2, which obviously
stand for 15 April, 1802."
"I dare say ... I dare say.... But you were speaking of a coincidence
and, so far, I fail to see...."
I went to a corner of my study, took a telescope, fixed it on its stand
and pointed it, through the open window, at the open window of a little
room facing my flat, on the other side of the street. And I asked Lupin
to look through it.
He stooped forward. The slanting rays of the morning sun lit up the room
opposite, revealing a set of mahogany furniture, all very simple, a
large bed and a child's bed hung with cretonne curtains.
"Ah!" cried Lupin, suddenly. "The same picture!"
"Exactly the same!" I said. "And the date: do you see the date, in red?
15. 4. 2."
"Yes, I see.... And who lives in that room?"
"A lady ... or, rather, a workwoman, for she has to work for her living
... needlework, hardly enough to keep herself and her child."
"What is her name?"
"Louise d'Ernemont.... From what I hear, she is the great-granddaughter
of a farmer-general who was guillotined during the Terror."
"Yes, on the same day as Andre Chenier," said Lupin. "According to the
memoirs of the time, this d'Ernemont was supposed to be a very rich
man." He raised his head and said, "It's an interesting story.... Why
did you wait before telling me?"
"Because this is the 15th of April."
"Well?"
"Well, I discovered yesterday--I heard them talking about it in the
porter's box--that the 15th of April plays an important part in the life
of Louise d'Ernemont."
"Nonsense!"
"Contrary to her usual habits, this woman who works every day of her
life, who keeps her two rooms tidy, who cooks the lunch which her
little girl eats when she comes home from the parish school ... this
woman, on the 15th of April, goes out with the child at ten o'clock in
the morning and does not return until nightfall. And this has happened
for years and in all weathers. You must admit that there is something
queer about this date which I find on an old picture, which is inscribed
on another, similar picture and which controls the annual movements of
the descendant of d'Ernemont the farmer-general."
"Yes, it's curious ... you're quite right," said Lupin, slowly. "And
don't you know where she goes to?"
"Nobody knows. She does not confide in a soul. As a matter of fact, she
talks very little."
"Are you sure of your information?"
"Absolutely. And the best proof of its accuracy is that here she comes."
A door had opened at the back of the room opposite, admitting a little
girl of seven or eight, who came and looked out of the window. A lady
appeared behind her, tall, good-looking still and wearing a sad and
gentle air. Both of them were ready and dressed, in clothes which were
simple in themselves, but which pointed to a love of neatness and a
certain elegance on the part of the mother.
"You see," I whispered, "they are going out."
And presently the mother took the child by the hand and they left the
room together.
Lupin caught up his hat:
"Are you coming?"
My curiosity was too great for me to raise the least objection. I went
downstairs with Lupin.
As we stepped into the street, we saw my neighbour enter a baker's shop.
She bought two rolls and placed them in a little basket which her
daughter was carrying and which seemed already to contain some other
provisions. Then they went in the direction of the outer boulevards and
followed them as far as the Place de l'Etoile, where they turned down
the Avenue Kleber to walk toward Passy.
Lupin strolled silently along, evidently obsessed by a train of thought
which I was glad to have provoked. From time to time, he uttered a
sentence which showed me the thread of his reflections; and I was able
to see that the riddle remained as much a mystery to him as to myself.
Louise d'Ernemont, meanwhile, had branched off to the left, along the
Rue Raynouard, a quiet old street in which Franklin and Balzac once
lived, one of those streets which, lined with old-fashioned houses and
walled gardens, give you the impression of being in a country-town. The
Seine flows at the foot of the slope which the street crowns; and a
number of lanes run down to the river.
My neighbour took one of these narrow, winding, deserted lanes. The
first building, on the right, was a house the front of which faced the
Rue Raynouard. Next came a moss-grown wall, of a height above the
ordinary, supported by buttresses and bristling with broken glass.
Half-way along the wall was a low, arched door. Louise d'Ernemont
stopped in front of this door and opened it with a key which seemed to
us enormous. Mother and child entered and closed the door.
"In any case," said Lupin, "she has nothing to conceal, for she has not
looked round once...."
He had hardly finished his sentence when we heard the sound of footsteps
behind us. It was two old beggars, a man and a woman, tattered, dirty,
squalid, covered in rags. They passed us without paying the least
attention to our presence. The man took from his wallet a key similar to
my neighbour's and put it into the lock. The door closed behind them.
And, suddenly, at the top of the lane, came the noise of a motor-car
stopping.... Lupin dragged me fifty yards lower down, to a corner in
which we were able to hide. And we saw coming down the lane, carrying a
little dog under her arm, a young and very much over-dressed woman,
wearing a quantity of jewellery, a young woman whose eyes were too dark,
her lips too red, her hair too fair. In front of the door, the same
performance, with the same key.... The lady and the dog disappeared from
view.
"This promises to be most amusing," said Lupin, chuckling. "What earthly
connection can there be between those different people?"
There hove in sight successively two elderly ladies, lean and rather
poverty-stricken in appearance, very much alike, evidently sisters; a
footman in livery; an infantry corporal; a fat gentleman in a soiled and
patched jacket-suit; and, lastly, a workman's family, father, mother,
and four children, all six of them pale and sickly, looking like people
who never eat their fill. And each of the newcomers carried a basket or
string-bag filled with provisions.
"It's a picnic!" I cried.
"It grows more and more surprising," said Lupin, "and I sha'n't be
satisfied till I know what is happening behind that wall."
To climb it was out of the question. We also saw that it finished, at
the lower as well as at the upper end, at a house none of whose windows
overlooked the enclosure which the wall contained.
During the next hour, no one else came along. We vainly cast about for
a stratagem; and Lupin, whose fertile brain had exhausted every possible
expedient, was about to go in search of a ladder, when, suddenly, the
little door opened and one of the workman's children came out.
The boy ran up the lane to the Rue Raynouard. A few minutes later he
returned, carrying two bottles of water, which he set down on the
pavement to take the big key from his pocket.
By that time Lupin had left me and was strolling slowly along the wall.
When the child, after entering the enclosure, pushed back the door Lupin
sprang forward and stuck the point of his knife into the staple of the
lock. The bolt failed to catch; and it became an easy matter to push the
door ajar.
"That's done the trick!" said Lupin.
He cautiously put his hand through the doorway and then, to my great
surprise, entered boldly. But, on following his example, I saw that, ten
yards behind the wall, a clump of laurels formed a sort of curtain which
allowed us to come up unobserved.
Lupin took his stand right in the middle of the clump. I joined him and,
like him, pushed aside the branches of one of the shrubs. And the sight
which presented itself to my eyes was so unexpected that I was unable to
suppress an exclamation, while Lupin, on his side, muttered, between
his teeth:
"By Jupiter! This is a funny job!"
We saw before us, within the confined space that lay between the two
windowless houses, the identical scene represented in the old picture
which I had bought at a second-hand dealer's!
The identical scene! At the back, against the opposite wall, the same
Greek rotunda displayed its slender columns. In the middle, the same
stone benches topped a circle of four steps that ran down to a fish-pond
with moss-grown flags. On the left, the same well raised its
wrought-iron roof; and, close at hand, the same sun-dial showed its
slanting gnomon and its marble face.
The identical scene! And what added to the strangeness of the sight was
the memory, obsessing Lupin and myself, of that date of the 15th of
April, inscribed in a corner of the picture, and the thought that this
very day was the 15th of April and that sixteen or seventeen people, so
different in age, condition and manners, had chosen the 15th of April to
come together in this forgotten corner of Paris!
All of them, at the moment when we caught sight of them, were sitting in
separate groups on the benches and steps; and all were eating. Not very
far from my neighbour and her daughter, the workman's family and the
beggar couple were sharing their provisions; while the footman, the
gentleman in the soiled suit, the infantry corporal and the two lean
sisters were making a common stock of their sliced ham, their tins of
sardines and their gruyere cheese.
The lady with the little dog alone, who had brought no food with her,
sat apart from the others, who made a show of turning their backs upon
her. But Louise d'Ernemont offered her a sandwich, whereupon her example
was followed by the two sisters; and the corporal at once began to make
himself as agreeable to the young person as he could.
It was now half-past one. The beggar-man took out his pipe, as did the
fat gentleman; and, when they found that one had no tobacco and the
other no matches, their needs soon brought them together. The men went
and smoked by the rotunda and the women joined them. For that matter,
all these people seemed to know one another quite well.
They were at some distance from where we were standing, so that we could
not hear what they said. However, we gradually perceived that the
conversation was becoming animated. The young person with the dog, in
particular, who by this time appeared to be in great request, indulged
in much voluble talk, accompanying her words with many gestures, which
set the little dog barking furiously.
But, suddenly, there was an outcry, promptly followed by shouts of rage;
and one and all, men and women alike, rushed in disorder toward the
well. One of the workman's brats was at that moment coming out of it,
fastened by his belt to the hook at the end of the rope; and the three
other urchins were drawing him up by turning the handle. More active
than the rest, the corporal flung himself upon him; and forthwith the
footman and the fat gentleman seized hold of him also, while the beggars
and the lean sisters came to blows with the workman and his family.
In a few seconds the little boy had not a stitch left on him beyond his
shirt. The footman, who had taken possession of the rest of the clothes,
ran away, pursued by the corporal, who snatched away the boy's breeches,
which were next torn from the corporal by one of the lean sisters.
"They are mad!" I muttered, feeling absolutely at sea.
"Not at all, not at all," said Lupin.
"What! Do you mean to say that you can make head or tail of what is
going on?"
He did not reply. The young lady with the little dog, tucking her pet
under her arm, had started running after the child in the shirt, who
uttered loud yells. The two of them raced round the laurel-clump in
which we stood hidden; and the brat flung himself into his mother's
arms.
At long last, Louise d'Ernemont, who had played a conciliatory part from
the beginning, succeeded in allaying the tumult. Everybody sat down
again; but there was a reaction in all those exasperated people and they
remained motionless and silent, as though worn out with their exertions.
And time went by. Losing patience and beginning to feel the pangs of
hunger, I went to the Rue Raynouard to fetch something to eat, which we
divided while watching the actors in the incomprehensible comedy that
was being performed before our eyes. They hardly stirred. Each minute
that passed seemed to load them with increasing melancholy; and they
sank into attitudes of discouragement, bent their backs more and more
and sat absorbed in their meditations.
The afternoon wore on in this way, under a grey sky that shed a dreary
light over the enclosure.
"Are they going to spend the night here?" I asked, in a bored voice.
But, at five o'clock or so, the fat gentleman in the soiled jacket-suit
took out his watch. The others did the same and all, watch in hand,
seemed to be anxiously awaiting an event of no little importance to
themselves. The event did not take place, for, in fifteen or twenty
minutes, the fat gentleman gave a gesture of despair, stood up and put
on his hat.
Then lamentations broke forth. The two lean sisters and the workman's
wife fell upon their knees and made the sign of the cross. The lady with
the little dog and the beggar-woman kissed each other and sobbed; and we
saw Louise d'Ernemont pressing her daughter sadly to her.
"Let's go," said Lupin.
"You think it's over?"
"Yes; and we have only just time to make ourselves scarce."
We went out unmolested. At the top of the lane, Lupin turned to the left
and, leaving me outside, entered the first house in the Rue Raynouard,
the one that backed on to the enclosure.
After talking for a few seconds to the porter, he joined me and we
stopped a passing taxi-cab:
"No. 34 Rue de Turin," he said to the driver.
The ground-floor of No. 34 was occupied by a notary's office; and we
were shown in, almost without waiting, to Maitre Valandier, a smiling,
pleasant-spoken man of a certain age.
Lupin introduced himself by the name of Captain Jeanniot, retired from
the army. He said that he wanted to build a house to his own liking
and that some one had suggested to him a plot of ground situated near
the Rue Raynouard.
"But that plot is not for sale," said Maitre Valandier.
"Oh, I was told...."
"You have been misinformed, I fear."
The lawyer rose, went to a cupboard and returned with a picture which he
showed us. I was petrified. It was the same picture which I had bought,
the same picture that hung in Louise d'Ernemont's room.
"This is a painting," he said, "of the plot of ground to which you
refer. It is known as the Clos d'Ernemont."
"Precisely."
"Well, this close," continued the notary, "once formed part of a large
garden belonging to d'Ernemont, the farmer-general, who was executed
during the Terror. All that could be sold has been sold, piecemeal, by
the heirs. But this last plot has remained and will remain in their
joint possession ... unless...."
The notary began to laugh.
"Unless what?" asked Lupin.
"Well, it's quite a romance, a rather curious romance, in fact. I often
amuse myself by looking through the voluminous documents of the case."
"Would it be indiscreet, if I asked ...?"
"Not at all, not at all," declared Maitre Valandier, who seemed
delighted, on the contrary, to have found a listener for his story. And,
without waiting to be pressed, he began: "At the outbreak of the
Revolution, Louis Agrippa d'Ernemont, on the pretence of joining his
wife, who was staying at Geneva with their daughter Pauline, shut up his
mansion in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, dismissed his servants and, with
his son Charles, came and took up his abode in his pleasure-house at
Passy, where he was known to nobody except an old and devoted
serving-woman. He remained there in hiding for three years and he had
every reason to hope that his retreat would not be discovered, when, one
day, after luncheon, as he was having a nap, the old servant burst into
his room. She had seen, at the end of the street, a patrol of armed men
who seemed to be making for the house. Louis d'Ernemont got ready
quickly and, at the moment when the men were knocking at the front door,
disappeared through the door that led to the garden, shouting to his
son, in a scared voice, to keep them talking, if only for five minutes.
He may have intended to escape and found the outlets through the garden
watched. In any case, he returned in six or seven minutes, replied very
calmly to the questions put to him and raised no difficulty about
accompanying the men. His son Charles, although only eighteen years of
age, was arrested also."
"When did this happen?" asked Lupin.
"It happened on the 26th day of Germinal, Year II, that is to say, on
the...."
Maitre Valandier stopped, with his eyes fixed on a calendar that hung on
the wall, and exclaimed:
"Why, it was on this very day! This is the 15th of April, the
anniversary of the farmer-general's arrest."
"What an odd coincidence!" said Lupin. "And considering the period at
which it took place, the arrest, no doubt, had serious consequences?"
"Oh, most serious!" said the notary, laughing. "Three months later, at
the beginning of Thermidor, the farmer-general mounted the scaffold. His
son Charles was forgotten in prison and their property was confiscated."
"The property was immense, I suppose?" said Lupin.
"Well, there you are! That's just where the thing becomes complicated.
The property, which was, in fact, immense, could never be traced. It was
discovered that the Faubourg Saint-Germain mansion had been sold, before
the Revolution, to an Englishman, together with all the country-seats
and estates and all the jewels, securities and collections belonging to
the farmer-general. The Convention instituted minute inquiries, as did
the Directory afterward. But the inquiries led to no result."
"There remained, at any rate, the Passy house," said Lupin.
"The house at Passy was bought, for a mere song, by a delegate of the
Commune, the very man who had arrested d'Ernemont, one Citizen Broquet.
Citizen Broquet shut himself up in the house, barricaded the doors,
fortified the walls and, when Charles d'Ernemont was at last set free
and appeared outside, received him by firing a musket at him. Charles
instituted one law-suit after another, lost them all and then proceeded
to offer large sums of money. But Citizen Broquet proved intractable. He
had bought the house and he stuck to the house; and he would have stuck
to it until his death, if Charles had not obtained the support of
Bonaparte. Citizen Broquet cleared out on the 12th of February, 1803;
but Charles d'Ernemont's joy was so great and his brain, no doubt, had
been so violently unhinged by all that he had gone through, that, on
reaching the threshold of the house of which he had at last recovered
the ownership, even before opening the door he began to dance and sing
in the street. He had gone clean off his head."
"By Jove!" said Lupin. "And what became of him?"
"His mother and his sister Pauline, who had ended by marrying a cousin
of the same name at Geneva, were both dead. The old servant-woman took
care of him and they lived together in the Passy house. Years passed
without any notable event; but, suddenly, in 1812, an unexpected
incident happened. The old servant made a series of strange revelations
on her death-bed, in the presence of two witnesses whom she sent for.
She declared that the farmer-general had carried to his house at Passy a
number of bags filled with gold and silver and that those bags had
disappeared a few days before the arrest. According to earlier
confidences made by Charles d'Ernemont, who had them from his father,
the treasures were hidden in the garden, between the rotunda, the
sun-dial and the well. In proof of her statement, she produced three
pictures, or rather, for they were not yet framed, three canvases, which
the farmer-general had painted during his captivity and which he had
succeeded in conveying to her, with instructions to hand them to his
wife, his son and his daughter. Tempted by the lure of wealth, Charles
and the old servant had kept silence. Then came the law-suits, the
recovery of the house, Charles's madness, the servant's own useless
searches; and the treasures were still there."
"And they are there now," chuckled Lupin.
"And they will be there always," exclaimed Maitre Valandier. "Unless ...
unless Citizen Broquet, who no doubt smelt a rat, succeeded in ferreting
them out. But this is an unlikely supposition, for Citizen Broquet died
in extreme poverty."
"So then ...?"
"So then everybody began to hunt. The children of Pauline, the sister,
hastened from Geneva. It was discovered that Charles had been secretly
married and that he had sons. All these heirs set to work."
"But Charles himself?"
"Charles lived in the most absolute retirement. He did not leave his
room."
"Never?"
"Well, that is the most extraordinary, the most astounding part of the
story. Once a year, Charles d'Ernemont, impelled by a sort of
subconscious will-power, came downstairs, took the exact road which his
father had taken, walked across the garden and sat down either on the
steps of the rotunda, which you see here, in the picture, or on the kerb
of the well. At twenty-seven minutes past five, he rose and went indoors
again; and until his death, which occurred in 1820, he never once failed
to perform this incomprehensible pilgrimage. Well, the day on which this
happened was invariably the 15th of April, the anniversary of the
arrest."
Maitre Valandier was no longer smiling and himself seemed impressed by
the amazing story which he was telling us.
"And, since Charles's death?" asked Lupin, after a moment's reflection.