813

by Maurice Leblanc

  “What is that?”

  “That I am given free scope and allowed to act according to the needs of the moment, without troubling about the public, who are growing impatient, or my superiors, who are intriguing against me.”

  “I agree.”

  “In that case, Monsieur le Président, in a few days from this I shall be the victor … or I shall be dead.”

  At Saint-Cloud. A little villa situated on one of the highest points of the upland, in an unfrequented road.

  It was eleven o’clock at night. M. Lenormand left his car at Saint-Cloud and walked cautiously along the road. A shadow appeared.

  “Is that you, Gourel?”

  “Yes, chief.”

  “Did you tell the brothers Doudeville that I was coming?”

  “Yes, your room is ready, you can go to bed and sleep … unless they try to carry off Pierre Leduc to-night, which would not surprise me, considering the behavior of the fellow whom the Doudevilles saw.”

  They walked across the garden, softly entered the house and went up to the first floor. The two brothers, Jean and Jacques Doudeville, were there.

  “No news of Prince Sernine?” asked Lenormand.

  “No, chief.”

  “What about Pierre Leduc?”

  “He spends the whole day lying flat on his back in his room on the ground-floor, or else in the garden. He never comes up to see us.”

  “Is he better?”

  “Much better. The rest has made a great change in his appearance.”

  “Is he wholly devoted to Lupin?”

  “To Prince Sernine, rather, for he does not suspect that the two are one and the same man. At least, I suppose so. One never knows, with him. He does not speak at all. Oh, he’s a queer fish! There’s only one person who has the gift of cheering him up, of making him talk and even laugh. That’s a young girl from Garches, to whom Prince Sernine introduced him. Geneviève Ernemont her name is. She has been here three times already … she was here to-day.” He added, jestingly, “I believe there’s a little flirting going on … It’s like his highness Prince Sernine and Mrs. Kesselbach … It seems he’s making eyes at her! … That devil of a Lupin!”

  M. Lenormand did not reply. But it was obvious that all these details, to which he seemed to attach no importance, were noted in the recesses of his memory, to be used whenever he might need to draw the logical inferences from them. He lit a cigar, chewed it without smoking it, lit it again and dropped it.

  He asked two or three more questions and then, dressed as he was, threw himself on his bed:

  “If the least thing happens, let me be awakened … If not, I shall sleep through the night … Go to your posts, all of you.”

  The others left the room.

  An hour passed, two hours.

  Suddenly, M. Lenormand felt some one touch him and Gourel said to him:

  “Get up, chief; they have opened the gate.”

  “One man or two?”

  “I only saw one … the moon appeared just then … he crouched down against a hedge.”

  “And the brothers Doudeville?”

  “I sent them out by the back. They will cut off his retreat when the time comes.”

  Gourel took M. Lenormand’s hand, led him downstairs and then into a little dark room:

  “Don’t stir, chief; we are in Pierre Leduc’s dressing-room. I am opening the door of the recess in which his bed stands … Don’t be afraid … he has taken his veronal as he does every evening … nothing can wake him. Come this way … It’s a good hiding-place, isn’t it? … These are the curtains of his bed … From here you can see the window and the whole side of the room between the window and the bed.”

  The casement stood open and admitted a vague light, which became very precise at times, when the moon burst through her veil of clouds. The two men did not take their eyes from the empty window-frame, feeling certain that the event which they were awaiting would come from that side.

  A slight, creaking noise …

  “He is climbing the trellis,” whispered Gourel.

  “Is it high?”

  “Six feet or so.”

  The creaking became more distinct.

  “Go, Gourel,” muttered M. Lenormand, “find the Doudevilles, bring them back to the foot of the wall and bar the road to any one who tries to get down this way.”

  Gourel went. At the same moment, a head appeared at the level of the window. Then a leg was flung over the balcony. M. Lenormand distinguished a slenderly-built man, below the middle height, dressed in dark colours and without a hat.

  The man turned and, leaning over the balcony, looked for a few seconds into space, as though to make sure that no danger threatened him. Then he stooped down and lay at full length on the floor. He appeared motionless. But soon M. Lenormand realized that the still blacker shadow which he formed against the surrounding darkness was coming forward, nearer.

  It reached the bed.

  M. Lenormand had an impression that he could hear the man’s breathing and, at the same time, that he could just see his eyes, keen, glittering eyes, which pierced the darkness like shafts of fire and which themselves could see through that same darkness.

  Pierre Leduc gave a deep sigh and turned over.

  A fresh silence …

  The man had glided along the bed with imperceptible movements and his dark outline now stood out against the whiteness of the sheets that hung down to the floor.

  M. Lenormand could have touched him by putting out his arm. This time, he clearly distinguished the breathing, which alternated with that of the sleeper, and he had the illusion that he also heard the sound of a heart beating.

  Suddenly, a flash of light … The man had pressed the spring of an electric lantern; and Pierre Leduc was lit full in the face, but the man remained in the shade, so that M. Lenormand was unable to see his features.

  All that he saw was something that shone in the bright space; and he shuddered. It was the blade of a knife; and that thin, tapering knife, more like a stiletto than a dagger, seemed to him identical with the weapon which he had picked up by the body of Chapman, Mr. Kesselbach’s secretary.

  He put forth all his will-power to restrain himself from springing upon the man. He wanted first to know what the man had come to do.

  The hand was raised. Was he going to strike? M. Lenormand calculated the distance in order to stop the blow … But no, it was not a murderous gesture, but one of caution. The hand would only fall if Pierre Leduc stirred or tried to call out. And the man bent over the sleeper, as though he were examining something.

  “The right cheek,” thought M. Lenormand, “the scar on the right cheek … He wants to make sure that it is really Pierre Leduc.”

  The man had turned a little to one side, so that only his shoulders were visible. But his clothes, his overcoat, were so near that they brushed against the curtains behind which M. Lenormand was hiding.

  “One movement on his part,” thought the chief detective, “a thrill of alarm; and I shall collar him.”

  But the man, entirely absorbed in his examination, did not stir. At last, after shifting the dagger to the hand that held the lantern, he raised the sheet, at first hardly at all, then a little more, then more still, until the sleeper’s left arm was uncovered and the hand laid bare. The flash of the lantern shone upon the hand. The fingers lay outspread. The little finger was cut on the second joint.

  Again Pierre Leduc made a movement. The light was immediately put out; and, for an instant, the man remained beside the bed, motionless, standing straight up. Would he make up his mind to strike? M. Lenormand underwent the agony of the crime which he could so easily prevent, but which he did not want to forestall before the very last second.

  A long, a very long silence. Suddenly, he saw or rather fancied that he saw an arm uplifted. Instinctively he moved, stretching his hand above the sleeper. In making this gesture, he hit against the man.

 
A dull cry. The fellow struck out at space, defended himself at random and fled toward the window. But M. Lenormand had leapt upon him and had his two arms around the man’s shoulders.

  He at once felt him yielding and, as the weaker of the two, powerless in Lenormand’s hands, trying to avoid the struggle and to slip from between his arms. Lenormand, exerting all his strength, held him flat against his chest, bent him in two and stretched him on his back on the floor.

  “Ah, I’ve got him, I’ve got him!” he muttered triumphantly.

  And he felt a singular elation at imprisoning that terrifying criminal, that unspeakable monster, in his irresistible grip. He felt him living and quivering, enraged and desperate, their two lives mingled, their breaths blended:

  “Who are you?” he asked. “Who are you? … You’ll have to speak …”

  And he clasped the enemy’s body with still greater force, for he had an impression that that body was diminishing between his arms, that it was vanishing. He gripped harder … and harder …

  And suddenly he shuddered from head to foot. He had felt, he still felt a tiny prick in the throat … In his exasperation, he gripped harder yet: the pain increased! And he observed that the man had succeeded in twisting one arm round, slipping his hand to his chest and holding the dagger on end. The arm, it was true, was incapable of motion; but the closer M. Lenormand tightened his grip, the deeper did the point of the dagger enter the proffered flesh.

  He flung back his head a little to escape the point: the point followed the movement and the wound widened.

  Then he moved no more, remembering the three crimes and all the alarming, atrocious and prophetic things represented by that same little steel needle which was piercing his skin and which, in its turn, was implacably penetrating …

  Suddenly, he let go and gave a leap backwards. Then, at once, he tried to resume the offensive. It was too late. The man flung his legs across the window-sill and jumped.

  “Look out, Gourel!” he cried, knowing that Gourel was there, ready to catch the fugitive.

  He leant out. A crunching of pebbles … a shadow between two trees, the slam of the gate … And no other sound … no interference …

  Without giving a thought to Pierre Leduc, he called:

  “Gourel! … Doudeville!”

  No answer. The great silence of the countryside at night …

  In spite of himself, he continued to think of the treble murder, the steel dagger. But no, it was impossible, the man had not had time, had not even had the need to strike, as he had found the road clear.

  M. Lenormand jumped out in his turn and, switching on his lantern, recognized Gourel lying on the ground:

  “Damn it!” he swore. “If they’ve killed him, they’ll have to pay dearly for it.”

  But Gourel was not dead, only stunned; and, a few minutes later, he came to himself and growled:

  “Only a blow of the fist, chief … just a blow of the fist which caught me full in the chest. But what a fellow!”

  “There were two of them then?”

  “Yes, a little one, who went up, and another, who took me unawares while I was watching.”

  “And the Doudevilles?”

  “Haven’t seen them.”

  One of them, Jacques, was found near the gate, bleeding from a punch in the jaw; the other a little farther, gasping for breath from a blow full on the chest.

  “What is it? What happened?” asked M. Lenormand.

  Jacques said that his brother and he had knocked up against an individual who had crippled them before they had time to defend themselves.

  “Was he alone?”

  “No; when he passed near us, he had a pal with him, shorter than himself.”

  “Did you recognize the man who struck you?”

  “Judging by the breadth of his shoulders, I thought he might be the Englishman of the Palace Hotel, the one who left the hotel and whose traces we lost.”

  “The major?”

  “Yes, Major Parbury.”

  After a moment’s reflection, M. Lenormand said:

  “There is no doubt possible. There were two of them in the Kesselbach case: the man with the dagger, who committed the murders, and his accomplice, the major.”

  “That is what Prince Sernine thinks,” muttered Jacques Doudeville.

  “And to-night,” continued the chief detective, “it is they again: the same two.” And he added, “So much the better. The chance of catching two criminals is a hundred times greater than the chance of catching one.”

  M. Lenormand attended to his men, had them put to bed and looked to see if the assailants had dropped anything or left any traces. He found nothing and went back to bed again himself.

  In the morning, as Gourel and the Doudevilles felt none the worse for their injuries, he told the two brothers to scour the neighborhood and himself set out with Gourel for Paris, in order to hurry matters on and give his orders.

  He lunched in his office. At two o’clock, he heard good news. One of his best detectives, Dieuzy, had picked up Steinweg, Rudolf Kesselbach’s correspondent, as the German was stepping out of a train from Marseilles.

  “Is Dieuzy there?”

  “Yes, chief,” said Gourel. “He’s here with the German.”

  “Have them brought in to me.”

  At that moment, the telephone-bell rang. It was Jean Doudeville, speaking from the post-office at Garches. The conversation did not take long:

  “Is that you, Jean? Any news?”

  “Yes, chief, Major Parbury …”

  “Well?”

  “We have found him. He has become a Spaniard and has darkened his skin. We have just seen him. He was entering the Garches free-school. He was received by that young lady … you know, the girl who knows Prince Sernine, Geneviève Ernemont.”

  “Thunder!”

  M. Lenormand let go the receiver, made a grab at his hat, flew into the passage, met Dieuzy and the German, shouted to them to meet him in his office at six o’clock, rushed down the stairs, followed by Gourel and two inspectors whom he picked up on the way, and dived into a taxi-cab:

  “Quick as you can to Garches … ten francs for yourself!”

  He stopped the car a little before the Parc de Villeneuve, at the turn of the lane that led to the school. Jean Doudeville was waiting for him and at once exclaimed:

  “He slipped away, ten minutes ago, by the other end of the lane.”

  “Alone?”

  “No, with the girl.”

  M. Lenormand took Doudeville by the collar:

  “Wretch! You let him go! But you ought to have … you ought to have …”

  “My brother is on his track.”

  “A lot of good that will do us! He’ll stick your brother. You’re no match for him, either of you!”

  He himself took the steering-wheel of the taxi, and resolutely drove into the lane, regardless of the cart-ruts and of the bushes on each side. They soon emerged on a parish-road, which took them to a crossway where five roads met. M. Lenormand, without hesitation chose the one on the left, the Saint-Cucufa Road. As a matter of fact, at the top of the slope that runs down to the lake, they met the other Doudeville brother, who shouted:

  “They are in a carriage … half a mile away.”

  The chief did not stop. He sent the car flying down the incline, rushed along the bends, drove round the lake and suddenly uttered an exclamation of triumph. Right at the top of a little hill that stood in front of them, he had seen the hood of a carriage.

  Unfortunately, he had taken the wrong road and had to back the machine. When he reached the place where the roads branched, the carriage was still there, stationary. And, suddenly, while he was turning, he saw a girl spring from the carriage. A man appeared on the step. The girl stretched out her arm. Two reports rang out.

  She had taken bad aim, without a doubt, for a head looked round the other side of the hood and the man, catching sight of the moto
r-cab, gave his horse a great lash with the whip and it started off at a gallop. The next moment, a turn of the road hid the carriage from sight.

  M. Lenormand finished his tacking in a few seconds, darted straight up the incline, passed the girl without stopping and turned round boldly. He found himself on a steep, pebbly forest road, which ran down between dense woods and which could only be followed very slowly and with the greatest caution. But what did he care! Twenty yards in front of him, the carriage, a sort of two-wheeled cabriolet, was dancing over the stones, drawn, or rather held back, by a horse which knew enough only to go very carefully, feeling its way and taking no risks. There was nothing to fear; escape was impossible.

  And the two conveyances went shaking and jolting down-hill. At one moment, they were so close together that M. Lenormand thought of alighting and running with his men. But he felt the danger of putting on the brake on so steep a slope; and he went on, pressing the enemy closely, like a prey which one keeps within sight, within touch …

  “We’ve got him, chief, we’ve got him!” muttered the inspectors, excited by the unexpected nature of the chase.

  At the bottom, the way flattened out into a road that ran towards the Seine, towards Bougival. The horse, on reaching level ground, set off at a jog-trot, without hurrying itself and keeping to the middle of the road.

  A violent effort shook the taxi. It appeared, instead of rolling, to proceed by bounds, like a darting fawn, and, slipping by the roadside slope, ready to smash any obstacle, it caught up the carriage, came level with it, passed it …

  An oath from M. Lenormand … shouts of fury … The carriage was empty!

  The carriage was empty. The horse was going along peacefully, with the reins on its back, no doubt returning to the stable of some inn in the neighborhood, where it had been hired for the day …

  Suppressing his inward rage, the chief detective merely said:

  “The major must have jumped out during the few seconds when we lost sight of the carriage, at the top of the descent.”