Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-thief (Penguin Classics)

by Leblanc, Maurice

  “Yes,” she said, in a voice faint as a whisper.

  She was resigned. She conjured up the future as in a vision: the scandal, the decree of divorce pronounced against herself, the custody of the child awarded to the father; and she accepted this, thinking that she would carry off her son, that she would go with him to the ends of the earth and that the two of them would live alone together and happy….

  Her mother-in-law said:

  “You have been very thoughtless, Yvonne.”

  Yvonne was on the point of confessing to her and asking for her protection. But what was the good? How could the Comtesse d’Origny possibly believe her innocent? She made no reply.

  Besides, the count at once returned, followed by his servant and by a man carrying a bag of tools under his arm.

  And the count said to the man:

  “You know what you have to do?”

  “Yes,” said the workman. “It’s to cut a ring that’s grown too small…. That’s easily done…. A touch of the nippers….”

  “And then you will see,” said the count, “if the inscription inside the ring was the one you engraved.”

  Yvonne looked at the clock. It was ten minutes to eleven. She seemed to hear, somewhere in the house, a sound of voices raised in argument; and, in spite of herself, she felt a thrill of hope. Perhaps Velmont has succeeded…. But the sound was renewed; and she perceived that it was produced by some coster-mongers passing under her window and moving farther on.

  It was all over. Horace Velmont had been unable to assist her. And she understood that, to recover her child, she must rely upon her own strength, for the promises of others are vain.

  She made a movement of recoil. She had felt the workman’s heavy hand on her hand; and that hateful touch revolted her.

  The man apologized, awkwardly. The count said to his wife:

  “You must make up your mind, you know.”

  Then she put out her slim and trembling hand to the workman, who took it, turned it over and rested it on the table, with the palm upward. Yvonne felt the cold steel. She longed to die, then and there; and, at once attracted by that idea of death, she thought of the poisons which she would buy and which would send her to sleep almost without her knowing it.

  The operation did not take long. Inserted on the slant, the little steel pliers pushed back the flesh, made room for themselves and bit the ring. A strong effort… and the ring broke. The two ends had only to be separated to remove the ring from the finger. The workman did so.

  The count exclaimed, in triumph:

  “At last! Now we shall see!… The proof is there! And we are all witnesses….”

  He snatched up the ring and looked at the inscription. A cry of amazement escaped him. The ring bore the date of his marriage to Yvonne: “23rd of October”!…

  We were sitting on the terrace at Monte Carlo. Lupin finished his story, lit a cigarette and calmly puffed the smoke into the blue air.

  I said:

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Why, the end of the story….”

  “The end of the story? But what other end could there be?”

  “Come… you’re joking…”

  “Not at all. Isn’t that enough for you? The countess is saved. The count, not possessing the least proof against her, is compelled by his mother to forego the divorce and to give up the child. That is all. Since then, he has left his wife, who is living happily with her son, a fine lad of sixteen.”

  “Yes… yes… but the way in which the countess was saved?”

  Lupin burst out laughing:

  “My dear old chap”—Lupin sometimes condescends to address me in this affectionate manner—”my dear old chap, you may be rather smart at relating my exploits, but, by Jove, you do want to have the i’s dotted for you! I assure you, the countess did not ask for explanations!”

  “Very likely. But there’s no pride about me,” I added, laughing. “Dot those i’s for me, will you?”

  He took out a five-franc piece and closed his hand over it.

  “What’s in my hand?”

  “A five-franc piece.”

  He opened his hand. The five-franc piece was gone.

  “You see how easy it is! A working jeweller, with his nippers, cuts a ring with a date engraved upon it: 23rd of October. It’s a simple little trick of sleight-of-hand, one of many which I have in my bag. By Jove, I didn’t spend six months with Dickson, the conjurer,2 for nothing!”

  “But then…?”

  “Out with it!”

  “The working jeweller?”

  “Was Horace Velmont! Was good old Lupin! Leaving the countess at three o’clock in the morning, I employed the few remaining minutes before the husband’s return to have a look round his study. On the table I found the letter from the working jeweller. The letter gave me the address. A bribe of a few louis enabled me to take the workman’s place; and I arrived with a wedding-ring ready cut and engraved. Hocus-pocus! Pass!… The count couldn’t make head or tail of it.”

  “Splendid!” I cried. And I added, a little chaffingly, in my turn, “But don’t you think that you were humbugged a bit yourself, on this occasion?”

  “Oh! And by whom, pray?”

  “By the countess?”

  “In what way?”

  “Hang it all, that name engraved as a talisman!… The mysterious Adonis who loved her and suffered for her sake!… All that story seems very unlikely; and I wonder whether, Lupin though you be, you did not just drop upon a pretty love-story, absolutely genuine and… none too innocent.”

  Lupin looked at me out of the corner of his eye:

  “No,” he said.

  “How do you know?”

  “If the countess made a misstatement in telling me that she knew that man before her marriage—and that he was dead— and if she really did love him in her secret heart, I, at least, have a positive proof that it was an ideal love and that he did not suspect it.”

  “And where is the proof?”

  “It is inscribed inside the ring which I myself broke on the countess’s finger… and which I carry on me. Here it is. You can read the name she had engraved on it.”

  He handed me the ring. I read:

  “Horace Velmont.”

  There was a moment of silence between Lupin and myself; and, noticing it, I also observed on his face a certain emotion, a tinge of melancholy.

  I resumed:

  “What made you tell me this story… to which you have often alluded in my presence?”

  “What made me…?”

  He drew my attention to a woman, still exceedingly handsome, who was passing on a young man’s arm. She saw Lupin and bowed.

  “It’s she,” he whispered. “She and her son.”

  “Then she recognized you?”

  “She always recognizes me, whatever my disguise.”

  “But since the burglary at the Château de Thibermesnil,3 the police have identified the two names of Arsène Lupin and Horace Velmont.”

  “Yes.”

  “Therefore she knows who you are.”

  “Yes.”

  “And she bows to you?” I exclaimed, in spite of myself.

  He caught me by the arm and, fiercely:

  “Do you think that I am Lupin to her? Do you think that I am a burglar in her eyes, a rogue, a cheat?… Why, I might be the lowest of miscreants, I might be a murderer even… and still she would bow to me!”

  “Why? Because she loved you once?”

  “Rot! That would be an additional reason, on the contrary, why she should now despise me.”

  “What then?”

  “I am the man who gave her back her son!”

  THE RED SILK SCARF

  On leaving his house one morning, at his usual early hour for going to the Law Courts, Chief-Inspector Ganimard noticed the curious behaviour of an individual who was walking along the Rue Pergolèse in front of him. Shabbily dressed and wearing a straw hat, though the day was the first
of December, the man stooped at every thirty or forty yards to fasten his boot-lace, or pick up his stick, or for some other reason. And, each time, he took a little piece of orange-peel from his pocket and laid it stealthily on the curb of the pavement. It was probably a mere display of eccentricity, a childish amusement to which no one else would have paid attention; but Ganimard was one of those shrewd observers who are indifferent to nothing that strikes their eyes and who are never satisfied until they know the secret cause of things. He therefore began to follow the man.

  Now, at the moment when the fellow was turning to the right, into the Avenue de la Grande-Armée, the inspector caught him exchanging signals with a boy of twelve or thirteen, who was walking along the houses on the left-hand side. Twenty yards farther, the man stooped and turned up the bottom of his trousers legs. A bit of orange-peel marked the place. At the same moment, the boy stopped and, with a piece of chalk, drew a white cross, surrounded by a circle, on the wall of the house next to him.

  The two continued on their way. A minute later, a fresh halt. The strange individual picked up a pin and dropped a piece of orange-peel; and the boy at once made a second cross on the wall and again drew a white circle round it.

  “By Jove!” thought the chief-inspector, with a grunt of satisfaction. “This is rather promising…. What on earth can those two merchants be plotting?”

  The two “merchants” went down the Avenue Friedland and the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, but nothing occurred that was worthy of special mention. The double performance was repeated at almost regular intervals and, so to speak, mechanically. Nevertheless, it was obvious, on the one hand, that the man with the orange-peel did not do his part of the business until after he had picked out with a glance the house that was to be marked and, on the other hand, that the boy did not mark that particular house until after he had observed his companion’s signal. It was certain, therefore, that there was an agreement between the two; and the proceedings presented no small interest in the chief-inspector’s eyes.

  At the Place Beauveau the man hesitated. Then, apparently making up his mind, he twice turned up and twice turned down the bottom of his trousers legs. Hereupon, the boy sat down on the curb, opposite the sentry who was mounting guard outside the Ministry of the Interior, and marked the flagstone with two little crosses contained within two circles. The same ceremony was gone through a little further on, when they reached the Elysée. Only, on the pavement where the President’s sentry was marching up and down, there were three signs instead of two.

  “Hang it all!” muttered Ganimard, pale with excitement and thinking, in spite of himself, of his inveterate enemy, Lupin, whose name came to his mind whenever a mysterious circumstance presented itself. “Hang it all, what does it mean?”

  He was nearly collaring and questioning the two “merchants.” But he was too clever to commit so gross a blunder. The man with the orange-peel had now lit a cigarette; and the boy, also placing a cigarette-end between his lips, had gone up to him, apparently with the object of asking for a light.

  They exchanged a few words. Quick as thought, the boy handed his companion an object which looked—at least, so the inspector believed—like a revolver. They both bent over this object; and the man, standing with his face to the wall, put his hand six times in his pocket and made a movement as though he were loading a weapon.

  As soon as this was done, they walked briskly to the Rue de Suréne; and the inspector, who followed them as closely as he was able to do without attracting their attention, saw them enter the gateway of an old house of which all the shutters were closed, with the exception of those on the third or top floor.

  He hurried in after them. At the end of the carriage-entrance he saw a large courtyard, with a house-painter’s sign at the back and a staircase on the left.

  He went up the stairs and, as soon as he reached the first floor, ran still faster, because he heard, right up at the top, a din as of a free-fight.

  When he came to the last landing he found the door open. He entered, listened for a second, caught the sound of a struggle, rushed to the room from which the sound appeared to proceed and remained standing on the threshold, very much out of breath and greatly surprised to see the man of the orange-peel and the boy banging the floor with chairs.

  At that moment a third person walked out of an adjoining room. It was a young man of twenty-eight or thirty, wearing a pair of short whiskers in addition to his moustache, spectacles, and a smoking-jacket with an astrakhan collar and looking like a foreigner, a Russian.

  “Good morning, Ganimard,” he said. And turning to the two companions, “Thank you, my friends, and all my congratulations on the successful result. Here’s the reward I promised you.”

  He gave them a hundred-franc note, pushed them outside and shut both doors.

  “I am sorry, old chap,” he said to Ganimard. “I wanted to talk to you… wanted to talk to you badly.”

  He offered him his hand and, seeing that the inspector remained flabbergasted and that his face was still distorted with anger, he exclaimed:

  “Why, you don’t seem to understand!… And yet it’s clear enough…. I wanted to see you particularly…. So what could I do?” And, pretending to reply to an objection, “No, no, old chap,” he continued. “You’re quite wrong. If I had written or telephoned, you would not have come… or else you would have come with a regiment. Now I wanted to see you all alone; and I thought the best thing was to send those two decent fellows to meet you, with orders to scatter bits of orange-peel and draw crosses and circles, in short, to mark out your road to this place…. Why, you look quite bewildered! What is it? Perhaps you don’t recognize me? Lupin…. Arsène Lupin…. Ransack your memory…. Doesn’t the name remind you of anything?”

  “You dirty scoundrel!” Ganimard snarled between his teeth.

  Lupin seemed greatly distressed and, in an affectionate voice:

  “Are you vexed? Yes, I can see it in your eyes…. The Dugrival business, I suppose?1 I ought to have waited for you to come and take me in charge?… There now, the thought never occurred to me! I promise you, next time….”

  “You scum of the earth!” growled Ganimard.

  “And I thinking I was giving you a treat! Upon my word, I did. I said to myself, ‘That dear old Ganimard! We haven’t met for an age. He’ll simply rush at me when he sees me!’ ”

  Ganimard, who had not yet stirred a limb, seemed to be waking from his stupor. He looked around him, looked at Lupin, visibly asked himself whether he would not do well to rush at him in reality and then, controlling himself, took hold of a chair and settled himself in it, as though he had suddenly made up his mind to listen to his enemy:

  “Speak,” he said. “And don’t waste my time with any nonsense. I’m in a hurry.”

  “That’s it,” said Lupin, “let’s talk. You can’t imagine a quieter place than this. It’s an old manor-house, which once stood in the open country, and it belongs to the Due de Rochelaure. The duke, who has never lived in it, lets this floor to me and the outhouses to a painter and decorator. I always keep up a few establishments of this kind: it’s a sound, practical plan. Here, in spite of my looking like a Russian nobleman, I am M. Daubreuil, an ex-cabinet-minister…. You understand, I had to select a rather overstocked profession, so as not to attract attention….”

  “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 shan’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.2 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 woke 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 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.”