Arsène Lupin, super-sleuth

The death of Miss Bakersfield, the savage attack of the three masked ruffians, the probable murder of the two passengers, the loss of his bank-notes, weighed but lightly on Ralph’s spirit compared with the incredible vision which had dashed itself as it were against his eyes. The girl with the green eyes! The most charming and ravishing girl he had ever set eyes on rising among the black shadows of a crime! The most radiant image appearing from behind the ignoble mask of a thief and murderer! The girl with the eyes of jade, towards whom his man’s instinct had fairly thrust him the very minute he saw her, whom he now found in a blood-stained blouse with panic-stricken face, robbing and murdering along with two horrible assassins!

Although his life of a great adventurer, full as it had been of horrors and ignominy, should have hardened him against the most terrible spectacles, Ralph (let us continue to call him this since it is under this name that Arsène Lupin played his part in this drama) de Limézy remained thunderstruck before a reality in which it was impossible for him to believe or even, in [36]a way, grasp. The actual fact was worse than anything he could imagine.

The conductor opened the window, leaned out, and shouted: “Murder! Murder! Look out for the murderers!”

The workmen within hearing gripped their picks and looked about them. Some way down the line a man shouted and began to run. The others ran after him. The conductor cut Ralph’s bonds, listening to his explanations as he did so. Then he bent down over Miss Bakersfield and said:

“This young woman’s dead, isn’t she?”

“Yes … strangled. And that isn’t all: there are two passengers in the end compartment.”

They went quickly to the end of the corridor. In the last compartment were two corpses. There were no signs of a struggle. There was no luggage.

Then some workmen from the line tried to open the door of the corridor facing that compartment. It was stuck. Ralph understood why the three robbers had had to hurry all the way up the corridor to escape by the door at the top of it, which was found to be open.

The workmen came through it; then some passengers came into the car through the collapsible passageway, and they and the workmen were on the point of entering the two compartments, when a loud voice cried in imperious accents:

“Nobody must touch anything! No, my man, leave [37]that revolver where it is. It’s a very important piece of evidence. In fact it would be better that all you people should clear out! The car will be taken off the train at the next station. What do you say, conductor?”

Ralph looked at him and was astounded to recognize the individual who had followed Miss Bakersfield and accosted the girl with the green eyes, the man of whom he had asked a light, in a word the pomaded lady-killer whom Miss Bakersfield had called Monsieur Marescal. Drawn up to his full height at the entry of the compartment in which Miss Bakersfield was lying, he barred the way of the intruders and waved them back towards the open doors.

There he stood till the train ran into the station of Beaucourt and the station master entered the car.

“Ah, there you are, station master,” he cried in a tone of relief. “Will you have the goodness to see to this business at once. Telephone to the nearest police station, send for a doctor and send word to the office of the Public Prosecutor at Romillaud. We are face to face with a crime.”

“With three crimes—murders,” the conductor amended. “Two masked men have escaped, two men who assaulted me.”

“Yes, some of the workmen repairing the line saw them climbing the embankment. There’s a little wood at the top of it; and they’re hunting through it and [38]along the high road. If they catch any one we shall hear about it here,” said Marescal.

He uttered the words sternly with an air of authority.

Ralph was growing more and more astonished; then of a sudden his head ceased humming; and he recovered his usual clear-sighted coolness.

The workmen, passengers, and station master trooped out; the car was left empty but for Marescal, the conductor, Ralph, and the dead. Ralph made to return to his seat. Marescal barred his way.

“What do you mean, sir?” cried Ralph indignantly, certain now that Marescal did not recognize him. “I was in this car and I want to go back to it.”

“No, sir,” replied Marescal. “Every place in which a crime has been committed belongs to justice, and no unauthorized person can enter it.”

The conductor intervened.

“This gentleman was one of the victims of the attack. They bound and robbed him.”

“I’m sorry,” said Marescal. “But the orders are strict.”

“What orders?” snapped Ralph.

“Mine.”

Ralph crossed his arms.

“That’s all very well, but by what right do you give them? It’s all very well for you to lay down the law with an insolence that these other people stand. But I am not in the humor to submit to it myself.” [39]

The lady-killer held out his visiting card and chanted in pompous accents:

“Rudolph Marescal, Commissary of the International Investigation Department, attached to the Ministry of the Interior.”

He had the air of saying: “In the face of such qualifications there is nothing to do but to give way.”

He added: “If I have taken charge of the matter it is by agreement with the station master and because my special qualifications authorize me to do so.”

Ralph taken aback, controlled himself. The name of Marescal suddenly awoke in his memory the confused remembrance of certain affairs in which it seemed to him that the Commissary had shown cleverness and remarkable clearsightedness. In any case it would be absurd to oppose him.

“It’s my fault,” he thought. “Instead of acting at once in the matter of the English girl and fulfilling my last promise to her, I wasted time in getting excited about the masked girl. But all the same I’ll catch you before I’ve done with you, my pomaded friend.”

In a tone of deference, as if he was quite alive to the prestige conferred by these high qualifications, he said: “Pardon me, Monsieur, little of a Parisian as I am—I spend most of my time out of France—your fame has reached my ears; and I recall among others an affair of earrings.”

Marescal seemed to swell slightly. [40]

“Yes, the earrings of Princess Laurentini,” he said, pompously. “It wasn’t a bad piece of work. I don’t mind telling you that before the police, and above all the examining magistrate come on the scene, I should very much like to have carried the inquiry to a point at which——”

“At which,” Ralph broke in in a tone of warm approval, “these gentlemen will have nothing to do but draw their conclusions. You are quite right; and I will not continue my journey till to-morrow, if my presence can be of any use to you.”

“It would be very useful to me and I’m very much obliged to you for the offer,” said Marescal gratefully.

The car was shunted into a siding; the train continued its journey. The conductor had to go with it; but before he went he made his statement

Marescal began his investigations, then evidently with the intention of getting Ralph out off the way, he begged him to go to the station to find some sheets to cover the corpses.

With an air of zeal Ralph bustled off down the corridor and out of the car. Then he slipped back, stepped on to the foot-board and raised his head to the level of the edge of the third window of the corridor.

“Its just as I thought,” he said to himself, “my pomaded friend wished to be alone. He had a little preliminary game to play.”

Marescal in fact had raised the body of the English [41]girl a little and unbuttoned her coat. Round her waist was a belt to which was fastened a little red leather wallet. He unfastened the clasp and took away the wallet. Then he laid the corpse gently back on the floor and opened the wallet. It contained papers and at once he set about reading them.

Ralph, who could only see his back, could not judge from his expression the effect that the papers had on him. He went off grumbling:

“It’s no use your hurrying, comrade, I shall catch you all right before the end of the business. Those papers were bequeathed to me; no one but me has any right to them.”

He accomplished the task with which he had been charged and brought back with him the station master’s wife and mother who insisted, as was the custom of the country, that they ought to keep watch over the dead. He found one of the workmen from down the line talking to Marescal and learned that two men had been seen hurrying through the wood and that one of them was limping.

“Was that all they found?” asked Ralph.

“Everything,” said Marescal. “They did find, on the track these two scoundrels took, a heel stuck between two roots which had gripped it, a heel torn off a shoe, but it was the heel of a woman’s shoe.”

“Then the workmen had nothing to report,” said Ralph in a tone of keen disappointment. [42]

“Nothing,” said Marescal a trifle glumly.

They raised the English girl from the floor and laid her on the seat. Ralph gazed at his beautiful and charming traveler for the last time, and murmured beneath his breath: “I shall avenge you, Miss Bakersfield. If I was unable to guard you and save you, I swear that your murderers shall be punished.”

He thought of the girl with the green eyes and swore again to take vengeance also on that mysterious creature.

“She was a beautiful creature,” he said. “Don’t you know her name?”

“How should I know it?” asked Marescal.

“But what about this wallet?”

“It must only be opened in the presence of the public prosecutor,” snapped Marescal; then, hastily changing the subject, he added: “The surprising thing is that the scoundrels did not rob her of it.”

“It should contain papers,” said Ralph, pressing his point.

“We must wait for the public prosecutor,” repeated the Commissary firmly. “But in any case it is quite clear that the robbers who stripped you took nothing from her—neither this wrist-watch, nor this brooch, nor this necklace.”

His vanity and pretentiousness did not escape Ralph; he said in a tone of awed admiration: “I have an impression, Monsieur Commissary, that you have [43]already made considerable progress towards the discovery of the truth. I feel that you are a master of the detective’s art. Would it be possible for you to tell me in a few words what point you have reached?”

“Why not?” said Marescal, taking Ralph’s arm and drawing him into the empty compartment next door. “The police won’t be long coming, nor will the doctor. In order to make clear my position in the matter and make sure of the reward, I shall be glad to inform you of the preliminary result of my first investigations.”

“Go it, old pomade-pot!” said Ralph to himself. “You could not find any one better than me to confide in!”

“Sit down,” said Marescal, offering him a cigarette. “I propose to demonstrate two fundamental facts, in my humble opinion, of the greatest importance. The first of them is that the English girl, as you describe her, has been the victim of a mistake. Yes, Monsieur, of a mistake. Don’t burst into protests; I can prove it. At the moment fixed by the train’s slackening speed, as they knew it would be forced to do, the robbers, who were in the car behind—I remember having noticed them from a distance, and I even believe that there were three of them—attack you and rob you; they attack your traveling companion and try to tie her up. Then of a sudden they leave her and move on—to the end compartment. What was the reason of this right-about turn? It was the fact that [44]they had made a mistake, because the young woman was hidden under her rug, because they thought they were attacking two men and found that what they had attacked was a man and a woman. Hence their consternation.… ‘Curse it! It’s a woman!’ And hence their hasty departure. They explore the car and find the two men they are really seeking—the two men in the end compartment. These two are on their guard and defend themselves. They shoot them and strip them of everything they have—suit-cases, bags, everything has gone. That’s the first point clearly established. What?”

Ralph was surprised, not by the hypothesis, for he had formed the same hypothesis himself some time before, but that Marescal should have formed it and set it forth with such a logical astuteness. He expressed his warm admiration.

“The second point,” said Marescal, evidently delighted by Ralph’s appreciation.

He held out a small silver box, delicately chased.

“I found that at the back of the seat.”

“A snuff-box?” said Ralph.

“Yes, an old snuff-box,” said Marescal. “But it is used as a cigarette-case.” He opened the box. “Seven cigarettes, you see. A mild tobacco—for a woman.”

“Or for a man,” said Ralph, smiling. “For after all there were only men there.”

“For a woman, I tell you.” [45]

“Impossible,” Ralph protested.

“Just smell the box.”

Ralph took it, sniffed at it, and agreed.

“You’re right—of course, you’re right. The scent of a woman who keeps her cigarette-case in her vanity bag along with her handkerchief and powder-puff and scent-spray. There’s no mistaking the smell,” he said.

“Well?” said Marescal in a tone of triumph.

“Well, I don’t understand anything about it. There are two men here whom we found murdered, and two men who attacked them and murdered them and bolted,” said Ralph in a tone of bewilderment.

“Why not a man and a woman?”

“What? A woman? One of these robbers a woman?” cried Ralph in well-feigned amazement.

“What about this box of cigarettes?” asked Marescal, tapping it.

“It’s hardly sufficient proof,” protested Ralph.

“I’ve got another,” declared Marescal.

“What is it?”

“The heel—this shoe-heel that they picked up in the wood, stuck between two roots. How many more proofs do you want to make you believe in this second fact I’m drumming into your head: the fact that of the two murderers one was a woman?” said Marescal, impatiently.

His clearsightedness irritated Ralph. He was careful, however, to let no vestige of irritation be seen, and [46]muttered in the tone of one from whom a tribute is forced: “By Jove, you’re devilishly smart!”

Then, more loudly, he added: “Is that all? Have you made any more discoveries?”

“Goodness!” cried Marescal, laughing triumphantly. “Give me time to get my breath!”

“Do you mean to go on working all night, then?”

“At any rate I’m going on working till they bring in the two fugitives. And that won’t take long, if they follow my instructions,” said Marescal confidently.

Ralph had followed Marescal’s dissertation with the simple air of admiration of a man who is not very clever himself and leaves to others the task of unraveling a tangle of which he understands very little himself.

He shook his head and, yawning, said: “Enjoy yourself in your own way, Monsieur Commissary. For my part I don’t mind telling you that all this excitement has upset me a bit, and an hour or two’s sleep——”

“Take it,” said Marescal readily. “Go to sleep in any of these compartments you fancy. I’ll see that no one disturbs you. And when I’ve finished, I’ll come and take a nap as well.”

Ralph went into the next compartment, shut the door, drew the curtains, pushed up the shade over the lamp.

“I’ve got you all right, old pomade-pot,” he said to himself. “You’re like the crow in the fable: a little [47]flattery will always loosen your tongue. You’re all right to look at; but you talk too much. As for your jailing this unknown girl and her accomplice, I shall be jolly well surprised if you bring it off. It’s a job I shall have to take in hand myself.”

Then he heard the sound of voices from the direction of the station. They grew louder. Then he heard Marescal, who was leaning out of a window of the corridor, cry out:

“Who is it? Ah, excellent! It’s the police, isn’t it?”

A voice replied: “Yes, Monsieur Commissary. The station master sent us to you.”

“Good. Have you made any arrests, inspector?” said Marescal.

“Only one, sir. One of the robbers they were hunting dropped on the turf by the high road, utterly done. We picked him up about a mile away. But the other managed to escape.”

“That’s a pity. What about the doctor?” said Marescal.

“He was having his horse harnessed as we came by his house. He had just had a night call; but he’ll be here in about forty minutes,” said the inspector.

Marescal paused; then he asked: “Did you catch the smaller of the two robbers?”

“Yes. A pale-faced lad, wearing a hat much too big for him. He’s crying and making promises and whining: [48]“I’ll tell the truth, but only to the examining magistrate. Where is the magistrate?” said the inspector.

“Have you left him at the station?”

“Yes—well guarded.”

“I’ll come along,” said Marescal.

“If you don’t mind, sir. But first I should like to learn exactly what happened on the train.”

“Right,” said Marescal

The inspector climbed up into the car, with a policeman. Marescal at once took him to the compartment in which lay the body of the English girl.

“Everything’s going all right,” Ralph said to himself. “If old pomade-pot starts expounding his theory, it will keep him busy for a while.”

The confusion had cleared from his mind; he was aware of quite unexpected intentions which had suddenly risen in his mind, without his knowing it, so to speak, and without his understanding at all the secret motives of his actions.

He opened the window, leaned out, and examined the line on that side of the carriage. Darkness and not a soul!

He jumped down. [49]