Ten minutes later, the duke sent his servant Hyacinthe to the post with three express messages. At four o’clock, in Angélique’s presence, he saw the three cousins: Mussy, fat, heavy, pasty-faced; d’Emboise, slender, fresh-coloured and shy: Caorches, short, thin and unhealthy-looking: all three, old bachelors by this time, lacking distinction in dress or appearance.
The meeting was a short one. The duke had worked out his whole plan of campaign, a defensive campaign, of which he set forth the first stage in explicit terms:
“Angélique and I will leave Paris to-night for our place in Brittany. I rely on you, my three nephews, to help us get away. You, d’Emboise, will come and fetch us in your car, with the hood up. You, Mussy, will bring your big motor and kindly see to the luggage with Hyacinthe, my man. You, Caorches, will go to the Gare d’Orléans and book our berths in the sleeping-car for Vannes by the 10.40 train. Is that settled?”
The rest of the day passed without incident. The duke, to avoid any accidental indiscretion, waited until after dinner to tell Hyacinthe to pack a trunk and a portmanteau. Hyacinthe was to accompany them, as well as Angélique’s maid.
At nine o’clock, all the other servants went to bed, by their master’s order. At ten minutes to ten, the duke, who was completing his preparations, heard the sound of a motor-horn. The porter opened the gates of the courtyard. The duke, standing at the window, recognized d’Emboise’s landaulette:
“Tell him I shall be down presently,” he said to Hyacinthe, “and let mademoiselle know.”
In a few minutes, as Hyacinthe did not return, he left his room. But he was attacked on the landing by two masked men, who gagged and bound him before he could utter a cry. And one of the men said to him, in a low voice:
“Take this as a first warning, monsieur le duc. If you persist in leaving Paris and refusing your consent, it will be a more serious matter.”
And the same man said to his companion:
“Keep an eye on him. I will see to the young lady.”
By that time, two other confederates had secured the lady’s maid; and Angélique, herself gagged, lay fainting on a couch in her boudoir.
She came to almost immediately, under the stimulus of a bottle of salts held to her nostrils; and, when she opened her eyes, she saw bending over her a young man, in evening-clothes, with a smiling and friendly face, who said:
“I implore your forgiveness, mademoiselle. All these happenings are a trifle sudden and this behaviour rather out of the way. But circumstances often compel us to deeds of which our conscience does not approve. Pray pardon me.”
He took her hand very gently and slipped a broad gold ring on the girl’s finger, saying:
“There, now we are engaged. Never forget the man who gave you this ring. He entreats you not to run away from him ... and to stay in Paris and await the proofs of his devotion. Have faith in him.”
He said all this in so serious and respectful a voice, with so much authority and deference, that she had not the strength to resist. Their eyes met. He whispered:
“The exquisite purity of your eyes! It would be heavenly to live with those eyes upon one. Now close them....”
He withdrew. His accomplices followed suit. The car drove off, and the house in the Rue de Varennes remained still and silent until the moment when Angélique, regaining complete consciousness, called out for the servants.
They found the duke, Hyacinthe, the lady’s maid and the porter and his wife all tightly bound. A few priceless ornaments had disappeared, as well as the duke’s pocket-book and all his jewellery; tie pins, pearl studs, watch and so on.
The police were advised without delay. In the morning it appeared that, on the evening before, d’Emboise, when leaving his house in the motor-car, was stabbed by his own chauffeur and thrown, half-dead, into a deserted street. Mussy and Caorches had each received a telephone-message, purporting to come from the duke, countermanding their attendance.
Next week, without troubling further about the police investigation, without obeying the summons of the examining-magistrate, without even reading Arsène Lupin’s letters to the papers on “the Varennes Flight,” the duke, his daughter and his valet stealthily took a slow train for Vannes and arrived one evening, at the old feudal castle that towers over the headland of Sarzeau. The duke at once organized a defence with the aid of the Breton peasants, true mediæval vassals to a man. On the fourth day, Mussy arrived; on the fifth, Caorches; and, on the seventh, d’Emboise, whose wound was not as severe as had been feared.
The duke waited two days longer before communicating to those about him what, now that his escape had succeeded in spite of Lupin, he called the second part of his plan. He did so, in the presence of the three cousins, by a dictatorial order to Angélique, expressed in these peremptory terms:
“All this bother is upsetting me terribly. I have entered on a struggle with this man whose daring you have seen for yourself; and the struggle is killing me. I want to end it at all costs. There is only one way of doing so, Angélique, and that is for you to release me from all responsibility by accepting the hand of one of your cousins. Before a month is out, you must be the wife of Mussy, Caorches or d’Emboise. You have a free choice. Make your decision.”
For four whole days Angélique wept and entreated her father, but in vain. She felt that he would be inflexible and that she must end by submitting to his wishes. She accepted:
“Whichever you please, father. I love none of them. So I may as well be unhappy with one as with the other.”
Thereupon a fresh discussion ensued, as the duke wanted to compel her to make her own choice. She stood firm. Reluctantly and for financial considerations, he named d’Emboise.
The banns were published without delay.
From that moment, the watch in and around the castle was increased twofold, all the more inasmuch as Lupin’s silence and the sudden cessation of the campaign which he had been conducting in the press could not but alarm the Duc de Sarzeau-Vendôme. It was obvious that the enemy was getting ready to strike and would endeavour to oppose the marriage by one of his characteristic moves.
Nevertheless, nothing happened: nothing two days before the ceremony, nothing on the day before, nothing on the morning itself. The marriage took place in the mayor’s office, followed by the religious celebration in church; and the thing was done.
Then and not till then, the duke breathed freely. Notwithstanding his daughter’s sadness, notwithstanding the embarrassed silence of his son-in-law, who found the situation a little trying, he rubbed his hands with an air of pleasure, as though he had achieved a brilliant victory:
“Tell them to lower the drawbridge,” he said to Hyacinthe, “and to admit everybody. We have nothing more to fear from that scoundrel.”
After the wedding-breakfast, he had wine served out to the peasants and clinked glasses with them. They danced and sang.
At three o’clock, he returned to the ground-floor rooms. It was the hour for his afternoon nap. He walked to the guard-room at the end of the suite. But he had no sooner placed his foot on the threshold than he stopped suddenly and exclaimed:
“What are you doing here, d’Emboise? Is this a joke?”
D’Emboise was standing before him, dressed as a Breton fisherman, in a dirty jacket and breeches, torn, patched and many sizes too large for him.
The duke seemed dumbfounded. He stared with eyes of amazement at that face which he knew and which, at the same time, roused memories of a very distant past within his brain. Then he strode abruptly to one of the windows overlooking the castle-terrace and called:
“Angélique!”
“What is it, father?” she asked, coming forward.
“Where’s your husband?”
“Over there, father,” said Angélique, pointing to d’Emboise, who was smoking a cigarette and reading, some way off.
The duke stumbled and fell into a chair, with a great shudder of fright:
“Oh, I shall go mad!”
&nbs
p; But the man in the fisherman’s garb knelt down before him and said:
“Look at me, uncle. You know me, don’t you? I’m your nephew, the one who used to play here in the old days, the one whom you called Jacquot.... Just think a minute.... Here, look at this scar....”
“Yes, yes,” stammered the duke, “I recognize you. It’s Jacques. But the other one....”
He put his hands to his head:
“And yet, no, it can’t be ... Explain yourself.... I don’t understand.... I don’t want to understand....”
There was a pause, during which the newcomer shut the window and closed the door leading to the next room. Then he came up to the old duke, touched him gently on the shoulder, to wake him from his torpor, and without further preface, as though to cut short any explanation that was not absolutely necessary, spoke as follows:
“Four years ago, that is to say, in the eleventh year of my voluntary exile, when I settled in the extreme south of Algeria, I made the acquaintance, in the course of a hunting-expedition arranged by a big Arab chief, of a man whose geniality, whose charm of manner, whose consummate prowess, whose indomitable pluck, whose combined humour and depth of mind fascinated me in the highest degree. The Comte d’Andrésy spent six weeks as my guest. After he left, we kept up a correspondence at regular intervals. I also often saw his name in the papers, in the society and sporting columns. He was to come back and I was preparing to receive him, three months ago, when, one evening as I was out riding, my two Arab attendants flung themselves upon me, bound me, blindfolded me and took me, travelling day and night, for a week, along deserted roads, to a bay on the coast, where five men awaited them. I was at once carried on board a small steam-yacht, which weighed anchor without delay. There was nothing to tell me who the men were nor what their object was in kidnapping me. They had locked me into a narrow cabin, secured by a massive door and lighted by a port-hole protected by two iron cross-bars. Every morning, a hand was inserted through a hatch between the next cabin and my own and placed on my bunk two or three pounds of bread, a good helping of food and a flagon of wine and removed the remains of yesterday’s meals, which I put there for the purpose. From time to time, at night, the yacht stopped and I heard the sound of the boat rowing to some harbour and then returning, doubtless with provisions. Then we set out once more, without hurrying, as though on a cruise of people of our class, who travel for pleasure and are not pressed for time. Sometimes, standing on a chair, I would see the coastline, through my port-hole, too indistinctly, however, to locate it. And this lasted for weeks. One morning, in the ninth week, I perceived that the hatch had been left unfastened and I pushed it open. The cabin was empty at the time. With an effort, I was able to take a nail-file from a dressing-table. Two weeks after that, by dint of patient perseverance, I had succeeded in filing through the bars of my port-hole and I could have escaped that way, only, though I am a good swimmer, I soon grow tired. I had therefore to choose a moment when the yacht was not too far from the land. It was not until yesterday that, perched on my chair, I caught sight of the coast; and, in the evening, at sunset, I recognized, to my astonishment, the outlines of the Château de Sarzeau, with its pointed turrets and its square keep. I wondered if this was the goal of my mysterious voyage. All night long, we cruised in the offing. The same all day yesterday. At last, this morning, we put in at a distance which I considered favourable, all the more so as we were steaming through rocks under cover of which I could swim unobserved. But, just as I was about to make my escape, I noticed that the shutter of the hatch, which they thought they had closed, had once more opened of itself and was flapping against the partition. I again pushed it ajar from curiosity. Within arm’s length was a little cupboard which I managed to open and in which my hand, groping at random, laid hold of a bundle of papers. This consisted of letters, letters containing instructions addressed to the pirates who held me prisoner. An hour later, when I wriggled through the port-hole and slipped into the sea, I knew all: the reasons for my abduction, the means employed, the object in view and the infamous scheme plotted during the last three months against the Duc de Sarzeau-Vendôme and his daughter. Unfortunately, it was too late. I was obliged, in order not to be seen from the yacht, to crouch in the cleft of a rock and did not reach land until mid-day. By the time that I had been to a fisherman’s cabin, exchanged my clothes for his and come on here, it was three o’clock. On my arrival. I learnt that Angélique’s marriage was celebrated this morning.”
The old duke had not spoken a word. With his eyes riveted on the stranger’s, he was listening in ever-increasing dismay. At times, the thought of the warnings given him by the prefect of police returned to his mind:
“They’re nursing you, monsieur le duc, they are nursing you.”
He said, in a hollow voice:
“Speak on ... finish your story.... All this is ghastly.... I don’t understand it yet ... and I feel nervous....”
The stranger resumed:
“I am sorry to say, the story is easily pieced together and is summed up in a few sentences. It is like this: the Comte d’Andrésy remembered several things from his stay with me and from the confidences which I was foolish enough to make to him. First of all, I was your nephew and yet you had seen comparatively little of me, because I left Sarzeau when I was quite a child, and since then our intercourse was limited to the few weeks which I spent here, fifteen years ago, when I proposed for the hand of my Cousin Angélique; secondly, having broken with the past, I received no letters; lastly, there was a certain physical resemblance between d’Andrésy and myself which could be accentuated to such an extent as to become striking. His scheme was built up on those three points. He bribed my Arab servants to give him warning in case I left Algeria. Then he went back to Paris, bearing my name and made up to look exactly like me, came to see you, was invited to your house once a fortnight and lived under my name, which thus became one of the many aliases beneath which he conceals his real identity. Three months ago, when ‘the apple was ripe,’ as he says in his letters, he began the attack by a series of communications to the press; and, at the same time, fearing no doubt that some newspaper would tell me in Algeria the part that was being played under my name in Paris, he had me assaulted by my servants and kidnapped by his confederates. I need not explain any more in so far as you are concerned, uncle.”
The Duc de Sarzeau-Vendôme was shaken with a fit of nervous trembling. The awful truth to which he refused to open his eyes appeared to him in its nakedness and assumed the hateful countenance of the enemy. He clutched his nephew’s hands and said to him, fiercely, despairingly:
“It’s Lupin, is it not?”
“Yes, uncle.”
“And it’s to him ... it’s to him that I have given my daughter!”
“Yes, uncle, to him, who has stolen my name of Jacques d’Emboise from me and stolen your daughter from you. Angélique is the wedded wife of Arsène Lupin; and that in accordance with your orders. This letter in his handwriting bears witness to it. He has upset your whole life, thrown you off your balance, besieging your hours of waking and your nights of dreaming, rifling your town-house, until the moment when, seized with terror, you took refuge here, where, thinking that you would escape his artifices and his rapacity, you told your daughter to choose one of her three cousins, Mussy, d’Emboise or Caorches, as her husband.
“But why did she select that one rather than the others?”
“It was you who selected him, uncle.”
“At random ... because he had the biggest income....”
“No, not at random, but on the insidious, persistent and very clever advice of your servant Hyacinthe.”
The duke gave a start:
“What! Is Hyacinthe an accomplice?”
“No, not of Arsène Lupin, but of the man whom he believes to be d’Emboise and who promised to give him a hundred thousand francs within a week after the marriage.”
“Oh, the villain!... He planned everything, foresaw everything....�
�
“Foresaw everything, uncle, down to shamming an attempt upon his life so as to avert suspicion, down to shamming a wound received in your service.”
“But with what object? Why all these dastardly tricks?”
“Angélique has a fortune of eleven million francs. Your solicitor in Paris was to hand the securities next week to the counterfeit d’Emboise, who had only to realize them forthwith and disappear. But, this very morning, you yourself were to hand your son-in-law, as a personal wedding-present, five hundred thousand francs’ worth of bearer-stock, which he has arranged to deliver to one of his accomplices at nine o’clock this evening, outside the castle, near the Great Oak, so that they may be negotiated to-morrow morning in Brussels.”
The Duc de Sarzeau-Vendôme had risen from his seat and was stamping furiously up and down the room:
“At nine o’clock this evening?” he said. “We’ll see about that.... We’ll see about that.... I’ll have the gendarmes here before then....”
“Arsène Lupin laughs at gendarmes.”
“Let’s telegraph to Paris.”
“Yes, but how about the five hundred thousand francs?... And, still worse, uncle, the scandal?... Think of this: your daughter, Angélique de Sarzeau-Vendôme, married to that swindler, that thief.... No, no, it would never do....”
“What then?”
“What?...”
The nephew now rose and, stepping to a gun-rack, took down a rifle and laid it on the table, in front of the duke:
“Away in Algeria, uncle, on the verge of the desert, when we find ourselves face to face with a wild beast, we do not send for the gendarmes. We take our rifle and we shoot the wild beast. Otherwise, the beast would tear us to pieces with its claws.”
Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17) Page 158
