813

by Maurice Leblanc

  Valenglay looked at him attentively, then went to a table, took up a newspaper and handed it to him, pointing his finger at an article as he did so.

  Lupin cast his eye at the head-line and read:

  “EXECUTION OF THE MONSTER”

  “Louis de Malreich underwent the death-penalty this morning …”

  He read no more. Thunderstruck, crushed, he fell into the premier’s chair with a moan of despair …

  How long he remained like that he could not say. When he was outside again, he remembered a great silence and then Valenglay bending over him and sprinkling water on his forehead. He remembered, above all, the premier’s hushed voice whispering:

  “Listen … you won’t say anything about this will you? Innocent, perhaps, I don’t say not … But what is the use of revelations, of a scandal? A judicial error can have serious consequences. Is it worth while? … A rehabilitation? For what purpose? He was not even sentenced under his own name. It is the name of Malreich which is held up to public execration … the name of the real criminal, as it happens … So …”

  And, pushing Lupin gradually toward the door, he said:

  “So go … Go back there … Get rid of the corpse … And let not a trace remain, eh? Not the slightest trace of all this business … I can rely on you, can I not?”

  And Lupin went back. He went back like a machine, because he had been told to do so and because he had no will left of his own.

  He waited for hours at the railway-station. Mechanically, he ate his dinner, took a ticket and settled down in a compartment.

  He slept badly. His brain was on fire between nightmares and half-waking intervals in which he tried to make out why Malreich had not defended himself:

  “He was a madman … surely … half a madman … He must have known her formerly … and she poisoned his life … she drove him crazy … So he felt he might as well die … Why defend himself?”

  The explanation only half satisfied him, and he promised himself sooner or later to clear up the riddle and to discover the exact part which Massier had played in Dolores’ life. But what did it matter for the moment? One fact alone stood out clearly, which was Massier’s madness, and he repeated, persistently:

  “He was a madman … Massier was undoubtedly mad. Besides, all those Massiers … a family of madmen …”

  He raved, mixing up names in his enfeebled brain.

  But, on alighting at Bruggen Station, in the cool, moist air of the morning, his consciousness revived. Things suddenly assumed a different aspect. And he exclaimed:

  “Well, after all, it was his own look-out! He had only to protest … I accept no responsibility … It was he who committed suicide … He was only a dumb actor in the play … He has gone under … I am sorry … But it can’t be helped!”

  The necessity for action stimulated him afresh. Wounded, tortured by that crime of which he knew himself to be the author for all that he might say, he nevertheless looked to the future:

  “Those are the accidents of war,” he said. “Don’t let us think about it. Nothing is lost. On the contrary! Dolores was the stumbling-block, since Pierre Leduc loved her. Dolores is dead. Therefore Pierre Leduc belongs to me. And he shall marry Geneviève, as I have arranged! And he shall reign! And I shall be the master! And Europe, Europe is mine!”

  He worked himself up, reassured, full of sudden confidence, and made feverish gestures as he walked along the road, whirling an imaginary sword, the sword of the leader whose will is law, who commands and triumphs:

  “Lupin, you shall be king! You shall be king, Arsène Lupin!”

  He inquired in the village of Bruggen and heard that Pierre Leduc had lunched yesterday at the inn. Since then, he had not been seen.

  “Oh?” asked Lupin. “Didn’t he sleep here?”

  “No.”

  “But where did he go after his lunch?”

  “He took the road to the castle.”

  Lupin walked away in some surprise. After all, he had told the young man to lock the doors and not to return after the servants had gone.

  He at once received a proof that Pierre had disobeyed him: the park gates were open.

  He went in, hunted all over the castle, called out. No reply.

  Suddenly, he thought of the chalet. Who could tell? Perhaps Pierre Leduc, worrying about the woman he loved and driven by an intuition, had gone to look for her in that direction. And Dolores’ corpse was there!

  Greatly alarmed, Lupin began to run.

  At first sight, there seemed to be no one in the chalet.

  “Pierre! Pierre!” he cried.

  Hearing no sound, he entered the front passage and the room which he had occupied.

  He stopped short, rooted to the threshold.

  Above Dolores’ corpse, hung Pierre Leduc, with a rope round his neck, dead.

  Lupin impatiently pulled himself together from head to foot. He refused to yield to a single gesture of despair. He refused to utter a single violent word. After the cruel blows which fate had dealt him, after Dolores’ crimes and death, after Massier’s execution, after all those disturbances and catastrophes, he felt the absolute necessity of retaining all his self-command. If not, his brain would undoubtedly give way …

  “Idiot!” he said, shaking his fist at Pierre Leduc. “You great idiot, couldn’t you wait? In ten years we should have had Alsace-Lorraine again!”

  To relieve his mind, he sought for words to say, for attitudes; but his ideas escaped him and his head seemed on the point of bursting.

  “Oh, no, no!” he cried. “None of that, thank you! Lupin mad too! No, old chap! Put a bullet through your head, if you like; and, when all is said, I don’t see any other way out. But Lupin drivelling, wheeled about in a bath-chair … no! Style, old fellow, finish in style!”

  He walked up and down, stamping his feet and lifting his knees very high, as certain actors do when feigning madness. And he said:

  “Swagger, my lad, swagger! The eyes of the gods are upon you! Lift up your head! Pull in your stomach, hang it! Throw out your chest! … Everything is breaking up around you. What do you care? … It’s the final disaster, I’ve played my last card, a kingdom in the gutter, I’ve lost Europe, the whole world ends in smoke … Well … and what of it? Laugh, laugh! Be Lupin, or you’re in the soup … Come, laugh! Louder than that, louder, louder! That’s right! … Lord, how funny it all is! Dolores, old girl, a cigarette!”

  He bent down with a grin, touched the dead woman’s face, tottered for a second and fell to the ground unconscious.

  After lying for an hour, he came to himself and stood up. The fit of madness was over; and, master of himself, with relaxed nerves, serious and silent, he considered the position.

  He felt that the time had come for the irrevocable decisions that involve a whole existence. His had been utterly shattered, in a few days, under the assault of unforeseen catastrophes, rushing up, one after the other, at the very moment when he thought his triumph assured. What should he do? Begin again? Build up everything again? He had not the courage for it. What then?

  The whole morning, he roamed tragically about the park and gradually realized his position in all its slightest details. Little by little, the thought of death enforced itself upon him with inflexible rigor.

  But, whether he decided to kill himself or to live, there was first of all a series of definite acts which he was obliged to perform. And these acts stood out clearly in his brain, which had suddenly become quite cool.

  The mid-day Angelus rang from the church-steeple.

  “To work!” he said, firmly.

  He returned to the chalet in a very calm frame of mind, went to his room, climbed on a stool, and cut the rope by which Pierre Leduc was hanging:

  “You poor devil!” he said. “You were doomed to end like that, with a hempen tie around your neck. Alas, you were not made for greatness: I ought to have foreseen that and not hooked my fortune to a rhymester!”
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  He felt in the young man’s clothes and found nothing. But, remembering Dolores’ second pocket-book, he took it from the pocket where he had left it.

  He gave a start of surprise. The pocket-book contained a bundle of letters whose appearance was familiar to him; and he at once recognized the different writings.

  “The Emperor’s letters!” he muttered, slowly. “The old chancellor’s letters! The whole bundle which I myself found at Leon Massier’s and which I handed to Count von Waldemar! … How did it happen? … Did she take them in her turn from that blockhead of a Waldemar?” And, suddenly, slapping his forehead, “Why, no, the blockhead is myself. These are the real letters! She kept them to blackmail the Emperor when the time came. And the others, the ones which I handed over, are copies, forged by herself, of course, or by an accomplice, and placed where she knew that I should find them … And I played her game for her, like a mug! By Jove, when women begin to interfere … !”

  There was only a piece of pasteboard left in the pocket-book, a photograph. He looked at it. It was his own.

  “Two photographs … Massier and I … the two she loved best, no doubt … For she loved me … A strange love, built up of admiration for the adventurer that I am, for the man who, by himself, put away the seven scoundrels whom she had paid to break my head! A strange love! I felt it throbbing in her the other day, when I told her my great dream of omnipotence. Then, really, she had the idea of sacrificing Pierre Leduc and subjecting her dream to mine. If the incident of the mirror had not taken place, she would have been subdued. But she was afraid. I had my hand upon the truth. My death was necessary for her salvation and she decided upon it.” He repeated several times, pensively, “And yet she loved me … Yes, she loved me, as others have loved me … others to whom I have brought ill-luck also … Alas, all those who love me die! … And this one died too, strangled by my hand … What is the use of living? … What is the use of living?” he asked again, in a low voice. “Is it not better to join them, all those women who have loved me … and who have died of their love … Sonia, Raymonde, Clotilde, Destange, Miss Clarke? …”

  He laid the two corpses beside each other, covered them with the same sheet, sat down at a table and wrote:

  “I have triumphed over everything and I am beaten. I have reached the goal and I have fallen. Fate is too strong for me … And she whom I loved is no more. I shall die also.”

  And he signed his name:

  “ARSÈNE LUPIN.”

  He sealed the letter and slipped it into a bottle which he flung through the window, on the soft ground of a flower-border.

  Next, he made a great pile on the floor with old newspapers, straw and shavings, which he went to fetch in the kitchen. On the top of it he emptied a gallon of petrol. Then he lit a candle and threw it among the shavings.

  A flame at once arose and other flames leapt forth, quick, glowing, crackling.

  “Let’s clear out,” said Lupin. “The chalet is built of wood, it will all flare up like a match. And, by the time they come from the village, break down the gates and run to this end of the park, it will be too late. They will find ashes, the remains of two charred corpses and, close at hand, my farewell letter in a bottle … Good-bye, Lupin! Bury me simply, good people, without superfluous state … a poor man’s funeral … No flowers, no wreaths. … Just a humble cross and a plain epitaph; ‘Here lies Arsène Lupin, adventurer.’”

  He made for the park wall, climbed over it, and turning round, saw the flames soaring up to the sky …

  He wandered back toward Paris on foot, bowed down by destiny, with despair in his heart. And the peasants were amazed at the sight of this traveller who paid with bank-notes for his fifteen-penny meals.

  Three foot-pads attacked him one evening in the forest. He defended himself with his stick and left them lying for dead …

  He spent a week at an inn. He did not know where to go … What was he to do? What was there for him to cling to? He was tired of life. He did not want to live …

  “Is that you?”

  Mme. Ernemont stood in her little sitting-room in the villa at Garches, trembling, scared and livid, staring at the apparition that faced her.

  Lupin! … It was Lupin.

  “You!” she said. “You! … But the papers said …”

  He smiled sadly:

  “Yes, I am dead.”

  “Well, then … well, then …” she said, naïvely.

  “You mean that, if I am dead, I have no business here. Believe me, I have serious reasons, Victoire.”

  “How you have changed!” she said, in a voice full of pity.

  “A few little disappointments … However, that’s over … Tell me, is Geneviève in?”

  She flew at him, in a sudden rage:

  “You leave her alone, do you hear? Geneviève? You want to see Geneviève, to take her back? Ah, this time I shall not let her out of my sight! She came back tired, white as a sheet, nervous; and the color has hardly yet returned to her cheeks. You shall leave her alone, I swear you shall.”

  He pressed his hand hard on the old woman’s shoulder:

  “I will—do you understand?—I will speak to her.”

  “No.”

  “I mean to speak to her.”

  “No.”

  He pushed her about. She drew herself up and, crossing her arms:

  “You shall pass over my dead body first, do you hear? The child’s happiness lies in this house and nowhere else … With all your ideas of money and rank, you would only make her miserable. Who is this Pierre Leduc of yours? And that Veldenz of yours? Geneviève a grand-duchess! You are mad. That’s no life for her! … You see, after all, you have thought only of yourself in this matter. It was your power, your fortune you wanted. The child you don’t care a rap about. Have you so much as asked yourself if she loved your rascally grand-duke? Have you asked yourself if she loved anybody? No, you just pursued your object, that is all, at the risk of hurting Geneviève and making her unhappy for the rest of her life … Well, I won’t have it! What she wants is a simple, honest existence, led in the broad light of day; and that is what you can’t give her. Then what are you here for?”

  He seemed to waver, but, nevertheless, he murmured in a low voice and very sadly:

  “It is impossible that I should never see her again, it is impossible that I should not speak to her …”

  “She believes you dead.”

  “That is exactly what I do not want! I want her to know the truth. It is a torture to me to think that she looks upon me as one who is no more. Bring her to me, Victoire.”

  He spoke in a voice so gentle and so distressed that she was utterly moved, and said:

  “Listen … First of all, I want to know … It depends upon what you intend to say to her … Be frank, my boy … What do you want with Geneviève?”

  He said, gravely:

  “I want to say this: ‘Geneviève, I promised your mother to give you wealth, power, a fairy-like existence. And, on the day when I had attained my aim, I would have asked you for a little place, not very far from you. Rich and happy, you would have forgotten—yes, I am sure of it—you would have forgotten who I am, or rather who I was. Unfortunately, fate has been too strong for me. I bring you neither wealth nor power. And it is I, on the contrary, who have need of you. Geneviève, will you help me?’”

  “To do what?” asked the old woman, anxiously.

  “To live …”

  “Oh!” she said. “Has it come to that, my poor boy? …”

  “Yes,” he answered, simply, without any affectation of sorrow, “yes, it has come to that. Three human beings are just dead, killed by me, killed by my hands. The burden of the memory is more than I can bear. I am alone. For the first time in my life, I need help. I have the right to ask that help of Geneviève. And her duty is to give it to me … If not …”

  “If not …?”

  “Then all is over.”

  Th
e old woman was silent, pale and quivering with emotion. She once more felt all her affection for him whom she had fed at her breast and who still and in spite of all remained “her boy.” She asked:

  “What do you intend to do with her?”

  “We shall go abroad. We will take you with us, if you like to come …”

  “But you forget … you forget …”

  “What?”

  “Your past …”

  “She will forget it too. She will understand that I am no longer the man I was, that I do not wish to be.”

  “Then, really, what you wish is that she should share your life, the life of Lupin?”

  “The life of the man that I shall be, of the man who will work so that she may be happy, so that she may marry according to her inclination. We will settle down in some nook or other. We will struggle together, side by side. And you know what I am capable of …”

  She repeated, slowly, with her eyes fixed on his:

  “Then, really, you wish her to share Lupin’s life?”

  He hesitated a second, hardly a second, and declared, plainly:

  “Yes, yes, I wish it, I have the right.”

  “You wish her to abandon all the children to whom she has devoted herself, all this life of work which she loves and which is essential to her happiness?”

  “Yes, I wish it, it is her duty.”

  The old woman opened the window and said:

  “In that case, call her.”

  Geneviève was in the garden, sitting on a bench. Four little girls were crowding round her. Others were playing and running about.

  He saw her full-face. He saw her grave, smiling eyes. She held a flower in her hand and plucked the petals one by one and gave explanations to the attentive and eager children. Then she asked them questions. And each answer was rewarded with a kiss to the pupil.

  Lupin looked at her long, with infinite emotion and anguish. A whole leaven of unknown feelings fermented within him. He had a longing to press that pretty girl to his breast, to kiss her and tell her how he respected and loved her. He remembered the mother, who died in the little village of Aspremont, who died of grief.