813

by Maurice Leblanc

  Not so very long before, in a speech delivered at the time of the fire at the Louvre and the capture of the incendiaries, Valenglay, the prime minister, had said, speaking in defence of the somewhat arbitrary manner in which M. Lenormand had acted on that occasion:

  “With his great powers of discernment, his energy, his qualities of decision and execution, his unexpected methods, his inexhaustible resources, M. Lenormand reminds us of the only man who, if he were still alive, could hope to hold his own against him: I mean Arsène Lupin. M. Lenormand is an Arsène Lupin in the service of society.”

  And, lo and behold, M. Lenormand was none other than Arsène Lupin!

  That he was a Russian prince, who cared! Lupin was an old hand at such changes of personality as that. But chief detective! What a delicious irony! What a whimsical humor in the conduct of that extraordinary life!

  M. Lenormand! … Arsène Lupin! …

  People were now able to explain to themselves the apparently miraculous feats of intelligence which had quite recently bewildered the crowd and baffled the police. They understood how his accomplice had been juggled away in the middle of the Palais de Justice itself, in broad daylight and on the appointed day. Had he himself not said:

  “My process is so ingenious and so simple … How surprised people will be on the day when I am free to speak! ‘Is that all?’ I shall be asked. That is all; but it had to be thought of.”

  It was, indeed, childishly simple: all you had to do was to be chief of the detective-service.

  Well, Lupin was chief of the detective-service; and every police-officer obeying his orders had made himself the involuntary and unconscious accomplice of Arsène Lupin.

  What a comedy! What admirable bluff! It was the monumental and consoling farce of these drab times of ours. Lupin in prison, Lupin irretrievably conquered was, in spite of himself, the great conqueror. From his cell he shone over Paris. He was more than ever the idol, more than ever the master.

  When Arsène Lupin awoke next morning, in his room at the “Santé Palace,” as he at once nicknamed it, he had a very clear vision of the enormous sensation which would be produced by his arrest under the double name of Sernine and Lenormand and the double title of prince and chief of the detective-service.

  He rubbed his hands and gave vent to his thoughts:

  “A man can have no better companion in his loneliness than the approval of his contemporaries. O fame! The sun of all living men! …”

  Seen by daylight, his cell pleased him even better than at night. The window, placed high up in the wall, afforded a glimpse of the branches of a tree, through which peeped the blue of the sky above. The walls were white. There was only one table and one chair, both fastened to the floor. But everything was quite nice and clean.

  “Come,” he said, “a little rest-cure here will be rather charming … But let us see to our toilet … Have I all I want? … No … In that case, ring twice for the chambermaid.”

  He pressed the button of an apparatus beside the door, which released a signaling-disc in the corridor.

  After a moment, bolts and bars were drawn outside, a key turned in the lock and a warder appeared.

  “Hot water, please,” said Lupin.

  The other looked at him with an air of mingled amazement and rage.

  “Oh,” said Lupin, “and a bath-towel! By Jove, there’s no bath-towel!”

  The man growled:

  “You’re getting at me, aren’t you? You’d better be careful!”

  He was going away, when Lupin caught him roughly by the arm:

  “Here! A hundred francs if you’ll post a letter for me.”

  He took out a hundred-franc note, which he had concealed during the search, and offered it to him.

  “Where’s the letter?” said the warder, taking the money.

  “Just give me a moment to write it.”

  He sat down at the table, scribbled a few words in pencil on a sheet of paper, put it in an envelope and addressed the letter:

  “To Monsieur S. B. 42,

  “Poste Restante,

  “PARIS.”

  The warder took the letter and walked away.

  “That letter,” said Lupin to himself, “will reach destination as safely as if I delivered it myself. I shall have the reply in an hour at latest: just the time I want to take a good look into my position.”

  He sat down on his chair and, in an undertone, summed up the situation as follows:

  “When all is said and done, I have two adversaries to fight at the present moment. There is, first, society, which holds me and which I can afford to laugh at. Secondly, there is a person unknown, who does not hold me, but whom I am not inclined to laugh at in the very least. It is he who told the police that I was Sernine. It was he who guessed that I was M. Lenormand. It was he who locked the door of the underground passage and it was he who had me clapped into prison.”

  Arsène Lupin reflected for a second and then continued:

  “So, at long last, the struggle lies between him and me. And, to keep up that struggle, that is to say, to discover and get to the bottom of the Kesselbach case, here am I, a prisoner, while he is free, unknown, and inaccessible, and holds the two trump-cards which I considered mine: Pierre Leduc and old Steinweg … In short, he is near the goal, after finally pushing me back.”

  A fresh contemplative pause, followed by a fresh soliloquy:

  “The position is far from brilliant. On the one side, everything; on the other, nothing. Opposite me, a man of my own strength, or stronger, because he has not the same scruples that hamper me. And I am without weapons to attack him with.”

  He repeated the last sentence several times, in a mechanical voice, and then stopped and, taking his forehead between his hands, sat for a long time wrapped in thought.

  “Come in, Mr. Governor,” he said, seeing the door open.

  “Were you expecting me?”

  “Why, I wrote to you, Mr. Governor, asking you to come! I felt certain that the warder would give you my letter. I was so certain of it that I put your initials, S. B., and your age, forty-two, on the envelope!”

  The governor’s name, in point of fact, was Stanislas Borély, and he was forty-two years of age. He was a pleasant-looking man, with a very gentle character, who treated the prisoners with all the indulgence possible.

  He said to Lupin:

  “Your opinion of my subordinate’s integrity was quite correct. Here is your money. It shall be handed to you at your release … You will now go through the searching-room again.”

  Lupin went with M. Borély to the little room reserved for this purpose, undressed and, while his clothes were inspected with justifiable suspicion, himself underwent a most fastidious examination.

  He was then taken back to his cell and M. Borély said:

  “I feel easier. That’s done.”

  “And very well done, Mr. Governor. Your men perform this sort of duty with a delicacy for which I should like to thank them by giving them a small token of my satisfaction.”

  He handed a hundred-franc note to M. Borély, who jumped as though he had been shot:

  “Oh! … But … where does that come from?”

  “No need to rack your brains, Mr. Governor. A man like myself, leading the life that I do, is always prepared for any eventuality: and no mishap, however painful—not even imprisonment—can take him unawares.”

  Seizing the middle finger of his left hand between the thumb and forefinger of the right, he pulled it off smartly and presented it calmly to M. Borély:

  “Don’t start like that, Mr. Governor. This is not my finger, but just a tube, made of gold-beater’s skin and cleverly colored, which fits exactly over my middle finger and gives the illusion of a real finger.” And he added, with a laugh, “In such a way, of course, as to conceal a third hundred-franc note … What is a poor man to do? He must carry the best purse he can … and must needs make use of it on occasions …�
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  He stopped at the sight of M. Borély’s startled face:

  “Please don’t think, Mr. Governor, that I wish to dazzle you with my little parlor-tricks. I only wanted to show you that you have to do with a … client of a rather … special nature and to tell you that you must not be surprised if I venture, now and again, to break the ordinary rules and regulations of your establishment.”

  The governor had recovered himself. He said plainly:

  “I prefer to think that you will conform to the rules and not compel me to resort to harsh measures …”

  “Which you would regret to have to enforce: isn’t that it, Mr. Governor? That’s just what I should like to spare you, by proving to you in advance that they would not prevent me from doing as I please: from corresponding with my friends, from defending the grave interests confided to me outside these walls, from writing to the newspapers that accept my inspiration, from pursuing the fulfilment of my plans and, lastly, from preparing my escape.”

  “Your escape!”

  Lupin began to laugh heartily:

  “But think, Mr. Governor, my only excuse for being in prison is … to leave it!”

  The argument did not appear to satisfy M. Borély. He made an effort to laugh in his turn:

  “Forewarned is forearmed,” he said.

  “That’s what I wanted,” Lupin replied. “Take all your precautions, Mr. Governor, neglect nothing, so that later they may have nothing to reproach you with. On the other hand, I shall arrange things in such a way that, whatever annoyance you may have to bear in consequence of my escape, your career, at least, shall not suffer. That is all I had to say to you, Mr. Governor. You can go.”

  And, while M. Borély walked away, greatly perturbed by his singular charge and very anxious about the events in preparation, the prisoner threw himself on his bed, muttering:

  “What cheek, Lupin, old fellow, what cheek! Really, any one would think that you had some idea as to how you were going to get out of this!”

  The Santé prison is built on the star plan. In the centre of the main portion is a round hall, upon which all the corridors converge, so that no prisoner is able to leave his cell without being at once perceived by the overseers posted in the glass box which occupies the middle of that central hall.

  The thing that most surprises the visitor who goes over the prison is that, at every moment, he will meet prisoners without a guard of any kind, who seem to move about as though they were absolutely free. In reality, in order to go from one point to another—for instance, from their cell to the van waiting in the yard to take them to the Palais de Justice for the magistrate’s examination—they pass along straight lines each of which ends in a door that is opened to them by a warder. The sole duty of the warder is to open and shut this door and to watch the two straight lines which it commands. And thus the prisoners, while apparently at liberty to come and go as they please, are sent from door to door, from eye to eye, like so many parcels passed from hand to hand.

  Outside, municipal guards receive the object and pack it into one of the compartments of the “salad-basket.”

  This is the ordinary routine.

  In Lupin’s case it was disregarded entirely. The police were afraid of that walk along the corridors. They were afraid of the prison-van. They were afraid of everything.

  M. Weber came in person, accompanied by twelve constables—the best he had, picked men, armed to the teeth—fetched the formidable prisoner at the door of his cell and took him in a cab, the driver of which was one of his own men, with mounted municipal guards trotting on each side, in front and behind.

  “Bravo!” cried Lupin. “I am quite touched by the compliment paid me. A guard of honor. By Jove, Weber, you have the proper hierarchical instinct! You don’t forget what is due to your immediate chief.” And, tapping him on the shoulder: “Weber, I intend to send in my resignation. I shall name you as my successor.”

  “It’s almost done,” said Weber.

  “That’s good news! I was a little anxious about my escape. Now I am easy in my mind. From the moment when Weber is chief of the detective-service … !”

  M. Weber did not reply to the gibe. At heart, he had a queer, complex feeling in the presence of his adversary, a feeling made up of the fear with which Lupin inspired him, the deference which he entertained for Prince Sernine and the respectful admiration which he had always shown to M. Lenormand. All this was mingled with spite, envy and satisfied hatred.

  They arrived at the Palais de Justice. At the foot of the “mouse-trap,” a number of detectives were waiting, among whom M. Weber rejoiced to see his best two lieutenants, the brothers Doudeville.

  “Has M. Formerie come?” he asked.

  “Yes, chief, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction is in his room.”

  M. Weber went up the stairs, followed by Lupin, who had the Doudevilles on either side of him.

  “Geneviève?” whispered the prisoner.

  “Saved …”

  “Where is she?”

  “With her grandmother.”

  “Mrs. Kesselbach?”

  “In Paris, at the Bristol.”

  “Suzanne?”

  “Disappeared.”

  “Steinweg?”

  “Released.”

  “What has he told you?”

  “Nothing. Won’t make any revelations except to you.”

  “Why?”

  “We told him he owed his release to you.”

  “Newspapers good this morning?”

  “Excellent.”

  “Good. If you want to write to me, here are my instructions.”

  They had reached the inner corridor on the first floor and Lupin slipped a pellet of paper into the hand of one of the brothers.

  M. Formerie uttered a delicious phrase when Lupin entered his room accompanied by the deputy-chief:

  “Ah, there you are! I knew we should lay hands on you some day or other!”

  “So did I, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction,” said Lupin, “and I am glad that you have been marked out by fate to do justice to the honest man that I am.”

  “He’s getting at me,” thought M. Formerie. And, in the same ironical and serious tone as Lupin, he retorted, “The honest man that you are, sir, will be asked what he has to say about three hundred and forty-four separate cases of larceny, burglary, swindling and forgery, blackmail, receiving and so on. Three hundred and forty-four!”

  “What! Is that all?” cried Lupin. “I really feel quite ashamed.”

  “Don’t distress yourself! I shall discover more. But let us proceed in order. Arsène Lupin, in spite of all our inquiries, we have no definite information as to your real name.”

  “How odd! No more have I!”

  “We are not even in a position to declare that you are the same Arsène Lupin who was confined in the Santé a few years back, and from there made his first escape.”

  “‘His first escape’ is good, and does you credit.”

  “It so happens, in fact,” continued M. Formerie, “that the Arsène Lupin card in the measuring department gives a description of Arsène Lupin which differs at all points from your real description.”

  “How more and more odd!”

  “Different marks, different measurements, different finger-prints … The two photographs even are quite unlike. I will therefore ask you to satisfy us as to your exact identity.”

  “That’s just what I was going to ask you. I have lived under so many distinct names that I have ended by forgetting my own. I don’t know where I am.”

  “So I must enter a refusal to answer?”

  “An inability.”

  “Is this a thought-out plan? Am I to expect the same silence in reply to all my questions?”

  “Very nearly.”

  “And why?”

  Lupin struck a solemn attitude and said:

  “M. le Juge d’Instruction, my life belongs to history. You have only to
turn over the annals of the past fifteen years and your curiosity will be satisfied. So much for my part. As to the rest, it does not concern me: it is an affair between you and the murderers at the Palace Hotel.”

  “Arsène Lupin, the honest man that you are will have to-day to explain the murder of Master Altenheim.”

  “Hullo, this is new! Is the idea yours, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Very clever! Upon my word, M. Formerie, you’re getting on!”

  “The position in which you were captured leaves no doubt.”

  “None at all; only, I will venture to ask you this: what sort of wound did Altenheim die of?”

  “Of a wound in the throat caused by a knife.”

  “And where is the knife?”

  “It has not been found.”

  “How could it not have been found, if I had been the assassin, considering that I was captured beside the very man whom I am supposed to have killed?”

  “Who killed him, according to you?”

  “The same man that killed Mr. Kesselbach, Chapman, and Beudot. The nature of the wound is a sufficient proof.”

  “How did he get away?”

  “Through a trap-door, which you will discover in the room where the tragedy took place.”

  M. Formerie assumed an air of slyness:

  “And how was it that you did not follow that useful example?”

  “I tried to follow it. But the outlet was blocked by a door which I could not open. It was during this attempt that ‘the other one’ came back to the room and killed his accomplice for fear of the revelations which he would have been sure to make. At the same time, he hid in a cupboard, where it was subsequently found, the parcel of clothes which I had prepared.”

  “What were those clothes for?”

  “To disguise myself. When I went to the Glycines my plan was this: to hand Altenheim over to the police, to suppress my own identity as Prince Sernine and to reappear under the features …”