"That's funny," said Conrad.
"Pooh!" said Otto. "We've only got to find the ladder hooked to the wall. Here, I have it… here's a step… and the next…"
He climbed the rungs, but was pulled up almost at once:
"Can't get any farther… It's as if there had been a fall of earth."
"Impossible!" Vorski protested. "However, wait a bit, I was forgetting: I have my pocket-lighter."
He struck a light; and the same cry of anger escaped all three of them: the whole of the top of the staircase and half the room was buried under a heap of stones and sand, with the trunk of the dead oak fallen in the middle. Not a chance of escape remained.
Vorski gave way to a fit of despair and collapsed on the stairs:
"We're tricked. It's that old brute who has played us this trick… which shows that he's not alone."
He bewailed his fate, raving, lacking the strength to continue the unequal struggle. But Conrad grew angry:
"I say, Vorski, this isn't like you, you know."
"There's nothing to be done against that fellow."
"Nothing to be done! In the first place, there's this, as I've told you twenty times: wring his neck. Oh, why did I restrain myself?"
[Pg 286]"You couldn't even have laid a hand on him. Did any of our bullets touch him?"
"Our bullets… our bullets," muttered Conrad. "All this strikes me as mighty queer. Hand me your lighter. I have another revolver, which comes from the Priory: and I loaded it myself yesterday morning. I'll soon see."
He examined the weapon and was not long in discovering that the seven cartridges which he had put in the cylinder had been replaced by seven cartridges from which the bullets had been extracted and which could therefore fire nothing except blank shots.
"That explains it," he said, "and your ancient Druid is no more of a wizard than I am. If our revolvers had been really loaded, we'd have shot him down like a dog."
But the explanation only increased Vorski's alarm:
"And how did he unload them? At what moment did he manage to take our revolvers from our pockets and put them back after drawing the charges? I did not leave go of mine for an instant."
"No more did I," Conrad admitted.
"And I defy any one to touch it without my knowing. So what then? Doesn't it prove that that demon has a special power? After all, we must look at things as they are. He's a man who possesses secrets of his own… and who has means at his disposal, means which…"
Conrad shrugged his shoulders:
"Vorski, this business has shattered you. You were within reach of the goal and yet you let go at[Pg 287] the first obstacle. You're turned into a dish-cloth. Well, I don't bow my head like you. Tricked? Why so? If he comes after us, there are three of us."
"He won't come. He'll leave us here shut up in a burrow with no way out of it."
"Then, if he doesn't come, I'll go back there, I will! I've got my knife; that's enough for me."
"You're wrong, Conrad."
"How am I wrong? I'm a match for any man, especially for that old blighter; and he's only got a sleeping woman to help him."
"Conrad, he's not a man and she's not a woman. Be careful."
"I'm careful and I'm going."
"You're going, you're going; but what's your plan?"
"I've no plan. Or rather, if I have, it's to out that beggar."
"All the same, mind what you're doing. Don't go for him bull-headed; try to take him by surprise."
"Well, of course!" said Conrad, moving away. "I'm not ass enough to risk his attacks. Be easy, I've got the bounder!"
Conrad's daring comforted Vorski.
"After all," he said, when his accomplice was gone, "he's right. If that old Druid didn't come after us, it's because he's got other ideas in his head. He certainly doesn't expect us to return on the offensive; and Conrad can very well take him by surprise. What do you say, Otto?"
Otto shared his opinion:
"He has only to bide his time," he replied.
[Pg 288]Fifteen minutes passed. Vorski gradually recovered his assurance. He had yielded to the reaction, after an excess of hope followed by disappointment too great for him to bear and also because of the weariness and depression produced by his drinking-bout. But the fighting spirit stimulated him once more; and he was anxious to have done with his adversary.
"I shouldn't be surprised," he said, "if Conrad had finished him off by now."
By this time he had acquired an exaggerated confidence which proved his unbalanced state of mind; and he wanted to go back again at once.
"Come along, Otto, it's the last trip. An old beggar to get rid of; and the thing's done. You've got your dagger? Besides, it won't be wanted. My two hands will do the trick."
"And suppose that blasted Druid has friends?"
"We'll see."
He once more went towards the crypts, moving cautiously and watching the opening of the passages which led from one to the other. No sound reached their ears. The light in the third crypt showed them the way.
"Conrad must have succeeded," Vorski observed. "If not, he would have shirked the fight and come back to us."
Otto agreed.
"It's a good sign, of course, that we don't see him. The ancient Druid must have had a bad time of it. Conrad is a scorcher."
They entered the third crypt. Things were in the places where they had left them: the sceptre on the block and the pommel, which Vorski had[Pg 289] unfastened, a little way off, on the ground. But, when he cast his eyes towards the shadowy recess where the ancient Druid was sleeping when they first arrived, he was astounded to see the old fellow, not exactly at the same place, but between the recess and the exit to the passage.
"Hang it, what's he doing?" he stammered, at once upset by that unexpected presence. "One would think he was asleep!"
The ancient Druid, in fact, appeared to be asleep. Only, why on earth was he sleeping in that attitude, flat on his stomach, with his arms stretched out on either side and his face to the floor? No man on his guard, or at least aware that he was in some sort of danger, would expose himself in this way to the enemy's attack. Moreover-Vorski's eyes were gradually growing accustomed to the half-darkness of the end crypt-moreover the white robe was marked with stains which looked red, which undoubtedly were red. What did it mean?
Otto said, in a low voice:
"He's lying in a queer attitude."
Vorski was thinking the same thing and put it more plainly:
"Yes, the attitude of a corpse."
"The attitude of a corpse," Otto agreed. "That's it, exactly."
Vorski presently fell back a step:
"Oh," he exclaimed, "can it be?"
"What?" asked the other.
"Between the two shoulders… Look."
"Well?"
"The knife."
"What knife?"
[Pg 290]"Conrad's," Vorski declared. "Conrad's dagger. I recognise it. Driven in between the shoulders." And he added, with a shudder, "That's where the red stains come from… It's blood… blood flowing from the wound."
"In that case," Otto remarked, "he is dead?"
"He's dead, yes, the ancient Druid is dead… Conrad must have surprised him and killed him… The ancient Druid is dead."
Vorski remained undecided for a while, ready to fall upon the lifeless body and to stab it in his turn. But he dared no more touch it now that it was dead than when it was alive; and all that he had the courage to do was to run and wrench the dagger from the wound.
"Ah," he cried, "you scoundrel, you've got what you deserve! And Conrad is a champion. I shan't forget you, Conrad, be sure of that."
"Where can Conrad be?"
"In the hall of the God-Stone. Ah, Otto, I'm itching to get back to the woman whom the ancient Druid put there and to settle her hash too!"
"Then you believe that she's a live woman?" chuckled Otto.
"And very much alive at that… like the ancient Druid! That wizard was only a fake, with a
few tricks of his own, perhaps, but no real power. There's the proof!"
"A fake, if you like," the accomplice objected. "But, all the same, he showed you by his signals the way to enter these caves. Now what was his object in that? And what was he doing here? Did he really know the secret of the God-Stone, the[Pg 291] way to get possession of it and exactly where it is?"
"You're right. It's all so many riddles," said Vorski, who preferred not to examine the details of the adventure too closely. "But it's so many riddles which'll answer themselves and which I'm not troubling about for the moment, because it's no longer that creepy individual who's putting them to me."
For the third time they went through the narrow communicating passage. Vorski entered the great hall like a conqueror, with his head high and a confident glance. There was no longer any obstacle, no longer any enemy to overcome. Whether the God-Stone was suspended between the stones of the ceiling, or whether the God-Stone was elsewhere, he was sure to discover it. There remained the mysterious woman who looked like Veronique, but who could not be Veronique and whose real identity he was about to unmask.
"Always presuming that she's still there," he muttered. "And I very much suspect that she's gone. She played her part in the ancient Druid's obscure schemes: and the ancient Druid, thinking me out of the way…"
He stepped forward and climbed a few steps.
The woman was there. She was there, lying on the lower table of the dolmen, shrouded in veils as before. The arm no longer hung towards the ground. There was only the hand emerging from the veils. The turquoise ring was on the finger.
"She hasn't moved," said Otto. "She's still asleep."
[Pg 292]"Perhaps she is asleep," said Vorski. "I'll watch her. Leave me alone."
He went nearer. He still had Conrad's dagger in his hand: and perhaps it was this that suggested killing to him, for his eyes fell upon the weapon and it was not till then that he seemed to realise that he was carrying it and that he might make use of it.
He was not more than three paces from the woman, when he perceived that the wrist which was uncovered was all bruised and as it were mottled with black patches, which evidently came from the cords with which she had been bound. Now the ancient Druid had remarked, an hour ago, that the wrists showed no signs of a bruise!
This detail confounded him anew, first, because it proved to him that this was really the woman whom he had crucified, who had been taken down and who was now before his eyes and, secondly, because he was suddenly reentering the domain of miracles; and Veronique's arm appeared to him, alternately, under two different aspects, as the arm of a living, uninjured woman and as the arm of a lifeless, tortured victim.
His trembling hand clutched the dagger, clinging to it, in a manner of speaking, as the only instrument of salvation. Once more in his confused brain the idea arose of striking, not to kill, because the woman must be dead, but of striking the invisible enemy who persisted in thwarting him and of conjuring all the evil spells at one blow.
He raised his arm. He chose the spot. His face assumed an expression of extreme savagery, lit up with the joy of murder. And suddenly he swooped down, striking, like a madman, at random,[Pg 293] ten times, twenty times, with a frenzied unbridling of all his instincts.
"Take that and die!" he spluttered. "Another!… Die!… And let's have an end of this… You are the evil genius that's been resisting me… and now I'm killing you… Die and leave me free!… Die so that I shall be the only master!"
He stopped to take breath. He was exhausted. And while his haggard eyes stared blindly at the horrible spectacle of the lacerated corpse, he received the strange impression that a shadow was placing itself between him and the sunlight which came through the opening overhead.
"Do you know what you remind me of?" said a voice.
He was dumbfounded. The voice was not Otto's voice. And the voice continued, while he stood with his head lowered and stupidly holding his dagger planted in the dead woman's body:
"Do you know what you remind me of, Vorski? You remind me of the bulls of my country. Let me tell you that I am a Spaniard and a great frequenter of the bull-ring. Well, when our bulls have gored some poor old cab-horse that is only fit for the knacker's yard, they go back to the body, from time to time, turn it over, gore it again, keep on killing it and killing it. You're like them, Vorski. You're seeing red. In order to defend yourself against the living enemy, you fall desperately on the enemy who is no longer alive; and it is death itself that you are trying to kill. What a silly beast you're making of yourself!"
Vorski raised his head. A man was standing in[Pg 294] front of him, leaning against one of the uprights of the dolmen. The man was of the average height, with a slender, well-built figure, and seemed to be still young, notwithstanding his hair, which was turning grey at the temples. He wore a blue-serge jacket with brass buttons and a yachting-cap with a black peak.
"Don't trouble to rack your brains," he said. "You don't know me. Let me introduce myself: Don Luis Perenna, grandee of Spain, a noble of many countries and Prince of Sarek. Yes, don't be surprised: I've taken the title of Prince of Sarek, having a certain right to it."
Vorski looked at him without understanding. The man continued:
"You don't seem very familiar with the Spanish nobility. Still, just test your memory: I am the gentleman who was to come to the rescue of the d'Hergemont family and the people of Sarek, the one whom your son Francois was expecting with such simple faith… Well, are you there?… Look, your companion, the trusty Otto, he seems to remember!… But perhaps my other name will convey more to you? It is well and favourably known. Lupin… Arsene Lupin…"
Vorski watched him with increasing terror and with a misgiving which became more accentuated at each word and movement of this new adversary. Though he recognized neither the man nor the man's voice, he felt himself dominated by a will of which he had already felt the power and lashed by the same sort of implacable irony. But was it possible?
"Everything is possible," Don Luis Perenna went on, "including even what you think. But I[Pg 295] repeat, what a silly beast you're making of yourself! Here are you playing the bold highwayman, the dashing adventurer; and you're frightened the moment you set eyes on one of your crimes! As long as it was just a matter of happy-go-lucky killing, you went straight ahead. But the first little jolt throws you off the track. Vorski kills; but whom has he killed? He has no idea. Is Veronique d'Hergemont dead or alive? Is she fastened to the oak on which you crucified her? Or is she lying here, on the sacrificial table? Did you kill her up there or down here? You can't tell. You never even thought, before you stabbed, of looking to see what you were stabbing. The great thing for you is to slash away with all your might, to intoxicate yourself with the sight and smell of blood and to turn live flesh into a hideous pulp. But look, can't you, you idiot? When a man kills, he's not afraid of killing and he doesn't hide the face of his victim. Look, you idiot!"
He himself stopped over the corpse and unwrapped the veil around the head.
Vorski had closed his eyes. Kneeling, with his chest pressed against the dead woman's legs, he remained without moving and kept his eyes obstinately shut.
"Are you there now?" chuckled Don Luis. "If you daren't look, it's because you've guessed or because you're on the point of guessing, you wretch: am I right? Your idiot brain is working it out: am I right? There were two women in the Isle of Sarek and two only, Veronique and the other… the other whose name was Elfride, I understand: am I right? Elfride and Veronique, your two[Pg 296] wives, one the mother of Raynold, the other the mother of Francois. So, if it's not Francois' mother whom you tied on the cross and whom you've just stabbed, then it's Raynold's mother. If the woman lying here, with her wrists bruised by the torture, is not Veronique, then she's Elfride. There's no mistake possible: Elfride, your wife and your accomplice; Elfride, your willing and subservient tool. And you know it so well that you would rather take my word for it than risk a glance and see the livid face of that de
ad woman, of your obedient accomplice tortured by yourself. You miserable poltroon!"
Vorski had hidden his head in his folded arms. He was not weeping. Vorski could not weep. Nevertheless, his shoulders were jerking convulsively; and his whole attitude expressed the wildest despair.
This lasted for some time. Then the shaking of the shoulders ceased. Still Vorski did not stir.
"Upon my word, you move me to pity, you poor old buffer!" said Don Luis. "Were you so fond of your Elfride as all that? She had become a habit, what? A mascot? Well, what can I say? People as a rule aren't such fools as you! They know what they're doing. They look before they leap! Hang it all, they stop to think! Whereas you go floundering about in crime like a new-born babe struggling in the water! No wonder you sink and go to the bottom… The ancient Druid, for instance: is he dead or alive? Did Conrad stick a dagger into his back, or was I playing the part of that diabolical personage? In short, are there an ancient Druid and a Spanish grandee, or[Pg 297] are the two individuals one and the same? This is all a sealed book to you, my poor fellow. And yet you'll want an explanation. Shall I help you?"
If Vorski had acted without thinking, it was easy to see, when he raised his head, that on this occasion he had taken time to reflect; that he knew very well the desperate resolve which circumstances called upon him to take. He was certainly ready for an explanation, as Don Luis suggested, but he wanted it dagger in hand, with the implacable intention of using it. Slowly, with his eyes fixed on Don Luis and without concealing his purpose, he had freed his weapon and was rising to his feet.
"Take care," said Don Luis. "Your knife is faked as your revolver was. It's made of tin-foil."
Useless pleasantry! Nothing could either hasten or delay the methodical impulse which urged Vorski to the supreme contest. He walked round the sacred table and took up his stand in front of Don Luis.
"You're sure it's you who have been thwarting all my plans these last few days?"
The Secret of Sarek (arsene lupin) Page 22
