The Teeth of the Tiger

by Maurice Leblanc

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ARSENE I EMPEROR OP MAURETANIA

  Don Luis ceased. A smile of amusement played round his lips. Therecollection of those four minutes seemed to divert him immensely.

  Valenglay and the Prefect of Police, who were neither of them men to beunduly surprised at courage and coolness, had listened to him,nevertheless, and were now looking at him in bewildered silence. Was itpossible for a human being to carry heroism to such unlikely lengths?

  Meanwhile, he went up to the other side of the chimney and pointed to alarger map, representing the French roads.

  "You told me, Monsieur le President, that the scoundrel's motor car hadleft Versailles and was going toward Nantes?"

  "Yes; and all our arrangements are made to arrest him either on the way,or else at Nantes or at Saint-Nazaire, where he may intend to take ship."

  Don Luis Perenna followed with his forefinger the road across France,stopping here and there, marking successive stages. And nothing couldhave been more impressive than this dumb show.

  The man that he was, preserving his composure amid the overthrow of allthat he had most at heart, seemed by his calmness to dominate time andcircumstances. It was as though the murderer were running away at one endof an unbreakable thread of which Don Luis held the other, and as thoughDon Luis could stop his flight at any time by a mere movement of hisfinger and thumb.

  As he studied the map, the master seemed to command not only a sheet ofcardboard, but also the highroad on which a motor car was spinning along,subject to his despotic will.

  He went back to the table and continued:

  "The battle was over. And there was no question of its being resumed. Myforty-two worthies found themselves face to face with a conqueror,against whom revenge is always possible, by fair means or foul, but withone who had subjugated them in a supernatural manner. There was no otherexplanation of the inexplicable facts which they had witnessed. I was asorcerer, a kind of marabout, a direct emissary of the Prophet."

  Valenglay laughed and said:

  "Their interpretation was not so very unreasonable, for, after all, youmust have performed a sleight-of-hand trick which strikes me also asbeing little less than miraculous."

  "Monsieur le President, do you know a curious short story of Balzac'scalled 'A Passion in the Desert?'"

  "Yes."

  "Well, the key to the riddle lies in that."

  "Does it? I don't quite see. You were not under the claws of a tigress.There, was no tigress to tame in this instance."

  "No, but there were women."

  "Eh? How do you mean?"

  "Upon my word, Monsieur le President," said Don Luis gayly, "I should notlike to shock you. But I repeat that the troop which carried me off onthat week's march included women; and women are a little like Balzac'stigress, creatures whom it is not impossible to tame, to charm, to breakin, until you make friends of them."

  "Yes, yes," muttered the Premier, madly puzzled, "but that needs time."

  "I had a week."

  "And complete liberty of action."

  "No, no, Monsieur le President. The eyes are enough to start with. Theeyes give rise to sympathy, interest, affection, curiosity, a wish toknow you better. After that, the merest opportunity--"

  "And did an opportunity offer?"

  "Yes, one night. I was fastened up, or at least they thought I was. Iknew that the chief's favourite was alone in her tent close by. I wentthere. I left her an hour afterward."

  "And the tigress was tamed?"

  "Yes, as thoroughly as Balzac's: tamed and blindly submissive."

  "But there were several of them?"

  "I know, Monsieur le President, and that was the difficulty. I was afraidof rivalry. But all went well: the favourite was not jealous, far fromit. And then, as I have told you, her submission was absolute. In short,I had five staunch, invisible friends, resolved to do anything I wantedand suspected by nobody.

  "My plan was being carried out before we reached the last halting-place.My five secret agents collected all the arms during the night. Theydashed the daggers to the ground and broke them. They removed the bulletsfrom the pistols. They damped the powder. Everything was ready forringing up the curtain."

  Valenglay bowed.

  "My compliments! You are a man of resource. And your scheme was notlacking in charm. For I take it that your five ladies were pretty?"

  Don Luis put on a bantering expression. He closed his eyes, as if torecall his bliss, and let fall the one word:

  "Hags!"

  The epithet gave rise to a burst of merriment. But Don Luis, as though ina hurry to finish his story, at once went on:

  "In any case, they saved my life, the hussies, and their aid never failedme. My forty-two watch-dogs, deprived of their arms and shaking with fearin those solitudes where everything is a trap and where death lies inwait for you at any minute, gathered round me as their real protector.When we joined the great tribe to which they belonged I was their actualchief. And it took me less than three months of dangers faced in common,of ambushes defeated under my advice, of raids and pillages effected bymy direction, to become the chief also of the whole tribe.

  "I spoke their language, I practised their religion, I wore theirdress, I conformed to their customs: alas! had I not five wives?Henceforward, my dream, which had gradually taken definite shape in mymind, became possible.

  "I sent one of my most faithful adherents to France, with sixty lettersto hand to sixty men whose names and addresses he learned by heart.Those sixty men were sixty associates whom Arsene Lupin had disbandedbefore he threw himself from the Capri cliffs. All had retired frombusiness, with a hundred thousand francs apiece in ready money and asmall trade or public post to keep them occupied. I had provided onewith a tobacconist's shop, another with a job as a park-keeper, otherswith sinecures in the government offices. In short, they wererespectable citizens.

  "To all of them--whether public servants, farmers, municipalcouncillors, grocers, sacristans, or what not--I wrote the same letter,made the same offer, and gave the same instructions in case they shouldaccept.... Monsieur le President, I thought that, of the sixty, ten orfifteen at most would come and join me: sixty came, Monsieur lePresident, sixty, and not one less! Sixty men punctually arrived at theappointed place.

  "On the day fixed, at the hour named, my old armed cruiser, the_Ascendam_, which they had brought back, anchored in the mouth of theWady Draa, on the Atlantic coast, between Cape Nun and Cape Juby. Twolongboats plied to and fro and landed my friends and the munitions of warwhich they had brought with them: camp furniture, quick-firing guns,ammunition, motor-boats, stores and provisions, trading wares, glassbeads, and cases of gold as well, for my sixty good men and true hadinsisted on turning their share of the old profits into cash and onputting into the new venture the six million francs which they hadreceived from their governor....

  "Need I say more, Monsieur le President? Must I tell you what a chieflike Arsene Lupin was able to attempt seconded by sixty fine fellows ofthat stamp and backed by an army of ten thousand well-armed andwell-trained Moorish fanatics? He attempted it; and his success wasunparalleled.

  "I do not think that there has ever been an idyl like that through whichwe lived during those fifteen months, first on the heights of the Atlasrange and then in the infernal plains of the Sahara: an idyl of heroism,of privation, of superhuman torture and superhuman joy; an idyl of hungerand thirst, of total defeat and dazzling victory....

  "My sixty trusty followers threw themselves into their work with mightand main. Oh, what men! You know them, Monsieur le President du Conseil!You've had them to deal with, Monsieur le Prefet de Police! The beggars!Tears come to my eyes when I think of some of them.

  "There were Charolais and his son, who distinguished themselves in thecase of the Princesse de Lamballe's tiara. There were Marco, who owed hisfame to the Kesselbach case, and Auguste, who was your chief messenger,Monsieur le President. There were the Growler and the Masher, whoachieved such g
lory in the hunt for the crystal stopper. There were thebrothers Beuzeville, whom I used to call the two Ajaxes. There werePhilippe d'Antrac, who was better born than any Bourbon, and Pierre LeGrand and Tristan Le Roux and Joseph Le Jeune."

  "And there was Arsene Lupin," said Valenglay, roused to enthusiasm bythis list of Homeric heroes.

  "And there was Arsene Lupin," repeated Don Luis.

  He nodded his head, smiled, and continued, in a very quiet voice:

  "I will not speak of him, Monsieur le President. I will not speak of him,for the simple reason that you would not believe my story. What they tellabout him when he was with the Foreign Legion is mere child's play besidewhat was to come later. Lupin was only a private soldier. In SouthMorocco he was a general. Not till then did Arsene Lupin really show whathe could do. And, I say it without pride, not even I foresaw what thatwas. The Achilles of the legend performed no greater feats. Hannibal andCaesar achieved no more striking results.

  "All I need tell you is that, in fifteen months, Arsene Lupin conquered akingdom twice the size of France. From the Berbers of Morocco, from theindomitable Tuaregs, from the Arabs of the extreme south of Algeria, fromthe negroes who overrun Senegal, from the Moors along the Atlantic coast,under the blazing sun, in the flames of hell, he conquered half theSahara and what we may call ancient Mauretania.

  "A kingdom of deserts and swamps? Partly, but a kingdom all the same,with oases, wells, rivers, forests, and incalculable riches, a kingdomwith ten million men and a hundred thousand warriors. This is the kingdomwhich I offer to France, Monsieur le President du Conseil."

  Valenglay did not conceal his amazement. Greatly excited and evenperturbed by what he had learned, looking over his extraordinary visitor,with his hands clutching at the map of Africa, he whispered:

  "Explain yourself; be more precise."

  Don Luis answered:

  "Monsieur le President du Conseil, I will not remind you of the events ofthe last few years. France, resolving to pursue a splendid dream ofdominion over North Africa, has had to part with a portion of the Congo.I propose to heal the painful wound by giving her thirty times as much asshe has lost. And I turn the magnificent and distant dream into animmediate certainty by joining the small slice of Morocco which you haveconquered to Senegal at one blow.

  "To-day, Greater France in Africa exists. Thanks to me, it is a solid andcompact expanse. Millions of square miles of territory and a coastlinestretching for several thousand miles from Tunis to the Congo, save for afew insignificant interruptions."

  "It's a Utopia," Valenglay protested.

  "It's a reality."

  "Nonsense! It will take us twenty years' fighting to achieve."

  "It will take you exactly five minutes!" cried Don Luis, withirresistible enthusiasm. "What I offer you is not the conquest of anempire, but a conquered empire, duly pacified and administered, in fullworking order and full of life. My gift is a present, not a future gift.

  "I, too, Monsieur le President du Conseil, I, Arsene Lupin, had cherisheda splendid dream. After toiling and moiling all my life, after knowingall the ups and downs of existence, richer than Croesus, because all thewealth of the world was mine, and poorer than Job, because I haddistributed all my treasures, surfeited with everything, tired ofunhappiness, and more tired still of happiness, sick of pleasure, ofpassion, of excitement, I wanted to do something that is incredible inthe present day: to reign!

  "And a still more incredible phenomenon: when this thing wasaccomplished, when the dead Arsene Lupin had come to life again as asultan out of the Arabian Nights, as a reigning, governing, law-givingArsene Lupin, head of the state and head of the church, I determined, ina few years, at one stroke, to tear down the screen of rebel tribesagainst which you were waging a desultory and tiresome war in the northof Morocco, while I was quietly and silently building up my kingdom atthe back of it.

  "Then, face to face with France and as powerful as herself, like aneighbour treating on equal terms, I would have cried to her, 'It's I,Arsene Lupin! Behold the former swindler and gentleman burglar! TheSultan of Adrar, the Sultan of Iguidi, the Sultan of El Djouf, the Sultanof the Tuaregs, the Sultan of Aubata, the Sultan of Brakna and Frerzon,all these am I, the Sultan of Sultans, grandson of Mahomet, son of Allah,I, I, I, Arsene Lupin!'

  "And, before taking the little grain of poison that sets one free--for aman like Arsene Lupin has no right to grow old--I should have signed thetreaty of peace, the deed of gift in which I bestowed a kingdom onFrance, signed it, below the flourishes of my grand dignitaries, kaids,pashas, and marabouts, with my lawful signature, the signature to which Iam fully entitled, which I conquered at the point of my sword and by myall-powerful will: 'Arsene I, Emperor of Mauretania!'"

  Don Luis uttered all these words in a strong voice, but without emphasis,with the very simple emotion and pride of a man who has done much and whoknows the value of what he has done. There were but two ways of replyingto him: by a shrug of the shoulders, as one replies to a madman, or bythe silence that expresses reflection and approval.

  The Prime Minister and the Prefect of Police said nothing, but theirlooks betrayed their secret thoughts. And deep down within themselvesthey felt that they were in the presence of an absolutely exceptionalspecimen of mankind, created to perform immoderate actions and fashionedby his own hand for a superhuman destiny.

  Don Luis continued:

  "It was a fine curtain, was it not, Monsieur le President du Conseil? Andthe end was worthy of the work. I should have been happy to have had itso. Arsene Lupin dying on a throne, sceptre in hand, would have been aspectacle not devoid of glamour. Arsene Lupin dying with his title ofArsene I, Emperor of Mauretania and benefactor of France: what anapotheosis! The gods have willed it otherwise. Jealous, no doubt, theyare lowering me to the level of my cousins of the old world and turningme into that absurd creature, a king in exile. Their will be done! Peaceto the late Emperor of Mauretania. He has strutted and fretted his hourupon the stage.

  "Arsene I is dead: long live France! Monsieur le President du Conseil, Irepeat my offer. Florence Levasseur is in danger. I alone can rescue herfrom the monster who is carrying her away. It will take me twenty-fourhours. In return for twenty-four hours' liberty I will give you theMauretanian Empire. Do you accept, Monsieur le President du Conseil?"

  "Well, certainly, I accept," said Valenglay, laughing. "What do you say,my dear Desmalions? The whole thing may not be very orthodox, but, hangit! Paris is worth a mass and the Kingdom of Mauretania is a temptingmorsel. We'll risk the experiment."

  Don Luis's face expressed so sincere a joy that one might have thoughtthat he had just achieved the most brilliant victory instead ofsacrificing a crown and flinging into the gutter the most fantastic dreamthat mortal man had ever conceived and realized.

  He asked:

  "What guarantees do you require, Monsieur le President?"

  "None."

  "I can show you treaties, documents to prove--"

  "Don't trouble. We'll talk about all that to-morrow. Meanwhile, go ahead.You are free."

  The essential word, the incredible word, was spoken.

  Don Luis took a few steps toward the door.

  "One word more, Monsieur le President," he said, stopping. "Among myformer companions is one for whom I procured a post suited to hisinclinations and his deserts. This man I did not send for to come toAfrica, thinking that some day or other he might be of use to me throughthe position which he occupied. I am speaking of Mazeroux, a sergeant inthe detective service."

  "Sergeant Mazeroux, whom Caceres denounced, with corroborating evidence,as an accomplice of Arsene Lupin, is in prison."

  "Sergeant Mazeroux is a model of professional honour, Monsieur lePresident. I owed his assistance only to the fact that I was helping thepolice. I was accepted as an auxiliary and more or less patronized byMonsieur le Prefet. Mazeroux thwarted me in anything I tried to do thatwas at all illegal. And he would have been the first to take me by thecollar if he had been so instructed.
I ask for his release."

  "Oho!"

  "Monsieur le President, your consent will be an act of justice and I begyou to grant it. Sergeant Mazerou shall leave France. He can be chargedby the government with a secret mission in the south of Morocco, with therank of colonial inspector."

  "Agreed," said Valenglay, laughing heartily. And he added, "My dearPrefect, once we depart from the strictly lawful path, there's no sayingwhere we come to. But the end justifies the means; and the end which wehave in view is to have done with this loathsome Mornington case."

  "This evening everything will be settled," said Don Luis.

  "I hope so. Our men are on the track."

  "They are on the track, but they have to check that track at every town,at every village, by inquiries made of every peasant they meet; they haveto find out if the motor has not branched off somewhere; and they arewasting time. I shall go straight for the scoundrel."

  "By what miracle?"

  "That must be my secret for the present, Monsieur le President."

  "Very well. Is there anything you want?"

  "This map of France."

  "Take it."

  "And a couple of revolvers."

  "Monsieur le Prefet will be good enough to ask his inspectors for tworevolvers and to give them to you. Is that all? Any money?"

  "No, thank you, Monsieur le President. I always carry a useful fiftythousand francs in my pocket-book, in case of need."

  "In that case," said the Prefect of Police, "I shall have to send someone with you to the lockup. I presume your pocket-book was among thethings taken from you."

  Don Luis smiled:

  "Monsieur le Prefet, the things that people can take from me are never ofthe least importance. My pocket-book is at the lockup, as you say. Butthe money--"

  He raised his left leg, took his boot in his hands and gave a slighttwist to the heel. There was a little click, and a sort of double drawershot out of the front of the sole. It contained two sheafs of bank notesand a number of diminutive articles, such as a gimlet, a watch spring,and some pills.

  "The wherewithal to escape," he said, "to live and--to die. Good-bye,Monsieur le President."

  In the hall M. Desmalions told the inspectors to let their prisoner gofree. Don Luis asked:

  "Monsieur le Prefet, did Deputy Chief Weber give you any particularsabout the brute's car?"

  "Yes, he telephoned from Versailles. It's a deep-yellow car, belonging tothe Compagnie des Cometes. The driver's seat is on the left. He's wearinga gray cloth cap with a black leather peak."

  "Thank you, Monsieur le Prefet."

  And he left the house.

  * * * * *

  An inconceivable thing had happened. Don Luis was free. Half an hour'sconversation had given him the power of acting and of fighting thedecisive battle.

  He went off at a run. At the Trocadero he jumped into a taxi.

  "Go to Issy-les-Moulineaux!" he cried. "Full speed! Forty francs!"

  The cab flew through Passy, crossed the Seine and reached theIssy-les-Moulineaux aviation ground in ten minutes.

  None of the aeroplanes was out, for there was a stiff breeze blowing. DonLuis ran to the sheds. The owners' names were written over the doors.

  "Davanne," he muttered. "That's the man I want."

  The door of the shed was open. A short, stoutish man, with a long redface, was smoking a cigarette and watching some mechanics working at amonoplane. The little man was Davanne himself, the famous airman.

  Don Luis took him aside and, knowing from the papers the sort of man thathe was, opened the conversation so as to surprise him from the start:

  "Monsieur," he said, unfolding his map of France, "I want to catch upsome one who has carried off the woman I love and is making for Nantes bymotor. The abduction took place at midnight. It is now about eighto'clock. Suppose that the motor, which is just a hired taxi with a driverwho has no inducement to break his neck, does an average of twenty milesan hour, including stoppages--in twelve hours' time--that is to say, attwelve o'clock--our man will have covered two hundred and forty miles andreached a spot between Angers and Nantes, at this point on the map."

  "Les Ponts-de-Drive," agreed Davanne, who was quietly listening.

  "Very well. Suppose, on the other hand, that an aeroplane were to startfrom Issy-les-Moulineaux at eight o'clock in the morning and travel atthe rate of sixty miles an hour, without stopping--in four hours'time--that is to say, at twelve o'clock--it would reach LesPonts-de-Drive at the exact same moment as the motor. Am I right?"

  "Perfectly."

  "In that case, if we agree, all is well. Does your machine carry apassenger?"

  "Sometimes she does."

  "We'll start at once. What are your terms?"

  "It depends. Who are you?"

  "Arsene Lupin."

  "The devil you are!" exclaimed Davanne, a little taken aback.

  "I am Arsene Lupin. You must know the best part of what has happened fromreading about it in the papers. Well, Florence Levasseur was kidnappedlast night. I want to save her. What's your price?"

  "Nothing."

  "That's too much!"

  "Perhaps, but the adventure amuses me. It will be an advertisement."

  "Very well. But your silence is necessary until to-morrow. I'll buy it.Here's twenty thousand francs."

  Ten minutes later Don Luis was dressed in an airman's suit, cap, andgoggles; and an aeroplane rose to a height of two thousand five hundredfeet to avoid the air currents, flew above the Seine, and darted due westacross France.

  Versailles, Maintenon, Chartres....

  Don Luis had never been up in an aeroplane. France had achieved theconquest of the air while he was fighting with the Legion and in theplains of the Sahara. Nevertheless, sensitive though he was to newimpressions--and what more exciting impression could he have thanthis?--he did not experience the heavenly delight of the man who for thefirst time soars above the earth. What monopolized his thoughts,strained his nerves, and excited his whole being to an exquisite degreewas the as yet impossible but inevitable sight of the motor which theywere pursuing.

  Amid the tremendous swarm of things beneath them, amid the unexpected dinof the wings and the engine, in the immensity of the sky, in the infinityof the horizon, his eyes sought nothing but that, and his ears admittedno other sound than the hum of the invisible car. His were the mighty andbrutal sensations of the hunter chasing his game. He was the bird of preywhom the distraught quarry has no chance of escaping.

  Nogent-le-Rotrou, La Ferte-Bernard, Le Mans....

  The two companions did not exchange a single word. Before him Perennasaw Davanne's broad back and powerful neck and shoulders. But, bybending his head a little, he saw the boundless space beneath him; andnothing interested him but the white ribbon of road that ran from townto town and from village to village, at times quite straight, as thougha hand had stretched it, and at others lazily winding, broken by a riveror a church.

  On this ribbon, at some place always closer and closer, were Florence andher abductor!

  He never doubted it! The yellow taxi was continuing its patient andplucky little effort. Mile after mile, through plains and villages,fields and forests, it was making Angers, with Les Ponts-de-Drive after,and, right at the end of the ribbon, the unattainable goal: Nantes,Saint-Nazaire, the steamer ready to start, and victory for thescoundrel....

  He laughed at the idea. As if there could be a question of any victorybut his, the victory of the falcon over its prey, the victory of theflying bird over the game that runs afoot! Not for a second did heentertain the thought that the enemy might have slunk away by takinganother road.

  There are some certainties that are equivalent to facts. And this onewas so great that it seemed to him that his adversaries were obligedto comply with it. The car was travelling along the road to Nantes.It would cover an average of twenty miles an hour. And as he himselfwas travelling at the rate of sixty miles, the encounter would takeplace at t
he spot named, Les Ponts-de-Drive, and at the hour named,twelve o'clock.

  A cluster of houses, a huge castle, towers, steeples: Angers....

  Don Luis asked Davanne the time. It was ten minutes to twelve.

  Already Angers was a vanished vision. Once more the open country, brokenup with many-coloured fields. Through it all, a road.

  And, on that road, a yellow motor.

  The yellow motor! The brute's motor! The motor with Florence Levasseur!

  Don Luis's joy contained no surprise. He knew so well that this was boundto happen!

  Davanne turned round and cried:

  "That's the one, isn't it?"

  "Yes, go straight for them."

  The airship dipped through space and caught up the car almost at once.Then Davanne slowed his engine and kept at six hundred feet above the carand a little way behind.

  From here they made out all the details. The driver was seated on theleft. He wore a gray cap with a black peak. It was one of the deep-yellowtaxis of the Compagnie des Cometes. It was the taxi which they werepursuing. And Florence was inside with her abductor.

  "At last," thought Don Luis, "I have them!"

  They flew for some time, keeping the same distance.

  Davanne waited for a signal which Don Luis was in no hurry to give. Hewas revelling in the sensation of his power, with a force made up ofmingled pride, hatred, and cruelty. He was indeed the eagle hoveringoverhead with its talons itching to rend live flesh. Escaped from thecage in which he had been imprisoned, released from the bonds thatfastened him, he had come all the way at full flight and was ready toswoop upon the helpless prey.

  He lifted himself in his seat and gave Davanne his instructions:

  "Be careful," he said, "not to brush too close by them. They might put abullet into us."

  Another minute passed.

  Suddenly they saw that, half a mile ahead, the road divided into three,thus forming a very wide open space which was still further extended bytwo triangular patches of grass where the three roads met.

  "Now?" asked Davanne, turning to Don Luis.

  The surrounding country was deserted.

  "Off you go!" cried Don Luis.

  The aeroplane seemed to shoot down suddenly, as though driven by anirresistible force, which sent it flying like an arrow toward the mark.It passed at three hundred feet above the car, and then, all at once,checking its career, choosing the spot at which it meant to hit thetarget, calmly, silently, like a night-bird, steering clear of the treesand sign-posts, it alighted softly on the grass of the crossroads.

  Don Luis sprang out and ran toward the motor, which was coming along at arapid pace. He stood in the middle of the road, levelled his tworevolvers, and shouted:

  "Stop, or I fire!"

  The terrified driver put on both brakes. The car pulled up.

  Don Luis rushed to one of the doors.

  "Thunder!" he roared, discharging one of his revolvers for no reason andsmashing a window-pane.

  There was no one in the car.