Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-thief (Penguin Classics)

by Leblanc, Maurice

  “It’s useless…. All that we are doing is quite useless…. I put it up here, on this shelf.”

  “You may have forgotten.”

  “No, no; it was here, on this shelf, and nowhere else.”

  They lit a candle, for the light in the little room was bad, and removed all the linen and all the different things with which it was crowded. And when the closet was quite empty they were compelled to admit, in despair, that the famous necklace, the Queen’s Necklace, was gone.

  The countess, who was noted for her determined character, wasted no time in vain lamentations, but sent for the commissary of police, M. Valorbe, whose sagacity and insight they had already had occasion to appreciate. He was put in possession of the details, and his first question was:

  “Are you sure, monsieur le comte, that no one can have passed through your room at night?”

  “Quite sure. I am a very light sleeper, and, besides, the bedroom door was bolted. I had to unfasten it this morning when my wife rang for the maid.”

  “Is there no other inlet through which it is possible to enter the closet?”

  “None.”

  “No window?”

  “Yes, but it is blocked up.”

  “I should like to see it.”

  Candles were let, and M. Valorbe at once remarked that the window was only blocked halfway by a chest, which, besides, did not absolutely touch the casements.

  “It is close enough up to prevent its being moved without making a great deal of noise.”

  “What does the window look out on?”

  “On a small inner yard.”

  “And you have another floor above this?”

  “Two; but at the level of the servants’ floor the yard is protected by a close-railed grating. That is what makes the light so bad.”

  Moreover, when they moved the chest they found that the window was latched, which would have been impossible if any one had entered from the out side.

  “Unless,” said the count, “he went out through our room.”

  “In which case you would not have found the door bolted in the morning.”

  The commissary reflected for a moment, and then, turning to the countess, asked:

  “Did your people know, madame, that you were going to wear the necklace last night?”

  “Certainly; I made no mystery about it. But nobody knew that we put it away in the linen-closet.”

  “Nobody?”

  “No… unless…”

  “I must beg you, madame, to be exact. It is a most important point.”

  She said to her husband:

  “I was thinking of Henriette.”

  “Henriette? She knew no more about it then the others.”

  “Who is this lady?” asked M. Valore.

  “One of my convent friends who quarrelled with her family, and married a sort of artisan. When her husband died I took her in here with her son, and furnished a couple of rooms for them in the house.” And she added, with a certain confusion: “She does me a few little services. She is a very handy person.”

  “What floor does she live on?”

  “On our own floor, not far off… at the end of the passage…. And, now that i think of it, her kitchen window…”

  “Looks out on this yard?”

  “Yes, it is just opposite.”

  A short silence followed upon this statement.

  Then M. Valorbe asked to be taken on Henriette’s rooms.

  They found her busy sewing, while her son Raoul, a little fellow of six or seven, sat reading beside her. Somewhat surprised at the sight of the poor apartment which had been furnished for her, and which consisted in all of one room with out a fire place, and of a sort of recess or box-room that did duty for a kitchen, the commissary questioned her. She seemed upset at hearing of the robbery. The night before she had herself dressed the countess, and fastened the necklace round her throat.

  “Good gracious!” she exclaimed, “who would ever have thought it?”

  “And you have no idea, not the smallest inkling? You know it is possible that the thief may have passed through your room.”

  “She laughed whole-heartedly, as though not imagining for a moment that the least suspicion could rest upon her.

  “Why, I never left my room! I never go out, you know. And, besides, look!” She opened the window of the kitchen. “There, it’s quite three yards to the ledge opposite.”

  “Who told you that we were considering the likelihood of a theft committed by this way?”

  “Why, wasn’t the necklace in the closet?”

  “How do you know?”

  “Goodness me, I always knew that they put it there at night!… They used to talk of it before me….”

  Her face, which was still young, but scored by care and sorrow, showed great gentleness and resignation. Nevertheless, in the silence that ensued, it suddenly assumed an expression of anguish, as though a danger had threatened its owner. Henriette drew her son to her. The child took her hand, and impressed a tender kiss upon it.

  “I presume,” said M. de Dreux to the commissary, when they were alone again—”I presume that you do not suspect her? I will answer for her. She is honesty itself.”

  “Oh, I am quite of your opinion,” declared M. Valorbe. “At most, the thought of an unconscious complicity passed through my mind. But I can see that we must abandon this explanation… it does not in the least help to solve the problem that faces us.”

  The commissary did not arrive any further with the inquiry, which was taken up by the examining magistrate, and completed in the course of the days that followed. He questioned the servants, experimented on the way in which the window of the linen-closet opened and shut, explored the little inner yard from top to bottom…. It was all fruitless. The latch was untouched. The window could not be opened or closed from the outside.

  The inquiries were aimed more particularly at Henriette, for, in spite of everything, the question always reverted in her direction. Her life was carefully investigated. It was ascertained that in three years she had only four times left the house, and it was possible to trace her movements on each of these occasions. As a matter of fact, she served Madame de Dreux in the capacity of lady’s maid and dressmaker, and her mistress treated her with a strictness to which all the servants, in confidence, bore witness.

  “Besides,” said the magistrate, who, by the end of the first week, had come to the same conclusions as the commissary, “admitting that we know the culprit—and we do not—we are no wiser as to the manner in which the theft was committed. We are hemmed in on either side by two obstacles—a locked window and a locked door. There are two mysteries: How could the thief get in? and, more difficult still, How could he get out, and leave a bolted door and a latched window behind him?”

  After four months’ investigation the magistrate’s private impression was that M. and Mme. de Dreux, driven by their monetary needs, which were known to be considerable and pressing, had sold the Queen’s Necklace. He filed the case, and dismissed it from his mind.

  The theft of the priceless jewel struck the Dreux-Soubises a blow from which it took them long to recover. Now that their credit was no longer sustained by the sort of reserve-fund which the possession of that treasure constituted, they found themselves confronted with less reasonable creditors and less willing money-lenders. They were compelled to resort to energetic measures, to sell and mortgage their property; in short, it would have meant absolute ruin if two fat legacies from distant relatives had not come in the nick of time to save them.

  They also suffered in their pride, as though they had lost one of the quarterings of their coat. And, strange to say, the countess wreaked her resentment upon her old school friend. She bore her a real grudge, and accused her openly. Henriette was first banished to the servants’ floor, and afterwards given a day’s notice to quit.

  The life of M. and Mme. de Dreux passed without any event of note. They travelled a great deal.

  One fact alone
must be recorded as belonging to this period. A few months after Henriette’s departure the countess received a letter from her that filled her with amazement:

  “MADAME,—I do not know how to thank you. For it was you, was it not, who sent me that? It must have been you. No one else knows of my retreat in this little village. Forgive me if I am mistaken, and, in any case, accept the expression of my gratitude for your past kindnesses.”

  What did she mean? The countess’ past and present kindnesses to Henriette amounted to a number of acts of injustice. What was the meaning of these thanks?

  Henriette was called upon to explain, and replied that she had received by post, in an unregistered envelope, two notes of a thousand francs each. She enclosed the envelope in her letter. It was stamped with the Paris post-mark, and bore only her address, written in an obviously disguised hand.

  Where did that two thousand francs come from? Who had sent it? And why had it been sent? The police made inquiries. But what possible clew could they follow up in that darkness?

  The same incident was repeated twelve months later; and a third time; and a fourth time; and every year for six years, with this difference: that in the fifth and sixth year the amount sent was doubled, which enabled Henriette, who had suddenly fallen ill, to provide for proper nursing. There was another difference: the postal authorities having seized one of the letters, on the pretext that it was not registered, the two last letters were handed in for registration—one at Saint-Germain, the other at Suresnes. The sender had signed his name first as Anquetry, next as Péchard. The addresses which he gave were false.

  At the end of six years Henriette died. The riddle remained unsolved.

  All these particulars are matters of public knowledge. The case was one of those which stir men’s minds, and it was strange that this necklace, after setting all France by the ears at the end of the eighteenth century, should succeed in causing so much renewed excitement more than a hundred years later. But what I am now about to relate is known to none, except the principals interested and a few persons upon whom the count imposed absolute secrecy. As it is probable that they will break their promises sooner or later, I have no scruple in tearing aside the veil; and thus my readers will receive, together with the key to the riddle, the explanation of the paragraph that appeared in the newspapers two mornings ago—an extraordinary paragraph, which added, if possible, a fresh modicum of darkness and mystery to the obscurity in which this drama was already shrouded.

  We must go five days back. Among M. de Dreux-Soubise’s guests at lunch were his two nieces and a cousin; the men were the Président d’Essaville; M. Bachas, the deputy; the Cavaliere Floriani, whom the count had met in Sicily; and General the Marquis de Rouzières, an old club acquaintance.

  After lunch the ladies served coffee in the drawing-room, and the gentlemen were given leave to smoke, on condition that they stayed where they were and talked. One of the girls amused them by telling their fortunes on the cards. The conversation afterwards turned on the subject of celebrated crimes. And thereupon M. de Rouzières, who never neglected an opportunity of teasing the count, brought up the affair of the necklace—a subject which M. de Dreux detested.

  Every one proceeded to give his opinion. Every one summed up the evidence in his own way. And, of course, all the conclusions were contradictory, and all equally inadmissible.

  “And what is your opinion, monsieur?” asked the countess of the Cavaliere Floriani.

  “Oh, I have no opinion, madame.”

  There was a general outcry of protest, inasmuch as the chevalier had only just been most brilliantly describing a series of adventures in which he had taken part with his father, a magistrate at Palermo, and in which he had given evidence of his taste for these matters and of his sound judgment.

  “I confess,” he said, “that I have sometimes managed to succeed where the experts had abandoned all their attempts. But I am far from considering myself a Sherlock Holmes…. And, besides, I hardly know the facts….”

  All faces were turned to the master of the house, who was reluctantly compelled to recapitulate the details. The chevalier listened, reflected, put a few questions, and murmured:

  “It’s odd… at first sight the thing does not seem to me so difficult to guess at.”

  The count shrugged his shoulders. But the others flocked round the chevalier, who resumed, in a rather dogmatic tone:

  “As a general rule, in order to discover the author of a theft or other crime, we have first to determine how this theft or crime has been committed, or at least how it might have been committed. In the present case nothing could be simpler, in my view, for we find ourselves face to face not with a number of different suppositions, but with one hard certainty, which is that the individual was able to enter only by the door of the bedroom or the window of the linen-closet. Now, a bolted door cannot be opened from the outside. Therefore, he must have entered by the window.”

  “It was closed, and it was found closed,” said M. de Dreux, flatly.

  Floriani took no notice of the interruption, and continued:

  “In order to do so he had only to fix a bridge of some sort— say, a plank or a ladder—between the balcony outside the kitchen and the ledge of the window; and, as soon as the jewel-case…”

  “But I tell you the window was closed!” cried the count, impatiently.

  This time Floriani was obliged to reply. He did so with the greatest calmness, like a man who refuses to be put out by so insignificant an objection.

  “I have no doubt that it was. But was there no hinged pane?”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “To begin with, it is almost a rule in the casement windows of that period. And, next, there must have been one, because otherwise the theft would be inexplicable.”

  “As a matter of fact, there was one, but it was closed, like the window. We did not even pay attention to it.”

  “That was a mistake; for if you had paid attention to it, you would obviously have seen that it had been opened.”

  “And how?”

  “I presume that, like all of them, it opens by means of a twisted iron wire, furnished with a ring at its lower end?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did this ring hang down between the casement and the chest?”

  “Yes, but I do not understand…”

  “It is like this. Through some cleft or cranny in the pane they must have contrived, with the aid of an instrument of some sort—say, an iron rod ending in a hook—to grip the ring, press down upon it, and open the pane.”

  The count sneered.

  “That’s perfect! Perfect! You settle it all so easily! Only you have forgotten one thing, my dear sir, which is that there was no cleft or cranny in the pane.”

  “Oh, but there was!”

  “How can you say that? We should have seen it.”

  “To see a thing one must look, and you did not look. The cleft exists, it is materially impossible that it should not exist, down the side of the pane, along the putty… vertically, of course…”

  The count rose. He seemed greatly excited, took two or three nervous strides across the room, and, going up to Floriani, said:

  “Nothing has been changed up there since that day… no one has set foot in that closet.”

  “In that case, monsieur, it is open to you to assure yourself that my explanation is in accordance with reality.”

  “It is in accordance with none of the facts which the police ascertained. You have seen nothing, you know nothing, and you go counter to all that we have seen and to all that we know.”

  Floriani did not seem to remark the count’s irritation, and said, with a smile:

  “Well, monsieur, I am trying to see plainly, that is all. If I am wrong you have only to prove me so….”

  “So I will, this very minute…. I confess that, in the long run, your assurance…”

  M. de Dreux mumbled a few words more, and then suddenly turned to the door and went ou
t.

  No one spoke a word. All waited anxiously, as though convinced that a particle of the truth was about to appear. And the silence was marked by an extreme gravity.

  At last the count was seen standing in the doorway. He was pale, and singularly agitated. He addressed his friends in a voice trembling with emotion:

  “I beg your pardon…. Monsieur Floriani’s revelations have taken me so greatly by surprise…. I should never have thought…”

  His wife asked him, eagerly:

  “What is it?… Tell us!… Speak! .. .”

  He stammered out:

  “The cleft is there… at the very place mentioned… down the side of the pane…”

  Abruptly seizing the chevalier’s arm, he said, in an imperious tone:

  “And now, monsieur, continue…. I admit that you have been right so far, but now… That is not all…. Tell me… what happened, according to you?”

  Floriani gently released his arm, and, after a moment’s interval, said:

  “Well, according to me, this is what happened: The individual, whoever he was, knowing that Madame de Dreux was going to wear the necklace at the reception, put his foot-bridge in position during your absence. He watched you through the window, and saw you hide the diamonds. As soon as you were gone he passed some implement down the pane and pulled the ring.”

  “Very well; but the distance was too great to allow of his reaching the latch of the window through the hinged pane.”

  “If he was unable to open the window he must have got in through the hinged pane itself.”

  “Impossible; there is not a man so slight in figure as to obtain admission that way.”

  “Then it was not a man.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What I say. If the passage was too narrow to admit a man, then it must have been a child.”

  “A child?”

  “Did you not tell me that your friend had a son?”

  “I did; a son called Raoul.”

  “It is extremely likely that Raoul committed the theft.”

  “What evidence have you?”