Germaine dropped into a chair for twenty seconds; then flung out of it.
“Ten minutes to five!” she cried. “Jacques is late. It’s the first time I’ve ever known him late.”
She went to the window, and looked across the wide stretch of meadow-land and woodland on which the chateau, set on the very crown of the ridge, looked down. The road, running with the irritating straightness of so many of the roads of France, was visible for a full three miles. It was empty.
“Perhaps the Duke went to the Chateau de Relzieres to see his cousin — though I fancy that at bottom the Duke does not care very much for the Baron de Relzieres. They always look as though they detested one another,” said Sonia, without raising her eyes from the letter she was addressing.
“You’ve noticed that, have you?” said Germaine. “Now, as far as Jacques is concerned — he’s — he’s so indifferent. None the less, when we were at the Relzieres on Thursday, I caught him quarrelling with Paul de Relzieres.”
“Quarrelling?” said Sonia sharply, with a sudden uneasiness in air and eyes and voice.
“Yes; quarrelling. And they said good-bye to one another in the oddest way.”
“But surely they shook hands?” said Sonia.
“Not a bit of it. They bowed as if each of them had swallowed a poker.”
“Why — then — then—” said Sonia, starting up with a frightened air; and her voice stuck in her throat.
“Then what?” said Germaine, a little startled by her panic-stricken face.
“The duel! Monsieur de Relzieres’ duel!” cried Sonia.
“What? You don’t think it was with Jacques?”
“I don’t know — but this quarrel — the Duke’s manner this morning — the Du Buits’ drive—” said Sonia.
“Of course — of course! It’s quite possible — in fact it’s certain!” cried Germaine.
“It’s horrible!” gasped Sonia. “Consider — just consider! Suppose something happened to him. Suppose the Duke—”
“It’s me the Duke’s fighting about!” cried Germaine proudly, with a little skipping jump of triumphant joy.
Sonia stared through her without seeing her. Her face was a dead white — fear had chilled the lustre from her skin; her breath panted through her parted lips; and her dilated eyes seemed to look on some dreadful picture.
Germaine pirouetted about the hall at the very height of triumph. To have a Duke fighting a duel about her was far beyond the wildest dreams of snobbishness. She chuckled again and again, and once she clapped her hands and laughed aloud.
“He’s fighting a swordsman of the first class — an invincible swordsman — you said so yourself,” Sonia muttered in a tone of anguish. “And there’s nothing to be done — nothing.”
She pressed her hands to her eyes as if to shut out a hideous vision.
Germaine did not hear her; she was staring at herself in a mirror, and bridling to her own image.
Sonia tottered to the window and stared down at the road along which must come the tidings of weal or irremediable woe. She kept passing her hand over her eyes as if to clear their vision.
Suddenly she started, and bent forward, rigid, all her being concentrated in the effort to see.
Then she cried: “Mademoiselle Germaine! Look! Look!”
“What is it?” said Germaine, coming to her side.
“A horseman! Look! There!” said Sonia, waving a hand towards the road.
“Yes; and isn’t he galloping!” said Germaine.
“It’s he! It’s the Duke!” cried Sonia.
“Do you think so?” said Germaine doubtfully.
“I’m sure of it — sure!”
“Well, he gets here just in time for tea,” said Germaine in a tone of extreme satisfaction. “He knows that I hate to be kept waiting. He said to me, ‘I shall be back by five at the latest.’ And here he is.”
“It’s impossible,” said Sonia. “He has to go all the way round the park. There’s no direct road; the brook is between us.”
“All the same, he’s coming in a straight line,” said Germaine.
It was true. The horseman had left the road and was galloping across the meadows straight for the brook. In twenty seconds he reached its treacherous bank, and as he set his horse at it, Sonia covered her eyes.
“He’s over!” said Germaine. “My father gave three hundred guineas for that horse.”
CHAPTER III
LUPIN’S WAY
SONIA, IN A sudden revulsion of feeling, in a reaction from her fears, slipped back and sat down at the tea-table, panting quickly, struggling to keep back the tears of relief. She did not see the Duke gallop up the slope, dismount, and hand over his horse to the groom who came running to him. There was still a mist in her eyes to blur his figure as he came through the window.
“If it’s for me, plenty of tea, very little cream, and three lumps of sugar,” he cried in a gay, ringing voice, and pulled out his watch. “Five to the minute — that’s all right.” And he bent down, took Germaine’s hand, and kissed it with an air of gallant devotion.
If he had indeed just fought a duel, there were no signs of it in his bearing. His air, his voice, were entirely careless. He was a man whose whole thought at the moment was fixed on his tea and his punctuality.
He drew a chair near the tea-table for Germaine; sat down himself; and Sonia handed him a cup of tea with so shaky a hand that the spoon clinked in the saucer.
“You’ve been fighting a duel?” said Germaine.
“What! You’ve heard already?” said the Duke in some surprise.
“I’ve heard,” said Germaine. “Why did you fight it?”
“You’re not wounded, your Grace?” said Sonia anxiously.
“Not a scratch,” said the Duke, smiling at her.
“Will you be so good as to get on with those wedding-cards, Sonia,” said Germaine sharply; and Sonia went back to the writing-table.
Turning to the Duke, Germaine said, “Did you fight on my account?”
“Would you be pleased to know that I had fought on your account?” said the Duke; and there was a faint mocking light in his eyes, far too faint for the self-satisfied Germaine to perceive.
“Yes. But it isn’t true. You’ve been fighting about some woman,” said Germaine petulantly.
“If I had been fighting about a woman, it could only be you,” said the Duke.
“Yes, that is so. Of course. It could hardly be about Sonia, or my maid,” said Germaine. “But what was the reason of the duel?”
“Oh, the reason of it was entirely childish,” said the Duke. “I was in a bad temper; and De Relzieres said something that annoyed me.”
“Then it wasn’t about me; and if it wasn’t about me, it wasn’t really worth while fighting,” said Germaine in a tone of acute disappointment.
The mocking light deepened a little in the Duke’s eyes.
“Yes. But if I had been killed, everybody would have said, ‘The Duke of Charmerace has been killed in a duel about Mademoiselle Gournay-Martin.’ That would have sounded very fine indeed,” said the Duke; and a touch of mockery had crept into his voice.
“Now, don’t begin trying to annoy me again,” said Germaine pettishly.
“The last thing I should dream of, my dear girl,” said the Duke, smiling.
“And De Relzieres? Is he wounded?” said Germaine.
“Poor dear De Relzieres: he won’t be out of bed for the next six months,” said the Duke; and he laughed lightly and gaily.
“Good gracious!” cried Germaine.
“It will do poor dear De Relzieres a world of good. He has a touch of enteritis; and for enteritis there is nothing like rest,” said the Duke.
Sonia was not getting on very quickly with the wedding-cards. Germaine was sitting with her back to her; and over her shoulder Sonia could watch the face of the Duke — an extraordinarily mobile face, changing with every passing mood. Sometimes his eyes met hers; and hers fell before them. But as soo
n as they turned away from her she was watching him again, almost greedily, as if she could not see enough of his face in which strength of will and purpose was mingled with a faint, ironic scepticism, and tempered by a fine air of race.
He finished his tea; then he took a morocco case from his pocket, and said to Germaine, “It must be quite three days since I gave you anything.”
He opened the case, disclosed a pearl pendant, and handed it to her.
“Oh, how nice!” she cried, taking it.
She took it from the case, saying that it was a beauty. She showed it to Sonia; then she put it on and stood before a mirror admiring the effect. To tell the truth, the effect was not entirely desirable. The pearls did not improve the look of her rather coarse brown skin; and her skin added nothing to the beauty of the pearls. Sonia saw this, and so did the Duke. He looked at Sonia’s white throat. She met his eyes and blushed. She knew that the same thought was in both their minds; the pearls would have looked infinitely better there.
Germaine finished admiring herself; she was incapable even of suspecting that so expensive a pendant could not suit her perfectly.
The Duke said idly: “Goodness! Are all those invitations to the wedding?”
“That’s only down to the letter V,” said Germaine proudly.
“And there are twenty-five letters in the alphabet! You must be inviting the whole world. You’ll have to have the Madeleine enlarged. It won’t hold them all. There isn’t a church in Paris that will,” said the Duke.
“Won’t it be a splendid marriage!” said Germaine. “There’ll be something like a crush. There are sure to be accidents.”
“If I were you, I should have careful arrangements made,” said the Duke.
“Oh, let people look after themselves. They’ll remember it better if they’re crushed a little,” said Germaine.
There was a flicker of contemptuous wonder in the Duke’s eyes. But he only shrugged his shoulders, and turning to Sonia, said, “Will you be an angel and play me a little Grieg, Mademoiselle Kritchnoff? I heard you playing yesterday. No one plays Grieg like you.”
“Excuse me, Jacques, but Mademoiselle Kritchnoff has her work to do,” said Germaine tartly.
“Five minutes’ interval — just a morsel of Grieg, I beg,” said the Duke, with an irresistible smile.
“All right,” said Germaine grudgingly. “But I’ve something important to talk to you about.”
“By Jove! So have I. I was forgetting. I’ve the last photograph I took of you and Mademoiselle Sonia.” Germaine frowned and shrugged her shoulders. “With your light frocks in the open air, you look like two big flowers,” said the Duke.
“You call that important!” cried Germaine.
“It’s very important — like all trifles,” said the Duke, smiling. “Look! isn’t it nice?” And he took a photograph from his pocket, and held it out to her.
“Nice? It’s shocking! We’re making the most appalling faces,” said Germaine, looking at the photograph in his hand.
“Well, perhaps you ARE making faces,” said the Duke seriously, considering the photograph with grave earnestness. “But they’re not appalling faces — not by any means. You shall be judge, Mademoiselle Sonia. The faces — well, we won’t talk about the faces — but the outlines. Look at the movement of your scarf.” And he handed the photograph to Sonia.
“Jacques!” said Germaine impatiently.
“Oh, yes, you’ve something important to tell me. What is it?” said the Duke, with an air of resignation; and he took the photograph from Sonia and put it carefully back in his pocket.
“Victoire has telephoned from Paris to say that we’ve had a paper-knife and a Louis Seize inkstand given us,” said Germaine.
“Hurrah!” cried the Duke in a sudden shout that made them both jump.
“And a pearl necklace,” said Germaine.
“Hurrah!” cried the Duke.
“You’re perfectly childish,” said Germaine pettishly. “I tell you we’ve been given a paper-knife, and you shout ‘hurrah!’ I say we’ve been given a pearl necklace, and you shout ‘hurrah!’ You can’t have the slightest sense of values.”
“I beg your pardon. This pearl necklace is from one of your father’s friends, isn’t it?” said the Duke.
“Yes; why?” said Germaine.
“But the inkstand and the paper-knife must be from the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and well on the shabby side?” said the Duke.
“Yes; well?”
“Well then, my dear girl, what are you complaining about? They balance; the equilibrium is restored. You can’t have everything,” said the Duke; and he laughed mischievously.
Germaine flushed, and bit her lip; her eyes sparkled.
“You don’t care a rap about me,” she said stormily.
“But I find you adorable,” said the Duke.
“You keep annoying me,” said Germaine pettishly. “And you do it on purpose. I think it’s in very bad taste. I shall end by taking a dislike to you — I know I shall.”
“Wait till we’re married for that, my dear girl,” said the Duke; and he laughed again, with a blithe, boyish cheerfulness, which deepened the angry flush in Germaine’s cheeks.
“Can’t you be serious about anything?” she cried.
“I am the most serious man in Europe,” said the Duke.
Germaine went to the window and stared out of it sulkily.
The Duke walked up and down the hall, looking at the pictures of some of his ancestors — somewhat grotesque persons — with humorous appreciation. Between addressing the envelopes Sonia kept glancing at him. Once he caught her eye, and smiled at her. Germaine’s back was eloquent of her displeasure. The Duke stopped at a gap in the line of pictures in which there hung a strip of old tapestry.
“I can never understand why you have left all these ancestors of mine staring from the walls and have taken away the quite admirable and interesting portrait of myself,” he said carelessly.
Germaine turned sharply from the window; Sonia stopped in the middle of addressing an envelope; and both the girls stared at him in astonishment.
“There certainly was a portrait of me where that tapestry hangs. What have you done with it?” said the Duke.
“You’re making fun of us again,” said Germaine.
“Surely your Grace knows what happened,” said Sonia.
“We wrote all the details to you and sent you all the papers three years ago. Didn’t you get them?” said Germaine.
“Not a detail or a newspaper. Three years ago I was in the neighbourhood of the South Pole, and lost at that,” said the Duke.
“But it was most dramatic, my dear Jacques. All Paris was talking of it,” said Germaine. “Your portrait was stolen.”
“Stolen? Who stole it?” said the Duke.
Germaine crossed the hall quickly to the gap in the line of pictures.
“I’ll show you,” she said.
She drew aside the piece of tapestry, and in the middle of the panel over which the portrait of the Duke had hung he saw written in chalk the words:
ARSENE LUPIN
“What do you think of that autograph?” said Germaine.
“‘Arsène Lupin?’” said the Duke in a tone of some bewilderment.
“He left his signature. It seems that he always does so,” said Sonia in an explanatory tone.
“But who is he?” said the Duke.
“Arsène Lupin? Surely you know who Arsène Lupin is?” said Germaine impatiently.
“I haven’t the slightest notion,” said the Duke.
“Oh, come! No one is as South-Pole as all that!” cried Germaine. “You don’t know who Lupin is? The most whimsical, the most audacious, and the most genial thief in France. For the last ten years he has kept the police at bay. He has baffled Ganimard, Holmlock Shears, the great English detective, and even Guerchard, whom everybody says is the greatest detective we’ve had in France since Vidocq. In fact, he’s our national robber. Do you mean to say
you don’t know him?”
“Not even enough to ask him to lunch at a restaurant,” said the Duke flippantly. “What’s he like?”
“Like? Nobody has the slightest idea. He has a thousand disguises. He has dined two evenings running at the English Embassy.”
“But if nobody knows him, how did they learn that?” said the Duke, with a puzzled air.
“Because the second evening, about ten o’clock, they noticed that one of the guests had disappeared, and with him all the jewels of the ambassadress.”
“All of them?” said the Duke.
“Yes; and Lupin left his card behind him with these words scribbled on it:”
“‘This is not a robbery; it is a restitution. You took the Wallace collection from us.’”
“But it was a hoax, wasn’t it?” said the Duke.
“No, your Grace; and he has done better than that. You remember the affair of the Daray Bank — the savings bank for poor people?” said Sonia, her gentle face glowing with a sudden enthusiastic animation.
“Let’s see,” said the Duke. “Wasn’t that the financier who doubled his fortune at the expense of a heap of poor wretches and ruined two thousand people?”
“Yes; that’s the man,” said Sonia. “And Lupin stripped Daray’s house and took from him everything he had in his strong-box. He didn’t leave him a sou of the money. And then, when he’d taken it from him, he distributed it among all the poor wretches whom Daray had ruined.”
“But this isn’t a thief you’re talking about — it’s a philanthropist,” said the Duke.
“A fine sort of philanthropist!” broke in Germaine in a peevish tone. “There was a lot of philanthropy about his robbing papa, wasn’t there?”
“Well,” said the Duke, with an air of profound reflection, “if you come to think of it, that robbery was not worthy of this national hero. My portrait, if you except the charm and beauty of the face itself, is not worth much.”
“If you think he was satisfied with your portrait, you’re very much mistaken. All my father’s collections were robbed,” said Germaine.
Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17) Page 41
