Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17)

by Maurice Leblanc

  “What!” cried the Duke; and a sudden flame of anger flared up in his eyes.

  “No; I could not ... and then I robbed him.... I preferred to ... it was more decent. Ah, I had excuses then. I began to steal to remain an honest woman ... and I’ve gone on stealing to keep up appearances. You see ... I joke about it.” And she laughed, the faint, dreadful, mocking laugh of a damned soul. “Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” she cried; and, burying her face in her hands, she burst into a storm of weeping.

  “Poor child,” said the Duke softly. And he stared gloomily on the ground, overcome by this revelation of the tortures of the feeble in the underworld beneath the Paris he knew.

  “Oh, you do pity me ... you do understand ... and feel,” said Sonia, between her sobs.

  The Duke raised his head and gazed at her with eyes full of an infinite sympathy and compassion.

  “Poor little Sonia,” he said gently. “I understand.”

  She gazed at him with incredulous eyes, in which joy and despair mingled, struggling.

  He came slowly towards her, and stopped short. His quick ear had caught the sound of a footstep outside the door.

  “Quick! Dry your eyes! You must look composed. The other room!” he cried, in an imperative tone.

  He caught her hand and drew her swiftly into the further drawing-room.

  With the quickness which came of long practice in hiding her feelings Sonia composed her face to something of its usual gentle calm. There was even a faint tinge of colour in her cheeks; they had lost their dead whiteness. A faint light shone in her eyes; the anguish had cleared from them. They rested on the Duke with a look of ineffable gratitude. She sat down on a couch. The Duke went to the window and lighted a cigarette. They heard the door of the outer drawing-room open, and there was a pause. Quick footsteps crossed the room, and Guerchard stood in the doorway. He looked from one to the other with keen and eager eyes. Sonia sat staring rather listlessly at the carpet. The Duke turned, and smiled at him.

  “Well, M. Guerchard,” he said. “I hope the burglars have not stolen the coronet.”

  “The coronet is safe, your Grace,” said Guerchard.

  “And the paper-knives?” said the Duke.

  “The paper-knives?” said Guerchard with an inquiring air.

  “The wedding presents,” said the Duke.

  “Yes, your Grace, the wedding presents are safe,” said Guerchard.

  “I breathe again,” said the Duke languidly.

  Guerchard turned to Sonia and said, “I was looking for you, Mademoiselle, to tell you that M. Formery has changed his mind. It is impossible for you to go out. No one will be allowed to go out.”

  “Yes?” said Sonia, in an indifferent tone.

  “We should be very much obliged if you would go to your room,” said Guerchard. “Your meals will be sent up to you.”

  “What?” said Sonia, rising quickly; and she looked from Guerchard to the Duke. The Duke gave her the faintest nod.

  “Very well, I will go to my room,” she said coldly.

  They accompanied her to the door of the outer drawing-room. Guerchard opened it for her and closed it after her.

  “Really, M. Guerchard,” said the Duke, shrugging his shoulders. “This last measure — a child like that!”

  “Really, I’m very sorry, your Grace; but it’s my trade, or, if you prefer it, my duty. As long as things are taking place here which I am still the only one to perceive, and which are not yet clear to me, I must neglect no precaution.”

  “Of course, you know best,” said the Duke. “But still, a child like that — you’re frightening her out of her life.”

  Guerchard shrugged his shoulders, and went quietly out of the room.

  The Duke sat down in an easy chair, frowning and thoughtful. Suddenly there struck on his ears the sound of a loud roaring and heavy bumping on the stairs, the door flew open, and M. Gournay-Martin stood on the threshold waving a telegram in his hand.

  M. Formery and the inspector came hurrying down the stairs behind him, and watched his emotion with astonished and wondering eyes.

  “Here!” bellowed the millionaire. “A telegram! A telegram from the scoundrel himself! Listen! Just listen:”

  “A thousand apologies for not having been able to keep my promise about the coronet. Had an appointment at the Acacias. Please have coronet ready in your room to-night. Will come without fail to fetch it, between a quarter to twelve and twelve o’clock.”

  “Yours affectionately,”

  “ARSENE LUPIN.”

  “There! What do you think of that?”

  “If you ask me, I think he’s humbug,” said the Duke with conviction.

  “Humbug! You always think it’s humbug! You thought the letter was humbug; and look what has happened!” cried the millionaire.

  “Give me the telegram, please,” said M. Formery quickly.

  The millionaire gave it to him; and he read it through.

  “Find out who brought it, inspector,” he said.

  The inspector hurried to the top of the staircase and called to the policeman in charge of the front door. He came back to the drawing-room and said: “It was brought by an ordinary post-office messenger, sir.”

  “Where is he?” said M. Formery. “Why did you let him go?”

  “Shall I send for him, sir?” said the inspector.

  “No, no, it doesn’t matter,” said M. Formery; and, turning to M. Gournay-Martin and the Duke, he said, “Now we’re really going to have trouble with Guerchard. He is going to muddle up everything. This telegram will be the last straw. Nothing will persuade him now that this is not Lupin’s work. And just consider, gentlemen: if Lupin had come last night, and if he had really set his heart on the coronet, he would have stolen it then, or at any rate he would have tried to open the safe in M. Gournay-Martin’s bedroom, in which the coronet actually is, or this safe here” — he went to the safe and rapped on the door of it— “in which is the second key.”

  “That’s quite clear,” said the inspector.

  “If, then, he did not make the attempt last night, when he had a clear field — when the house was empty — he certainly will not make the attempt now when we are warned, when the police are on the spot, and the house is surrounded. The idea is childish, gentlemen” — he leaned against the door of the safe— “absolutely childish, but Guerchard is mad on this point; and I foresee that his madness is going to hamper us in the most idiotic way.”

  He suddenly pitched forward into the middle of the room, as the door of the safe opened with a jerk, and Guerchard shot out of it.

  “What the devil!” cried M. Formery, gaping at him.

  “You’d be surprised how clearly you hear everything in these safes — you’d think they were too thick,” said Guerchard, in his gentle, husky voice.

  “How on earth did you get into it?” cried M. Formery.

  “Getting in was easy enough. It’s the getting out that was awkward. These jokers had fixed up some kind of a spring so that I nearly shot out with the door,” said Guerchard, rubbing his elbow.

  “But how did you get into it? How the deuce DID you get into it?” cried M. Formery.

  “Through the little cabinet into which that door behind the safe opens. There’s no longer any back to the safe; they’ve cut it clean out of it — a very neat piece of work. Safes like this should always be fixed against a wall, not stuck in front of a door. The backs of them are always the weak point.”

  “And the key? The key of the safe upstairs, in my bedroom, where the coronet is — is the key there?” cried M. Gournay-Martin.

  Guerchard went back into the empty safe, and groped about in it. He came out smiling.

  “Well, have you found the key?” cried the millionaire.

  “No. I haven’t; but I’ve found something better,” said Guerchard.

  “What is it?” said M. Formery sharply.

  “I’ll give you a hundred guesses,” said Guerchard with a tantalizing smile.

&nb
sp; “What is it?” said M. Formery.

  “A little present for you,” said Guerchard.

  “What do you mean?” cried M. Formery angrily.

  Guerchard held up a card between his thumb and forefinger and said quietly:

  “The card of Arsène Lupin.”

  CHAPTER XIV

  GUERCHARD PICKS UP THE TRUE SCENT

  THE MILLIONAIRE GAZED at the card with stupefied eyes, the inspector gazed at it with extreme intelligence, the Duke gazed at it with interest, and M. Formery gazed at it with extreme disgust.

  “It’s part of the same ruse — it was put there to throw us off the scent. It proves nothing — absolutely nothing,” he said scornfully.

  “No; it proves nothing at all,” said Guerchard quietly.

  “The telegram is the important thing — this telegram,” said M. Gournay-Martin feverishly. “It concerns the coronet. Is it going to be disregarded?”

  “Oh, no, no,” said M. Formery in a soothing tone. “It will be taken into account. It will certainly be taken into account.”

  M. Gournay-Martin’s butler appeared in the doorway of the drawing-room: “If you please, sir, lunch is served,” he said.

  At the tidings some of his weight of woe appeared to be lifted from the head of the millionaire. “Good!” he said, “good! Gentlemen, you will lunch with me, I hope.”

  “Thank you,” said M. Formery. “There is nothing else for us to do, at any rate at present, and in the house. I am not quite satisfied about Mademoiselle Kritchnoff — at least Guerchard is not. I propose to question her again — about those earlier thefts.”

  “I’m sure there’s nothing in that,” said the Duke quickly.

  “No, no; I don’t think there is,” said M. Formery. “But still one never knows from what quarter light may come in an affair like this. Accident often gives us our best clues.”

  “It seems rather a shame to frighten her — she’s such a child,” said the Duke.

  “Oh, I shall be gentle, your Grace — as gentle as possible, that is. But I look to get more from the examination of Victoire. She was on the scene. She has actually seen the rogues at work; but till she recovers there is nothing more to be done, except to wait the discoveries of the detectives who are working outside; and they will report here. So in the meantime we shall be charmed to lunch with you, M. Gournay-Martin.”

  They went downstairs to the dining-room and found an elaborate and luxurious lunch, worthy of the hospitality of a millionaire, awaiting them. The skill of the cook seemed to have been quite unaffected by the losses of his master. M. Formery, an ardent lover of good things, enjoyed himself immensely. He was in the highest spirits. Germaine, a little upset by the night-journey, was rather querulous. Her father was plunged in a gloom which lifted for but a brief space at the appearance of a fresh delicacy. Guerchard ate and drank seriously, answering the questions of the Duke in a somewhat absent-minded fashion. The Duke himself seemed to have lost his usual flow of good spirits, and at times his brow was knitted in an anxious frown. His questions to Guerchard showed a far less keen interest in the affair.

  To him the lunch seemed very long and very tedious; but at last it came to an end. M. Gournay-Martin seemed to have been much cheered by the wine he had drunk. He was almost hopeful. M. Formery, who had not by any means trifled with the champagne, was raised to the very height of sanguine certainty. Their coffee and liqueurs were served in the smoking-room. Guerchard lighted a cigar, refused a liqueur, drank his coffee quickly, and slipped out of the room.

  The Duke followed him, and in the hall said: “I will continue to watch you unravel the threads of this mystery, if I may, M. Guerchard.”

  Good Republican as Guerchard was, he could not help feeling flattered by the interest of a Duke; and the excellent lunch he had eaten disposed him to feel the honour even more deeply.

  “I shall be charmed,” he said. “To tell the truth, I find the company of your Grace really quite stimulating.”

  “It must be because I find it all so extremely interesting,” said the Duke.

  They went up to the drawing-room and found the red-faced young policeman seated on a chair by the door eating a lunch, which had been sent up to him from the millionaire’s kitchen, with a very hearty appetite.

  They went into the drawing-room. Guerchard shut the door and turned the key: “Now,” he said, “I think that M. Formery will give me half an hour to myself. His cigar ought to last him at least half an hour. In that time I shall know what the burglars really did with their plunder — at least I shall know for certain how they got it out of the house.”

  “Please explain,” said the Duke. “I thought we knew how they got it out of the house.” And he waved his hand towards the window.

  “Oh, that! — that’s childish,” said Guerchard contemptuously. “Those are traces for an examining magistrate. The ladder, the table on the window-sill, they lead nowhere. The only people who came up that ladder were the two men who brought it from the scaffolding. You can see their footsteps. Nobody went down it at all. It was mere waste of time to bother with those traces.”

  “But the footprint under the book?” said the Duke.

  “Oh, that,” said Guerchard. “One of the burglars sat on the couch there, rubbed plaster on the sole of his boot, and set his foot down on the carpet. Then he dusted the rest of the plaster off his boot and put the book on the top of the footprint.”

  “Now, how do you know that?” said the astonished Duke.

  “It’s as plain as a pike-staff,” said Guerchard. “There must have been several burglars to move such pieces of furniture. If the soles of all of them had been covered with plaster, all the sweeping in the world would not have cleared the carpet of the tiny fragments of it. I’ve been over the carpet between the footprint and the window with a magnifying glass. There are no fragments of plaster on it. We dismiss the footprint. It is a mere blind, and a very fair blind too — for an examining magistrate.”

  “I understand,” said the Duke.

  “That narrows the problem, the quite simple problem, how was the furniture taken out of the room. It did not go through that window down the ladder. Again, it was not taken down the stairs, and out of the front door, or the back. If it had been, the concierge and his wife would have heard the noise. Besides that, it would have been carried down into a main street, in which there are people at all hours. Somebody would have been sure to tell a policeman that this house was being emptied. Moreover, the police were continually patrolling the main streets, and, quickly as a man like Lupin would do the job, he could not do it so quickly that a policeman would not have seen it. No; the furniture was not taken down the stairs or out of the front door. That narrows the problem still more. In fact, there is only one mode of egress left.”

  “The chimney!” cried the Duke.

  “You’ve hit it,” said Guerchard, with a husky laugh. “By that well-known logical process, the process of elimination, we’ve excluded all methods of egress except the chimney.”

  He paused, frowning, in some perplexity; and then he said uneasily: “What I don’t like about it is that Victoire was set in the fireplace. I asked myself at once what was she doing there. It was unnecessary that she should be drugged and set in the fireplace — quite unnecessary.”

  “It might have been to put off an examining magistrate,” said the Duke. “Having found Victoire in the fireplace, M. Formery did not look for anything else.”

  “Yes, it might have been that,” said Guerchard slowly. “On the other hand, she might have been put there to make sure that I did not miss the road the burglars took. That’s the worst of having to do with Lupin. He knows me to the bottom of my mind. He has something up his sleeve — some surprise for me. Even now, I’m nowhere near the bottom of the mystery. But come along, we’ll take the road the burglars took. The inspector has put my lantern ready for me.”

  As he spoke he went to the fireplace, picked up a lantern which had been set on the top of the i
ron fire-basket, and lighted it. The Duke stepped into the great fireplace beside him. It was four feet deep, and between eight and nine feet broad. Guerchard threw the light from the lantern on to the back wall of it. Six feet from the floor the soot from the fire stopped abruptly, and there was a dappled patch of bricks, half of them clean and red, half of them blackened by soot, five feet broad, and four feet high.

  “The opening is higher up than I thought,” said Guerchard. “I must get a pair of steps.”

  He went to the door of the drawing-room and bade the young policeman fetch him a pair of steps. They were brought quickly. He took them from the policeman, shut the door, and locked it again. He set the steps in the fireplace and mounted them.

  “Be careful,” he said to the Duke, who had followed him into the fireplace, and stood at the foot of the steps. “Some of these bricks may drop inside, and they’ll sting you up if they fall on your toes.”

  The Duke stepped back out of reach of any bricks that might fall.

  Guerchard set his left hand against the wall of the chimney-piece between him and the drawing-room, and pressed hard with his right against the top of the dappled patch of bricks. At the first push, half a dozen of them fell with a bang on to the floor of the next house. The light came flooding in through the hole, and shone on Guerchard’s face and its smile of satisfaction. Quickly he pushed row after row of bricks into the next house until he had cleared an opening four feet square.

  “Come along,” he said to the Duke, and disappeared feet foremost through the opening.

  The Duke mounted the steps, and found himself looking into a large empty room of the exact size and shape of the drawing-room of M. Gournay-Martin, save that it had an ordinary modern fireplace instead of one of the antique pattern of that in which he stood. Its chimney-piece was a few inches below the opening. He stepped out on to the chimney-piece and dropped lightly to the floor.