Arsène Lupin, super-sleuth

They disembarked on the little beach, on which grains of sand shone like mica. The cliff on the right and the cliff on the left in coming together formed an acute angle, the lower part of which was hollowed out into a small grotto, protected in front by a slate roof.

Under this roof stood a small table, covered with a cloth on which were plates, a junket, and fruit. On a visiting card on one of the plates were written these words:

“The Marquess de Talencay, the friend of your grandfather Etienne d’Asteux, greets you, Aurelie. He will be with you presently and begs to offer his excuses for being unable to meet you until later in the day.”

“He was expecting me, then?” said Aurelie.

“Yes,” said Ralph. “We had a long talk, he and I, four days ago, and I was to bring you here at noon to-day.”

She looked round her. A painter’s easel was leaning against the wall of the grotto, under a large shelf heaped with drawing materials, measures, and boxes of colors. There was on it also a pile of old clothes. Hanging across the grotto was a hammock. At the back of the grotto two large stones formed a fireplace [266]and a pipe rose into a crevice in the cliff like the flue of a chimney.

“Does he live here?” asked Aurelie.

“Often, especially in the summer. For the rest of the year he lives at the village of Juvains, where I found him. But he comes here every day. Like your dead grandfather, he is an old eccentric, very cultivated, very artistic, though he does paint very bad pictures. He lives alone, a little after the manner of a hermit, hunts, cuts down and saws up his trees, watches over his shepherds, and feeds all the poor of the countryside, which belongs to him for six miles round. And he’s been waiting for you for fifteen years, Aurelie.”

“Or at least waiting for me to be of age.”

“Yes; by reason of an agreement with his friend d’Asteux. I questioned him about it. But he did not wish to discuss it with any one but you. I had to tell him the whole story of your life and what had happened during the last few months. Then, as I promised to bring you, he lent me the key of the door in the wall. He is immensely delighted that he is going to see you.”

“Then why isn’t he here?”

The absence of the Marquess de Talencay surprised Ralph greatly, though he had no reason for attaching much importance to it. But, since he did not wish to make the girl anxious, he gave full play to his wit and humor during this first meal they took together, in [267]such curious circumstances and at so odd a place. Always careful not to ruffle her by a display of too great tenderness, he was conscious that she felt quite safe with him. She must be quite aware that this was no longer the enemy from whom she had fled, but a friend who only wished her well. So many times already had he saved her. So many times had she been surprised at having hope only in him, at seeing her own life dependent wholly on this unknown, and her happiness rise or decline according to his will.

She murmured: “I should love to thank you; but I do not know how. I owe too much to pay the debt.”

He said to her: “Smile, lady with the green eyes, and look at me.”

She looked at him and smiled.

“You’ve paid the debt,” he said.

At a quarter to three the music of the bells began again and the big bell of the cathedral came droning round the angle of the cliffs.

“It really is quite natural; and the phenomenon is well known all through the district,” Ralph explained. “When the wind blows from the north-east, that is to say from Clermont-Ferrand, the acoustic qualities of the country cause a strong current of air to carry all these sounds by a compulsory route which winds among the mountains and ends at the surface of the lake. It is inevitable; it is mathematical. The bells of all the churches of Clermont-Ferrand and the big bell of its [268]cathedral cannot do anything else but come and ring here as they are doing at the moment.”

She shook her head.

“No,” she said. “It is not so. Your explanation does not satisfy me.”

“Have you another?”

“The true one.”

“What is it?”

“I firmly believe that it is you who bring the sound of these bells here to revive all my impressions as a child.”

“I’m omnipotent, then?”

“You’re omnipotent,” she said in a tone of profound conviction.

“And I’m omniscient also,” said Ralph. “Here, at this very hour, fifteen years ago, you slept.”

“What do you mean?”

“That your eyes are heavy with sleep since your life of fifteen years ago is being lived again.”

She did not try to oppose his wish and stretched herself out in the hammock.

Ralph kept watch for a while at the mouth of the grotto. Then, having looked at his watch, his face clouded with annoyance. A quarter past three—and the Marquess de Talencay had not come.

“But after all—after all—it isn’t of any importance,” he said to himself.

But it was of importance; and well he knew it. [269]There are situations in which everything is of importance.

He went back into the grotto and gazed at the girl, who was sleeping under his protection, and wished once more to apostrophize her and thank her for her trust in him. But he could not. A growing anxiety was invading him.

He crossed the little beach and discovered that the boat, the bow of which he had drawn up on to the beach, was now floating two or three yards from the edge of it. He had to draw it in with a pole, and then he made a second discovery, which was that the boat, which, during their passage across the lake, had contained two or three inches of water, now contained twenty or thirty.

He succeeded in turning it upside down on the beach.

“Goodness! What a miracle it was we didn’t go to the bottom!” he thought to himself.

It was not a matter of an ordinary crack, easy to stop up, but of a whole plank rotted, of a plank also which had been recently inserted in the bottom of the boat and only fastened by four nails.

Who had done this? At first Ralph thought of the Marquess de Talencay. But with what object would the old gentleman have acted in this manner? What reason was there for thinking that d’Asteux’s friend desired to bring about a catastrophe at the very moment at which the young girl was brought to him? [270]

Then another question presented itself: by what road was Talencay coming to the place now that he had no boat at his service? From what quarter would he arrive? Was there a way by land which came down to this beach?

He started to look for it. There was no possible way of getting out on the left: there were the obstacles of the two waterfalls in addition to the obstacles of the cliff. But on the right, just above where the cliff dipped into the lake and formed the beach, twenty steps had been cut in the rock and from the top of them along the front of the cliff rose a path, or rather a ledge so narrow, that, here and there, it was necessary to hold on to projections from the cliff to get along it.

Ralph climbed the steps and made his way up it. Here and there an iron hasp had been driven into the surface of the cliff by which one prevented one’s self falling into space. And so he was able to reach, with considerable difficulty, the plateau above, to find that the path ran round the second lake and turned towards the passage between the two. A grassy plain, studded with boulders, stretched around him. Two shepherds were moving off it, driving their flocks towards the high wall. Nowhere did he see the tall figure of the Marquess de Talencay.

He returned to the beach after an hour’s exploration, to make the disagreeable discovery that, during that [271]hour, the water had risen and covered the bottom steps in the cliff. He had to jump to the beach.

“It’s queer,” he murmured with an anxious air.

Aurelie must have heard him, for she came quickly out of the cave to him. Then she stopped, astonished.

“What’s the matter?” asked Ralph.

“The water,” she said. “How high it is. It was much lower when I went to sleep, wasn’t it? I’m sure it was.”

“You’re right.”

“How do you explain it?”

“It’s a quite natural phenomenon, like those bells,” he said quickly. Then in reassuring accents, he added: “The lake is subject to the law of the tides, which, as you know, produces an ebb and flow.”

“But when is it going to stop rising?”

“In an hour or two.”

“That’s to say that the water will fill half the grotto?”

“Yes. It certainly does flow into the grotto, as this black line on the wall, which is evidently the high-water mark, proves.”

He had lowered his voice a little. Above the black line to which he had pointed, there was another just under the ceiling of the grotto. What did that one mean? Was he to understand that at certain periods the water would reach the ceiling? But owing to what exceptional phenomena, to what immense cataclysm? [272]

“But no,” he said to himself, pulling himself together. “A supposition of that kind is absurd. A cataclysm? That only happens once in a thousand years. An oscillation of the ebb and flow? Fantasies in which I don’t believe. It can only be mere chance, a passing incident.”

That might be so. But what was it that produced this passing incident? In spite of himself he felt a vague dread. He thought of the inexplicable absence of Talencay. He thought of the connection which might exist between this absence and the dull menace of the danger he did not yet fully grasp. He thought of the scuttled boat.

“What’s the matter?” Aurelie asked. “You seem absent-minded.”

“The fact is, I’m beginning to believe that we are wasting our time here,” he said. “Since your grandfather’s friend is not coming, we had better go to him. The interview can take place quite as well at his house at Juvains.”

“But how are we to go? The boat seems useless.”

“There is a road to the right, very difficult for a woman, but all the same practicable,—only you will have to let yourself be carried.”

“Why shouldn’t I walk too?”

“What point is there in your getting wet? It’s just as well that I should be the only one to get into the water.” [273]

He made this suggestion without any afterthought. But he saw that she was blushing. The idea of being carried by him, as she had been carried along the Beaucourt Road, must be hateful to her.

They were silent, both of them embarrassed.

Then the girl, who was standing on the edge of the lake, bent down and plunged her hand into it.

“No—no—I couldn’t stand this icy water; I really couldn’t,” she said.

She went back into the grotto, and he followed her.

A quarter of an hour passed; and to Ralph it seemed a long quarter of an hour indeed.

At last he said: “We ought to be going. The situation is becoming dangerous.”

She followed him out of the grotto. But at the moment she mounted his back, there came the whine of a bullet and the shower of splinters from the face of the cliff. The report of the rifle rang.

She dropped from his back. A second bullet whined and struck the cliff. He picked her up, carried her into the grotto, sat her down, and sprang out of it as if he were dashing to the assault.

“Ralph! Ralph! I forbid you! They’ll kill you!” she cried, following him.

He caught her up again, and forced her back into the grotto. But this time she did not let go of him, but clung to and held him back.

“Stay here—please!” she cried. [274]

“No, no: you’re wrong. I must act!”

“I won’t have it! I won’t have it!” she cried.

She held him with trembling hands; and she, who had been so frightened of being carried by him a few moments before, held him clasped to her, with a grip there was no loosening.

“Don’t be frightened,” he said quickly.

“I’m not frightened,” she said. “But we must remain together. The same danger threatens us. Let’s stick to one another.”

“I won’t leave you,” said Ralph. “You’re right.” He put his head out of the door to take a look round. A third bullet shattered one of the tiles of the roof.

So they were besieged, compelled to stay where they were. Two marksmen armed with long-range rifles prevented any attempt to get away. Ralph had time to learn the position of these marksmen, from two little clouds of smoke which were rising at a distance. Posted a little way from one another on the cliff on the right, they were about two hundred and fifty yards away. From that point they commanded the whole length of the lake and the little corner of the beach that still remained above the water and nearly all of the interior of the grotto. All of it, except a recess on the right, in which they were huddled, and the very back of it where were the two stones which served as a fireplace, which was hidden by the slope of the roof, was open to their fire. [275]

By a violent effort Ralph forced himself to laugh.

“This is funny,” he said.

His laughter seemed so spontaneous that it quieted Aurelie.

He went on: “Here we are blockaded. At the slightest movement, a bullet. And the line of fire is such that we’re obliged to hide ourselves in a mousehole. You must admit that it is jolly well planned.”

“Who by?”

“I thought at first by the old Marquess. But it isn’t him. It can’t be him.”

“Then what has become of him?”

“He’s shut up somewhere. There’s no doubt about it. He must have fallen into some trap which was laid for him by the very people who are blockading us.”

“That’s to say?”

“Two formidable enemies from whom we need not expect any pity. Jodot and William Ancivel.”

He was thus brutally frank on this point, to turn Aurelie’s attention from the real danger which threatened them. For Jodot and William and their rifles counted very little in his eyes compared with the rising invasion of this stealthy water which the two crooks had made their formidable ally.

“And why this ambush?” she asked.

“The treasure,” said Ralph. “That’s the only possible explanation. I reduced Marescal to impotence; but I did not forget that one day or other we should [276]have to deal with Jodot and William. They have got ahead of me. Having learned my plans by some means or other, they have attacked your grandfather’s friend, imprisoned him, robbed him of the papers he was going to communicate to you, and have been ready for us since the morning. If they did not shoot us down when we were coming through the passage between the two lakes, it was because shepherds were moving about the plateau. It was evident that we should wait for Talencay here, on the strength of the visiting card, and the few words that one of the two confederates scribbled on it. And it’s here that they’ve set their ambush. Scarcely had we passed through the passage before big flood-gates were closed, and the surface of the lake, swollen by the two waterfalls, began to rise without its being possible for us to notice it for four or five hours. But by then the shepherds would have returned to the village, and the lake become the most lonely and admirable of rifle ranges. The boat being scuttled, the bullets prevent any sortie of the besieged; and it is impossible for them to take flight. That’s how Ralph de Limézy has let himself be caught like a common Marescal.”

He said this in the chaffing tone of a man who is the first to laugh at a trick that has been played him. Aurelie almost wanted to laugh.

He lit a cigarette and held out the burning match. Two reports from the plateau; then immediately a third and a fourth. But the bullets missed. [277]

The flood, however, was rising quickly. The beach was quite covered and little waves were now flowing over its flat surface and lapping against the entrance of the grotto.

“We shall be more comfortable on the two stones of the fireplace,” said Ralph.

They sprang across the grotto, and reached them without drawing fire. Ralph lifted the girl into the hammock, which, hanging high, was hidden by the tiled roof. Then he made a dash at the table, caught up in a napkin all that was left of their lunch, leaped back and set it on the shelf, beside the drawing materials. Two rifles rang out.

“Too late!” he said. “We’ve nothing more to fear. A little patience and we shall go quietly away. My idea is to rest and have a meal; and by that time it will be dark. As soon as it is dark I will carry you on my shoulder to the path up the cliff. The strong point of our adversaries is that the daylight enables them to blockade us. Darkness means safety.”

“Yes, but the water will be rising,” said Aurelie. “And it will be an hour before it’s dark enough to start.”

“Well, what of it? Instead of getting my feet wet, I shall get wet to the waist,” said Ralph.

It sounded very simple. But he was quite aware of the flaws in his plan. In the first place, the sun had scarcely disappeared behind the summit of the mountains; and that meant another hour and a half or two [278]hours of daylight. Moreover, the enemy would draw nearer, little by little, and post themselves at the top of the path; and how was he, hampered by the girl, to force a passage?

Aurelie was doubtful, asking herself what she was to believe. In spite of herself, her eyes were fixed on marks in the wall, which enabled her to follow the rising of the water. But Ralph’s coolness was uncommonly impressive.

“You will save us, I’m sure of it,” she murmured.

“Presently,” he said airily. “You trust me?”

“Yes: I trust you. You told me one day—do you remember? When you were reading the lines on my hand—that I was to beware of danger from water? Your prediction is being accomplished; and yet, I am not at all afraid, for you can do anything. You work miracles.”

“Miracles?” said Ralph, still maintaining his efforts to reassure her by speaking lightly. “No: not miracles. I merely reason, and then act as the occasion demands. Because I never questioned you about your childish memories, and nevertheless brought you here to the very scene you saw so long ago, you think me a kind of sorcerer. You’re wrong. It was all a matter of reasoning and thought. Yet I had no more precise information than the rest of them. Jodot and his confederates knew the bottle as well as I did, and like me read the formula inscribed under the name of Eau de [279]Jouvence. What information did they get from it? None. But I made inquiries, and I saw that nearly the whole of the formula was a reproduction, with the exception of one line of the analysis of the springs of Royat, one of the principal hot bath establishments of Auvergne. I looked at the map of Auvergne and on it I find the village and lake of Juvains—Juvains, an obvious contraction of the Latin word Juventia, which means Jouvence. I knew where I was. After an hour’s gossip at Juvains I learned that old M. de Talencay, the Marquess of Carabas of this part of the world, must be at the very heart of the business, and approached him as your envoy. When he told me that you had formerly come here on the Sunday and Monday of the Assumption, that is to say the fourteenth and fifteenth of August, I fixed our visit for the same day. As it happens, the wind was blowing from the north-east, as on your earlier visit. So we had the escort of the bells. And that’s all the miracle there was about it, young lady with the green eyes.”

But words were not enough to distract her attention any longer.

A moment later she murmured: “The water is rising—it’s rising. It’s covered the two stones and is wetting your shoes.”

He stepped down into the water, raised one of the stones, and set it on the other. Thus elevated, he rested his elbow against the rope of the hammock, and [280]with untroubled mien began to talk again, for he feared the effect of silence on the girl.

But all the while he was talking about their safety, his underthought had been busy with other trains of reasoning and other reflections about the implacable reality, the growing menace of which he was watching with a growing fear. What was taking place? How was he to handle the situation? Owing to the action of Jodot and William, the surface of the water was rising. So be it. But the two ruffians were evidently taking advantage of a state of things already existing and which had existed for centuries. Must he not then suppose that those who made possible this raising of the surface for reasons now hidden from him—but certainly not for the purpose of blockading and drowning people in the grotto—must have made it equally possible to let the surface sink back to its normal level? The closing of the flood-gates implied the existence of invisible machinery which would, when the lake was too full, let the water out. But where was he to look for this machinery?

Ralph was not one of those who await death with idle hands. He considered carefully the plans of getting to grips with his enemies, or of swimming to the flood-gates. But if a bullet hit him, or if the icy coldness of the water gave him cramp, what would become of Aurelie?

Careful as he was to hide his anxiety from Aurelie, she could not longer fail to understand certain inflections [281]of his voice and pauses in his task when he was tongue-tied by the fear which was torturing her.

“Please—please—answer me,” she said. “I would much rather know the truth. There is no longer any hope, is there?”

“What! But it’s getting dark.”

“But not quickly enough. And when the night does come we shall be none the more able to get away.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. But I have a feeling that it is all over with us; and that you know it.”

He said firmly: “No—no. The danger is great. But it’s a long way off as yet. We shall escape it, if we keep cool. Everything rests on that. Thought and understanding. When I understand everything, I’m sure that there will be time to act. Only——”

“Only?”

“You must help me. To understand everything I need your memories, all your memories.”

His voice had grown serious; he went on with restrained fervor: “I know you promised your mother to keep them secret from every one except the man you should come to love. But death is an even stronger reason for speaking than love. And if you do not love me, I love you as your mother would have wished that you should be loved. Forgive me for telling you this in spite of the vow I made to you; but there are times at which one can keep silent no longer. I love you—I [282]love you and I wish to save you—I love you. I cannot allow you to keep silent, for it would be a crime against yourself. Answer my questions. Perhaps a few words will be enough to enlighten me.”

“Question me,” she murmured.

“What passed during your last visit after your coming here with your mother? What scenes did you see? Where did your grandfather and his friend take you?”

“Nowhere,” she said confidently. “I’m sure of having slept here, in a hammock, as I have done to-day. The others were talking. The two men were smoking. These are things which I had forgotten and which I now recall. I remember the smell of the tobacco and the noise of the uncorking of a bottle. And then—then—I was quite awake, and we had a meal. Outside, the sun was shining——”

“The sun?”

“Yes, it must have been the next day.”

“The next day? You’re sure? Everything lies in this detail,” he said quickly.

“Yes: I’m certain. I awoke here the next day, and, outside, the sun was shining. I see myself still here, yet it is somewhere else. I see the rocks, though they’re no longer in the same place.”

“How? They’re no longer in the same place?” he said in bewildered accents.

“No: the water was no longer washing the foot of them.” [283]

“The water was no longer washing the foot of the cliffs and yet you came out of this grotto?” he said.

“I came out of this grotto. Yes: my grandfather led the way; my mother followed, holding me by the hand. It was slippery under our feet. Around us were odd-looking houses—ruins. And then came the chiming of the bells—the same bells we heard to-day.”

“It is so—it certainly is so,” murmured Ralph. “Everything is in accordance with my supposition. There is no possible doubt about it.”

A heavy silence fell on them. The water was lapping against the walls with a sinister sound. The table, the easel, the books, and the chairs were floating about.

He had to sit on the end of the hammock crouched down under the granite ceiling.

Outside, the dusk was mingling with the fading light. Of what use would the darkness be to him, however thick it might be? In what quarter was he to act? He cudgelled his brains desperately, trying to force them to discover the solution. Aurelie was half sitting up, and he guessed that her eyes were kind and affectionate. She took hold of one of his hands, bent down, and kissed it.

“Heavens!” he cried. “What are you doing?”

She murmured: “I love you.”

Her green eyes were shining in the dusk. He heard the beating of her heart. Never had he experienced so profound a joy. [284]

She put her arms round his neck and said in the tenderest accents:

“I love you. That is my great and only secret, Ralph. The other does not interest me. But this secret is all my life—all my soul! I have loved you from the beginning, without knowing you, even before I saw your face. I loved you in the darkness, and it was because of that that I detested you. Yes: I was ashamed. It was your lips that took me, on the road to Beaucourt. They stirred in me something I had never known and which frightened me. So much pleasure, so much happiness, on that horrible night—from a man I did not know! To the very depths of my being, I felt the delightful and revolting feeling that I belonged to you, and that you had only to will it to make me your slave. If I fled from you, it was because of that, Ralph—not because I hated you, but because I loved you too dearly and was afraid of you. I was troubled and confused. I wished at any cost never to see you again and yet I only thought of seeing you again. If I was able to endure the horror of that night and all the abominable tortures which followed it, it was because of you—because of you from whom I fled who always came again at the hour of danger. I hated you for it with all my heart; and every time I felt myself yet more yours. Ralph, Ralph, clasp me tightly, Ralph, I love you.”

He clasped her to him with a dolorous passion. [285]In his heart he had never doubted the existence of this love. It had been revealed to him by the ardor of a first kiss; and at every one of their meetings, it had displayed itself in a fear of which he had divined the profound cause. But he was afraid even of the happiness he was feeling. The tender words of the young girl, the caress of her fresh breath intoxicated him. The dauntless will to fight was weakening in him.

She had divined this lassitude in the depths of his being, and drew him yet closer to her.

“Let us resign ourselves, Ralph,” she said. “Let us accept the inevitable. I do not fear death with you. But I want it to surprise me in your arms—my mouth on your mouth, Ralph. Life can never give us greater happiness.”

Her two arms enlaced him like a collar from which he could no longer free himself. Little by little her lips drew nearer and nearer to his.

He resisted, however. To kiss those lips which offered themselves to him, was to accept defeat and, as she said, resign himself to the inevitable. But he would not. All his nature rose in revolt against such cowardice.

But Aurelie implored him, stammering the words which weaken and disarm.

“I love you—do not refuse that which should be—I love you—I love you.”

Their lips met. He enjoyed the intoxication of a [286]kiss in which there was all the ardor of life and the terrible pleasure of death. Darkness seemed to envelop them more quickly, now that they abandoned themselves to the delicious torpor of the embrace. The water was rising.

It was a passing weakness; and Ralph tore himself out of it violently. The thought that this charming creature, whom he had saved so many times, was about to endure the terrible torture of the water that forces its way into you and smothers you and kills you, shook him with horror.

“No, no!” he cried. “This shall not be! Death for you? No! I will find a way to prevent such a monstrous thing!”

She wished to hold him back. She grasped his wrists and implored him in lamentable accents:

“I implore you! I implore you! What are you going to do?”

“Save you! and save myself!”

“It is too late.”

“Too late? But the night has come! I no longer see your dear eyes; I no longer see your lips. Why should I not act?”

“But in what way?”

“How do I know! The essential thing is to act! Moreover I do know certain facts. There must necessarily be means of neutralizing, at a given moment, the action of the closed flood-gates. There must be [287]sluices which let the water flow swiftly away. I must find them!”

Aurelie did not listen to him. She groaned: “I implore you not to leave me alone in this dreadful darkness! I’m afraid, Ralph.”

“No: since you are not afraid to die, you’re not afraid to live—to live two hours. Not more. The water cannot reach you for two hours. And I shall be here—I swear to you, Aurelie, that I shall be here, whatever happens, to tell you that you are saved—or to die with you!”

Little by little, pitilessly, he freed himself from her desperate arms. Then he bent over her and said passionately:

“Trust me, my beloved. You know that I have never failed in my efforts. The moment I have succeeded, I will let you know by a signal—I’ll whistle twice. But even when you feel the water chilling you, believe blindly in me!”

Nerveless, she fell back.

“Go,” she said. “Go since you wish to.”

“And you will not be frightened?”

“No: since you do not wish it.”

He took off his coat and waistcoat and shoes, glanced at the illuminated figures of his watch, fastened it round his neck, and slipped out of the hammock.

Outside, darkness. He had no weapon, no clue.

It was eight o’clock. [288]