813

by Maurice Leblanc

  M. Lenormand found her in one of the drawing rooms, overcome by the unexpected shock, dry-eyed, but with her features wrung with grief and her body trembling all over, as though convulsed with fever. She was a rather tall, dark woman; and her black and exceedingly beautiful eyes were filled with gold, with little gold spots, like spangles gleaming in the dark. Her husband had met her in Holland, where Dolores was born of an old family of Spanish origin, the Amontis. He fell in love with her at first sight; and for four years the harmony between them, built up of mutual affection and devotion, had never been interrupted.

  M. Lenormand introduced himself. She looked at him without replying; and he was silent, for she did not appear, in her stupor, to understand what he said. Then, suddenly, she began to shed copious tears and asked to be taken to her husband.

  In the hall, M. Lenormand found Gourel, who was looking for him and who rushed at him with a hat which he held in his hand:

  “I picked this up, chief … There’s no doubt whom it belongs to, is there?”

  It was a soft, black felt hat and resembled the description given. There was no lining or label inside it.

  “Where did you pick it up?”

  “On the second-floor landing of the servants’ staircase.”

  “Nothing on the other floors?”

  “Nothing. We’ve searched everywhere. There is only the first floor left. And this hat shows that the man went down so far. We’re burning, chief!”

  “I think so.”

  At the foot of the stairs M. Lenormand stopped:

  “Go back to the commissary and give him my orders: he must post two men at the foot of each of the four staircases, revolver in hand. And they are to fire, if necessary. Understand this, Gourel: if Chapman is not saved and if the fellow escapes, it means my resignation. I’ve been wool-gathering for over two hours.”

  He went up the stairs. On the first floor he met two policemen leaving a bedroom, accompanied by a servant of the hotel.

  The passage was deserted. The hotel staff dared not venture into it. Some of the permanent visitors had locked themselves in their rooms; and the police had to knock for a long time and proclaim who they were before they could get the doors opened.

  Farther on, M. Lenormand saw another group of policemen searching the maid’s pantry and, at the end of a long passage, he saw some more men who were approaching the turning, that is to say, that part of the passage which contained the rooms overlooking the Rue de Judée.

  And, suddenly, he heard these men shouting; and they disappeared at a run.

  He hurried after them.

  The policemen had stopped in the middle of the passage. At their feet, blocking their way, with its face on the carpet, lay a corpse.

  M. Lenormand bent down and took the lifeless head in his hands:

  “Chapman,” he muttered. “He is dead.”

  He examined the body. A white knitted silk muffler was tied round the neck. He undid it. Red stains appeared; and he saw that the muffler held a thick wad of cotton-wool in position against the nape of the neck. The wad was soaked with blood.

  Once again there was the same little wound, clean, frank and pitiless.

  M. Formerie and the commissary were at once told and came hastening up.

  “No one gone out?” asked the chief detective. “No surprise?”

  “No,” said the commissary. “There are two men on guard at the foot of each staircase.”

  “Perhaps he has gone up again?” said M. Formerie.

  “No! … No! …”

  “But some one must have met him …”

  “No … This all happened quite a long time ago. The hands are cold … The murder must have been committed almost immediately after the other … as soon as the two men came here by the servants’ staircase.”

  “But the body would have been seen! Think, fifty people must have passed this spot during the last two hours …”

  “The body was not here.”

  “Then where was it?”

  “Why, how can I tell?” snapped the chief detective. “Do as I’m doing, look for yourself! You can’t find things by talking.”

  He furiously patted the knob of his stick with a twitching hand; and he stood there, with his eyes fixed on the body, silent and thoughtful. At last he spoke:

  “Monsieur le Commissaire, be so good as to have the victim taken to an empty room. Let them fetch the doctor. Mr. Manager, would you mind opening the doors of all the rooms on this passage for me?”

  On the left were three bedrooms and two sitting-rooms, forming an empty suite, which M. Lenormand inspected. On the right were four bedrooms. Two were occupied respectively by a M. Reverdat and an Italian, Baron Giacomini, who were both then out. In the third room they found an elderly English maiden lady still in bed; and, in the fourth, an Englishman who was placidly reading and smoking and who had not been in the least disturbed by the noises in the passage. His name was Major Parbury.

  No amount of searching or questioning led to any result. The old maid had heard nothing before the exclamations of the policeman: no noise of a struggle, no cry of pain, no sound of quarreling; and Major Parbury neither.

  Moreover, there was no suspicious clue found, no trace of blood, nothing to lead them to suppose that the unfortunate Chapman had been in one of those rooms.

  “It’s queer,” muttered the examining-magistrate, “it’s all very queer …” And he confessed, ingenuously, “I feel more and more at sea … There is a whole series of circumstances that are partly beyond me. What do you make of it, M. Lenormand?”

  M. Lenormand was on the point of letting off one of those pointed rejoinders in which he was wont to give vent to his chronic ill-temper, when Gourel appeared upon the scene, all out of breath.

  “Chief,” he panted, “they’ve found this … downstairs … in the office … on a chair …”

  It was a parcel of moderate dimensions, wrapped up in a piece of black serge.

  “Did they open it?” asked the chief.

  “Yes, but when they saw what the parcel contained, they did it up again exactly as it was … fastened very tight, as you can see …”

  “Untie it.”

  Gourel removed the wrapper and disclosed a black diagonal jacket and trousers, which had evidently been packed up in a hurry, as the creases in the cloth showed. In the middle was a towel, covered with blood, which had been dipped in water, in order, no doubt, to destroy the marks of the hands that had been wiped on it. Inside the napkin was a steel dagger, with a handle encrusted with gold. This also was red with blood, the blood of three men stabbed within the space of a few hours by an invisible hand, amid the crowd of three hundred people moving about in the huge hotel.

  Edwards, the man-servant, at once identified the dagger as belonging to Mr. Kesselbach. He had seen it on the table on the previous day, before the assault committed by Lupin.

  “Mr. Manager,” said the chief detective, “the restriction is over. Gourel, go and give orders to leave the doors free.”

  “So you think that Lupin has succeeded in getting out?” asked M. Formerie.

  “No. The perpetrator of the three murders which we have discovered is in one of the rooms of the hotel, or, rather, he is among the visitors in the hall or in the reception-rooms. In my opinion, he was staying in the hotel.”

  “Impossible! Besides, where would he have changed his clothes? And what clothes would he have on now?”

  “I don’t know, but I am stating a fact.”

  “And you are letting him go? Why, he’ll just walk out quietly, with his hands in his pockets!”

  “The one who walks away like that, without his luggage, and who does not return, will be the criminal. Mr. Manager, please come with me to the office. I should like to make a close inspection of your visitors’ book.”

  In the office, M. Lenormand found a few letters addressed to Mr. Kesselbach. He handed them to the examining-magistrate. There w
as also a parcel that had just come by the Paris parcel-post. The paper in which it was packed was partly torn; and M. Lenormand saw that it held a small ebony box, engraved with the name of Rudolf Kesselbach. Feeling curious, he opened the parcel. The box contained the fragments of a looking-glass which had evidently been fixed to the inside of the lid. It also contained the card of Arsène Lupin.

  But one detail seemed to strike the chief detective. On the outside, at the bottom of the box, was a little blue-edged label, similar to the label which he had picked up in the room on the fourth floor where the cigarette-case was found, and this label bore the same number, 813.

  CHAPTER III

  M. LENORMAND OPENS HIS CAMPAIGN

  “AUGUSTE, SHOW M. LENORMAND IN.”

  The messenger went out and, a few seconds later, announced the chief of the detective-service.

  There were three men in the prime minister’s private room on the Place Beauvau: the famous Valenglay, leader of the radical party for the past thirty years and now president of the council and minister of the interior; the attorney-general, M. Testard; and the prefect of police, Delaume.

  The prefect of police and the attorney-general did not rise from the chairs which they had occupied during their long conversation with the prime minister. Valenglay, however, stood up and, pressing the chief detective’s hand, said, in the most cordial tones:

  “I have no doubt, my dear Lenormand, that you know the reason why I asked you to come.”

  “The Kesselbach case?”

  “Yes.”

  The Kesselbach case! Not one of us but is able to recall not only the main details of this tragic affair, the tangled skein of which I have set myself to unravel, but even its very smallest incidents, so greatly did the tragedy excite us all during these recent years. Nor is there one of us but remembers the extraordinary stir which it created both in and outside France. And yet there was one thing that upset the public even more than the three murders committed in such mysterious circumstances, more than the detestable atrocity of that butchery, more than anything else; and that was the reappearance—one might almost say the resurrection—of Arsène Lupin.

  Arsène Lupin! No one had heard speak of him for over four years, since his incredible, his astounding adventure of the Hollow Needle, since the day when he had slunk away into the darkness before the eyes of Holmlock Shears and Isidore Beautrelet, carrying on his back the dead body of the woman whom he loved, and followed by his old servant, Victoire.

  From that day onward he had been generally believed to be dead. This was the version put about by the police, who, finding no trace of their adversary, were content purely and simply to bury him.

  Some, however, believing him to be saved, described him as leading a placid, Philistine existence. According to them, he was living with his wife and children, growing his small potatoes; whereas others maintained that, bent down with the weight of sorrow and weary of the vanities of this world, he had sought the seclusion of a Trappist monastery.

  And here he was once more looming large in the public view and resuming his relentless struggle against society! Arsène Lupin was Arsène Lupin again, the fanciful, intangible, disconcerting, audacious, genial Arsène Lupin! But, this time, a cry of horror arose. Arsène Lupin had taken human life! And the fierceness, the cruelty, the ruthless cynicism of the crime were so great that, then and there, the legend of the popular hero, of the chivalrous and occasionally sentimental adventurer, made way for a new conception of an inhuman, bloodthirsty, and ferocious monster. The crowd now loathed and feared its former idol with more intensity than it had once shown in admiring him for his easy grace and his diverting good-humor.

  And, forthwith, the indignation of that frightened crowd turned against the police. Formerly, people had laughed. They forgave the beaten commissary of police for the comical fashion in which he allowed himself to be beaten. But the joke had lasted too long; and, in a burst of revolt and fury, they now called the authorities to account for the unspeakable crimes which these were powerless to prevent.

  In the press, at public meetings, in the streets and even in the tribune of the Chamber of Deputies there was such an explosion of wrath that the government grew alarmed and strove by every possible means to allay the public excitement.

  It so happened that Valenglay, the premier, took a great interest in all these police questions and had often amused himself by going closely into different cases with the chief of the detective-service, whose good qualities and independent character he valued highly. He sent for the prefect and the attorney-general to see him in his room, talked to them and then sent for M. Lenormand.

  “Yes, my dear Lenormand, it’s about the Kesselbach case. But, before we discuss it, I must call your attention to a point which more particularly affects and, I may say, annoys Monsieur le Préfet de Police. M. Delaume, will you explain to M. Lenormand …?

  “Oh, M. Lenormand knows quite well how the matter stands,” said the prefect, in a tone which showed but little good-will toward his subordinate. “We have talked it over already and I have told him what I thought of his improper conduct at the Palace Hotel. People are generally indignant.”

  M. Lenormand rose, took a paper from his pocket and laid it on the table.

  “What is this?” asked Valenglay.

  “My resignation, Monsieur le Président du Conseil.”

  Valenglay gave a jump:

  “What! Your resignation! For a well-meaning remark which Monsieur le Préfet thinks fit to address to you and to which, for that matter, he attaches no importance whatever—do you, Delaume? No importance whatever—and there you go, taking offence! You must confess, my dear Lenormand, that you’re devilish touchy! Come, put that bit of paper back in your pocket and let’s talk seriously.”

  The chief detective sat down again, and Valenglay, silencing the prefect, who made no attempt to conceal his dissatisfaction, said:

  “In two words, Lenormand, the thing is that Lupin’s reappearance upon the scene annoys us. The brute has defied us long enough. It used to be funny, I confess, and I, for my part, was the first to laugh at it. But it’s no longer a question of that. It’s a question of murder now. We could stand Lupin, as long as he amused the gallery. But, when he takes to killing people, no!”

  “Then what is it that you ask, Monsieur le Président?”

  “What we ask? Oh, it’s quite simple! First, his arrest and then his head!”

  “I can promise you his arrest, some day or another, but not his head.”

  “What! If he’s arrested, it means trial for murder, a verdict of guilty, and the scaffold.”

  “No!”

  “And why not?”

  “Because Lupin has not committed murder.”

  “Eh? Why, you’re mad, Lenormand! The corpses at the Palace Hotel are so many inventions, I suppose! And the three murders were never committed!”

  “Yes, but not by Lupin.”

  The chief spoke these words very steadily, with impressive calmness and conviction. The attorney and the prefect protested.

  “I presume, Lenormand,” said Valenglay, “that you do not put forward that theory without serious reasons?”

  “It is not a theory.”

  “What proof have you?”

  “There are two, to begin with, two proofs of a moral nature, which I at once placed before Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction and which the newspapers have laid stress upon. First and foremost, Lupin does not kill people. Next, why should he have killed anybody, seeing that the object which he set out to achieve, the theft, was accomplished and that he had nothing to fear from an adversary who was gagged and bound?”

  “Very well. But the facts?”

  “Facts are worth nothing against reason and logic; and, moreover, the facts also are on my side. What would be the meaning of Lupin’s presence in the room in which the cigarette-case was discovered? On the other hand, the black clothes which were found and which evidently bel
onged to the murderer are not in the least of a size to fit Lupin.”

  “You know him, then, do you?”

  “I? No. But Edwards saw him, Gourel saw him; and the man whom they saw is not the man whom the chambermaid saw, on the servants’ staircase, dragging Chapman by the hand.”

  “Then your idea …”

  “You mean to say, the truth, M. le Président. Here it is, or, at least, here is the truth as far as I know it. On Tuesday, the 16th of April, a man—Lupin—broke into Mr. Kesselbach’s room at about two o’clock in the afternoon …”

  M. Lenormand was interrupted by a burst of laughter. It came from the prefect of police.

  “Let me tell you, M. Lenormand, that you are in rather too great a hurry to state your precise facts. It has been shown that, at three o’clock on that day, Mr. Kesselbach walked into the Crédit Lyonnais and went down to the safe deposit. His signature in the register proves it.”

  M. Lenormand waited respectfully until his superior had finished speaking. Then, without even troubling to reply directly to the attack, he continued:

  “At about two o’clock in the afternoon, Lupin, assisted by an accomplice, a man named Marco, bound Mr. Kesselbach hand and foot, robbed him of all the loose cash which he had upon him and compelled him to reveal the cypher of his safe at the Crédit Lyonnais. As soon as the secret was told, Marco left. He joined another accomplice, who, profiting by a certain resemblance to Mr. Kesselbach—a resemblance which he accentuated that day by wearing clothes similar to Mr. Kesselbach’s and putting on a pair of gold spectacles—entered the Crédit Lyonnais, imitated Mr. Kesselbach’s signature, emptied the safe of its contents and walked off, accompanied by Marco. Marco at once telephoned to Lupin. Lupin, as soon as he was sure that Mr. Kesselbach had not deceived him and that the object of his expedition was attained, went away.”

  Valenglay seemed to waver in his mind:

  “Yes, yes … we’ll admit that … But what surprises me is that a man like Lupin should have risked so much for such a paltry profit: a few bank-notes and the hypothetical contents of a safe.”