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

by Maurice Leblanc

  So Arsène Lupin possessed no proof at all; and, when he was threatening and commanding and treating Prasville with that airy insolence, it was all a farce, all bluff!

  “No, no, it’s impossible,” thought the secretary-general. “I have the sealed envelope.... It’s here.... I have only to open it.”

  He dared not open it. He handled it, weighed it, examined it... And doubt made its way so swiftly into his mind that he was not in the least surprised, when he did open it, to find that it contained four blank sheets of note-paper.

  “Well, well,” he said, “I am no match for those rascals. But all is not over yet.”

  And, in point of fact, all was not over. If Lupin had acted so daringly, it showed that the letters existed and that he relied upon buying them from Stanislas Vorenglade. But, as, on the other hand, Vorenglade was not in Paris, Prasville’s business was simply to forestall Lupin’s steps with regard to Vorenglade and obtain the restitution of those dangerous letters from Vorenglade at all costs. The first to arrive would be the victor.

  Prasville once more took his hat, coat and stick, went downstairs, stepped into a taxi and drove to Vorenglade’s flat.

  Here he was told that the ex-deputy was expected home from London at six o’clock that evening.

  It was two o’clock in the afternoon. Prasville therefore had plenty of time to prepare his plan.

  He arrived at the Gare du Nord at five o’clock and posted all around, in the waiting-rooms and in the railway-offices, the three or four dozen detectives whom he had brought with him.

  This made him feel easy. If M. Nicole tried to speak to Vorenglade, they would arrest Lupin. And, to make assurance doubly sure, they would arrest whosoever could be suspected of being either Lupin or one of Lupin’s emissaries.

  Moreover, Prasville made a close inspection of the whole station. He discovered nothing suspicious. But, at ten minutes to six, Chief-inspector Blanchon, who was with him, said:

  “Look, there’s Daubrecq.”

  Daubrecq it was; and the sight of his enemy exasperated the secretary-general to such a pitch that he was on the verge of having him arrested. But he reflected that he had no excuse, no right, no warrant for the arrest.

  Besides, Daubrecq’s presence proved, with still greater force, that everything now depended on Stanislas Vorenglade. Vorenglade possessed the letters: who would end by having them? Daubrecq? Lupin? Or he, Prasville?

  Lupin was not there and could not be there. Daubrecq was not in a position to fight. There could be no doubt, therefore, about the result: Prasville would reenter into possession of his letters and, through this very fact, would escape Daubrecq’s threats and Lupin’s threats and recover all his freedom of action against them.

  The train arrived.

  In accordance with orders, the stationmaster had issued instructions that no one was to be admitted to the platform. Prasville, therefore, walked on alone, in front of a number of his men, with Chief-inspector Blanchon at their head.

  The train drew up.

  Prasville almost at once saw Stanislas Vorenglade at the window of a first-class compartment, in the middle of the train.

  The ex-deputy alighted and then held out his hand to assist an old gentleman who was travelling with him.

  Prasville ran up to him and said, eagerly:

  “Vorenglade... I want to speak to you...”

  At the same moment, Daubrecq, who had managed to pass the barrier, appeared and exclaimed:

  “M. Vorenglade, I have had your letter. I am at your disposal.”

  Vorenglade looked at the two men, recognized Prasville, recognized Daubrecq, and smiled:

  “Oho, it seems that my return was awaited with some impatience! What’s it all about? Certain letters, I expect?”

  “Yes... yes...” replied the two men, fussing around him.

  “You’re too late,” he declared.

  “Eh? What? What do you mean?”

  “I mean that the letters are sold.”

  “Sold! To whom?”

  “To this gentleman,” said Vorenglade, pointing to his travelling-companion, “to this gentleman, who thought that the business was worth going out of his way for and who came to Amiens to meet me.”

  The old gentleman, a very old man wrapped in furs and leaning on his stick, took off his hat and bowed.

  “It’s Lupin,” thought Prasville, “it’s Lupin, beyond a doubt.”

  And he glanced toward the detectives, was nearly calling them, but the old gentleman explained:

  “Yes, I thought the letters were good enough to warrant a few hours’ railway journey and the cost of two return tickets.”

  “Two tickets?”

  “One for me and the other for one of my friends.”

  “One of your friends?”

  “Yes, he left us a few minutes ago and reached the front part of the train through the corridor. He was in a great hurry.”

  Prasville understood: Lupin had taken the precaution to bring an accomplice, and the accomplice was carrying off the letters. The game was lost, to a certainty. Lupin had a firm grip on his victim. There was nothing to do but submit and accept the conqueror’s conditions.

  “Very well, sir,” said Prasville. “We shall see each other when the time comes. Good-bye for the present, Daubrecq: you shall hear from me.” And, drawing Vorenglade aside, “As for you, Vorenglade, you are playing a dangerous game.”

  “Dear me!” said the ex-deputy. “And why?”

  The two men moved away.

  Daubrecq had not uttered a word and stood motionless, as though rooted to the ground.

  The old gentleman went up to him and whispered:

  “I say, Daubrecq, wake up, old chap... It’s the chloroform, I expect...”

  Daubrecq clenched his fists and gave a muttered growl.

  “Ah, I see you know me!” said the old gentleman. “Then you will remember our interview, some months ago, when I came to see you in the Square Lamartine and asked you to intercede in Gilbert’s favour. I said to you that day, ‘Lay down your arms, save Gilbert and I will leave you in peace. If not, I shall take the list of the Twenty-seven from you; and then you’re done for.’ Well, I have a strong suspicion that done for is what you are. That comes of not making terms with kind M. Lupin. Sooner or later, you’re bound to lose your boots by it. However, let it be a lesson to you.

  “By the way, here’s your pocketbook which I forgot to give you. Excuse me if you find it lightened of its contents. There were not only a decent number of bank-notes in it, but also the receipt from the warehouse where you stored the Enghien things which you took back from me. I thought I might as well save you the trouble of taking them out yourself. It ought to be done by now. No, don’t thank me: it’s not worth mentioning. Good-bye, Daubrecq. And, if you should want a louis or two, to buy yourself a new decanter-stopper, drop me a line. Good-bye, Daubrecq.”

  He walked away.

  He had not gone fifty steps when he heard the sound of a shot.

  He turned round.

  Daubrecq had blown his brains out.

  “De profundis,” murmured Lupin, taking off his hat.

  Two months later, Gilbert, whose sentence had been commuted to one of penal servitude for life, made his escape from the Ile de Re, on the day before that on which he was to have been transported to New Caledonia.

  It was a strange escape. Its least details remained difficult to understand; and, like the two shots on the Boulevard Arago, it greatly enhanced Arsène Lupin’s prestige.

  “Taken all round,” said Lupin to me, one day, after telling me the different episodes of the story, “taken all around, no enterprise has ever given me more trouble or cost me greater exertions than that confounded adventure which, if you don’t mind, we will call, The Crystal Stopper; or, Never Say Die. In twelve hours, between six o’clock in the morning and six o’clock in the evening, I made up for six months of bad luck, blunders, gropings in the dark and reverses. I certainly count those twelve hour
s among the finest and the most glorious of my life.”

  “And Gilbert?” I asked. “What became of him?”

  “He is farming his own land, way down in Algeria, under his real name, his only name of Antoine Mergy. He is married to an Englishwoman, and they have a son whom he insisted on calling Arsène. I often receive a bright, chatty, warm-hearted letter from him.”

  “And Mme. Mergy?”

  “She and her little Jacques are living with them.”

  “Did you see her again?”

  “I did not.”

  “Really!”

  Lupin hesitated for a few moments and then said with a smile:

  “My dear fellow, I will let you into a secret that will make me seem ridiculous in your eyes. But you know that I have always been as sentimental as a schoolboy and as silly as a goose. Well, on the evening when I went back to Clarisse Mergy and told her the news of the day — part of which, for that matter, she already knew — I felt two things very thoroughly. One was that I entertained for her a much deeper feeling than I thought; the other that she, on the contrary, entertained for me a feeling which was not without contempt, not without a rankling grudge nor even a certain aversion.”

  “Nonsense! Why?”

  “Why? Because Clarisse Mergy is an exceedingly honest woman and because I am... just Arsène Lupin.”

  “Oh!”

  “Dear me, yes, an attractive bandit, a romantic and chivalrous cracksman, anything you please. For all that, in the eyes of a really honest woman, with an upright nature and a well-balanced mind, I am only the merest riff-raff.”

  I saw that the wound was sharper than he was willing to admit, and I said:

  “So you really loved her?”

  “I even believe,” he said, in a jesting tone, “that I asked her to marry me. After all, I had saved her son, had I not?... So... I thought. What a rebuff!... It produced a coolness between us... Since then...”

  “You have forgotten her?”

  “Oh, certainly! But it required the consolations of one Italian, two Americans, three Russians, a German grand-duchess and a Chinawoman to do it!”

  “And, after that...?”

  “After that, so as to place an insuperable barrier between myself and her, I got married.”

  “Nonsense! You got married, you, Arsène Lupin?”

  “Married, wedded, spliced, in the most lawful fashion. One of the greatest names in France. An only daughter. A colossal fortune... What! You don’t know the story? Well, it’s worth hearing.”

  And, straightway, Lupin, who was in a confidential vein, began to tell me the story of his marriage to Angelique de Sarzeau-Vendome, Princesse de Bourbon-Conde, to-day Sister Marie-Auguste, a humble nun in the Visitation Convent... [*]

  * See The Confessions of Arsène Lupin By Maurice Leblanc

  Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

  But, after the first few words, he stopped, as though his narrative had suddenly ceased to interest him, and he remained pensive.

  “What’s the matter, Lupin?”

  “The matter? Nothing.”

  “Yes, yes... There... now you’re smiling... Is it Daubrecq’s secret receptacle, his glass eye, that’s making you laugh?”

  “Not at all.”

  “What then?”

  “Nothing, I tell you... only a memory.”

  “A pleasant memory?”

  “Yes!... Yes, a delightful memory even. It was at night, off the Ile de Re, on the fishing-smack in which Clarisse and I were taking Gilbert away.... We were alone, the two of us, in the stern of the boat... And I remember ... I talked... I spoke words and more words... I said all that I had on my heart... And then... then came silence, a perturbing and disarming silence.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, I swear to you that the woman whom I took in my arms that night and kissed on the lips — oh, not for long: a few seconds only, but no matter! — I swear before heaven that she was something more than a grateful mother, something more than a friend yielding to a moment of susceptibility, that she was a woman also, a woman quivering with emotion ...” And he continued, with a bitter laugh, “Who ran away next day, never to see me again.”

  He was silent once more. Then he whispered:

  “Clarisse... Clarisse... On the day when I am tired and disappointed and weary of life, I will come to you down there, in your little Arab house ... in that little white house, Clarisse, where you are waiting for me...”

  The Confessions of Arsène Lupin

  Anonymous translation, 1912

  CONTENTS

  TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND FRANCS REWARD!..

  THE WEDDING-RING

  THE SIGN OF THE SHADOW

  THE INFERNAL TRAP

  THE RED SILK SCARF

  SHADOWED BY DEATH

  A TRAGEDY IN THE FOREST OF MORGUES

  LUPIN’S MARRIAGE

  THE INVISIBLE PRISONER

  EDITH SWAN-NECK

  The original frontispiece

  TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND FRANCS REWARD!..

  “LUPIN,” I SAID, “tell me something about yourself.”

  “Why, what would you have me tell you? Everybody knows my life!” replied Lupin, who lay drowsing on the sofa in my study.

  “Nobody knows it!” I protested. “People know from your letters in the newspapers that you were mixed up in this case, that you started that case. But the part which you played in it all, the plain facts of the story, the upshot of the mystery: these are things of which they know nothing.”

  “Pooh! A heap of uninteresting twaddle!”

  “What! Your present of fifty thousand francs to Nicolas Dugrival’s wife! Do you call that uninteresting? And what about the way in which you solved the puzzle of the three pictures?”

  Lupin laughed:

  “Yes, that was a queer puzzle, certainly. I can suggest a title for you if you like: what do you say to The Sign of the Shadow?”

  “And your successes in society and with the fair sex?” I continued. “The dashing Arsène’s love-affairs!... And the clue to your good actions? Those chapters in your life to which you have so often alluded under the names of The Wedding-ring, Shadowed by Death, and so on!... Why delay these confidences and confessions, my dear Lupin?... Come, do what I ask you!...”

  It was at the time when Lupin, though already famous, had not yet fought his biggest battles; the time that preceded the great adventures of The Hollow Needle and 813. He had not yet dreamt of annexing the accumulated treasures of the French Royal House nor of changing the map of Europe under the Kaiser’s nose: he contented himself with milder surprises and humbler profits, making his daily effort, doing evil from day to day and doing a little good as well, naturally and for the love of the thing, like a whimsical and compassionate Don Quixote.

  He was silent; and I insisted:

  “Lupin, I wish you would!”

  To my astonishment, he replied:

  “Take a sheet of paper, old fellow, and a pencil.”

  I obeyed with alacrity, delighted at the thought that he at last meant to dictate to me some of those pages which he knows how to clothe with such vigour and fancy, pages which I, unfortunately, am obliged to spoil with tedious explanations and boring developments.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  “Quite.”

  “Write down, 20, 1, 11, 5, 14, 15.”

  “What?”

  “Write it down, I tell you.”

  He was now sitting up, with his eyes turned to the open window and his fingers rolling a Turkish cigarette. He continued:

  “Write down, 21, 14, 14, 5....”

  He stopped. Then he went on:

  “3, 5, 19, 19 ...”

  And, after a pause:

  “5, 18, 25 ...”

  Was he mad? I looked at him hard and, presently, I saw that his eyes were no longer listless, as they had been a little before, but keen and attentive and that they seemed to be watching, somewhere, in space, a sight that apparently captivated the
m.

  Meanwhile, he dictated, with intervals between each number:

  “18, 9, 19, 11, 19 ...”

  There was hardly anything to be seen through the window but a patch of blue sky on the right and the front of the building opposite, an old private house, whose shutters were closed as usual. There was nothing particular about all this, no detail that struck me as new among those which I had had before my eyes for years....

  “1, 2....”

  And suddenly I understood ... or rather I thought I understood, for how could I admit that Lupin, a man so essentially level-headed under his mask of frivolity, could waste his time upon such childish nonsense? What he was counting was the intermittent flashes of a ray of sunlight playing on the dingy front of the opposite house, at the height of the second floor!

  “15, 22 ...” said Lupin.

  The flash disappeared for a few seconds and then struck the house again, successively, at regular intervals, and disappeared once more.

  I had instinctively counted the flashes and I said, aloud:

  “5....”

  “Caught the idea? I congratulate you!” he replied, sarcastically.

  He went to the window and leant out, as though to discover the exact direction followed by the ray of light. Then he came and lay on the sofa again, saying:

  “It’s your turn now. Count away!”

  The fellow seemed so positive that I did as he told me. Besides, I could not help confessing that there was something rather curious about the ordered frequency of those gleams on the front of the house opposite, those appearances and disappearances, turn and turn about, like so many flash signals.

  They obviously came from a house on our side of the street, for the sun was entering my windows slantwise. It was as though some one were alternately opening and shutting a casement, or, more likely, amusing himself by making sunlight flashes with a pocket-mirror.

  “It’s a child having a game!” I cried, after a moment or two, feeling a little irritated by the trivial occupation that had been thrust upon me.

  “Never mind, go on!”