“It’s curious, say what one likes,” thought Lupin. “Here is a house in which Daubrecq carefully conceals his rascalities and is on his guard, not without good reason, against spies; and everybody walks in and out as in a booth at a fair. Victoire lets me in, the portress admits the emissaries of the police: that’s well and good; but who is playing false in these people’s favour? Are we to suppose that they are acting alone? But what fearlessness! And how well they know their way about!”
In the afternoon, during Daubrecq’s absence, he examined the door of the first-floor bedroom. And, at the first glance, he understood: one of the lower panels had been skilfully cut out and was only held in place by invisible tacks. The people, therefore, who had done this work were the same who had acted at his two places, in the Rue Matignon and the Rue Chateaubriand.
He also found that the work dated back to an earlier period and that, as in his case, the opening had been prepared beforehand, in anticipation of favourable circumstances or of some immediate need.
The day did not seem long to Lupin. Knowledge was at hand. Not only would he discover the manner in which his adversaries employed those little openings, which were apparently unemployable, since they did not allow a person to reach the upper bolts, but he would learn who the ingenious and energetic adversaries were with whom he repeatedly and inevitably found himself confronted.
One incident annoyed him. In the evening Daubrecq, who had complained of feeling tired at dinner, came home at ten o’clock and, contrary to his usual custom, pushed the bolts of the hall-door. In that case, how would the others be able to carry out their plan and go to Daubrecq’s room? Lupin waited for an hour after Daubrecq put out his light. Then he went down to the deputy’s study, opened one of the windows ajar and returned to the third floor and fixed his rope-ladder so that, in case of need, he could reach the study without passing though the house. Lastly, he resumed his post on the second-floor landing.
He did not have to wait long. An hour earlier than on the previous night some one tried to open the hall-door. When the attempt failed, a few minutes of absolute silence followed. And Lupin was beginning to think that the men had abandoned the idea, when he gave a sudden start. Some one had passed, without the least sound to interrupt the silence. He would not have known it, so utterly were the thing’s steps deadened by the stair-carpet, if the baluster-rail, which he himself held in his hand, had not shaken slightly. Some one was coming upstairs.
And, as the ascent continued, Lupin became aware of the uncanny feeling that he heard nothing more than before. He knew, because of the rail, that a thing was coming and he could count the number of steps climbed by noting each vibration of the rail; but no other indication gave him that dim sensation of presence which we feel in distinguishing movements which we do not see, in perceiving sounds which we do not hear. And yet a blacker darkness ought to have taken shape within the darkness and something ought, at least, to modify the quality of the silence. No, he might well have believed that there was no one there.
And Lupin, in spite of himself and against the evidence of his reason, ended by believing it, for the rail no longer moved and he thought that he might have been the sport of an illusion.
And this lasted a long time. He hesitated, not knowing what to do, not knowing what to suppose. But an odd circumstance impressed him. A clock struck two. He recognized the chime of Daubrecq’s clock. And the chime was that of a clock from which one is not separated by the obstacle of a door.
Lupin slipped down the stairs and went to the door. It was closed, but there was a space on the left, at the bottom, a space left by the removal of the little panel.
He listened. Daubrecq, at that moment, turned in his bed; and his breathing was resumed, evenly and a little stertorously. And Lupin plainly heard the sound of rumpling garments. Beyond a doubt, the thing was there, fumbling and feeling through the clothes which Daubrecq had laid beside his bed.
“Now,” thought Lupin, “we shall learn something. But how the deuce did the beggar get in? Has he managed to draw the bolts and open the door? But, if so, why did he make the mistake of shutting it again?”
Not for a second — a curious anomaly in a man like Lupin, an anomaly to be explained only by the uncanny feeling which the whole adventure produced in him — not for a second did he suspect the very simple truth which was about to be revealed to him. Continuing his way down, he crouched on one of the bottom steps of the staircase, thus placing himself between the door of the bedroom and the hall-door, on the road which Daubrecq’s enemy must inevitably take in order to join his accomplices.
He questioned the darkness with an unspeakable anguish. He was on the point of unmasking that enemy of Daubrecq’s, who was also his own adversary. He would thwart his plans. And the booty captured from Daubrecq he would capture in his turn, while Daubrecq slept and while the accomplices lurking behind the hall-door or outside the garden-gate vainly awaited their leader’s return.
And that return took place. Lupin knew it by the renewed vibration of the balusters. And, once more, with every sense strained and every nerve on edge, he strove to discern the mysterious thing that was coming toward him. He suddenly realized it when only a few yards away. He himself, hidden in a still darker recess, could not be seen. And what he saw — in the very vaguest manner — was approaching stair by stair, with infinite precautions, holding on to each separate baluster.
“Whom the devil have I to do with?” said Lupin to himself, while his heart thumped inside his chest.
The catastrophe was hastened. A careless movement on Lupin’s part was observed by the stranger, who stopped short. Lupin was afraid lest the other should turn back and take to flight. He sprang at the adversary and was stupefied at encountering nothing but space and knocking against the stair-rail without seizing the form which he saw. But he at once rushed forward, crossed the best part of the hall and caught up his antagonist just as he was reaching the door opening on the garden.
There was a cry of fright, answered by other cries on the further side of the door.
“Oh, hang it, what’s this?” muttered Lupin, whose arms had closed, in the dark, round a little, tiny, trembling, whimpering thing.
Suddenly understanding, he stood for a moment motionless and dismayed, at a loss what to do with his conquered prey. But the others were shouting and stamping outside the door. Thereupon, dreading lest Daubrecq should wake up, he slipped the little thing under his jacket, against his chest, stopped the crying with his handkerchief rolled into a ball and hurried up the three flights of stairs.
“Here,” he said to Victoire, who woke with a start. “I’ve brought you the indomitable chief of our enemies, the Hercules of the gang. Have you a feeding-bottle about you?”
He put down in the easy-chair a child of six or seven years of age, the tiniest little fellow in a gray jersey and a knitted woollen cap, whose pale and exquisitely pretty features were streaked with the tears that streamed from the terrified eyes.
“Where did you pick that up?” asked Victoire, aghast.
“At the foot of the stairs, as it was coming out of Daubrecq’s bedroom,” replied Lupin, feeling the jersey in the hope that the child had brought a booty of some kind from that room.
Victoire was stirred to pity:
“Poor little dear! Look, he’s trying not to cry!... Oh, saints above, his hands are like ice! Don’t be afraid, sonnie, we sha’n’t hurt you: the gentleman’s all right.”
“Yes,” said Lupin, “the gentleman’s quite all right, but there’s another very wicked gentleman who’ll wake up if they go on making such a rumpus outside the hall-door. Do you hear them, Victoire?”
“Who is it?”
“The satellites of our young Hercules, the indomitable leader’s gang.”
“Well...?” stammered Victoire, utterly unnerved.
“Well, as I don’t want to be caught in the trap, I shall start by clearing out. Are you coming, Hercules?”
He rolled the child
in a blanket, so that only its head remained outside, gagged its mouth as gently as possible and made Victoire fasten it to his shoulders:
“See, Hercules? We’re having a game. You never thought you’d find gentlemen to play pick-a-back with you at three o’clock in the morning! Come, whoosh, let’s fly away! You don’t get giddy, I hope?”
He stepped across the window-ledge and set foot on one of the rungs of the ladder. He was in the garden in a minute.
He had never ceased hearing and now heard more plainly still the blows that were being struck upon the front-door. He was astounded that Daubrecq was not awakened by so violent a din:
“If I don’t put a stop to this, they’ll spoil everything,” he said to himself.
He stood in an angle of the house, invisible in the darkness, and measured the distance between himself and the gate. The gate was open. To his right, he saw the steps, on the top of which the people were flinging themselves about; to his left, the building occupied by the portress.
The woman had come out of her lodge and was standing near the people, entreating them:
“Oh, do be quiet, do be quiet! He’ll come!”
“Capital!” said Lupin. “The good woman is an accomplice of these as well. By Jingo, what a pluralist!”
He rushed across to her and, taking her by the scruff of the neck, hissed:
“Go and tell them I’ve got the child... They can come and fetch it at my place, Rue Chateaubriand.”
A little way off, in the avenue, stood a taxi which Lupin presumed to be engaged by the gang. Speaking authoritatively, as though he were one of the accomplices, he stepped into the cab and told the man to drive him home.
“Well,” he said to the child, “that wasn’t much of a shake-up, was it?... What do you say to going to bye-bye on the gentleman’s bed?”
As his servant, Achille, was asleep, Lupin made the little chap comfortable and stroked his hair for him. The child seemed numbed. His poor face was as though petrified into a stiff expression made up, at one and the same time, of fear and the wish not to show fear, of the longing to scream and a pitiful effort not to scream.
“Cry, my pet, cry,” said Lupin. “It’ll do you good to cry.”
The child did not cry, but the voice was so gentle and so kind that he relaxed his tense muscles; and, now that his eyes were calmer and his mouth less contorted, Lupin, who was examining him closely, found something that he recognized, an undoubted resemblance.
This again confirmed certain facts which he suspected and which he had for some time been linking in his mind. Indeed, unless he was mistaken, the position was becoming very different and he would soon assume the direction of events. After that...
A ring at the bell followed, at once, by two others, sharp ones.
“Hullo!” said Lupin to the child. “Here’s mummy come to fetch you. Don’t move.”
He ran and opened the door.
A woman entered, wildly:
“My son!” she screamed. “My son! Where is he?”
“In my room,” said Lupin.
Without asking more, thus proving that she knew the way, she rushed to the bedroom.
“As I thought,” muttered Lupin. “The youngish woman with the gray hair: Daubrecq’s friend and enemy.”
He walked to the window and looked through the curtains. Two men were striding up and down the opposite pavement: the Growler and the Masher.
“And they’re not even hiding themselves,” he said to himself. “That’s a good sign. They consider that they can’t do without me any longer and that they’ve got to obey the governor. There remains the pretty lady with the gray hair. That will be more difficult. It’s you and I now, mummy.”
He found the mother and the boy clasped in each other’s arms; and the mother, in a great state of alarm, her eyes moist with tears, was saying:
“You’re not hurt? You’re sure? Oh, how frightened you must have been, my poor little Jacques!”
“A fine little fellow,” said Lupin.
She did not reply. She was feeling the child’s jersey, as Lupin had done, no doubt to see if he had succeeded in his nocturnal mission; and she questioned him in a whisper.
“No, mummy,” said the child. “No, really.”
She kissed him fondly and petted him, until, in a little while, the child, worn out with fatigue and excitement, fell asleep. She remained leaning over him for a long time. She herself seemed very much worn out and in need of rest.
Lupin did not disturb her contemplation. He looked at her anxiously, with an attention which she did not perceive, and he noticed the wider rings round her eyes and the deeper marks of wrinkles. Yet he considered her handsomer than he had thought, with that touching beauty which habitual suffering gives to certain faces that are more human, more sensitive than others.
She wore so sad an expression that, in a burst of instinctive sympathy, he went up to her and said: “I do not know what your plans are, but, whatever they may be, you stand in need of help. You cannot succeed alone.”
“I am not alone.”
“The two men outside? I know them. They’re no good. I beseech you, make use of me. You remember the other evening, at the theatre, in the private box? You were on the point of speaking. Do not hesitate to-day.”
She turned her eyes on him, looked at him long and fixedly and, as though unable to escape that opposing will, she said:
“What do you know exactly? What do you know about me?”
“There are many things that I do not know. I do not know your name. But I know...”
She interrupted him with a gesture; and, resolutely, in her turn, dominating the man who was compelling her to speak:
“It doesn’t matter,” she exclaimed. “What you know, after all, is not much and is of no importance. But what are your plans? You offer me your help: with what view? For what work? You have flung yourself headlong into this business; I have been unable to undertake anything without meeting you on my path: you must be contemplating some aim... What aim?”
“What aim? Upon my word, it seems to me that my conduct...”
“No, no,” she said, emphatically, “no phrases! What you and I want is certainties; and, to achieve them, absolute frankness. I will set you the example. M. Daubrecq possesses a thing of unparalleled value, not in itself, but for what it represents. That thing you know. You have twice held it in your hands. I have twice taken it from you. Well, I am entitled to believe that, when you tried to obtain possession of it, you meant to use the power which you attribute to it and to use it to your own advantage...”
“What makes you say that?”
“Yes, you meant to use it to forward your schemes, in the interest of your own affairs, in accordance with your habits as a...”
“As a burglar and a swindler,” said Lupin, completing the sentence for her.
She did not protest. He tried to read her secret thoughts in the depths of her eyes. What did she want with him? What was she afraid of? If she mistrusted him, had he not also reasons to mistrust that woman who had twice taken the crystal stopper from him to restore it to Daubrecq? Mortal enemy of Daubrecq’s though she were, up to what point did she remain subject to that man’s will? By surrendering himself to her, did he not risk surrendering himself to Daubrecq? And yet he had never looked upon graver eyes nor a more honest face.
Without further hesitation, he stated:
“My object is simple enough. It is the release of my friends Gilbert and Vaucheray.”
“Is that true? Is that true?” she exclaimed, quivering all over and questioning him with an anxious glance.
“If you knew me...”
“I do know you... I know who you are. For months, I have taken part in your life, without your suspecting it... and yet, for certain reasons, I still doubt...”
He said, in a more decisive tone:
“You do not know me. If you knew me, you would know that there can be no peace for me before my two companions have escaped the awful fate that
awaits them.”
She rushed at him, took him by the shoulders and positively distraught, said:
“What? What did you say? The awful fate?... Then you believe... you believe...”
“I really believe,” said Lupin, who felt how greatly this threat upset her, “I really believe that, if I am not in time, Gilbert and Vaucheray are done for.”
“Be quiet!... Be quiet!” she cried, clutching him fiercely. “Be quiet!... You mustn’t say that... There is no reason... It’s just you who suppose...”
“It’s not only I, it’s Gilbert as well...”
“What? Gilbert? How do you know?”
“From himself?”
“From him?”
“Yes, from Gilbert, who has no hope left but in me; from Gilbert, who knows that only one man in the world can save him and who, a few days ago, sent me a despairing appeal from prison. Here is his letter.”
She snatched the paper greedily and read in stammering accents:
“Help, governor!... I am frightened!... I am frightened!...”
She dropped the letter. Her hands fluttered in space. It was as though her staring eyes beheld the sinister vision which had already so often terrified Lupin. She gave a scream of horror, tried to rise and fainted.
CHAPTER V. THE TWENTY-SEVEN
THE CHILD WAS sleeping peacefully on the bed. The mother did not move from the sofa on which Lupin had laid her; but her easier breathing and the blood which was now returning to her face announced her impending recovery from her swoon.
He observed that she wore a wedding-ring. Seeing a locket hanging from her bodice, he stooped and, turning it, found a miniature photograph representing a man of about forty and a lad — a stripling rather — in a schoolboy’s uniform. He studied the fresh, young face set in curly hair:
“It’s as I thought,” he said. “Ah, poor woman!”
The hand which he took between his grew warmer by degrees. The eyes opened, then closed again. She murmured:
“Jacques...”
“Do not distress yourself... it’s all right he’s asleep.”
Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17) Page 125
