Arsène Lupin, super-sleuth

Events had taken a course uncommonly favorable to Marescal. Aurelie’s confinement to her room meant checkmate to the plan that Ralph had had in mind; it rendered it impossible to fly; it kept her awaiting denunciation in a terrible suspense. Marescal took immediate precautions not to lose these advantages; the nurse they had to put in charge of her, was one of his creatures and, as Ralph was able to ascertain, let him have word every day of the condition of the sick girl. In the event of a sudden improvement, he would have acted.

“Yes,” said Ralph to himself. “But if he has not acted already, it must be that he has motives which prevent him still from laying information against her and prefer to await the end of her illness. He is making his preparations. Let us make our preparations too.”

Though he was opposed to too logical hypotheses which the event always upsets, Ralph had drawn from the facts of the affair some, so to speak, involuntary, conclusions. The strange truth of which no one in the world had dreamt for an instant, but which was so [164]simple, he saw in a confused fashion, rather owing to the weight of the facts than to any effort of his intelligence, and he understood that the moment had come to attack the problem with the utmost determination.

“In an enterprise,” he often said to himself, “the first step is often the most difficult of all.”

If certain actions were clear enough to him, the motives of them remained obscure. To him characters in the drama presented the appearance of people struggling in stress and storm. If he meant to win, it was no longer enough to go on defending Aurelie day after day, but he must ransack the past and discover what profound reasons had moved these people and influenced them in the course of that tragic night.

“To sum up,” he said to himself, “besides me, there are four leading actors who circle round Aurelie and who, all four of them, persecute her: William, Jodot, Marescal and Bregeac. Of these four, some are drawn to her by love, others by the desire of tearing her secret from her. The combination of these two elements, love and greed, are the determining factors in the affair. Now William is, for the time being, out of action. Bregeac and Jodot do not worry me much, as long as Aurelie is ill. There remains Marescal. That is the enemy to be watched.”

There were opposite Bregeac’s house, some empty rooms. Ralph established himself in them. Moreover, since the nurse was in Marescal’s pay, he renewed [165]his acquaintance with the maid and bribed her. Thrice, during the absence of the nurse, this maid took him into Aurelie’s bedroom.

Aurelie did not appear to recognize him. She was still so enfeebled by the fever that she could only utter a few incoherent words and close her eyes again. But he had no doubt that she heard him and that she knew who it was who spoke to her in that gentle voice which comforted and soothed her like the passes of an hypnotist.

“It is I, Aurelie,” he said. “You see that I am true to my promise and that you may have complete confidence in me. I swear to you that your enemies are not capable of fighting me and that I will set you free. How should it be otherwise? I think of nothing but you. I reconstitute your life, and little by little it grows clearer and clearer to me exactly as it is, simple and honest. I know that you are innocent. I’ve always known it, even when I accused you. The most irrefutable proof seemed false to me: the lady with the green eyes could not be a criminal.”

He did not fear to go further in his avowals and say the tenderest words to her, to which she was compelled to listen, for he mixed with his advice:

“You are all my life. I have never found so much grace and charm in a woman. Trust yourself to me, Aurelie. I only ask one thing of you, you know, trust. If any one questions you, do not answer. If any one [166]writes to you, do not reply, if any one wishes to take you away from here refuse to go. Trust in me to the very last minute of the cruelest hour. I shall be there. I shall always be there because I live only for you and by you.”

The girl’s face filled slowly with a restful quietness. She fell asleep, as if lulled by a happy dream.

Then he slipped into the room reserved for the use of Bregeac and sought, vainly enough, papers and information which might guide his actions.

He also made domiciliary visits to the flat which Marescal occupied in the Rue de Rivoli and searched them with extraordinary minuteness.

Finally he made the most careful inquiries in the offices of the Minister of the Interior in which the two men worked. Their rivalry and hatred of one another were known to all. Both of them, supported by people in high places, were the objects of a struggle both at the Ministry and at the Prefecture of Police, waged by powerful personages who battled above their heads. The service suffered from it. Either of them accused the other openly of serious derelictions from duty. There was talk of calling on them to resign. Which of them would be sacrificed?

One day, hidden behind the window curtain, Ralph watched Bregeac at Aurelie’s bedside. He was a bilious-looking person with a thin and yellow face. Of rather more than middle height, he carried himself with [167]something of an air, and at any rate he was a man of greater elegance and distinction than the vulgar Marescal.

Awaking suddenly, Aurelie caught sight of him bending over her, and said in harsh enough accents: “Leave me! Go away!”

“How you detest me and how you would love to injure me!” he murmured sadly.

“I should never injure the man that my mother married,” she said.

He gazed upon her with eyes full of suffering.

“You are very beautiful, my poor child,” he said. “But, alas, why have you always rejected my affection? Yes, I know that I was in the wrong. For a very long while I was only drawn to you by that secret you kept from me for no reason whatever. But if you had not been so stubborn in that absurd silence, I should never have dreamt of the love which now tortures me, for you will never love me—it is not possible that you should ever love me.”

She did not wish to listen to him and turned away her head.

However, he went on: “During your delirium you often spoke of revelations you wanted to make to me. Were they revelations about the secret, or about your senseless flight with that fellow William? Where did that outsider take you? What became of you before you took refuge in your convent?” [168]

She did not answer—either because she was too exhausted to answer, or because she disliked him too heartily.

He said no more and went away. When he had gone, Ralph, slipping away in his turn, saw that she was weeping.

Finally, at the end of a fortnight’s investigation any one but Ralph would have been discouraged. Speaking generally, apart from certain tendencies, which he had interpreted in his own way, the chief problems remained insoluble, or, at any rate, were incapable of any apparent solution.

“But I am not wasting my time,” he said to himself; “and that is the essential thing. Action often consists of inactivity. The atmosphere is less thick. My vision of the characters and events in this affair is growing stronger and more precise. If the fact which is the key to the problem is still missing, I am in the very heart of the enemy’s camp. On the eve of a combat which promises to be so violent, when all these mortal enemies confront one another, the needs of the fight itself and of finding effective weapons will certainly give me the unexpected jolt which will strike out the sparks which will show me the truth.”

One of those sparks was struck out sooner than he expected, a spark which lighted one quarter of the darkness, a quarter from which he did not think that anything important would come. One morning he was [169]gazing out of his window, with his eyes fixed on the windows of Bregeac’s house, when he saw, still disguised as a rag-picker, the murderer Jodot. This time Jodot was carrying on his shoulder a canvas bag into which he dropped his loot. He set it down in front of the house itself, sat down and began to eat his dejeuner, poking about in the orderly box which the cook had carried out. The action seemed mechanical, but in a minute or two Ralph perceived that the man was only hooking out of the box crumpled envelopes and torn-up letters. He cast a glance over each scrap and then continued his sorting. There was no doubt that he was interested in Bregeac’s correspondence.

A quarter of an hour later he hoisted his bag on to his back and went off. Ralph followed him to Montmartre, to discover that Jodot had a junk shop there. He came three days in succession and on each occasion he repeated the same equivocal operation. But on the third day, which was a Sunday, Ralph surprised Bregeac watching him out of his window. When Jodot went off, Bregeac, in his turn, followed him with infinite precaution. Ralph followed both of them at a distance. Was he going to discover the tie which connected Bregeac and Jodot?

In this order, following one another, they went through the Monceau district, crossed over the fortifications, and came to the banks of the Seine at the end of the Boulevard Bineau. A few modest villas [170]stood between patches of waste land. Jodot set down his bag in front of one of these villas and sat down on the curb and began to eat.

He remained there four or five hours, watched by Bregeac, who had his lunch in the arbor of a small restaurant about thirty yards away, and by Ralph, who, stretched at full length on the river bank, smoked cigarettes.

When Jodot went away, Bregeac went off in the opposite direction as if he had lost all interest in the matter. Ralph went into the restaurant and over a meal, for which he was more than ready, chatted to the proprietor. He learned that the villa in front of which Jodot had been sitting, had belonged a few weeks before to the two brothers Loubeaux, who had been murdered by three ruffians in the Marseilles express. The police had sealed it up and left it in charge of a neighbor who went for a walk every Sunday afternoon.

Ralph had started at hearing the name of the brothers Loubeaux. The maneuvers of Jodot began to assume significance.

He went deeper into the matter and learned that at the time of their death the brothers Loubeaux lived very little at their villa, which they only used as an office for their champagne business. They had separated from their partner and were traveling on their own account.

“Their partner?” said Ralph. [171]

“Yes. You’ll still see his name engraved on the brass plate on the door, ‘Loubeaux Frères, et Jodot’,” said the proprietor of the restaurant.

Ralph started again.

“Jodot?” he said in incredulous accents.

“Yes—a big, red-faced man who looks like a strong man at a fair. No one has seen him about here for more than a year.”

Most important information, as Ralph told himself, when the proprietor hurried to welcome a regular customer.

So Jodot had formerly been the partner of the two brothers whom he was to murder later. There was nothing astonishing in the fact that the police had not gone carefully into this matter, for they had never suspected that there had been any Jodot concerned in the crime, since Marescal had made up his mind that Ralph was the third confederate of the murderers. But why did Jodot return to the very place where his victims had formerly lived? And why did Bregeac spy upon his coming?

The week passed uneventfully. Jodot did not appear again in front of Bregeac’s house. But on the Saturday Ralph, convinced that he would return to the villa on the Sunday, climbed over the wall of its garden from the piece of waste land which ran along it and made his way into the villa itself through a window on the first floor. [172]

Two of the rooms on this floor were still furnished; and there were signs that they had been carefully searched. Who had searched them? The Police? Bregeac? Jodot? With what object?

Ralph did not search them himself. That which some one else had sought, was either not to be found there, or was to found there no longer. He settled down to spend the night in an easy chair. He found a book lying on the table and began to read it by the light of his electric torch. It sent him to sleep.

The truth is only revealed to those who compel it to emerge from the darkness; and it often happens that, when one believes it to be a long way off, chance comes and sets it in the very place one has prepared for it. One’s merit consists in the quality of that preparation. On awaking, Ralph’s eyes fell on the book he had been reading. Its cover had been again covered with a piece of cloth cut out of one of those squares of black cloth which photographers use to cover their cameras.

Ralph hunted about. In a corner of a cupboard, devoted apparently to odds and ends, he found one of those very squares of cloth. Three round pieces of about the size of a plate had been cut out of it.

“Here we are!” he said to himself in some excitement. “I am in luck! The three masks of the train-robbers came from this house! Here is the irrefutable proof of it. It does throw a lot of light on the affair.” [173]

The truth now appeared to him so natural, so exactly in keeping with the unexpressed intuitions he had had, and to a certain extent so entertaining in its simplicity, that he laughed aloud in that silent house.

“Perfect—perfect,” he said to himself. “Fortune itself will supply me with the missing facts. Henceforward she will enter my service, and all the details of the affair are going to come at my call and range themselves in order before me in the full light of day.”

At eight o’clock in the morning the caretaker of the villa made his Sunday round of the ground floor and satisfied himself that the seals were unbroken. At nine Ralph went down into the dining-room, and opened a window, leaving the shutters closed, just above the spot on which Jodot was accustomed to sit.

Jodot arrived punctually. He came with his sack, which he set against the wall. Then he sat down and began his meal. Over it he talked to himself, but in so low a voice that Ralph could not catch his words. His meal consisted of sausages and cheese washed down by a jug of red wine; and after it he lit a pipe, the smoke of which rose to Ralph’s nostrils.

This first pipe was followed by a second, then by a third. So two hours passed, without Ralph’s being able to understand the reason of this long stay. Through a hole in the shutter he could see Jodot’s ragged trouser-legs and his boots down at heel. Beyond them flowed the river. Passers-by came and [174]went. Bregeac must be on the watch in one of the arbors of the restaurant.

At last, a few minutes before noon, Jodot uttered these words:

“Hang it all! Nothing fresh? But it’s pretty stiff, dammit!”

He seemed to be speaking not to himself, but to some one close at hand. But no one had joined him: there was no one near him.

“Hell and blazes!” he growled on. “I tell you the bottle’s there! I’ve had it in my hand and seen it with my own eyes not once but a hundred times. Have you done exactly what I told you? The whole of the right side of the cellar, as you went over the left the other day? Well, well—you ought to have found it.”

He was silent for a little while; then he went on.

“It might be as well to try somewhere else and move on to the waste ground at the back of the house, in case they threw the bottle there, before the coup on the express. It’s an open-air hiding-place, and just as good as any other. If Bregeac has searched the cellar, he mayn’t have thought of outside. Go there and look. I’ll wait for you.”

Ralph did not wait to hear any more. He began to understand as soon as Jodot spoke of the cellar. That cellar must run from the front to the back of the house, with an air-hole into the street and another at [175]the back. Access to it through the air-hole at the back would be easy.

Quickly he ran upstairs to the first floor and into a back bedroom from which he could look down on the waste ground, to find that he had guessed right. In the middle of the unused building plot, in which stood a board with “For Sale” on it, among a heap of old iron, empty barrels, and broken bottles, a small boy of seven or eight, tiny, incredibly thin in his tightly fitting gray jersey, was searching hard, darting about with the agility of a squirrel. The circle he was searching with the object of finding a bottle, was of very small circumference. If Jodot had been right, the search should not take him long. It did not. In about ten minutes after moving the broken barrels and boxes, the small boy rose and, without wasting time, ran towards the villa, carrying a bottle gray with dust.

Ralph ran down the stairs to the ground floor with the intention of relieving the small boy of his prize. But he could not get the door at the head of the stairs to the basement open, and he hurried to his peep-hole at the dining-room window.

He was just in time to hear Jodot say: “That’s it! You’ve got it! Splendid! Now I’m ‘armed’. Bregeac’s friend won’t be able to give me any more trouble. Hurry up! Get out of sight!”

The small boy got out of sight. He squeezed himself through the opening made by a broken bar in the [176]grating and the air-hole and slipped like a ferret into the sack.

Jodot at once rose, hoisted the sack on to his shoulder, and went off.

Ralph gave him a minute or two’s grace, then drew the bolts of the front door, opened it, breaking the seals, and started in pursuit.

Jodot was walking briskly along two hundred yards ahead, carrying the confederate who had first explored for him the basement of Bregeac’s house, and then the cellar of the villa of the brothers Loubeaux.

Fifty yards behind him Bregeac was winding in and out among the trees which bordered the road.

Fifty yards behind him an angler was rowing along under the bank of the Seine in pursuit of Bregeac. It was Marescal. So Jodot was followed by Bregeac, Bregeac and Jodot by Marescal, and all three of them by Ralph.

And the stake for which all four of them were playing was the possession of a bottle.

“This is growing exciting,” said Ralph to himself. “Jodot is in possession of the bottle it is true. But he does not know that other people are after it. Who will be cleverest of the other three? If there was no Lupin in it, I should back Marescal. But Lupin is in it.”

Jodot stopped. Bregeac stopped also, so did Marescal in his boat. Ralph stopped too.

Jodot laid his sack on the ground, stretched out so [177]that the small boy should be comfortable, and sitting on a bench, he began to examine the bottle, shaking it and holding it up to the light.

The time had come for Bregeac to act; at any rate that was his opinion; and he came up very quietly.

He had opened a large parasol and held it before him like a shield behind which he hid his face. On his boat Marescal disappeared beneath a very large straw hat.

When Bregeac was three yards from the bench, he shut his parasol, sprang forward, without bothering about the people strolling along the path, snatched the bottle, and took to flight along a lane in the direction of the fortifications.

He did this with uncommon skill and admirable swiftness. Taken aback, Jodot hesitated, cried out, caught up the sack, set it down again as if he was afraid of not being able to run quickly enough with such a burden, lost time and went out of action.

But Marescal, foreseeing the attack, had landed, and at once dashed in pursuit. Ralph did the same. There were only three competitors left.

Bregeac, like a good runner, gave his mind to nothing but his running and did not turn round. Marescal gave his mind only to Bregeac, and he did not turn round either, so that Ralph was able to pursue them quite openly. Why not?

In ten minutes the first of the three runners reached the Ternes Gate. Bregeac was so hot that he took off [178]his jacket. Near the Custom House a street car had stopped and a number of travelers were waiting at the ticket office to get aboard it and return to Paris.

Bregeac mingled with this crowd. Marescal did the same.

The conductor called out the numbers of the tickets. But the jostling was so violent that Marescal had scarcely any difficulty in pulling the bottle out of Bregeac’s pocket without Bregeac’s being any the wiser. At once Marescal slipped through the Custom House and set off at full speed.

“My good friends eliminate themselves one after the other,” chuckled Ralph. “And each of them is working for me.”

When, in his turn, Ralph went through the Custom House, he saw Bregeac making desperate efforts to get out of the car through the crowd which blockaded his way, in order to pursue the man who had robbed him.

Marescal plunged into the streets which run parallel to the Avenue des Ternes. They are narrow and winding. He ran like a madman. When he came to a stop at the Avenue Wagram, he was out of breath. His face was shining with sweat, his eyes were bloodshot, his veins were swollen. He mopped his face and forehead, utterly done.

He bought a newspaper and, after having taken a look at it, wrapped the bottle up in it. Then he stuck it under his arm and went tottering on like a man who [179]only keeps upright by a miracle. In fact, the handsome Marescal could not hold himself upright. His collar was as limp and crumpled as if it had been dipped in water; his beard ended in two points from which dripped drops of sweat.

It was just before he reached the Place de L’Etoile that a gentleman in large dark spectacles, coming from the opposite direction with a lighted cigarette in his mouth, appeared in front of him. This gentleman barred his way, and since his cigarette was already burning, did not ask him for a light, but, without a word puffed a cloud of smoke into his face, and smiled a smile that bared his teeth, nearly all of them pointed like canines.

The Commissary’s eyes started out of their sockets; he stammered: “Who are you? What do you want?”

What was the use of asking? He knew quite well that the man who always mystified him stood before him, the man whom he called the third confederate, Aurelie’s lover, and his, Marescal’s, eternal enemy.

And this man, who appeared to him the devil in person, pointed a finger at the bottle and said in affectionately genial accents:

“Come, hand it over—be nice to the kind gentleman—hand it over. A Commissary of your rank can’t go dancing along the streets with a bottle. Come, Rudolph—hand it over.”

Marescal gave way at once. Cry out, call for help, [180]set passers-by on this murderer—he could not do it. He was under a spell. This infernal creature robbed him of all his vigor, and, stupidly, without dreaming for a moment of resisting, like a thief who finds it quite natural to restore the thing he has stolen, he allowed the bottle to be taken from under the arm which could not longer hold it.

At that moment Bregeac came up, also breathless, also powerless to spring on the third thief, or to question Marescal. Both of them stood, stunned, on the edge of the gutter and watched the gentleman in dark spectacles hail a taxi, get into it, and wave his hat in farewell out of the window.

As soon as he reached his lodgings Ralph unwrapped the bottle. It was a quart bottle such as is used for mineral water, an old quart bottle of thick black glass. On the dusty, dirty label, which all the same must have been protected against the damp, an inscription in large printed letters could be easily read:

EAU DE JOUVENCE.

Below were several lines hard to decipher which evidently gave the formula of this Eau de Jouvence.

.….….….….….….….….….…
.… mille cures.….….….….….….
.….….….….….….….….….…
  etc.….….….….…… [181]

But the bottle was not empty. In the inside something moved, something light, which rustled like paper. He turned the bottle upside down and shook it; nothing came out. Then he let down into the bottle a piece of string ending in a big knot and by means of it, after the exercise of a good deal of patience, drew out a small sheet of paper, rolled up into a cylinder and tied with red thread. Having unrolled it, he saw that it was rather less than a half of an ordinary sheet of paper and that the lower part of it had been cut, or rather torn, irregularly. Some words were written on it in ink, of which many were missing, but which were sufficient for him to form several sentences:

“The accusation is true. This is my formal confession. I alone am responsible for the crime that has been committed and neither Jodot nor the Loubeaux are to be blamed for it. Bregeac.”

At the first glance Ralph had recognized Bregeac’s handwriting, but written in an ink faded by time, which permitted him, along with the state of the paper, to reckon the document to be fifteen or twenty years old.

What was this crime, and against whom had it been committed?

He reflected for some time before he arrived at this conclusion. Then he said to himself: “All the obscurity of this affair comes from the fact that it is not one affair but two; two enterprises are mingled in it, [182]two dramas of which the first dominates the second. First the drama of the express in which the characters are the two Loubeaux, William Jodot, and Aurelie. The second is a drama which took place years ago and of which to-day the two actors, Jodot and Bregeac, are at loggerheads.

“The situation which grows more and more complicated for any one who does not know the key-word, is becoming clearer and clearer to me. The hour of battle draws near, and the stake is Aurelie, or rather the secret which flutters in the depths of her beautiful green eyes. Whoever shall be for a few minutes, by force, by trickery, or by love, master of her thoughts, will be master of that secret, for which so many victims have already died.

“And to this whirlwind of hate and vengeance and greed, Marescal with his passion, his ambition, and his rancor, brings that terrible instrument of war, Justice.

“Opposing him, myself.”

He made his preparations with the most minute care and with all the more vigor because each of his adversaries was redoubling his precautions. Bregeac, without any definite proof against the nurse who gave information to Marescal or against the maid whom Ralph had bribed, discharged them both. The shutters of the windows in the front of his house were shut. On the other hand, the agents of Marescal began to show themselves in the street. Jodot only no longer showed [183]himself. Disarmed doubtless by the loss of the document in which Bregeac had written his confession, he must have buried himself in some safe retreat.

This period lasted for a fortnight. Ralph obtained an introduction, under a false name, to the wife of the Minister who openly protected Marescal, and succeeded in becoming uncommonly intimate with this rather mature lady, who was exceedingly jealous, and from whom her husband kept nothing secret. She was transported with joy by Ralph’s attentions. Without being aware of the part she was playing and ignorant moreover of Marescal’s passion for Aurelie, from hour to hour she kept Ralph informed of the Commissary’s intentions, of his plans with regard to Aurelie, and of the method by which he sought, with the Minister’s help, to smash Bregeac and those who supported him.

Ralph was frightened: the attack was so well planned that he asked himself if he ought not to anticipate it, to carry off Aurelie, and so bring it to nothing before it was put into execution.

“And what then?” he said to himself. “What should we gain by flight? The conflict would remain the same and everything would begin all over again.”

He was able to resist the temptation.

Returning home one evening, he found a note awaiting him. The Minister’s wife informed him that the final decisions had been made, among others that the [184]arrest of Aurelie had been fixed for the next day, July the 12th, at three o’clock in the afternoon.

“Poor little girl with the green eyes,” thought Ralph. “Will she have confidence in me in everything and in spite of everything, as I asked her? Will there not again be tears and anguish for her?”

He slept peacefully, like a great commander on the eve of battle. He rose at eight o’clock. The decisive day had begun.

Then, towards noon, as his maid, his old nurse Victoire, returned by the servants’ entrance with her basket of provisions, six men posted on the staircase, forced their way into the kitchen.

“Is your master here?” said one of them roughly. “Come, hurry up! There’s no point in lying. I am the Commissary Marescal and I have a warrant for his arrest.”

Pale and trembling she muttered: “He’s in his study.”

“Take us to it!”

He set his hand over her mouth, that she might not warn her master, and made her walk along the passage at the end of which she pointed to a door.

Their adversary had not time to throw himself on guard. He was seized and tied up and dispatched almost as if he had been a trunk.

Marescal said simply: “You are the chief of the robbers of the express. Your name is Ralph de Limézy.” [185]Turning to his men he added: “Take him to the police station. Here’s the warrant. And keep your mouths shut, do you hear? Not a word about the personality of our ‘client’. You’re responsible for him, Tony. You, too, Labonce. Take him off, And at three o’clock meet me in front of Bregeac’s house. It will be the young lady’s turn then and the smashing up of her step-father.”

Four men took away the prisoner. Marescal kept the fifth, Sauvinoux, with him.

Forthwith he searched the study and took possession of some papers and other unimportant things. But neither he, nor Sauvinoux, found what they were looking for, the bottle on the label of which he had had time to read, when he came to a stop in the Avenue Wagram: “Eau de Jouvence.”

They went away to lunch in a neighboring restaurant. They came back and Marescal searched furiously.

At last, at a quarter past two, Sauvinoux discovered the famous bottle behind the marble slab under the mantelpiece. It was corked and carefully sealed with red sealing-wax.

Marescal shook it and held it up against the light of an electric light bulb. It contained a roll of paper.

He hesitated—should he read that paper?

“No, no! Not yet!—Later in the presence of [186]Bregeac! Bravo, Sauvinoux! You’ve worked splendidly, my lad!”

His joy was overflowing. He went away, murmuring:

“This time I am near my goal. I hold Bregeac in my hands and I’ve only to tighten my grip. As for the girl, there is no longer any one to defend her. Her lover is in prison. There are just you and I, darling!” [187]