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

by Maurice Leblanc

  “Is it really necessary, monsieur le président?”

  “I consider it essential. May I also confess that I am curious to learn how you discovered the secret? I should be glad, therefore, if you would call at my department in an hour’s time.”

  “I am very sorry, sir, but I shall be gone in fifteen minutes.”

  “No, no, you can’t go like this,” said Valenglay, with authority.

  “Why not, sir?”

  “Well, because we don’t know your name or anything about you.”

  “That makes so little difference!”

  “In peace-time, perhaps. But, in war-time, it won’t do at all.”

  “Surely, monsieur le président, you will make an exception in my case?”

  “An exception, indeed? What next?”

  “Suppose it’s the reward which I ask, will you refuse me then?”

  “It’s the only one which we are obliged to refuse you. However, you won’t ask for it. A good citizen like yourself understands the constraints to which everybody is bound to submit. My dear Masseron, arrange it with this gentleman. At the department in an hour from now. Good-by till then, sir. I shall expect you.”

  And, after a very civil bow, he walked away to his car, twirling his stick gaily and escorted by M. Masseron.

  “Well, on my soul!” chuckled Don Luis. “There’s a character for you! In the twinkling of an eye, he accepts three hundred millions in gold, signs an epoch-making treaty and orders the arrest of Arsène Lupin!”

  “What do you mean?” cried Patrice, startled out of his life. “Your arrest?”

  “Well, he orders me to appear before him, to produce my papers and the devil knows what.”

  “But that’s monstrous!”

  “It’s the law of the land, my dear captain. We must bow to it.”

  “But . . .”

  “Captain, believe me when I say that a few little worries of this sort deprive me of none of the whole-hearted satisfaction which I feel at rendering this great service to my country. I wanted, during the war, to do something for France and to make the most of the time which I was able to devote to her during my stay. I’ve done it. And then I have another reward: the four millions. For I think highly enough of your Coralie to believe her incapable of wishing to touch this money . . . which is really her property.”

  “I’ll go bail for her over that.”

  “Thank you. And you may be sure that the gift will be well employed. So everything is settled. I have still a few minutes to give you. Let us turn them to good account. M. Masseron is collecting his men by now. To simplify their task and avoid a scandal, we’ll go down to the lower quay, by the sand-heap. It’ll be easier for him to collar me there.”

  “I accept your few minutes,” said Patrice, as they went down the steps. “But first of all I want to apologize . . .”

  “For what? For behaving a little treacherously and locking me into the studio of the lodge? You couldn’t help yourself: you were trying to assist your Coralie. For thinking me capable of keeping the treasure on the day when I discovered it? You couldn’t help that either: how could you imagine that Arsène Lupin would despise three hundred million francs?”

  “Very well, no apologies,” said Patrice, laughing. “But all my thanks.”

  “For what? For saving your life and saving Coralie’s? Don’t thank me. It’s a hobby of mine, saving people.”

  Patrice took Don Luis’ hand and pressed it firmly. Then, in a chaffing tone which hid his emotion, he said:

  “Then I won’t thank you. I won’t tell you that you rid me of a hideous nightmare by letting me know that I was not that monster’s son and by unveiling his real identity. I will not tell you either that I am a happy man now that life is opening radiantly before me, with Coralie free to love me. No, we won’t talk of it. But shall I confess to you that my happiness is still a little — what shall I say? — a little dim, a little timid? I no longer feel any doubt; but in spite of all, I don’t quite understand the truth, and, until I do understand it, the truth will cause me some anxiety. So tell me . . . explain to me . . . I want to know . . .”

  “And yet the truth is so obvious!” cried Don Luis. “The most complex truths are always so simple! Look here, don’t you understand anything? Just think of the way in which the problem is set. For sixteen or eighteen years, Siméon Diodokis behaves like a perfect friend, devoted to the pitch of self-denial, in short, like a father. He has not a thought, outside that of his revenge, but to secure your happiness and Coralie’s. He wants to bring you together. He collects your photographs. He follows the whole course of your life. He almost gets into touch with you. He sends you the key of the garden and prepares a meeting. Then, suddenly, a complete change takes place. He becomes your inveterate enemy and thinks of nothing but killing the pair of you. What is there that separates those two states of mind? One fact, that’s all, or rather one date, the night of the third of April and the tragedy that takes place that night and the following day at Essarès’ house. Until that date, you were Siméon Diodokis’ son. After that date, you were Siméon Diodokis’ greatest enemy. Does that suggest nothing to you? It’s really curious. As for me, all my discoveries are due to this general view of the case which I took from the beginning.”

  Patrice shook his head without replying. He did not understand. The riddle retained a part of its unfathomable secret.

  “Sit down there,” said Don Luis, “on our famous sand-heap, and listen to me. It won’t take me ten minutes.”

  They were on Berthou’s Wharf. The light was beginning to wane and the outlines on the opposite bank of the river were becoming indistinct. The barge rocked lazily at the edge of the quay.

  Don Luis expressed himself in the following terms:

  “On the evening when, from the inner gallery of the library, you witnessed the tragedy at Essarès’ house, you saw before your eyes two men bound by their accomplices: Essarès Bey and Siméon Diodokis. They are both dead. One of them was your father. Let us speak first of the other. Essarès Bey’s position was a critical one that evening. After draining our gold currency on behalf of an eastern power, he was trying to filch the remainder of the millions of francs collected. The Belle Hélène, summoned by the rain of sparks, was lying moored alongside Berthou’s Wharf. The gold was to be shifted at night from the sand-bags to the motor-barge. All was going well, when the accomplices, warned by Siméon, broke in. Thereupon we have the blackmailing-scene, Colonel Fakhi’s death and so on, with Essarès learning at one and the same time that his accomplices knew of his schemes and his plan to pilfer the gold and also that Colonel Fakhi had informed the police about him. He was cornered. What could he do? Run away? But, in war-time, running away is almost impossible. Besides, running away meant giving up the gold and likewise giving up Coralie, which would never have done. So there was only one thing, to disappear from sight. To disappear from sight and yet to remain there, on the battlefield, near the gold and near Coralie. Night came; and he employed it in carrying out his plan. So much for Essarès. We now come to Siméon Diodokis.”

  Don Luis stopped to take breath. Patrice had been listening eagerly, as though each word had brought its share of light into the oppressive darkness.

  “The man who was known as old Siméon,” continued Don Luis, “that is to say, your father, Armand Belval, a former victim, together with Coralie’s mother, of Essarès Bey, had also reached a turning-point of his career. He was nearly achieving his object. He had betrayed and delivered his enemy, Essarès, into the hands of Colonel Fakhi and the accomplices. He had succeeded in bringing you and Coralie together. He had sent you the key of the lodge. He was justified in hoping that, in a few days more, everything would end according to his wishes. But, next morning, on waking, certain indications unknown to me revealed to him a threatening danger; and he no doubt foresaw the plan which Essarès was engaged in elaborating. And he too put himself the same question: What was he to do? What was there for him to do? He must warn you, wa
rn you without delay, telephone to you at once. For time was pressing, the danger was becoming definite. Essarès was watching and hunting down the man whom he had chosen as his victim for the second time. You can picture Siméon possibly feeling himself pursued and locking himself into the library. You can picture him wondering whether he would ever be able to telephone to you and whether you would be there. He asks for you. He calls out to you. Essarès hammers away at the door. And your father, gasping for breath, shouts, ‘Is that you, Patrice? Have you the key? . . . And the letter? . . . No? . . . But this is terrible! Then you don’t know’ . . . And then a hoarse cry, which you hear at your end of the wire, and incoherent noises, the sound of an altercation. And then the lips gluing themselves to the instrument and stammering words at random: ‘Patrice, the amethyst pendant . . . Patrice, I should so much have liked . . . Patrice, Coralie!’ Then a loud scream . . . cries that grow weaker and weaker . . . silence, and that is all. Your father is dead, murdered. This time, Essarès Bey, who had failed before, in the lodge, took his revenge on his old rival.”

  “Oh, my unhappy father!” murmured Patrice, in great distress.

  “Yes, it was he. That was at nineteen minutes past seven in the morning, as you noted. A few minutes later, eager to know and understand, you yourself rang up; and it was Essarès who replied, with your father’s dead body at his feet.”

  “Oh, the scoundrel! So that this body, which we did not find and were not able to find . . .”

  “Was simply made up by Essarès, made up, disfigured, transformed into his own likeness. That, captain, is how — and the whole mystery lies in this — Siméon Diodokis, dead, became Essarès Bey, while Essarès Bey, transformed into Siméon Diodokis, played the part of Siméon Diodokis.”

  “Yes,” said Patrice, “I see, I understand.”

  “As to the relations existing between the two men,” continued Don Luis, “I am not certain. Essarès may or may not have known before that old Siméon was none other than his former rival, the lover of Coralie’s mother, the man in short who had escaped death. He may or may not have known that Siméon was your father. These are points which will never be decided and which, moreover, do not matter. What I do take for granted is that this new murder was not improvised on the spot. I firmly believe that Essarès, having noticed certain similarities in height and figure, had made every preparation to take Siméon’s place if circumstances obliged him to disappear. And it was easily done. Siméon Diodokis wore a wig and no beard. Essarès, on the contrary, was bald-headed and had a beard. He shaved himself, smashed Siméon’s face against the grate, mingled the hairs of his own beard with the bleeding mass, dressed the body in his clothes, took his victim’s clothes for himself, put on the wig, the spectacles and the comforter. The transformation was complete.”

  Patrice thought for a moment. Then he raised an objection:

  “Yes, that’s what happened at nineteen minutes past seven. But something else happened at twenty-three minutes past twelve.”

  “No, nothing at all.”

  “But that clock, which stopped at twenty-three minutes past twelve?”

  “I tell you, nothing happened at all. Only, he had to put people off the scent. He had above all to avoid the inevitable accusation that would have been brought against the new Siméon.”

  “What accusation?”

  “What accusation? Why, that he had killed Essarès Bey, of course! A dead body is discovered in the morning. Who has committed the murder? Suspicion would at once have fallen on Siméon. He would have been questioned and arrested. And Essarès would have been found under Siméon’s mask. No, he needed liberty and facilities to move about as he pleased. To achieve this, he kept the murder concealed all the morning and arranged so that no one set foot in the library. He went three times and knocked at his wife’s door, so that she should say that Essarès Bey was still alive during the morning. Then, when she went out, he raised his voice and ordered Siméon, in other words himself, to see her to the hospital in the Champs-Élysées. And in this way Mme. Essarès thought that she was leaving her husband behind her alive and that she was escorted by old Siméon, whereas actually she was leaving old Siméon’s corpse in an empty part of the house and was escorted by her husband. Then what happened? What the rascal had planned. At one o’clock, the police, acting on the information laid by Colonel Fakhi, arrived and found themselves in the presence of a corpse. Whose corpse? There was not a shadow of hesitation on that point. The maids recognized their master; and, when Mme. Essarès returned, it was her husband whom she saw lying in front of the fireplace at which he had been tortured the night before. Old Siméon, that is to say, Essarès himself, helped to establish the identification. You yourself were taken in. The trick was played.”

  “Yes,” said Patrice, nodding his head, “that is how things must have gone. They all fit in.”

  “The trick was played,” Don Luis repeated, “and nobody could make out how it was done. Was there not this further proof, the letter written in Essarès’ own hand and found on his desk? The letter was dated at twelve o’clock on the fourth of April, addressed to his wife, and told her that he was going away. Better still, the trick was so successfully played that the very clues which ought to have revealed the truth merely concealed it. For instance, your father used to carry a tiny album of photographs in a pocket stitched inside his under-vest. Essarès did not notice it and did not remove the vest from the body. Well, when they found the album, they at once accepted that most unlikely hypothesis: Essarès Bey carrying on his person an album filled with photographs of his wife and Captain Belval! In the same way, when they found in the dead man’s hand an amethyst pendant containing your two latest photographs and when they also found a crumpled paper with something on it about the golden triangle, they at once admitted that Essarès Bey had stolen the pendant and the document and was holding them in his hand when he died! So absolutely certain were they all that it was Essarès Bey who had been murdered, that his dead body lay before their eyes and that they must not trouble about the question any longer. And in this way the new Siméon was master of the situation. Essarès Bey is dead, long live Siméon!”

  Don Luis indulged in a hearty laugh. The adventure struck him as really amusing.

  “Then and there,” he went on, “Essarès, behind his impenetrable mask, set to work. That very day he listened to your conversation with Coralie and, overcome with fury at seeing you bend over her, fired a shot from his revolver. But, when this new attempt failed, he ran away and played an elaborate comedy near the little door in the garden, crying murder, tossing the key over the wall to lay a false scent and falling to the ground half dead, as though he had been strangled by the enemy who was supposed to have fired the shot. The comedy ended with a skilful assumption of madness.”

  “But what was the object of this madness?”

  “What was the object? Why, to make people leave him alone and keep them from questioning him or suspecting him. Once he was looked upon as mad, he could remain silent and unobserved. Otherwise, Mme. Essarès would have recognized his voice at the first words he spoke, however cleverly he might have altered his tone. From this time onward, he is mad. He is an irresponsible being. He goes about as he pleases. He is a madman! And his madness is so thoroughly admitted that he leads you, so to speak, by the hand to his former accomplices and causes you to have them arrested, without asking yourself for an instant if this madman is not acting with the clearest possible sense of his own interest. He’s a madman, a poor, harmless madman, one of those unfortunates with whom nobody dreams of interfering. Henceforth, he has only his last two adversaries to fight: Coralie and you. And this is an easy matter for him. I presume that he got hold of a diary kept by your father. At any rate, he knows every day of the one which you keep. From this he learns the whole story of the graves; and he knows that, on the fourteenth of April, Coralie and you are both going on a pilgrimage to those graves. Besides, he plans to make you go there, for his plot is laid. He prep
ares against the son and the daughter, against the Patrice and Coralie of to-day, the attempt which he once prepared against the father and the mother. The attempt succeeds at the start. It would have succeeded to the end, but for an idea that occurred to our poor Ya-Bon, thanks to which a new adversary, in the person of myself, entered the lists. . . . But I need hardly go on. You know the rest as well as I do; and, like myself, you can judge in all his glory the inhuman villain who, in the space of those twenty-four hours, allowed his accomplice Grégoire to be strangled, buried your Coralie under the sand-heap, killed Ya-Bon, locked me in the lodge, or thought he did, buried you alive in the grave dug by your father and made away with Vacherot, the porter. And now, Captain Belval, do you think that I ought to have prevented him from committing suicide, this pretty gentleman who, in the last resort, was trying to pass himself off as your father?”

  “You were right,” said Patrice. “You have been right all through, from start to finish. I see it all now, as a whole and in every detail. Only one point remains: the golden triangle. How did you find out the truth? What was it that brought you to this sand-heap and enabled you to save Coralie from the most awful death?”

  “Oh, that part was even simpler,” replied Don Luis, “and the light came almost without my knowing it! I’ll tell it you in a few words. But let us move away first. M. Masseron and his men are becoming a little troublesome.”

  The detectives were distributed at the two entrances to Berthou’s Wharf. M. Masseron was giving them his instructions. He was obviously speaking to them of Don Luis and preparing to accost him.

  “Let’s get on the barge,” said Don Luis. “I’ve left some important papers there.”

  Patrice followed him. Opposite the cabin containing Grégoire’s body was another cabin, reached by the same companion-way. It was furnished with a table and a chair.

  “Here, captain,” said Don Luis, taking a letter from the drawer of the table and settling it, “is a letter which I will ask you to . . . but don’t let us waste words. I shall hardly have time to satisfy your curiosity. Our friends are coming nearer. Well, we were saying, the golden triangle . . .”