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

by Maurice Leblanc

  “By Jove!” said Lupin. “And what became of him?”

  “His mother and his sister Pauline, who had ended by marrying a cousin of the same name at Geneva, were both dead. The old servant-woman took care of him and they lived together in the Passy house. Years passed without any notable event; but, suddenly, in 1812, an unexpected incident happened. The old servant made a series of strange revelations on her death-bed, in the presence of two witnesses whom she sent for. She declared that the farmer-general had carried to his house at Passy a number of bags filled with gold and silver and that those bags had disappeared a few days before the arrest. According to earlier confidences made by Charles d’Ernemont, who had them from his father, the treasures were hidden in the garden, between the rotunda, the sun-dial and the well. In proof of her statement, she produced three pictures, or rather, for they were not yet framed, three canvases, which the farmer-general had painted during his captivity and which he had succeeded in conveying to her, with instructions to hand them to his wife, his son and his daughter. Tempted by the lure of wealth, Charles and the old servant had kept silence. Then came the law-suits, the recovery of the house, Charles’s madness, the servant’s own useless searches; and the treasures were still there.”

  “And they are there now,” chuckled Lupin.

  “And they will be there always,” exclaimed Maître Valandier. “Unless ... unless Citizen Broquet, who no doubt smelt a rat, succeeded in ferreting them out. But this is an unlikely supposition, for Citizen Broquet died in extreme poverty.”

  “So then ...?”

  “So then everybody began to hunt. The children of Pauline, the sister, hastened from Geneva. It was discovered that Charles had been secretly married and that he had sons. All these heirs set to work.”

  “But Charles himself?”

  “Charles lived in the most absolute retirement. He did not leave his room.”

  “Never?”

  “Well, that is the most extraordinary, the most astounding part of the story. Once a year, Charles d’Ernemont, impelled by a sort of subconscious will-power, came downstairs, took the exact road which his father had taken, walked across the garden and sat down either on the steps of the rotunda, which you see here, in the picture, or on the kerb of the well. At twenty-seven minutes past five, he rose and went indoors again; and until his death, which occurred in 1820, he never once failed to perform this incomprehensible pilgrimage. Well, the day on which this happened was invariably the 15th of April, the anniversary of the arrest.”

  Maître Valandier was no longer smiling and himself seemed impressed by the amazing story which he was telling us.

  “And, since Charles’s death?” asked Lupin, after a moment’s reflection.

  “Since that time,” replied the lawyer, with a certain solemnity of manner, “for nearly a hundred years, the heirs of Charles and Pauline d’Ernemont have kept up the pilgrimage of the 15th of April. During the first few years they made the most thorough excavations. Every inch of the garden was searched, every clod of ground dug up. All this is now over. They take hardly any pains. All they do is, from time to time, for no particular reason, to turn over a stone or explore the well. For the most part, they are content to sit down on the steps of the rotunda, like the poor madman; and, like him, they wait. And that, you see, is the sad part of their destiny. In those hundred years, all these people who have succeeded one another, from father to son, have lost — what shall I say? — the energy of life. They have no courage left, no initiative. They wait. They wait for the 15th of April; and, when the 15th of April comes, they wait for a miracle to take place. Poverty has ended by overtaking every one of them. My predecessors and I have sold first the house, in order to build another which yields a better rent, followed by bits of the garden and further bits. But, as to that corner over there,” pointing to the picture, “they would rather die than sell it. On this they are all agreed: Louise d’Ernemont, who is the direct heiress of Pauline, as well as the beggars, the workman, the footman, the circus-rider and so on, who represent the unfortunate Charles.”

  There was a fresh pause; and Lupin asked:

  “What is your own opinion, Maître Valandier?”

  “My private opinion is that there’s nothing in it. What credit can we give to the statements of an old servant enfeebled by age? What importance can we attach to the crotchets of a madman? Besides, if the farmer-general had realized his fortune, don’t you think that that fortune would have been found? One could manage to hide a paper, a document, in a confined space like that, but not treasures.”

  “Still, the pictures?...”

  “Yes, of course. But, after all, are they a sufficient proof?”

  Lupin bent over the copy which the solicitor had taken from the cupboard and, after examining it at length, said:

  “You spoke of three pictures.”

  “Yes, the one which you see was handed to my predecessor by the heirs of Charles. Louise d’Ernemont possesses another. As for the third, no one knows what became of it.”

  Lupin looked at me and continued:

  “And do they all bear the same date?”

  “Yes, the date inscribed by Charles d’Ernemont when he had them framed, not long before his death.... The same date, that is to say the 15th of April, Year II, according to the revolutionary calendar, as the arrest took place in April, 1794.”

  “Oh, yes, of course,” said Lupin. “The figure 2 means....”

  He thought for a few moments and resumed:

  “One more question, if I may. Did no one ever come forward to solve the problem?”

  Maître Valandier threw up his arms:

  “Goodness gracious me!” he cried. “Why, it was the plague of the office! One of my predecessors, Maître Turbon, was summoned to Passy no fewer than eighteen times, between 1820 and 1843, by the groups of heirs, whom fortune-tellers, clairvoyants, visionaries, impostors of all sorts had promised that they would discover the farmer-general’s treasures. At last, we laid down a rule: any outsider applying to institute a search was to begin by depositing a certain sum.”

  “What sum?”

  “A thousand francs.”

  “And did this have the effect of frightening them off?”

  “No. Four years ago, an Hungarian hypnotist tried the experiment and made me waste a whole day. After that, we fixed the deposit at five thousand francs. In case of success, a third of the treasure goes to the finder. In case of failure, the deposit is forfeited to the heirs. Since then, I have been left in peace.”

  “Here are your five thousand francs.”

  The lawyer gave a start:

  “Eh? What do you say?”

  “I say,” repeated Lupin, taking five bank-notes from his pocket and calmly spreading them on the table, “I say that here is the deposit of five thousand francs. Please give me a receipt and invite all the d’Ernemont heirs to meet me at Passy on the 15th of April next year.”

  The notary could not believe his senses. I myself, although Lupin had accustomed me to these surprises, was utterly taken back.

  “Are you serious?” asked Maître Valandier.

  “Perfectly serious.”

  “But, you know, I told you my opinion. All these improbable stories rest upon no evidence of any kind.”

  “I don’t agree with you,” said Lupin.

  The notary gave him the look which we give to a person who is not quite right in his head. Then, accepting the situation, he took his pen and drew up a contract on stamped paper, acknowledging the payment of the deposit by Captain Jeanniot and promising him a third of such moneys as he should discover:

  “If you change your mind,” he added, “you might let me know a week before the time comes. I shall not inform the d’Ernemont family until the last moment, so as not to give those poor people too long a spell of hope.”

  “You can inform them this very day, Maître Valandier. It will make them spend a happier year.”

  We said good-bye. Outside, in the street, I c
ried:

  “So you have hit upon something?”

  “I?” replied Lupin. “Not a bit of it! And that’s just what amuses me.”

  “But they have been searching for a hundred years!”

  “It is not so much a matter of searching as of thinking. Now I have three hundred and sixty-five days to think in. It is a great deal more than I want; and I am afraid that I shall forget all about the business, interesting though it may be. Oblige me by reminding me, will you?”

  I reminded him of it several times during the following months, though he never seemed to attach much importance to the matter. Then came a long period during which I had no opportunity of seeing him. It was the period, as I afterward learnt, of his visit to Armenia and of the terrible struggle on which he embarked against Abdul the Damned, a struggle which ended in the tyrant’s downfall.

  I used to write to him, however, at the address which he gave me and I was thus able to send him certain particulars which I had succeeded in gathering, here and there, about my neighbour Louise d’Ernemont, such as the love which she had conceived, a few years earlier, for a very rich young man, who still loved her, but who had been compelled by his family to throw her over; the young widow’s despair, and the plucky life which she led with her little daughter.

  Lupin replied to none of my letters. I did not know whether they reached him; and, meantime, the date was drawing near and I could not help wondering whether his numerous undertakings would not prevent him from keeping the appointment which he himself had fixed.

  As a matter of fact, the morning of the 15th of April arrived and Lupin was not with me by the time I had finished lunch. It was a quarter-past twelve. I left my flat and took a cab to Passy.

  I had no sooner entered the lane than I saw the workman’s four brats standing outside the door in the wall. Maître Valandier, informed by them of my arrival, hastened in my direction:

  “Well?” he cried. “Where’s Captain Jeanniot?”

  “Hasn’t he come?”

  “No; and I can assure you that everybody is very impatient to see him.”

  The different groups began to crowd round the lawyer; and I noticed that all those faces which I recognized had thrown off the gloomy and despondent expression which they wore a year ago.

  “They are full of hope,” said Maître Valandier, “and it is my fault. But what could I do? Your friend made such an impression upon me that I spoke to these good people with a confidence ... which I cannot say I feel. However, he seems a queer sort of fellow, this Captain Jeanniot of yours....”

  He asked me many questions and I gave him a number of more or less fanciful details about the captain, to which the heirs listened, nodding their heads in appreciation of my remarks.

  “Of course, the truth was bound to be discovered sooner or later,” said the fat gentleman, in a tone of conviction.

  The infantry corporal, dazzled by the captain’s rank, did not entertain a doubt in his mind.

  The lady with the little dog wanted to know if Captain Jeanniot was young.

  But Louise d’Ernemont said:

  “And suppose he does not come?”

  “We shall still have the five thousand francs to divide,” said the beggar-man.

  For all that, Louise d’Ernemont’s words had damped their enthusiasm. Their faces began to look sullen and I felt an atmosphere as of anguish weighing upon us.

  At half-past one, the two lean sisters felt faint and sat down. Then the fat gentleman in the soiled suit suddenly rounded on the notary:

  “It’s you, Maître Valandier, who are to blame.... You ought to have brought the captain here by main force.... He’s a humbug, that’s quite clear.”

  He gave me a savage look, and the footman, in his turn, flung muttered curses at me.

  I confess that their reproaches seemed to me well-founded and that Lupin’s absence annoyed me greatly:

  “He won’t come now,” I whispered to the lawyer.

  And I was thinking of beating a retreat, when the eldest of the brats appeared at the door, yelling:

  “There’s some one coming!... A motor-cycle!...”

  A motor was throbbing on the other side of the wall. A man on a motor-bicycle came tearing down the lane at the risk of breaking his neck. Suddenly, he put on his brakes, outside the door, and sprang from his machine.

  Under the layer of dust which covered him from head to foot, we could see that his navy-blue reefer-suit, his carefully creased trousers, his black felt hat and patent-leather boots were not the clothes in which a man usually goes cycling.

  “But that’s not Captain Jeanniot!” shouted the notary, who failed to recognize him.

  “Yes, it is,” said Lupin, shaking hands with us. “I’m Captain Jeanniot right enough ... only I’ve shaved off my moustache.... Besides, Maître Valandier, here’s your receipt.”

  He caught one of the workman’s children by the arm and said:

  “Run to the cab-rank and fetch a taxi to the corner of the Rue Raynouard. Look sharp! I have an urgent appointment to keep at two o’clock, or a quarter-past at the latest.”

  There was a murmur of protest. Captain Jeanniot took out his watch:

  “Well! It’s only twelve minutes to two! I have a good quarter of an hour before me. But, by Jingo, how tired I feel! And how hungry into the bargain!”

  The corporal thrust his ammunition-bread into Lupin’s hand; and he munched away at it as he sat down and said:

  “You must forgive me. I was in the Marseilles express, which left the rails between Dijon and Laroche. There were twelve people killed and any number injured, whom I had to help. Then I found this motor-cycle in the luggage-van.... Maître Valandier, you must be good enough to restore it to the owner. You will find the label fastened to the handle-bar. Ah, you’re back, my boy! Is the taxi there? At the corner of the Rue Raynouard? Capital!”

  He looked at his watch again:

  “Hullo! No time to lose!”

  I stared at him with eager curiosity. But how great must the excitement of the d’Ernemont heirs have been! True, they had not the same faith in Captain Jeanniot that I had in Lupin. Nevertheless, their faces were pale and drawn. Captain Jeanniot turned slowly to the left and walked up to the sun-dial. The pedestal represented the figure of a man with a powerful torso, who bore on his shoulders a marble slab the surface of which had been so much worn by time that we could hardly distinguish the engraved lines that marked the hours. Above the slab, a Cupid, with outspread wings, held an arrow that served as a gnomon.

  The captain stood leaning forward for a minute, with attentive eyes.

  Then he said:

  “Somebody lend me a knife, please.”

  A clock in the neighbourhood struck two. At that exact moment, the shadow of the arrow was thrown upon the sunlit dial along the line of a crack in the marble which divided the slab very nearly in half.

  The captain took the knife handed to him. And with the point, very gently, he began to scratch the mixture of earth and moss that filled the narrow cleft.

  Almost immediately, at a couple of inches from the edge, he stopped, as though his knife had encountered an obstacle, inserted his thumb and forefinger and withdrew a small object which he rubbed between the palms of his hands and gave to the lawyer:

  “Here, Maître Valandier. Something to go on with.”

  It was an enormous diamond, the size of a hazelnut and beautifully cut.

  The captain resumed his work. The next moment, a fresh stop. A second diamond, magnificent and brilliant as the first, appeared in sight.

  And then came a third and a fourth.

  In a minute’s time, following the crack from one edge to the other and certainly without digging deeper than half an inch, the captain had taken out eighteen diamonds of the same size.

  During this minute, there was not a cry, not a movement around the sun-dial. The heirs seemed paralyzed with a sort of stupor. Then the fat gentleman muttered:

  “Geminy!”
/>   And the corporal moaned:

  “Oh, captain!... Oh, captain!...”

  The two sisters fell in a dead faint. The lady with the little dog dropped on her knees and prayed, while the footman, staggering like a drunken man, held his head in his two hands, and Louise d’Ernemont wept.

  When calm was restored and all became eager to thank Captain Jeanniot, they saw that he was gone.

  Some years passed before I had an opportunity of talking to Lupin about this business. He was in a confidential vein and answered:

  “The business of the eighteen diamonds? By Jove, when I think that three or four generations of my fellow-men had been hunting for the solution! And the eighteen diamonds were there all the time, under a little mud and dust!”

  “But how did you guess?...”

  “I did not guess. I reflected. I doubt if I need even have reflected. I was struck, from the beginning, by the fact that the whole circumstance was governed by one primary question: the question of time. When Charles d’Ernemont was still in possession of his wits, he wrote a date upon the three pictures. Later, in the gloom in which he was struggling, a faint glimmer of intelligence led him every year to the centre of the old garden; and the same faint glimmer led him away from it every year at the same moment, that is to say, at twenty-seven minutes past five. Something must have acted on the disordered machinery of his brain in this way. What was the superior force that controlled the poor madman’s movements? Obviously, the instinctive notion of time represented by the sun-dial in the farmer-general’s pictures. It was the annual revolution of the earth around the sun that brought Charles d’Ernemont back to the garden at a fixed date. And it was the earth’s daily revolution upon its own axis that took him from it at a fixed hour, that is to say, at the hour, most likely, when the sun, concealed by objects different from those of to-day, ceased to light the Passy garden. Now of all this the sun-dial was the symbol. And that is why I at once knew where to look.”

  “But how did you settle the hour at which to begin looking?”