813

by Maurice Leblanc

  She looked at him greedily, dominated, swayed by the strength of that man. And her eyes expressed an admiration which she did not seek to conceal.

  He put his hands on Dolores’ shoulders and said:

  “That is my dream. Great as it is, it will be surpassed by the facts: that I swear to you. The Kaiser has already seen what I am good for. One day, he will find me installed in front of him, face to face. I hold all the trumps. Valenglay will act at my bidding … England also … The game is played and won … That is my dream … There is another one …”

  He stopped suddenly. Dolores did not take her eyes from him; and an infinite emotion changed every feature of her face.

  A vast joy penetrated him as he once more felt, and clearly felt, that woman’s confusion in his presence. He no longer had the sense of being to her … what he was, a thief, a robber; he was a man, a man who loved and whose love roused unspoken feelings in the depths of a friendly soul.

  Then he said no more, but he lavished upon her, unuttered, every known word of love and admiration; and he thought of the life which he might lead somewhere, not far from Veldenz, unknown and all-powerful …

  A long silence united them. Then she rose and said, softly:

  “Go away, I entreat you to go … Pierre shall marry Geneviève, I promise you that, but it is better that you should go … that you should not be here … Go. Pierre shall marry Geneviève.”

  He waited for a moment. Perhaps he would rather have had more definite words, but he dared not ask for anything. And he withdrew, dazed, intoxicated and happy to obey, to subject his destiny to hers!

  On his way to the door, he came upon a low chair, which he had to move. But his foot knocked against something. He looked down. It was a little pocket-mirror, in ebony, with a gold monogram.

  Suddenly, he started and snatched up the mirror. The monogram consisted of two letters interlaced, an “L” and an “M.”

  An “L” and an “M!”

  “Louis de Malreich,” he said to himself, with a shudder.

  He turned to Dolores:

  “Where does this mirror come from? Whose is it? It is important that I should …”

  She took it from him and looked at it:

  “I don’t know … I never saw it before … a servant, perhaps …”

  “A servant, no doubt,” he said, “but it is very odd … it is one of those coincidences …”

  At that moment, Geneviève entered by the other door, and without seeing Lupin, who was hidden by a screen, at once exclaimed:

  “Why, there’s your glass, Dolores! … So you have found it, after making me hunt for it all this time! … Where was it?” And the girl went away saying, “Oh, well, I’m very glad it’s found! … How upset you were! … I will go and tell them at once to stop looking for it …”

  Lupin had not moved. He was confused, and tried in vain to understand. Why had Dolores not spoken the truth? Why had she not at once said whose the mirror was?

  An idea flashed across his mind; and he asked, more or less at random:

  “Do you know Louis de Malreich?”

  “Yes,” she said, watching him, as though striving to guess the thoughts that beset him.

  He rushed toward her, in a state of intense excitement:

  “You know him? Who was he? Who is he? Who is he? And why did you not tell me? Where have you known him? Speak … answer … I implore you …”

  “No,” she said.

  “But you must, you must … Think! Louis de Malreich! The murderer! The monster! … Why did you not tell me?”

  She, in turn, placed her hands on Lupin’s shoulders and, in a firm voice, declared:

  “Listen, you must never ask me, because I shall never tell … It is a secret which I shall take with me to the grave … Come what may, no one will ever know, no one in the wide world, I swear it!”

  He stood before her for some minutes, anxiously, with a confused brain.

  He remembered Steinweg’s silence and the old man’s terror when Lupin asked him to reveal the terrible secret. Dolores also knew and she also refused to speak.

  He went out without a word.

  The open air, the sense of space, did him good. He passed out through the park-wall and wandered long over the country. And he soliloquized aloud:

  “What does it mean? What is happening? For months and months, fighting hard and acting, I have been pulling the strings of all the characters that are to help me in the execution of my plans; and, during this time, I have completely forgotten to stoop over them and see what is going on in their hearts and brains. I do not know Pierre Leduc, I do not know Geneviève, I do not know Dolores … And I have treated them as so many jumping-jacks, whereas they are live persons. And to-day I am stumbling over obstacles.”

  He stamped his foot and cried:

  “Over obstacles that do not exist! What do I care for the psychological state of Geneviève, of Pierre? … I will study that later, at Veldenz, when I have secured their happiness. But Dolores … she knew Malreich and said nothing! … Why? What relation united them? Was she afraid of him? Is she afraid that he will escape from prison and come to revenge himself for an indiscretion on her part?”

  At night, he went to the chalet which he had allotted to his own use at the end of the park and dined in a very bad temper, storming at Octave, who waited on him and who was always either too slow or too fast:

  “I’m sick of it, leave me alone … You’re doing everything wrong to-day … And this coffee … It’s not fit to drink.”

  He pushed back his cup half-full and, for two hours, walked about the park, sifting the same ideas over and over again. At last, one suggestion took definite shape within his mind:

  “Malreich has escaped from prison. He is terrifying Mrs. Kesselbach. By this time, he already knows the story of the mirror from her …”

  Lupin shrugged his shoulders:

  “And to-night he’s coming to pull my leg, I suppose! I’m talking nonsense. The best thing I can do is to go to bed.”

  He went to his room, undressed and got into bed. He fell asleep at once, with a heavy sleep disturbed by nightmares. Twice he woke and tried to light his candle and twice fell back, as though stunned by a blow.

  Nevertheless, he heard the hours strike on the village clock, or rather he thought that he heard them strike, for he was plunged in a sort of torpor in which he seemed to retain all his wits.

  And he was haunted by dreams, dreams of anguish and terror. He plainly heard the sound of his window opening. He plainly, through his closed eyelids, through the thick darkness, saw a form come toward the bed.

  And the form bent over him.

  He made the incredible effort needed to raise his eyelids and look … or, at least, he imagined that he did. Was he dreaming? Was he awake? He asked himself the question in despair.

  A further sound …

  He took up the box of matches by his bedside:

  “Let’s have a light on it,” he said, with a great sense of elation.

  He struck a match and lit the candle.

  Lupin felt the perspiration stream over his skin, from head to foot, while his heart ceased beating, stopped with terror. The man was there.

  Was it possible? No, no … and yet he saw … Oh, the fearsome sight! … The man, the monster, was there …

  “He shall not … he shall not,” stammered Lupin madly.

  The man, the monster was there, dressed in black, with a mask on his face and with his felt hat pulled down over his fair hair.

  “Oh, I am dreaming … I am dreaming!” said Lupin, laughing. “It’s a nightmare! …”

  Exerting all his strength and all his will-power, he tried to make a movement, one movement, to drive away the vision.

  He could not.

  And, suddenly, he remembered: the coffee! The taste of it … similar to the taste of the coffee which he had drunk at Veldenz!

  He gave a cry, mad
e a last effort and fell back exhausted. But, in his delirium, he felt that the man was unfastening the top button of his pajama-jacket and baring his neck, felt that the man was raising his arm, saw that the hand was clutching the handle of a dagger, a little steel dagger similar to that which had struck Kesselbach, Chapman, Altenheim and so many others …

  A few hours later, Lupin woke up, shattered with fatigue, with a scorched palate.

  He lay for several minutes collecting his thoughts and, suddenly, remembering, made an instinctive defensive movement, as though he were being attacked:

  “Fool that I am!” he cried, jumping out of bed. “It was a nightmare, an hallucination. It only needs a little reflection. Had it been ‘he,’ had it really been a man, in flesh and blood, who lifted his hand against me last night, he would have cut my throat like a rabbit’s. ‘He’ doesn’t hesitate. Let’s be logical. Why should he spare me? For the sake of my good looks? No, I have been dreaming, that’s all …”

  He began to whistle and dressed himself, assuming the greatest calmness, but his brain never ceased working and his eyes sought about …

  On the floor, on the window-ledge, not a trace. As his room was on the ground-floor and as he slept with his window open, it was evident that his assailant would have entered that way.

  Well, he discovered nothing; and nothing either at the foot of the wall outside, or on the gravel of the path that ran round the chalet.

  “Still … still …” he repeated, between his teeth …

  He called Octave:

  “Where did you make the coffee which you gave me last night?”

  “At the castle, governor, like the rest of the things. There is no range here.”

  “Did you drink any of it?”

  “No.”

  “Did you throw away what was left in the coffee-pot?”

  “Why, yes, governor. You said it was so bad. You only took a few mouthfuls.”

  “Very well. Get the motor ready. We’re leaving.”

  Lupin was not the man to remain in doubt. He wanted to have a decisive explanation with Dolores. But, for this, he must first clear up certain points that seemed to him obscure and see Jean Doudeville who had sent him some rather curious information from Veldenz.

  He drove, without stopping, to the grand-duchy, which he reached at two o’clock. He had an interview with Count de Waldemar, whom he asked, upon some pretext, to delay the journey of the delegates of the Regency to Bruggen. Then he went in search of Doudeville, in a tavern at Veldenz.

  Doudeville took him to another tavern, where he introduced him to a shabbily-dressed little gentleman, Herr Stockli, a clerk in the department of births, deaths and marriages. They had a long conversation. They went out together and all three passed stealthily through the offices of the town-hall. At seven o’clock, Lupin dined and set out again. At ten o’clock he arrived at Bruggen Castle and asked for Geneviève, so that she might take him to Mrs. Kesselbach’s room.

  He was told that Mlle. Ernemont had been summoned back to Paris by a telegram from her grandmother.

  “Ah!” he said. “Could I see Mrs. Kesselbach?”

  “Mrs. Kesselbach went straight to bed after dinner. She is sure to be asleep.”

  “No, I saw a light in her boudoir. She will see me.”

  He did not even wait for Mrs. Kesselbach to send out an answer. He walked into the boudoir almost upon the maid’s heels, dismissed her and said to Dolores:

  “I have to speak to you, madame, on an urgent matter … Forgive me … I confess that my behavior must seem importunate … But you will understand, I am sure …”

  He was greatly excited and did not seem much disposed to put off the explanation, especially as, before entering the room, he thought he heard a sound.

  Yet Dolores was alone and lying down. And she said, in her tired voice:

  “Perhaps we might … to-morrow …”

  He did not answer, suddenly struck by a smell that surprised him in that boudoir, a smell of tobacco. And, at once, he had the intuition, the certainty, that there was a man there, at the moment when he himself arrived, and that perhaps the man was there still, hidden somewhere …

  Pierre Leduc? No, Pierre Leduc did not smoke. Then who?

  Dolores murmured:

  “Be quick, please.”

  “Yes, yes, but first … would it be possible for you to tell me …?”

  He interrupted himself. What was the use of asking her? If there were really a man in hiding, would she be likely to tell?

  Then he made up his mind and, trying to overcome the sort of timid constraint that oppressed him at the sense of a strange presence, he said, in a very low voice, so that Dolores alone should hear:

  “Listen, I have learnt something … which I do not understand … and which perplexes me greatly. You will answer me, will you not, Dolores?”

  He spoke her name with great gentleness and as though he were trying to master her by the note of love and affection in his voice.

  “What have you learnt?” she asked.

  “The register of births at Veldenz contains three names which are those of the last descendants of the family of Malreich, which settled in Germany …”

  “Yes, you have told me all that …”

  “You remember, the first name is Raoul de Malreich, better known under his alias of Altenheim, the scoundrel, the swell hooligan, now dead … murdered.”

  “Yes.”

  “Next comes Louis de Malreich, the monster, this one, the terrible murderer who will be beheaded in a few days from now.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, lastly, Isilda, the mad daughter …”

  “Yes.”

  “So all that is quite positive, is it not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” said Lupin, leaning over her more closely than before, “I have just made an investigation which showed to me that the second of the three Christian names, or rather a part of the line on which it is written, has at some time or other, been subjected to erasure. The line is written over, in a new hand, with much fresher ink; but the writing below is not quite effaced, so that …”

  “So that …?” asked Mrs. Kesselbach, in a low voice.

  “So that, with a good lens and particularly with the special methods which I have at my disposal, I was able to revive some of the obliterated syllables and, without any possibility of a mistake, in all certainty, to reconstruct the old writing. I then found not Louis de Malreich, but …”

  “Oh, don’t, don’t! …”

  Suddenly shattered by the strain of her prolonged effort of resistance, she lay bent in two and, with her head in her hands, her shoulders shaken with convulsive sobs, she wept.

  Lupin looked for long seconds at this weak and listless creature, so pitifully helpless. And he would have liked to stop, to cease the torturing questions which he was inflicting upon her. But was it not to save her that he was acting as he did? And, to save her, was it not necessary that he should know the truth, however painful?

  He resumed:

  “Why that forgery?”

  “It was my husband,” she stammered, “it was my husband who did it. With his fortune, he could do everything; and he bribed a junior clerk to have the Christian name of the second child altered for him on the register.”

  “The Christian name and the sex,” said Lupin.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Then,” he continued, “I am not mistaken: the original Christian name, the real one, was Dolores?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why did your husband …?”

  She whispered in a shame-faced manner, while the tears streamed down her cheeks.

  “Don’t you understand?”

  “No.”

  “But think,” she said, shuddering, “I was the sister of Isilda, the mad woman, the sister of Altenheim, the ruffian. My husband—or rather my affianced husband—would not have me remain that. He love
d me. I loved him too, and I consented. He suppressed Dolores de Malreich on the register, he bought me other papers, another personality, another birth-certificate; and I was married in Holland under another maiden name, as Dolores Amonti.”

  Lupin reflected for a moment and said, thoughtfully:

  “Yes … yes … I understand … But then Louis de Malreich does not exist; and the murderer of your husband, the murderer of your brother and sister, does not bear that name … His name …”

  She sprang to a sitting posture and, eagerly:

  “His name! Yes, that is his name … yes, it is his name nevertheless … Louis de Malreich … L. M … Remember … Oh, do not try to find out … it is the terrible secret … Besides, what does it matter? … They have the criminal … He is the criminal … I tell you he is. Did he defend himself when I accused him, face to face? Could he defend himself, under that name or any other? It is he … it is he … He committed the murders … He struck the blows … The dagger … The steel dagger … Oh, if I could only tell all I know! … Louis de Malreich … If I could only …”

  She fell back on the sofa in a fit of hysterical sobbing; and her hand clutched Lupin’s and he heard her stammering, amid inarticulate words:

  “Protect me … protect me … You alone, perhaps … Oh, do not forsake me … I am so unhappy! … Oh, what torture … what torture! … It is hell! …”

  With his free hand, he stroked her hair and forehead with infinite gentleness; and, under his caress, she gradually relaxed her tense nerves and became calmer and quieter.

  Then he looked at her again and long, long asked himself what there could be behind that fair, white brow, what secret was ravaging that mysterious soul. She also was afraid. But of whom? Against whom was she imploring him to protect her?

  Once again, he was obsessed by the image of the man in black, by that Louis de Malreich, the sinister and incomprehensible enemy, whose attacks he had to ward off without knowing whence they came or even if they were taking place.