before long."
"I doubt it."
"You wait and see."
She reflected once more and said to her nephew:
"What would you do?"
"Fasten his arm again and let's be off," he replied.
A hideous suggestion! It meant condemning Lupin to the most horrible of
all deaths, death by starvation.
"No," said the widow. "He might still find a means of escape. I know
something better than that."
She took down the receiver of the telephone, waited and asked:
"Number 82248, please."
And, after a second or two:
"Hullo!... Is that the Criminal Investigation Department?... Is
Chief-inspector Ganimard there?... In twenty minutes, you say?... I'm
sorry!... However!... When he comes, give him this message from Mme.
Dugrival.... Yes, Mme. Nicolas Dugrival.... Ask him to come to my flat.
Tell him to open the looking-glass door of my wardrobe; and, when he has
done so, he will see that the wardrobe hides an outlet which makes my
bedroom communicate with two other rooms. In one of these, he will find
a man bound hand and foot. It is the thief, Dugrival's murderer.... You
don't believe me?... Tell M. Ganimard; he'll believe me right enough....
Oh, I was almost forgetting to give you the man's name: Arsene Lupin!"
And, without another word, she replaced the receiver.
"There, Lupin, that's done. After all, I would just as soon have my
revenge this way. How I shall hold my sides when I read the reports of
the Lupin trial!... Are you coming, Gabriel?"
"Yes, aunt."
"Good-bye, Lupin. You and I sha'n't see each other again, I expect, for
we are going abroad. But I promise to send you some sweets while you're
in prison."
"Chocolates, mother! We'll eat them together!"
"Good-bye."
"_Au revoir._"
The widow went out with her nephew, leaving Lupin fastened down to the
bed.
He at once moved his free arm and tried to release himself; but he
realized, at the first attempt, that he would never have the strength to
break the wire strands that bound him. Exhausted with fever and pain,
what could he do in the twenty minutes or so that were left to him
before Ganimard's arrival?
Nor did he count upon his friends. True, he had been thrice saved from
death; but this was evidently due to an astounding series of accidents
and not to any interference on the part of his allies. Otherwise they
would not have contented themselves with these extraordinary
manifestations, but would have rescued him for good and all.
No, he must abandon all hope. Ganimard was coming. Ganimard would find
him there. It was inevitable. There was no getting away from the fact.
And the prospect of what was coming irritated him singularly. He already
heard his old enemy's gibes ringing in his ears. He foresaw the roars of
laughter with which the incredible news would be greeted on the morrow.
To be arrested in action, so to speak, on the battlefield, by an
imposing detachment of adversaries, was one thing: but to be arrested,
or rather picked up, scraped up, gathered up, in such condition, was
really too silly. And Lupin, who had so often scoffed at others, felt
all the ridicule that was falling to his share in this ending of the
Dugrival business, all the bathos of allowing himself to be caught in
the widow's infernal trap and finally of being "served up" to the police
like a dish of game, roasted to a turn and nicely seasoned.
"Blow the widow!" he growled. "I had rather she had cut my throat and
done with it."
He pricked up his ears. Some one was moving in the next room. Ganimard!
No. Great as his eagerness would be, he could not be there yet. Besides,
Ganimard would not have acted like that, would not have opened the door
as gently as that other person was doing. What other person? Lupin
remembered the three miraculous interventions to which he owed his life.
Was it possible that there was really somebody who had protected him
against the widow, and that that somebody was now attempting to rescue
him? But, if so, who?
Unseen by Lupin, the stranger stooped behind the bed. Lupin heard the
sound of the pliers attacking the wire strands and releasing him little
by little. First his chest was freed, then his arms, then his legs.
And a voice said to him:
"You must get up and dress."
Feeling very weak, he half-raised himself in bed at the moment when the
stranger rose from her stooping posture.
"Who are you?" he whispered. "Who are you?"
And a great surprise over came him.
By his side stood a woman, a woman dressed in black, with a lace shawl
over her head, covering part of her face. And the woman, as far as he
could judge, was young and of a graceful and slender stature.
"Who are you?" he repeated.
"You must come now," said the woman. "There's no time to lose."
"Can I?" asked Lupin, making a desperate effort. "I doubt if I have the
strength."
"Drink this."
She poured some milk into a cup; and, as she handed it to him, her lace
opened, leaving the face uncovered.
"You!" he stammered. "It's you!... It's you who ... it was you who
were...."
He stared in amazement at this woman whose features presented so
striking a resemblance to Gabriel's, whose delicate, regular face had
the same pallor, whose mouth wore the same hard and forbidding
expression. No sister could have borne so great a likeness to her
brother. There was not a doubt possible: it was the identical person.
And, without believing for a moment that Gabriel had concealed himself
in a woman's clothes, Lupin, on the contrary, received the distinct
impression that it was a woman standing beside him and that the
stripling who had pursued him with his hatred and struck him with the
dagger was in very deed a woman. In order to follow their trade with
greater ease, the Dugrival pair had accustomed her to disguise herself
as a boy.
"You ... you ...!" he repeated. "Who would have suspected ...?"
She emptied the contents of a phial into the cup:
"Drink this cordial," she said.
He hesitated, thinking of poison.
She added:
"It was I who saved you."
"Of course, of course," he said. "It was you who removed the bullets
from the revolver?"
"Yes."
"And you who hid the knife?"
"Here it is, in my pocket."
"And you who smashed the window-pane while your aunt was throttling me?"
"Yes, it was I, with the paper-weight on the table: I threw it into the
street."
"But why? Why?" he asked, in utter amazement.
"Drink the cordial."
"Didn't you want me to die? But then why did you stab me to begin with?"
"Drink the cordial."
He emptied the cup at a draught, without quite knowing the reason of his
sudden confidence.
"Dress yourself ... quickly," she commanded, retiring to the window.
He obeyed and she came back to him, for he had dropped into a chair,
exhausted.
"We must go now, we must, we have only just time.... Collect your
strength."
She bent forward a little, so that he might lean on her shoulder, and
turned toward the door and the staircase.
And Lupin walked as one walks in a dream, one of those queer dreams in
which the most inconsequent things occur, a dream that was the happy
sequel of the terrible nightmare in which he had lived for the past
fortnight.
A thought struck him, however. He began to laugh:
"Poor Ganimard! Upon my word, the fellow has no luck, I would give
twopence to see him coming to arrest me."
After descending the staircase with the aid of his companion, who
supported him with incredible vigour, he found himself in the street,
opposite a motor-car into which she helped him to mount.
"Right away," she said to the driver.
Lupin, dazed by the open air and the speed at which they were
travelling, hardly took stock of the drive and of the incidents on the
road. He recovered all his consciousness when he found himself at home
in one of the flats which he occupied, looked after by his servant, to
whom the girl gave a few rapid instructions.
"You can go," he said to the man.
But, when the girl turned to go as well, he held her back by a fold of
her dress.
"No ... no ... you must first explain.... Why did you save me? Did you
return unknown to your aunt? But why did you save me? Was it from pity?"
She did not answer. With her figure drawn up and her head flung back a
little, she retained her hard and impenetrable air. Nevertheless, he
thought he noticed that the lines of her mouth showed not so much
cruelty as bitterness. Her eyes, her beautiful dark eyes, revealed
melancholy. And Lupin, without as yet understanding, received a vague
intuition of what was passing within her. He seized her hand. She pushed
him away, with a start of revolt in which he felt hatred, almost
repulsion. And, when he insisted, she cried:
"Let me be, will you?... Let me be!... Can't you see that I detest you?"
They looked at each other for a moment, Lupin disconcerted, she
quivering and full of uneasiness, her pale face all flushed with
unwonted colour.
He said to her, gently:
"If you detested me, you should have let me die.... It was simple
enough.... Why didn't you?"
"Why?... Why?... How do I know?..."
Her face contracted. With a sudden movement, she hid it in her two
hands; and he saw tears trickle between her fingers.
Greatly touched, he thought of addressing her in fond words, such as one
would use to a little girl whom one wished to console, and of giving her
good advice and saving her, in his turn, and snatching her from the bad
life which she was leading, perhaps against her better nature.
But such words would have sounded ridiculous, coming from his lips, and
he did not know what to say, now that he understood the whole story and
was able to picture the young woman sitting beside his sick-bed,
nursing the man whom she had wounded, admiring his pluck and gaiety,
becoming attached to him, falling in love with him and thrice over,
probably in spite of herself, under a sort of instinctive impulse, amid
fits of spite and rage, saving him from death.
And all this was so strange, so unforeseen; Lupin was so much unmanned
by his astonishment, that, this time, he did not try to retain her when
she made for the door, backward, without taking her eyes from him.
She lowered her head, smiled for an instant and disappeared.
He rang the bell, quickly:
"Follow that woman," he said to his man. "Or no, stay where you are....
After all, it is better so...."
He sat brooding for a while, possessed by the girl's image. Then he
revolved in his mind all that curious, stirring and tragic adventure, in
which he had been so very near succumbing; and, taking a hand-glass from
the table, he gazed for a long time and with a certain self-complacency
at his features, which illness and pain had not succeeded in impairing
to any great extent:
"Good looks count for something, after all!" he muttered.
V
THE RED SILK SCARF
On leaving his house one morning, at his usual early hour for going to
the Law Courts, Chief-inspector Ganimard noticed the curious behaviour
of an individual who was walking along the Rue Pergolese in front of
him. Shabbily dressed and wearing a straw hat, though the day was the
first of December, the man stooped at every thirty or forty yards to
fasten his boot-lace, or pick up his stick, or for some other reason.
And, each time, he took a little piece of orange-peel from his pocket
and laid it stealthily on the kerb of the pavement. It was probably a
mere display of eccentricity, a childish amusement to which no one else
would have paid attention; but Ganimard was one of those shrewd
observers who are indifferent to nothing that strikes their eyes and who
are never satisfied until they know the secret cause of things. He
therefore began to follow the man.
Now, at the moment when the fellow was turning to the right, into the
Avenue de la Grande-Armee, the inspector caught him exchanging signals
with a boy of twelve or thirteen, who was walking along the houses on
the left-hand side. Twenty yards farther, the man stooped and turned up
the bottom of his trousers legs. A bit of orange-peel marked the place.
At the same moment, the boy stopped and, with a piece of chalk, drew a
white cross, surrounded by a circle, on the wall of the house next to
him.
The two continued on their way. A minute later, a fresh halt. The
strange individual picked up a pin and dropped a piece of orange-peel;
and the boy at once made a second cross on the wall and again drew a
white circle round it.
"By Jove!" thought the chief-inspector, with a grunt of satisfaction.
"This is rather promising.... What on earth can those two merchants be
plotting?"
The two "merchants" went down the Avenue Friedland and the Rue du
Faubourg-Saint-Honore, but nothing occurred that was worthy of special
mention. The double performance was repeated at almost regular intervals
and, so to speak, mechanically. Nevertheless, it was obvious, on the one
hand, that the man with the orange-peel did not do his part of the
business until after he had picked out with a glance the house that was
to be marked and, on the other hand, that the boy did not mark that
particular house until after he had observed his companion's signal. It
was certain, therefore, that there was an agreement between the two; and
the proceedings presented no small interest in the chief-inspector's
eyes.
At the Place Beauveau the man hesitated. Then, apparently making up his
mind, he twice turned up and twice turned down the bottom of his
trousers legs. Hereupon, the boy sat down on the kerb, opposite the
sentry who was mounting guard outside the Ministry of the Interior, and
marked the flagstone with two little crosses contained within two
circles. The same ceremony was gone through a little further on, when
they reached the Elysee. Only, on the pavement where the President's
sentry was marching up and down, there were three signs instead of two.
"Hang it all!" muttered Ganimard, pale with excitement and thinking, in
spite of himself, of his inveterate enemy, Lupin, whose name came to his
mind whenever a mysterious circumstance presented itself. "Hang it all,
what does it mean?"
He was nearly collaring and questioning the two "merchants." But he was
too clever to commit so gross a blunder. The man with the orange-peel
had now lit a cigarette; and the boy, also placing a cigarette-end
between his lips, had gone up to him, apparently with the object of
asking for a light.
They exchanged a few words. Quick as thought, the boy handed his
companion an object which looked--at least, so the inspector
believed--like a revolver. They both bent over this object; and the man,
standing with his face to the wall, put his hand six times in his pocket
and made a movement as though he were loading a weapon.
As soon as this was done, they walked briskly to the Rue de Surene; and
the inspector, who followed them as closely as he was able to do without
attracting their attention, saw them enter the gateway of an old house
of which all the shutters were closed, with the exception of those on
the third or top floor.
He hurried in after them. At the end of the carriage-entrance he saw a
large courtyard, with a house-painter's sign at the back and a staircase
on the left.
He went up the stairs and, as soon as he reached the first floor, ran
still faster, because he heard, right up at the top, a din as of a
free-fight.
When he came to the last landing he found the door open. He entered,
listened for a second, caught the sound of a struggle, rushed to the
room from which the sound appeared to proceed and remained standing on
the threshold, very much out of breath and greatly surprised to see
the man of the orange-peel and the boy banging the floor with chairs.
At that moment a third person walked out of an adjoining room. It was a
young man of twenty-eight or thirty, wearing a pair of short whiskers in
addition to his moustache, spectacles, and a smoking-jacket with an
astrakhan collar and looking like a foreigner, a Russian.
"Good morning, Ganimard," he said. And turning to the two companions,
"Thank you, my friends, and all my congratulations on the successful
result. Here's the reward I promised you."
He gave them a hundred-franc note, pushed them outside and shut both
doors.
"I am sorry, old chap," he said to Ganimard. "I wanted to talk to you
... wanted to talk to you badly."
He offered him his hand and, seeing that the inspector remained
flabbergasted and that his face was still distorted with anger, he
exclaimed:
"Why, you don't seem to understand!... And yet it's clear enough.... I
wanted to see you particularly.... So what could I do?" And, pretending
to reply to an objection, "No, no, old chap," he continued. "You're
quite wrong. If I had written or telephoned, you would not have come
... or else you would have come with a regiment. Now I wanted to see you
all alone; and I thought the best thing was to send those two decent
fellows to meet you, with orders to scatter bits of orange-peel and draw
crosses and circles, in short, to mark out your road to this place....
Why, you look quite bewildered! What is it? Perhaps you don't recognize
me? Lupin.... Arsene Lupin.... Ransack your memory.... Doesn't the name
remind you of anything?"
"You dirty scoundrel!" Ganimard snarled between his teeth.
Lupin seemed greatly distressed and, in an affectionate voice:
"Are you vexed? Yes, I can see it in your eyes.... The Dugrival
business, I suppose? I ought to have waited for you to come and take me
in charge?... There now, the thought never occurred to me! I promise
you, next time...."
"You scum of the earth!" growled Ganimard.
"And I thinking I was giving you a treat! Upon my word, I did. I said to
myself, 'That dear old Ganimard! We haven't met for an age. He'll simply
rush at me when he sees me!'"
Ganimard, who had not yet stirred a limb, seemed to be waking from his
stupor. He looked around him, looked at Lupin, visibly asked himself
whether he would not do well to rush at him in reality and then,
controlling himself, took hold of a chair and settled himself in it, as
though he had suddenly made up his mind to listen to his enemy:
"Speak," he said. "And don't waste my time with any nonsense. I'm in a
hurry."
"That's it," said Lupin, "let's talk. You can't imagine a quieter place
than this. It's an old manor-house, which once stood in the open
country, and it belongs to the Duc de Rochelaure. The duke, who has
never lived in it, lets this floor to me and the outhouses to a painter
and decorator. I always keep up a few establishments of this kind: it's
a sound, practical plan. Here, in spite of my looking like a Russian
nobleman, I am M. Daubreuil, an ex-cabinet-minister.... You understand,
I had to select a rather overstocked profession, so as not to attract
attention...."
"Do you think I care a hang about all this?" said Ganimard, interrupting
him.
"Quite right, I'm wasting words and you're in a hurry. Forgive me. I
sha'n't be long now.... Five minutes, that's all.... I'll start at
once.... Have a cigar? No? Very well, no more will I."
He sat down also, drummed his fingers on the table, while thinking, and
began in this fashion:
"On the 17th of October, 1599, on a warm and sunny autumn day ... Do
you follow me?... But, now that I come to think of it, is it really
necessary to go back to the reign of Henry IV, and tell you all about
the building of the Pont-Neuf? No, I don't suppose you are very well up
in French history; and I should only end by muddling you. Suffice it,
then, for you to know that, last night, at one o'clock in the morning, a
boatman passing under the last arch of the Pont-Neuf aforesaid, along
the left bank of the river, heard something drop into the front part of
his barge. The thing had been flung from the bridge and its evident
destination was the bottom of the Seine. The bargee's dog rushed
forward, barking, and, when the man reached the end of his craft, he saw
the animal worrying a piece of newspaper that had served to wrap up a
number of objects. He took from the dog such of the contents as had not
fallen into the water, went to his cabin and examined them carefully.
The result struck him as interesting; and, as the man is connected with
one of my friends, he sent to let me know. This morning I was waked up
and placed in possession of the facts and of the objects which the man
had collected. Here they are."
He pointed to them, spread out on a table. There were, first of all, the
torn pieces of a newspaper. Next came a large cut-glass inkstand, with a
long piece of string fastened to the lid. There was a bit of broken
glass and a sort of flexible cardboard, reduced to shreds. Lastly, there
was a piece of bright scarlet silk, ending in a tassel of the same
material and colour.
"You see our exhibits, friend of my youth," said Lupin. "No doubt, the
problem would be more easily solved if we had the other objects which
went overboard owing to the stupidity of the dog. But it seems to me,
all the same, that we ought to be able to manage, with a little
reflection and intelligence. And those are just your great qualities.
How does the business strike you?"
Ganimard did not move a muscle. He was willing to stand Lupin's chaff,
but his dignity commanded him not to speak a single word in answer nor
even to give a nod or shake of the head that might have been taken to
express approval or or criticism.
"I see that we are entirely of one mind," continued Lupin, without
appearing to remark the chief-inspector's silence. "And I can sum up the
matter briefly, as told us by these exhibits. Yesterday evening, between
nine and twelve o'clock, a showily dressed young woman was wounded with
a knife and then caught round the throat and choked to death by a
well-dressed gentleman, wearing a single eyeglass and interested in
racing, with whom the aforesaid showily dressed young lady had been
eating three meringues and a coffee eclair."
Lupin lit a cigarette and, taking Ganimard by the sleeve:
"Aha, that's up against you, chief-inspector! You thought that, in the
domain of police deductions, such feats as those were prohibited to
outsiders! Wrong, sir! Lupin juggles with inferences and deductions for
all the world like a detective in a novel. My proofs are dazzling and
absolutely simple."
And, pointing to the objects one by one, as he demonstrated his
statement, he resumed: