“Who are you? Who are you?”
“Don’t you recollect me? Why, think of that famous luncheon in the Villa Dupont! … You yourself, you old flunkey, handed me the plate of cakes … and such cakes!”
“Prince … Prince …” stammered the other.
“Yes, yes, Prince Arsène, Prince Lupin in person … Aha, you breathe again! … You’re saying to yourself that you have nothing to fear from Lupin, isn’t that it? Well, you’re wrong, old chap, you have everything to fear.” He took a card from his pocket and showed it to him. “There, look, I belong to the police now. Can’t be helped: that’s what we all come to in the end, all of us robber-kings and emperors of crime.”
“Well?” said the head-waiter, still greatly alarmed.
“Well, go to that customer over there, who’s calling you, get him what he wants and come back to me. And no nonsense, mind you: don’t go trying to get away. I have ten men outside, with orders to keep their eyes on you. Be off.”
The head-waiter obeyed. Five minutes after, he returned and, standing in front of the table, with his back to the restaurant, as though discussing the quality of the cigars with his customers, he said:
“Well? What is it?”
Lupin laid a number of hundred-franc notes in a row on the table:
“One note for each definite answer to my questions.”
“Done!”
“Now then. How many of you were there with Baron Altenheim?”
“Seven, without counting myself.”
“No more?”
“No. Once only, we picked up some workmen in Italy to make the underground passage from the Villa des Glycines, at Garches.”
“Were there two underground passages?”
“Yes, one led to the Pavillon Hortense and the other branched off from the first and ran under Mrs. Kesselbach’s house.”
“What was the object?”
“To carry off Mrs. Kesselbach.”
“Were the two maids, Suzanne and Gertrude, accomplices?”
“Yes.”
“Where are they?”
“Abroad.”
“And your seven pals, those of the Altenheim gang?”
“I have left them. They are still going on.”
“Where can I find them?”
Dominique hesitated. Lupin unfolded two notes of a thousand francs each and said:
“Your scruples do you honor, Dominique. There’s nothing for it but to swallow them like a man and answer.”
Dominique replied:
“You will find them at No. 3, Route de la Revolte, Neuilly. One of them is called the Broker.”
“Capital. And now the name, the real name of Altenheim. Do you know it?”
“Yes, Ribeira.”
“Dominique, Dominique, you’re asking for trouble. Ribeira was only an assumed name. I asked you the real name.”
“Parbury.”
“That’s another assumed name.”
The head-waiter hesitated. Lupin unfolded three hundred franc notes.
“Pshaw, what do I care!” said the man. “After all, he’s dead, isn’t he? Quite dead.”
“His name,” said Lupin.
“His name? The Chevalier de Malreich.”
Lupin gave a jump in his chair:
“What? What do you say? The Chevalier—say it again—the Chevalier …?”
“Raoul de Malreich.”
A long pause. Lupin, with his eyes fixed before him, thought of the mad girl at Veldenz, who had died by poison: Isilda bore the same name, Malreich. And it was the name borne by the small French noble who came to the court of Veldenz in the eighteenth century.
He resumed his questions:
“What country did this Malreich belong to?”
“He was of French origin, but born in Germany … I saw some papers once … that was how I came to know his name … Oh, if he had found it out, he would have wrung my neck, I believe!”
Lupin reflected and said:
“Did he command the lot of you?”
“Yes.”
“But he had an accomplice, a partner?”
“Oh hush … hush … !”
The head-waiter’s face suddenly expressed the most intense alarm. Lupin noticed the same sort of terror and repulsion which he himself felt when he thought of the murderer.
“Who is he? Have you seen him?”
“Oh, don’t let us talk of that one … it doesn’t do to talk of him.”
“Who is he, I’m asking you.”
“He is the master … the chief … Nobody knows him.”
“But you’ve seen him, you. Answer me. Have you seen him?”
“Sometimes, in the dark … at night. Never by daylight. His orders come on little scraps of paper … or by telephone.”
“His name?”
“I don’t know it. We never used to speak of him. It was unlucky.”
“He dresses in black, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, in black. He is short and slender … with fair hair …”
“And he kills, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, he kills … he kills where another might steal a bit of bread.”
His voice shook. He entreated:
“Let us stop this … it won’t do to talk of him … I tell you … it’s unlucky.”
Lupin was silent, impressed, in spite of himself, by the man’s anguish. He sat long thinking and then rose and said to the head-waiter:
“Here, here’s your money; but, if you want to live in peace, you will do well not to breathe a word of our conversation to anybody.”
He left the restaurant with Doudeville and walked to the Porte Saint-Denis without speaking, absorbed in all that he had heard. At last, he seized his companion’s arm and said:
“Listen to me, Doudeville, carefully. Go to the Gare du Nord. You will get there in time to catch the Luxemburg express. Go to Veldenz, the capital of the grand-duchy of Zweibrucken-Veldenz. At the town-hall, you will easily obtain the birth-certificate of the Chevalier de Malreich and further information about the family. You will be back on the day after to-morrow: that will be Saturday.”
“Am I to let them know at the detective-office?”
“I’ll see to that. I shall telephone that you are ill. Oh, one word more: on Saturday, meet me at twelve o’clock in a little café on the Route de la Revolte, called the Restaurant Buffalo. Come dressed as a workman.”
The next day, Lupin, wearing a short smock and a cap, went down to Neuilly and began his investigations at No. 3, Route de la Revolte. A gateway opened into an outer yard; and here he found a huge block of workmen’s dwellings, a whole series of passages and workshops, with a swarming population of artisans, women and brats. In a few minutes, he had won the good-will of the portress, with whom he chatted for an hour on the most varied topics. During this hour, he saw three men pass, one after the other, whose manner struck him:
“That’s game,” he thought, “and gamy game at that! … They follow one another by scent! … Look quite respectable, of course, but with the eye of the hunted deer which knows that the enemy is all around and that every tuft, every blade of grass may conceal an ambush.”
That afternoon and on the Saturday morning, he pursued his inquiries and made certain that Altenheim’s seven accomplices all lived on the premises. Four of them openly followed the trade of second-hand clothes-dealers. Two of the others sold newspapers; and the third described himself as a broker and was nicknamed accordingly.
They went in and out, one after the other, without appearing to know one another. But, in the evening, Lupin discovered that they met in a sort of coach-house situated right at the back of the last of the yards, a place in which the Broker kept his wares piled up: old iron, broken kitchen-ranges, rusty stove-pipes … and also, no doubt, the best part of the stolen goods.
“Come,” he said, “the work is shaping nicely. I asked my cousin of Germany for a month and I believe
a fortnight will be enough for my purpose. And what I like about it is that I shall start operations with the scoundrels who made me take a header in the Seine. My poor old Gourel, I shall revenge you at last. And high time too!”
At twelve o’clock on Saturday, he went to the Restaurant Buffalo, a little low-ceilinged room to which brick-layers and cab-drivers resorted for their mid-day meal. Some one came and sat down beside him:
“It’s done, governor.”
“Ah, is it you, Doudeville? That’s right! I’m dying to know. Have you the particulars? The birth-certificate? Quick, tell me.”
“Well, it’s like this: Altenheim’s father and mother died abroad.”
“Never mind about them.”
“They left three children.”
“Three?”
“Yes. The eldest would have been thirty years old by now. His name was Raoul de Malreich.”
“That’s our man, Altenheim. Next?”
“The youngest of the children was a girl, Isilda. The register has an entry, in fresh ink, ‘Deceased.’”
“Isilda … Isilda,” repeated Lupin. “That’s just what I thought: Isilda was Altenheim’s sister … I saw a look in her face which I seemed to recognize … So that was the link between them … But the other, the third child, or rather the second?”
“A son. He would be twenty-six by now.”
“His name?”
“Louis de Malreich.”
Lupin gave a little start:
“That’s it! Louis de Malreich … The initials L. M … The awful and terrifying signature! … The murderer’s name is Louis de Malreich … He was the brother of Altenheim and the brother of Isilda and he killed both of them for fear of what they might reveal.”
Lupin sat long, silent and gloomy, under the obsession, no doubt, of the mysterious being.
Doudeville objected:
“What had he to fear from his sister Isilda? She was mad, they told me.”
“Mad, yes, but capable of remembering certain details of her childhood. She must have recognized the brother with whom she grew up … and that recollection cost her her life.” And he added, “Mad! But all those people were mad … The mother was mad … The father a dipsomaniac … Altenheim a regular brute beast … Isilda, a poor innocent … As for the other, the murderer, he is the monster, the crazy lunatic …”
“Crazy? Do you think so, governor?”
“Yes, crazy! With flashes of genius, of devilish cunning and intuition, but a crack-brained fool, a madman, like all that Malreich family. Only madmen kill and especially madmen of his stamp. For, after all …”
He interrupted himself; and his face underwent so great a change that Doudeville was struck by it:
“What’s the matter, governor?”
“Look.”
A man had entered and hung his hat—a soft, black felt hat—on a peg. He sat down at a little table, examined the bill of fare which a waiter brought him, gave his order and waited motionless, with his body stiff and erect and his two arms crossed over the table-cloth.
And Lupin saw him full-face.
He had a lean, hard visage, absolutely smooth and pierced with two sockets in the depths of which appeared a pair of steel-gray eyes. The skin seemed stretched from bone to bone, like a sheet of parchment, so stiff and so thick that not a hair could have penetrated through it.
And the face was dismal and dull. No expression enlivened it. No thought seemed to abide under that ivory forehead; and the eye-lids, entirely devoid of lashes, never flickered, which gave the eyes the fixed look of the eyes in a statue.
Lupin beckoned to one of the waiters:
“Who is that gentleman?”
“The one eating his lunch over there?”
“Yes.”
“He is a customer. He comes here two or three times a week.”
“Can you tell me his name?”
“Why, yes … Leon Massier.”
“Oh!” blurted Lupin, very excitedly. “L. M … the same two letters … could it be Louis de Malreich?”
He watched him eagerly. Indeed, the man’s appearance agreed with Lupin’s conjectures, with what he knew of him and of his hideous mode of existence. But what puzzled him was that look of death about him: where he anticipated life and fire, where he would have expected to find the torment, the disorder, the violent facial distortion of the great accursed, he beheld sheer impassiveness.
He asked the waiter:
“What does he do?”
“I really can’t say. He’s a rum cove … He’s always quite alone … He never talks to anybody … We here don’t even know the sound of his voice … He points his finger at the dishes on the bill of fare which he wants … He has finished in twenty minutes; then he pays and goes …”
“And he comes back again?”
“Every three or four days. He’s not regular.”
“It’s he, it cannot be any one else,” said Lupin to himself. “It’s Malreich. There he is … breathing … at four steps from me. There are the hands that kill. There is the brain that gloats upon the smell of blood. There is the monster, the vampire! …”
And, yet, was it possible? Lupin had ended by looking upon Malreich as so fantastic a being that he was disconcerted at seeing him in the flesh, coming, going, moving. He could not explain to himself how the man could eat bread and meat like other men, drink beer like any one else: this man whom he had pictured as a foul beast, feeding on live flesh and sucking the blood of his victims.
“Come away, Doudeville.”
“What’s the matter with you, governor? You look quite white!”
“I want air. Come out.”
Outside, he drew a deep breath, wiped the perspiration from his forehead and muttered:
“That’s better. I was stifling.” And, mastering himself, he added, “Now we must play our game cautiously and not lose sight of his tracks.”
“Hadn’t we better separate, governor? Our man saw us together. He will take less notice of us singly.”
“Did he see us?” said Lupin, pensively. “He seems to me to see nothing, to hear nothing and to look at nothing. What a bewildering specimen!”
And, in fact, ten minutes later, Leon Massier appeared and walked away, without even looking to see if he was followed. He had lit a cigarette and smoked, with one of his hands behind his back, strolling along like a saunterer enjoying the sunshine and the fresh air and never suspecting that his movements could possibly be watched.
He passed through the toll-gates, skirted the fortifications, went out again through the Porte Champerret and retraced his steps along the Route de la Revolte.
Would he enter the buildings at No. 3? Lupin eagerly hoped that he would, for that would have been a certain proof of his complicity with the Altenheim gang; but the man turned round and made for the Rue Delaizement, which he followed until he passed the Velodrome Buffalo.
On the left, opposite the cycling-track, between the public tennis-court and the booths that line the Rue Delaizement, stood a small detached villa, surrounded by a scanty garden. Leon Massier stopped, took out his keys, opened first the gate of the garden and then the door of the house and disappeared.
Lupin crept forward cautiously. He at once noticed that the block in the Route de la Revolte stretched back as far as the garden-wall. Coming still nearer, he saw that the wall was very high and that a coach-house rested against it at the bottom of the garden. The position of the buildings was such as to give him the certainty that his coach-house stood back to back with the coach-house in the inner yard of No. 3, which served as a lumber-room for the Broker.
Leon Massier, therefore, occupied a house adjoining the place in which the seven members of the Altenheim gang held their meetings. Consequently, Leon Massier was, in point of fact, the supreme leader who commanded that gang; and there was evidently a passage between the two coach-houses through which he communicated with his followers.
�
��I was right,” said Lupin. “Leon Massier and Louis de Malreich are one and the same man. The situation is much simpler than it was.”
“There is no doubt about that,” said Doudeville, “and everything will be settled in a few days.”
“That is to say, I shall have been stabbed in the throat.”
“What are you saying, governor? There’s an idea!”
“Pooh, who knows? I have always had a presentiment that that monster would bring me ill-luck.”
Thenceforth it became a matter of watching Malreich’s life in such a way that none of his movements went unobserved. This life was of the oddest, if one could believe the people of the neighborhood whom Doudeville questioned. “The bloke from the villa,” as they called him, had been living there for a few months only. He saw and received nobody. He was not known to keep a servant of any kind. And the windows, though they were left wide open, even at night, always remained dark and were never lit with the glow of a lamp or candle.
Moreover, Leon Massier most often went out at the close of day and did not come in again until very late … at dawn, said people who had come upon him at sunrise.
“And does any one know what he does?” asked Lupin of his companion, when they next met.
“No, he leads an absolutely irregular existence. He sometimes disappears for several days together … or, rather, he remains indoors. When all is said, nobody knows anything.”
“Well, we shall know; and that soon.”
He was wrong. After a week of continuous efforts and investigations, he had learnt no more than before about that strange individual. The extraordinary thing that constantly happened was this, that, suddenly, while Lupin was following him, the man, who was ambling with short steps along the streets, without ever turning round or ever stopping, the man would vanish as if by a miracle. True, he sometimes went through houses with two entrances. But, at other times, he seemed to fade away in the midst of the crowd, like a ghost. And Lupin was left behind, petrified, astounded, filled with rage and confusion.
He at once hurried to the Rue Delaizement and stood on guard outside the villa. Minutes followed upon minutes, half-hour upon half-hour. A part of the night slipped away. Then, suddenly, the mysterious man hove in sight. What could he have been doing?
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