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

by Maurice Leblanc

  “Do you think I care a hang about all this?” said Ganimard, interrupting him.

  “Quite right, I’m wasting words and you’re in a hurry. Forgive me. I sha’n’t be long now.... Five minutes, that’s all.... I’ll start at once.... Have a cigar? No? Very well, no more will I.”

  He sat down also, drummed his fingers on the table, while thinking, and began in this fashion:

  “On the 17th of October, 1599, on a warm and sunny autumn day ... Do you follow me?... But, now that I come to think of it, is it really necessary to go back to the reign of Henry IV, and tell you all about the building of the Pont-Neuf? No, I don’t suppose you are very well up in French history; and I should only end by muddling you. Suffice it, then, for you to know that, last night, at one o’clock in the morning, a boatman passing under the last arch of the Pont-Neuf aforesaid, along the left bank of the river, heard something drop into the front part of his barge. The thing had been flung from the bridge and its evident destination was the bottom of the Seine. The bargee’s dog rushed forward, barking, and, when the man reached the end of his craft, he saw the animal worrying a piece of newspaper that had served to wrap up a number of objects. He took from the dog such of the contents as had not fallen into the water, went to his cabin and examined them carefully. The result struck him as interesting; and, as the man is connected with one of my friends, he sent to let me know. This morning I was waked up and placed in possession of the facts and of the objects which the man had collected. Here they are.”

  He pointed to them, spread out on a table. There were, first of all, the torn pieces of a newspaper. Next came a large cut-glass inkstand, with a long piece of string fastened to the lid. There was a bit of broken glass and a sort of flexible cardboard, reduced to shreds. Lastly, there was a piece of bright scarlet silk, ending in a tassel of the same material and colour.

  “You see our exhibits, friend of my youth,” said Lupin. “No doubt, the problem would be more easily solved if we had the other objects which went overboard owing to the stupidity of the dog. But it seems to me, all the same, that we ought to be able to manage, with a little reflection and intelligence. And those are just your great qualities. How does the business strike you?”

  Ganimard did not move a muscle. He was willing to stand Lupin’s chaff, but his dignity commanded him not to speak a single word in answer nor even to give a nod or shake of the head that might have been taken to express approval or or criticism.

  “I see that we are entirely of one mind,” continued Lupin, without appearing to remark the chief-inspector’s silence. “And I can sum up the matter briefly, as told us by these exhibits. Yesterday evening, between nine and twelve o’clock, a showily dressed young woman was wounded with a knife and then caught round the throat and choked to death by a well-dressed gentleman, wearing a single eyeglass and interested in racing, with whom the aforesaid showily dressed young lady had been eating three meringues and a coffee éclair.”

  Lupin lit a cigarette and, taking Ganimard by the sleeve:

  “Aha, that’s up against you, chief-inspector! You thought that, in the domain of police deductions, such feats as those were prohibited to outsiders! Wrong, sir! Lupin juggles with inferences and deductions for all the world like a detective in a novel. My proofs are dazzling and absolutely simple.”

  And, pointing to the objects one by one, as he demonstrated his statement, he resumed:

  “I said, after nine o’clock yesterday evening. This scrap of newspaper bears yesterday’s date, with the words, ‘Evening edition.’ Also, you will see here, pasted to the paper, a bit of one of those yellow wrappers in which the subscribers’ copies are sent out. These copies are always delivered by the nine o’clock post. Therefore, it was after nine o’clock. I said, a well-dressed man. Please observe that this tiny piece of glass has the round hole of a single eyeglass at one of the edges and that the single eyeglass is an essentially aristocratic article of wear. This well-dressed man walked into a pastry-cook’s shop. Here is the very thin cardboard, shaped like a box, and still showing a little of the cream of the meringues and éclairs which were packed in it in the usual way. Having got his parcel, the gentleman with the eyeglass joined a young person whose eccentricity in the matter of dress is pretty clearly indicated by this bright-red silk scarf. Having joined her, for some reason as yet unknown he first stabbed her with a knife and then strangled her with the help of this same scarf. Take your magnifying glass, chief-inspector, and you will see, on the silk, stains of a darker red which are, here, the marks of a knife wiped on the scarf and, there, the marks of a hand, covered with blood, clutching the material. Having committed the murder, his next business is to leave no trace behind him. So he takes from his pocket, first, the newspaper to which he subscribes — a racing-paper, as you will see by glancing at the contents of this scrap; and you will have no difficulty in discovering the title — and, secondly, a cord, which, on inspection, turns out to be a length of whip-cord. These two details prove — do they not? — that our man is interested in racing and that he himself rides. Next, he picks up the fragments of his eyeglass, the cord of which has been broken in the struggle. He takes a pair of scissors — observe the hacking of the scissors — and cuts off the stained part of the scarf, leaving the other end, no doubt, in his victim’s clenched hands. He makes a ball of the confectioner’s cardboard box. He also puts in certain things that would have betrayed him, such as the knife, which must have slipped into the Seine. He wraps everything in the newspaper, ties it with the cord and fastens this cut-glass inkstand to it, as a make-weight. Then he makes himself scarce. A little later, the parcel falls into the waterman’s barge. And there you are. Oof, it’s hot work!... What do you say to the story?”

  He looked at Ganimard to see what impression his speech had produced on the inspector. Ganimard did not depart from his attitude of silence.

  Lupin began to laugh:

  “As a matter of fact, you’re annoyed and surprised. But you’re suspicious as well: ‘Why should that confounded Lupin hand the business over to me,’ say you, ‘instead of keeping it for himself, hunting down the murderer and rifling his pockets, if there was a robbery?’ The question is quite logical, of course. But — there is a ‘but’ — I have no time, you see. I am full up with work at the present moment: a burglary in London, another at Lausanne, an exchange of children at Marseilles, to say nothing of having to save a young girl who is at this moment shadowed by death. That’s always the way: it never rains but it pours. So I said to myself, ‘Suppose I handed the business over to my dear old Ganimard? Now that it is half-solved for him, he is quite capable of succeeding. And what a service I shall be doing him! How magnificently he will be able to distinguish himself!’ No sooner said than done. At eight o’clock in the morning, I sent the joker with the orange-peel to meet you. You swallowed the bait; and you were here by nine, all on edge and eager for the fray.”

  Lupin rose from his chair. He went over to the inspector and, with his eyes in Ganimard’s, said:

  “That’s all. You now know the whole story. Presently, you will know the victim: some ballet-dancer, probably, some singer at a music-hall. On the other hand, the chances are that the criminal lives near the Pont-Neuf, most likely on the left bank. Lastly, here are all the exhibits. I make you a present of them. Set to work. I shall only keep this end of the scarf. If ever you want to piece the scarf together, bring me the other end, the one which the police will find round the victim’s neck. Bring it me in four weeks from now to the day, that is to say, on the 29th of December, at ten o’clock in the morning. You can be sure of finding me here. And don’t be afraid: this is all perfectly serious, friend of my youth; I swear it is. No humbug, honour bright. You can go straight ahead. Oh, by the way, when you arrest the fellow with the eyeglass, be a bit careful: he is left-handed! Good-bye, old dear, and good luck to you!”

  Lupin spun round on his heel, went to the door, opened it and disappeared before Ganimard had even thought of taking
a decision. The inspector rushed after him, but at once found that the handle of the door, by some trick of mechanism which he did not know, refused to turn. It took him ten minutes to unscrew the lock and ten minutes more to unscrew the lock of the hall-door. By the time that he had scrambled down the three flights of stairs, Ganimard had given up all hope of catching Arsène Lupin.

  Besides, he was not thinking of it. Lupin inspired him with a queer, complex feeling, made up of fear, hatred, involuntary admiration and also the vague instinct that he, Ganimard, in spite of all his efforts, in spite of the persistency of his endeavours, would never get the better of this particular adversary. He pursued him from a sense of duty and pride, but with the continual dread of being taken in by that formidable hoaxer and scouted and fooled in the face of a public that was always only too willing to laugh at the chief-inspector’s mishaps.

  This business of the red scarf, in particular, struck him as most suspicious. It was interesting, certainly, in more ways than one, but so very improbable! And Lupin’s explanation, apparently so logical, would never stand the test of a severe examination!

  “No,” said Ganimard, “this is all swank: a parcel of suppositions and guesswork based upon nothing at all. I’m not to be caught with chaff.”

  When he reached the headquarters of police, at 36 Quai des Orfèvres, he had quite made up his mind to treat the incident as though it had never happened.

  He went up to the Criminal Investigation Department. Here, one of his fellow-inspectors said:

  “Seen the chief?”

  “No.”

  “He was asking for you just now.”

  “Oh, was he?”

  “Yes, you had better go after him.”

  “Where?”

  “To the Rue de Berne ... there was a murder there last night.”

  “Oh! Who’s the victim?”

  “I don’t know exactly ... a music-hall singer, I believe.”

  Ganimard simply muttered:

  “By Jove!”

  Twenty minutes later he stepped out of the underground railway-station and made for the Rue de Berne.

  The victim, who was known in the theatrical world by her stage-name of Jenny Saphir, occupied a small flat on the second floor of one of the houses. A policeman took the chief-inspector upstairs and showed him the way, through two sitting-rooms, to a bedroom, where he found the magistrates in charge of the inquiry, together with the divisional surgeon and M. Dudouis, the head of the detective-service.

  Ganimard started at the first glance which he gave into the room. He saw, lying on a sofa, the corpse of a young woman whose hands clutched a strip of red silk! One of the shoulders, which appeared above the low-cut bodice, bore the marks of two wounds surrounded with clotted blood. The distorted and almost blackened features still bore an expression of frenzied terror.

  The divisional surgeon, who had just finished his examination, said:

  “My first conclusions are very clear. The victim was twice stabbed with a dagger and afterward strangled. The immediate cause of death was asphyxia.”

  “By Jove!” thought Ganimard again, remembering Lupin’s words and the picture which he had drawn of the crime.

  The examining-magistrate objected:

  “But the neck shows no discoloration.”

  “She may have been strangled with a napkin or a handkerchief,” said the doctor.

  “Most probably,” said the chief detective, “with this silk scarf, which the victim was wearing and a piece of which remains, as though she had clung to it with her two hands to protect herself.”

  “But why does only that piece remain?” asked the magistrate. “What has become of the other?”

  “The other may have been stained with blood and carried off by the murderer. You can plainly distinguish the hurried slashing of the scissors.”

  “By Jove!” said Ganimard, between his teeth, for the third time. “That brute of a Lupin saw everything without seeing a thing!”

  “And what about the motive of the murder?” asked the magistrate. “The locks have been forced, the cupboards turned upside down. Have you anything to tell me, M. Dudouis?”

  The chief of the detective-service replied:

  “I can at least suggest a supposition, derived from the statements made by the servant. The victim, who enjoyed a greater reputation on account of her looks than through her talent as a singer, went to Russia, two years ago, and brought back with her a magnificent sapphire, which she appears to have received from some person of importance at the court. Since then, she went by the name of Jenny Saphir and seems generally to have been very proud of that present, although, for prudence sake, she never wore it. I daresay that we shall not be far out if we presume the theft of the sapphire to have been the cause of the crime.”

  “But did the maid know where the stone was?”

  “No, nobody did. And the disorder of the room would tend to prove that the murderer did not know either.”

  “We will question the maid,” said the examining-magistrate.

  M. Dudouis took the chief-inspector aside and said:

  “You’re looking very old-fashioned, Ganimard. What’s the matter? Do you suspect anything?”

  “Nothing at all, chief.”

  “That’s a pity. We could do with a bit of showy work in the department. This is one of a number of crimes, all of the same class, of which we have failed to discover the perpetrator. This time we want the criminal ... and quickly!”

  “A difficult job, chief.”

  “It’s got to be done. Listen to me, Ganimard. According to what the maid says, Jenny Saphir led a very regular life. For a month past she was in the habit of frequently receiving visits, on her return from the music-hall, that is to say, at about half-past ten, from a man who would stay until midnight or so. ‘He’s a society man,’ Jenny Saphir used to say, ‘and he wants to marry me.’ This society man took every precaution to avoid being seen, such as turning up his coat-collar and lowering the brim of his hat when he passed the porter’s box. And Jenny Saphir always made a point of sending away her maid, even before he came. This is the man whom we have to find.”

  “Has he left no traces?”

  “None at all. It is obvious that we have to deal with a very clever scoundrel, who prepared his crime beforehand and committed it with every possible chance of escaping unpunished. His arrest would be a great feather in our cap. I rely on you, Ganimard.”

  “Ah, you rely on me, chief?” replied the inspector. “Well, we shall see ... we shall see.... I don’t say no.... Only....”

  He seemed in a very nervous condition, and his agitation struck M. Dudouis.

  “Only,” continued Ganimard, “only I swear ... do you hear, chief? I swear....”

  “What do you swear?”

  “Nothing.... We shall see, chief ... we shall see....”

  Ganimard did not finish his sentence until he was outside, alone. And he finished it aloud, stamping his foot, in a tone of the most violent anger:

  “Only, I swear to Heaven that the arrest shall be effected by my own means, without my employing a single one of the clues with which that villain has supplied me. Ah, no! Ah, no!...”

  Railing against Lupin, furious at being mixed up in this business and resolved, nevertheless, to get to the bottom of it, he wandered aimlessly about the streets. His brain was seething with irritation; and he tried to adjust his ideas a little and to discover, among the chaotic facts, some trifling detail, unperceived by all, unsuspected by Lupin himself, that might lead him to success.

  He lunched hurriedly at a bar, resumed his stroll and suddenly stopped, petrified, astounded and confused. He was walking under the gateway of the very house in the Rue de Surène to which Lupin had enticed him a few hours earlier! A force stronger than his own will was drawing him there once more. The solution of the problem lay there. There and there alone were all the elements of the truth. Do and say what he would, Lupin’s assertions were so precise, his calculations so acc
urate, that, worried to the innermost recesses of his being by so prodigious a display of perspicacity, he could not do other than take up the work at the point where his enemy had left it.

  Abandoning all further resistance, he climbed the three flights of stairs. The door of the flat was open. No one had touched the exhibits. He put them in his pocket and walked away.

  From that moment, he reasoned and acted, so to speak, mechanically, under the influence of the master whom he could not choose but obey.

  Admitting that the unknown person whom he was seeking lived in the neighbourhood of the Pont-Neuf, it became necessary to discover, somewhere between that bridge and the Rue de Berne, the first-class confectioner’s shop, open in the evenings, at which the cakes were bought. This did not take long to find. A pastry-cook near the Gare Saint-Lazare showed him some little cardboard boxes, identical in material and shape with the one in Ganimard’s possession. Moreover, one of the shop-girls remembered having served, on the previous evening, a gentleman whose face was almost concealed in the collar of his fur coat, but whose eyeglass she had happened to notice.

  “That’s one clue checked,” thought the inspector. “Our man wears an eyeglass.”

  He next collected the pieces of the racing-paper and showed them to a newsvendor, who easily recognized the Turf Illustré. Ganimard at once went to the offices of the Turf and asked to see the list of subscribers. Going through the list, he jotted down the names and addresses of all those who lived anywhere near the Pont-Neuf and principally — because Lupin had said so — those on the left bank of the river.

  He then went back to the Criminal Investigation Department, took half a dozen men and packed them off with the necessary instructions.

  At seven o’clock in the evening, the last of these men returned and brought good news with him. A certain M. Prévailles, a subscriber to the Turf, occupied an entresol flat on the Quai des Augustins. On the previous evening, he left his place, wearing a fur coat, took his letters and his paper, the Turf Illustré, from the porter’s wife, walked away and returned home at midnight. This M. Prévailles wore a single eyeglass. He was a regular race-goer and himself owned several hacks which he either rode himself or jobbed out.