And those were the words which Lupin had overheard, after the first boat started:
“Help!... Murder!... I shall be killed!”
And this was the reply of the exchange. The police were hurrying to the spot. And Lupin remembered the sounds which he had heard from the garden, four or five minutes earlier, at most:
“The police! Take to your heels!” he shouted, darting across the dining room.
“What about Vaucheray?” asked Gilbert.
“Sorry, can’t be helped!”
But Vaucheray, waking from his torpor, entreated him as he passed:
“Governor, you wouldn’t leave me like this!”
Lupin stopped, in spite of the danger, and was lifting the wounded man, with Gilbert’s assistance, when a loud din arose outside:
“Too late!” he said.
At that moment, blows shook the hall-door at the back of the house. He ran to the front steps: a number of men had already turned the corner of the house at a rush. He might have managed to keep ahead of them, with Gilbert, and reach the waterside. But what chance was there of embarking and escaping under the enemy’s fire?
He locked and bolted the door.
“We are surrounded... and done for,” spluttered Gilbert.
“Hold your tongue,” said Lupin.
“But they’ve seen us, governor. There, they’re knocking.”
“Hold your tongue,” Lupin repeated. “Not a word. Not a movement.”
He himself remained unperturbed, with an utterly calm face and the pensive attitude of one who has all the time that he needs to examine a delicate situation from every point of view. He had reached one of those minutes which he called the “superior moments of existence,” those which alone give a value and a price to life. On such occasions, however threatening the danger, he always began by counting to himself, slowly— “One... Two... Three... Four.... Five... Six” — until the beating of his heart became normal and regular. Then and not till then, he reflected, but with what intensity, with what perspicacity, with what a profound intuition of possibilities! All the factors of the problem were present in his mind. He foresaw everything. He admitted everything. And he took his resolution in all logic and in all certainty.
After thirty or forty seconds, while the men outside were banging at the doors and picking the locks, he said to his companion:
“Follow me.”
Returning to the dining-room, he softly opened the sash and drew the Venetian blinds of a window in the side-wall. People were coming and going, rendering flight out of the question.
Thereupon he began to shout with all his might, in a breathless voice:
“This way!... Help!... I’ve got them!... This way!”
He pointed his revolver and fired two shots into the tree-tops. Then he went back to Vaucheray, bent over him and smeared his face and hands with the wounded man’s blood. Lastly, turning upon Gilbert, he took him violently by the shoulders and threw him to the floor.
“What do you want, governor? There’s a nice thing to do!”
“Let me do as I please,” said Lupin, laying an imperative stress on every syllable. “I’ll answer for everything... I’ll answer for the two of you... Let me do as I like with you... I’ll get you both out of prison ... But I can only do that if I’m free.”
Excited cries rose through the open window.
“This way!” he shouted. “I’ve got them! Help!”
And, quietly, in a whisper:
“Just think for a moment... Have you anything to say to me?... Something that can be of use to us?”
Gilbert was too much taken aback to understand Lupin’s plan and he struggled furiously. Vaucheray showed more intelligence; moreover, he had given up all hope of escape, because of his wound; and he snarled:
“Let the governor have his way, you ass!... As long as he gets off, isn’t that the great thing?”
Suddenly, Lupin remembered the article which Gilbert had put in his pocket, after capturing it from Vaucheray. He now tried to take it in his turn.
“No, not that! Not if I know it!” growled Gilbert, managing to release himself.
Lupin floored him once more. But two men suddenly appeared at the window; and Gilbert yielded and, handing the thing to Lupin, who pocketed it without looking at it, whispered:
“Here you are, governor... I’ll explain. You can be sure that...”
He did not have time to finish... Two policemen and others after them and soldiers who entered through every door and window came to Lupin’s assistance.
Gilbert was at once seized and firmly bound. Lupin withdrew:
“I’m glad you’ve come,” he said. “The beggar’s given me a lot of trouble. I wounded the other; but this one...”
The commissary of police asked him, hurriedly:
“Have you seen the man-servant? Have they killed him?”
“I don’t know,” he answered.
“You don’t know?...”
“Why, I came with you from Enghien, on hearing of the murder! Only, while you were going round the left of the house, I went round the right. There was a window open. I climbed up just as these two ruffians were about to jump down. I fired at this one,” pointing to Vaucheray, “and seized hold of his pal.”
How could he have been suspected? He was covered with blood. He had handed over the valet’s murderers. Half a score of people had witnessed the end of the heroic combat which he had delivered. Besides, the uproar was too great for any one to take the trouble to argue or to waste time in entertaining doubts. In the height of the first confusion, the people of the neighbourhood invaded the villa. One and all lost their heads. They ran to every side, upstairs, downstairs, to the very cellar. They asked one another questions, yelled and shouted; and no one dreamt of checking Lupin’s statements, which sounded so plausible.
However, the discovery of the body in the pantry restored the commissary to a sense of his responsibility. He issued orders, had the house cleared and placed policemen at the gate to prevent any one from passing in or out. Then, without further delay, he examined the spot and began his inquiry. Vaucheray gave his name; Gilbert refused to give his, on the plea that he would only speak in the presence of a lawyer. But, when he was accused of the murder, he informed against Vaucheray, who defended himself by denouncing the other; and the two of them vociferated at the same time, with the evident wish to monopolize the commissary’s attention. When the commissary turned to Lupin, to request his evidence, he perceived that the stranger was no longer there.
Without the least suspicion, he said to one of the policemen:
“Go and tell that gentleman that I should like to ask him a few questions.”
They looked about for the gentleman. Some one had seen him standing on the steps, lighting a cigarette. The next news was that he had given cigarettes to a group of soldiers and strolled toward the lake, saying that they were to call him if he was wanted.
They called him. No one replied.
But a soldier came running up. The gentleman had just got into a boat and was rowing away for all he was worth. The commissary looked at Gilbert and realized that he had been tricked:
“Stop him!” he shouted. “Fire on him! He’s an accomplice!...”
He himself rushed out, followed by two policemen, while the others remained with the prisoners. On reaching the bank, he saw the gentleman, a hundred yards away, taking off his hat to him in the dusk.
One of the policemen discharged his revolver, without thinking.
The wind carried the sound of words across the water. The gentleman was singing as he rowed:
“Go, little bark,
Float in the dark...”
But the commissary saw a skiff fastened to the landing-stage of the adjoining property. He scrambled over the hedge separating the two gardens and, after ordering the soldiers to watch the banks of the lake and to seize the fugitive if he tried to put ashore, the commissary and two of his men pulled off in pursuit of Lupin.
It was not a difficult matter, for they were able to follow his movements by the intermittent light of the moon and to see that he was trying to cross the lakes while bearing toward the right — that is to say, toward the village of Saint-Gratien. Moreover, the commissary soon perceived that, with the aid of his men and thanks perhaps to the comparative lightness of his craft, he was rapidly gaining on the other. In ten minutes he had decreased the interval between them by one half.
“That’s it!” he cried. “We shan’t even need the soldiers to keep him from landing. I very much want to make the fellow’s acquaintance. He’s a cool hand and no mistake!”
The funny thing was that the distance was now diminishing at an abnormal rate, as though the fugitive had lost heart at realizing the futility of the struggle. The policemen redoubled their efforts. The boat shot across the water with the swiftness of a swallow. Another hundred yards at most and they would reach the man.
“Halt!” cried the commissary.
The enemy, whose huddled shape they could make out in the boat, no longer moved. The sculls drifted with the stream. And this absence of all motion had something alarming about it. A ruffian of that stamp might easily lie in wait for his aggressors, sell his life dearly and even shoot them dead before they had a chance of attacking him.
“Surrender!” shouted the commissary.
The sky, at that moment, was dark. The three men lay flat at the bottom of their skiff, for they thought they perceived a threatening gesture.
The boat, carried by its own impetus, was approaching the other.
The commissary growled:
“We won’t let ourselves be sniped. Let’s fire at him. Are you ready?” And he roared, once more, “Surrender... if not...!”
No reply.
The enemy did not budge.
“Surrender!... Hands up!... You refuse?... So much the worse for you... I’m counting... One... Two...”
The policemen did not wait for the word of command. They fired and, at once, bending over their oars, gave the boat so powerful an impulse that it reached the goal in a few strokes.
The commissary watched, revolver in hand, ready for the least movement. He raised his arm:
“If you stir, I’ll blow out your brains!”
But the enemy did not stir for a moment; and, when the boat was bumped and the two men, letting go their oars, prepared for the formidable assault, the commissary understood the reason of this passive attitude: there was no one in the boat. The enemy had escaped by swimming, leaving in the hands of the victor a certain number of the stolen articles, which, heaped up and surmounted by a jacket and a bowler hat, might be taken, at a pinch, in the semi-darkness, vaguely to represent the figure of a man.
They struck matches and examined the enemy’s cast clothes. There were no initials in the hat. The jacket contained neither papers nor pocketbook. Nevertheless, they made a discovery which was destined to give the case no little celebrity and which had a terrible influence on the fate of Gilbert and Vaucheray: in one of the pockets was a visiting-card which the fugitive had left behind... the card of Arsène Lupin.
At almost the same moment, while the police, towing the captured skiff behind them, continued their empty search and while the soldiers stood drawn up on the bank, straining their eyes to try and follow the fortunes of the naval combat, the aforesaid Arsène Lupin was quietly landing at the very spot which he had left two hours earlier.
He was there met by his two other accomplices, the Growler and the Masher, flung them a few sentences by way of explanation, jumped into the motor-car, among Daubrecq the deputy’s armchairs and other valuables, wrapped himself in his furs and drove, by deserted roads, to his repository at Neuilly, where he left the chauffeur. A taxicab brought him back to Paris and put him down by the church of Saint-Philippe-du-Roule, not far from which, in the Rue Matignon, he had a flat, on the entresol-floor, of which none of his gang, excepting Gilbert, knew, a flat with a private entrance. He was glad to take off his clothes and rub himself down; for, in spite of his strong constitution, he felt chilled to the bone. On retiring to bed, he emptied the contents of his pockets, as usual, on the mantelpiece. It was not till then that he noticed, near his pocketbook and his keys, the object which Gilbert had put into his hand at the last moment.
And he was very much surprised. It was a decanter-stopper, a little crystal stopper, like those used for the bottles in a liqueur-stand. And this crystal stopper had nothing particular about it. The most that Lupin observed was that the knob, with its many facets, was gilded right down to the indent. But, to tell the truth, this detail did not seem to him of a nature to attract special notice.
“And it was this bit of glass to which Gilbert and Vaucheray attached such stubborn importance!” he said to himself. “It was for this that they killed the valet, fought each other, wasted their time, risked prison... trial... the scaffold!...”
Too tired to linger further upon this matter, exciting though it appeared to him, he replaced the stopper on the chimney-piece and got into bed.
He had bad dreams. Gilbert and Vaucheray were kneeling on the flags of their cells, wildly stretching out their hands to him and yelling with fright:
“Help!... Help!” they cried.
But, notwithstanding all his efforts, he was unable to move. He himself was fastened by invisible bonds. And, trembling, obsessed by a monstrous vision, he watched the dismal preparations, the cutting of the condemned men’s hair and shirt-collars, the squalid tragedy.
“By Jove!” he said, when he woke after a series of nightmares. “There’s a lot of bad omens! Fortunately, we don’t err on the side of superstition. Otherwise...!” And he added, “For that matter, we have a talisman which, to judge by Gilbert and Vaucheray’s behaviour, should be enough, with Lupin’s help, to frustrate bad luck and secure the triumph of the good cause. Let’s have a look at that crystal stopper!”
He sprang out of bed to take the thing and examine it more closely. An exclamation escaped him. The crystal stopper had disappeared...
CHAPTER II. EIGHT FROM NINE LEAVES ONE
NOTWITHSTANDING MY FRIENDLY relations with Lupin and the many flattering proofs of his confidence which he has given me, there is one thing which I have never been quite able to fathom, and that is the organization of his gang.
The existence of the gang is an undoubted fact. Certain adventures can be explained only by countless acts of devotion, invincible efforts of energy and powerful cases of complicity, representing so many forces which all obey one mighty will. But how is this will exerted? Through what intermediaries, through what subordinates? That is what I do not know. Lupin keeps his secret; and the secrets which Lupin chooses to keep are, so to speak, impenetrable.
The only supposition which I can allow myself to make is that this gang, which, in my opinion, is very limited in numbers and therefore all the more formidable, is completed and extended indefinitely by the addition of independent units, provisional associates, picked up in every class of society and in every country of the world, who are the executive agents of an authority with which, in many cases, they are not even acquainted. The companions, the initiates, the faithful adherents — men who play the leading parts under the direct command of Lupin — move to and fro between these secondary agents and the master.
Gilbert and Vaucheray evidently belonged to the main gang. And that is why the law showed itself so implacable in their regard. For the first time, it held accomplices of Lupin in its clutches — declared, undisputed accomplices — and those accomplices had committed a murder. If the murder was premeditated, if the accusation of deliberate homicide could be supported by substantial proofs, it meant the scaffold. Now there was, at the very least, one self-evident proof, the cry for assistance which Leonard had sent over the telephone a few minutes before his death:
“Help!... Murder!... I shall be killed!...”
The desperate appeal had been heard by two men, the operator on duty and one of his fellow-clerks, who swor
e to it positively. And it was in consequence of this appeal that the commissary of police, who was at once informed, had proceeded to the Villa Marie-Therese, escorted by his men and a number of soldiers off duty.
Lupin had a very clear notion of the danger from the first. The fierce struggle in which he had engaged against society was entering upon a new and terrible phase. His luck was turning. It was no longer a matter of attacking others, but of defending himself and saving the heads of his two companions.
A little memorandum, which I have copied from one of the note-books in which he often jots down a summary of the situations that perplex him, will show us the workings of his brain:
“One definite fact, to begin with, is that Gilbert and Vaucheray humbugged me. The Enghien expedition, undertaken ostensibly with the object of robbing the Villa Marie-Therese, had a secret purpose. This purpose obsessed their minds throughout the operations; and what they were looking for, under the furniture and in the cupboards, was one thing and one thing alone: the crystal stopper. Therefore, if I want to see clear ahead, I must first of all know what this means. It is certain that, for some hidden reason, that mysterious piece of glass possesses an incalculable value in their eyes. And not only in theirs, for, last night, some one was bold enough and clever enough to enter my flat and steal the object in question from me.”
This theft of which he was the victim puzzled Lupin curiously.
Two problems, both equally difficult of solution, presented themselves to his mind. First, who was the mysterious visitor? Gilbert, who enjoyed his entire confidence and acted as his private secretary, was the only one who knew of the retreat in the Rue Matignon. Now Gilbert was in prison. Was Lupin to suppose that Gilbert had betrayed him and put the police on his tracks? In that case, why were they content with taking the crystal stopper, instead of arresting him, Lupin?
But there was something much stranger still. Admitting that they had been able to force the doors of his flat — and this he was compelled to admit, though there was no mark to show it — how had they succeeded in entering the bedroom? He turned the key and pushed the bolt as he did every evening, in accordance with a habit from which he never departed. And, nevertheless — the fact was undeniable — the crystal stopper had disappeared without the lock or the bolt having been touched. And, although Lupin flattered himself that he had sharp ears, even when asleep, not a sound had waked him!
Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17) Page 120
