The Hollow Needle

by Maurice Leblanc

  In Book III of Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War (MS. edition, Alexandria), it is stated that, after the defeat of Veridovix by G. Titullius Sabinus, the chief of the Caleti was brought before Caesar and that, for his ransom, he revealed the Secret of the Needle—

  The Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, between Charles the Simple and Rollo, the chief of the Norse barbarians, gives Rollo’s name followed by all his titles, among which we read that of Master of the Secret of the Needle.

  The Saxon Chronicle (Gibson’s edition, page 134), speaking of William the Conqueror, says that the staff of his banner ended in a steel point pierced with an eye, like a needle.

  In a rather ambiguous phrase in her examination, Joan of Arc admits that she has still a great secret to tell the King of France. To which her judges reply, “Yes, we know of what you speak; and that, Joan, is why you shall die the death.”

  Philippe de Comines mentions it in connection with Louis XI, and, later, Sully in connection with Henry IV: “By the virtue of the Needle!” the good king sometimes swears.

  Between these two, Francis I, in a speech addressed to the notables of the Havre, in 1520, uttered this phrase, which has been handed down in the diary of a Honfleur burgess; “The Kings of France carry secrets that often decide the conduct of affairs and the fate of towns.”

  All these quotations, all the stories relating to the Iron Mask, the Captain of the Guards and his descendant, I have found to-day in a pamphlet written by this same descendant and published in the month of June, 1815, just before or just after the battle of Waterloo, in a period, therefore, of great upheavals, in which the revelations which it contained were likely to pass unperceived.

  What is the value of this pamphlet? Nothing, you will tell me, and we must attach no credit to it. And this is the impression which I myself would have carried away, if it had not occurred to me to open Caesar’s Commentaries at the chapter given. What was my astonishment when I came upon the phrase quoted in the little book before me! And it was the same thing with the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, with the Saxon Chronicle, with the examination of Joan of Arc, in short, with all that I have been able to verify up to the present.

  Lastly, there is an even more precise fact related by the author of the pamphlet of 1815. During the French campaign, he being then an officer under Napoleon, his horse dropped dead, one evening, and he rang at the door of a castle where he was received by an old knight of St. Louis. And, in the course of conversation with the old man, he learnt that this castle, standing on the bank of the Creuse, was called the Chateau de l’Aiguille, that it had been built and christened by Louis XIV, and that, by his express order, it was adorned with turrets and with a spire which represented the Needle. As its date it bore, it must still bear, the figure 1680.

  1680! One year after the publication of the book and the imprisonment of the Iron Mask! Everything was now explained: Louis XIV, foreseeing that the secret might be noised abroad, had built and named that castle so as to offer the quidnuncs a natural explanation of the ancient mystery. The Hollow Needle! A castle with pointed bell-turrets standing on the bank of the Creuse and belonging to the King. People would at once think that they had the key to the riddle and all enquiries would cease.

  The calculation was just, seeing that, more than two centuries later, M. Beautrelet fell into the trap. And this, Sir, is what I was leading up to in writing this letter. If Lupin, under the name of Anfredi, rented from M. Valmeras the Chateau de l’Aiguille on the bank of the Creuse; if, admitting the success of the inevitable investigations of M. Beautrelet, he lodged his two prisoners there, it was because he admitted the success of the inevitable researches made by M. Beautrelet and because, with the object of obtaining the peace for which he had asked, he laid for M. Beautrelet precisely what we may call the historic trap of Louis XIV.

  And hence we come to this undeniable conclusion, that he, Lupin, by his unaided lights, without possessing any other facts than those which we possess, managed by means of the witchcraft of a really extraordinary genius, to decipher the undecipherable document; and that he, Lupin, the last heir of the Kings of France, knows the royal mystery of the Hollow Needle!

  Here ended the letter. But, for some minutes, from the passage that referred to the Chateau de l’Aiguille onward, it was not Beautrelet’s but another voice that read it aloud. Realizing his defeat, crushed under the weight of his humiliation, Isidore had dropped the newspaper and sunk into his chair, with his face buried in his hands.

  Panting, shaken with excitement by this incredible story, the crowd had come gradually nearer and was now pressing round.

  With a thrill of anguish, they waited for the words which he would say in reply, the objections which he would raise.

  He did not stir.

  Valmeras gently uncrossed his hands and raised his head.

  Isidore Beautrelet was weeping.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE TREATISE OF THE NEEDLE

  IT IS FOUR O’CLOCK in the morning. Isidore has not returned to the Lycee Janson. He has no intention of returning before the end of the war of extermination which he has declared against Lupin. This much he swore to himself under his breath, while his friends drove off with him, all faint and bruised, in a cab.

  A mad oath! An absurd and illogical war! What can he do, a single, unarmed stripling, against that phenomenon of energy and strength? On which side is he to attack him? He is unassailable. Where to wound him? He is invulnerable. Where to get at him? He is inaccessible.

  Four o’clock in the morning. Isidore has again accepted his schoolfellow’s hospitality. Standing before the chimney in his bedroom, with his elbows flat on the mantel-shelf and his two fists under his chin, he stares at his image in the looking-glass. He is not crying now, he can shed no more tears, nor fling himself about on his bed, nor give way to despair, as he has been doing for the last two hours and more. He wants to think, to think and understand.

  And he does not remove his eyes from those same eyes reflected in the glass, as though he hoped to double his powers of thought by contemplating his pensive image, as though he hoped to find at the back of that mirrored Beautrelet the unsolvable solution of what he does not find within himself.

  He stands thus until six o’clock, and, little by little, the question presents itself to his mind with the strictness of an equation, bare and dry and cleared of all the details that complicate and obscure it.

  Yes, he has made a mistake. Yes, his reading of the document is all wrong. The word aiguille does not point to the castle on the Creuse. Also, the word demoiselles cannot be applied to Raymonde de Saint-Veran and her cousin, because the text of the document dates back for centuries.

  Therefore, all must be done over again, from the beginning.

  How?

  One piece of evidence alone would be incontestible: the book published under Louis XIV. Now of those hundred copies printed by the person who was presumed to be the Man with the Iron Mask only two escaped the flames. One was purloined by the Captain of the Guards and lost. The other was kept by Louis XIV, handed down to Louis XV, and burnt by Louis XVI. But a copy of the essential page, the page containing the solution of the problem, or at least a cryptographic solution, was conveyed to Marie Antoinette, who slipped it into the binding of her book of hours. What has become of this paper? Is it the one which Beautrelet has held in his hands and which Lupin recovered from him through Bredoux, the magistrate’s clerk? Or is it still in Marie Antoinette’s book of hours? And the question resolves itself into this: what has become of the Queen’s book of hours?

  After taking a short rest, Beautrelet consulted his friend’s father, an old and experienced collector, who was often called upon officially to give an expert opinion and who had quite lately been invited to advise the director of one of our museums on the drawing up of the catalogue.

  “Marie Antoinette’s book of hours?” he exclaimed. “Why, the Queen left it to her waiting-woman, with secr
et instructions to forward it to Count Fersen. After being piously preserved in the count’s family, it has been, for the last five years, in a glass case—”

  “A glass case?”

  “In the Musee Carnavalet, quite simply.”

  “When will the museum be open?”

  “At twenty minutes from now, as it is every morning.”

  Isidore and his friend jumped out of a cab at the moment when the doors of Madame de Sevigne’s old mansion were opening.

  “Hullo! M. Beautrelet!”

  A dozen voices greeted his arrival. To his great surprise, he recognized the whole crowd of reporters who were following up “the mystery of the Hollow Needle.” And one of them exclaimed:

  “Funny, isn’t it, that we should all have had the same idea? Take care, Arsène Lupin may be among us!”

  They entered the museum together. The director was at once informed, placed himself entirely at their disposal, took them to the glass case and skewed them a poor little volume, devoid of all ornament, which certainly had nothing royal about it. Nevertheless, they were overcome by a certain emotion at the sight of this object which the Queen had touched in those tragic days, which her eyes, red with tears, had looked upon—And they dared not take it and hunt through it: it was as though they feared lest they should be guilty of a sacrilege—

  “Come, M. Beautrelet, it’s your business!”

  He took the book with an anxious gesture. The description corresponded with that given by the author of the pamphlet. Outside was a parchment cover, dirty, stained and worn in places, and under it, the real binding, in stiff leather. With what a thrill Beautrelet felt for the hidden pocket! Was it a fairy tale? Or would he find the document written by Louis XVI and bequeathed by the Queen to her fervent admirer?

  At the first page, on the upper side of the book, there was no receptacle.

  “Nothing,” he muttered.

  “Nothing,” they echoed, palpitating with excitement.

  But, at the last page, forcing back the book a little, he at once saw that the parchment was not stuck to the binding. He slipped his fingers in between—there was something—yes, he felt something—a paper—

  “Oh!” he gasped, in an accent almost of pain. “Here—is it possible?”

  “Quick, quick!” they cried. “What are you waiting for?”

  He drew out a sheet folded in two.

  “Well, read it!—There are words in red ink—Look!—it might be blood—pale, faded blood—Read it!—”

  He read:

  To you, Fersen. For my son. 16 October, 1793.

  MARIE ANTOINETTE.

  And suddenly Beautrelet gave a cry of stupefaction. Under the Queen’s signature there were—there were two words, in black ink, underlined with a flourish—two words:

  ARSÈNE LUPIN.

  All, in turns, took the sheet of paper and the same cry escaped from the lips of all of them:

  “Marie Antoinette!—Arsène Lupin!”

  A great silence followed. That double signature: those two names coupled together, discovered hidden in the book of hours; that relic in which the poor Queen’s desperate appeal had slumbered for more than a century: that horrible date of the 16th of October, 1793, the day on which the Royal head fell: all of this was most dismally and disconcertingly tragic.

  “Arsène Lupin!” stammered one of the voices, thus emphasizing the scare that underlay the sight of that demoniacal name at the foot of the hallowed page.

  “Yes, Arsène Lupin,” repeated Beautrelet. “The Queen’s friend was unable to understand her desperate dying appeal. He lived with the keepsake in his possession which the woman whom he loved had sent him and he never guessed the reason of that keepsake. Lupin discovered everything, on the other hand—and took it.”

  “Took what?”

  “The document, of course! The document written by Louis XVI; and it is that which I held in my hands. The same appearance, the same shape, the same red seals. I understand why Lupin would not leave me a document which I could turn to account by merely examining the paper, the seals and so on.”

  “And then?”

  “Well, then, since the document is genuine, since I have, with my own eyes, seen the marks of the red seals, since Marie Antoinette herself assures me, by these few words in her hand, that the whole story of the pamphlet, as printed by M. Massiban, is correct, because a problem of the Hollow Needle really exists, I am now certain to succeed.”

  “But how? Whether genuine or not, the document is of no use to you if you do not manage to decipher it, because Louis XVI destroyed the book that gave the explanation.”

  “Yes, but the other copy, which King Louis XVI’s Captain of the Guards snatched from the flames, was not destroyed.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Prove the contrary.”

  After uttering this defiance, Beautrelet was silent for a time and then, slowly, with his eyes closed, as though trying to fix and sum up his thoughts, he said:

  “Possessing the secret, the Captain of the Guards begins by revealing it bit by bit in the journal found by his descendant. Then comes silence. The answer to the riddle is withheld. Why? Because the temptation to make use of the secret creeps over him little by little and he gives way to it. A proof? His murder. A further proof? The magnificent jewel found upon him, which he must undoubtedly have taken from some royal treasure the hiding-place of which, unknown to all, would just constitute the mystery of the Hollow Needle. Lupin conveyed as much to me; Lupin was not lying.”

  “Then what conclusion do you draw, Beautrelet?”

  “I draw this conclusion, my friends, that it be a good thing to advertise this story as much as possible, so that people may know, through all the papers, that we are looking for a book entitled The Treatise of the Needle. It may be fished out from the back shelves of some provincial library.”

  The paragraph was drawn up forthwith; and Beautrelet set to work at once, without even waiting for it to produce a result. A first scent suggested itself: the murder was committed near Gaillon. He went there that same day. Certainly, he did not hope to reconstruct a crime perpetrated two hundred years ago. But, all the same, there are crimes that leave traces in the memories, in the traditions of a countryside. They are recorded in the local chronicles. One day, some provincial archaeologist, some lover of old legends, some student of the minor incidents of the life of the past makes them the subject of an article in a newspaper or of a communication to the academy of his departmental town.

  Beautreiet saw three or four of these archaeologists. With one of them in particular, an old notary, he examined the prison records, the ledgers of the old bailiwicks and the parish registers. There was no entry referring to the murder of a Captain of the Guards in the seventeenth century.

  He refused to be discouraged and continued his search in Paris, where the magistrate’s examination might have taken place. His efforts came to nothing.

  But the thought of another track sent him off in a fresh direction. Was there no chance of finding out the name of that captain whose descendant served in the armies of the Republic and was quartered in the Temple during the imprisonment of the Royal Family? By dint of patient working, he ended by making out a list in which two names at least presented an almost complete resemblance: M. de Larbeyrie, under Louis XIV, and Citizen Larbrie, under the Terror.

  This already was an important point. He stated it with precision in a note which he sent to the papers, asking for any information concerning this Larbeyrie or his descendants.

  It was M. Massiban, the Massiban of the pamphlet, the member of the Institute, who replied to him:

  SIR:

  Allow me to call your attention to the following passage of Voltaire, which I came upon in his manuscript of Le Siecle de Louis XIV. (Chapter XXV: Particularites et anecdotes du regne). The passage has been suppressed in all the printed editions:

  “I have heard it said by the late M. de Caumartin
, intendant of finance, who was a friend of Chamillard the minister, that the King one day left hurriedly in his carriage at the news that M. de Larbeyrie had been murdered and robbed of some magnificent jewels. He seemed greatly excited and repeated:

  “‘All is lost—all is lost—’

  “In the following year, the son of this Larbeyrie and his daughter, who had married the Marquis de Velines, were banished to their estates in Provence and Brittany. We cannot doubt that there is something peculiar in this.”

  I, in my turn, will add that we can doubt it all the less inasmuch as M. de Chamillard, according to Voltaire, WAS THE LAST MINISTER WHO POSSESSED THE STRANGE SECRET OF THE IRON MASK.

  You will see for yourself, Sir, the profit that can be derived from this passage and the evident link established between the two adventures. As for myself, I will not venture to imagine any very exact surmise as regards the conduct, the suspicions, and the apprehensions of Louis XIV in these circumstances; but, on the other hand, seeing that M. de Larbeyrie left a son, who was probably the grandfather of Larbrie the citizen-officer, and also a daughter, is it not permissible to suppose that a part of the papers left by Larbeyrie came to the daughter and that among these papers was the famous copy which the Captain of the Guards saved from the flames?

  I have consulted the Country-house Year-book. There is a Baron de Velines living not far from Rennes. Could he be a descendant of the Marquis? At any rate, I wrote to him yesterday, on chance, to ask if he had not in his possession a little old book bearing on its title-page the word aiguille; and I am awaiting his reply.

  It would give me the greatest pleasure to talk of all these matters with you. If you can spare the time, come and see me.