The Crystal Stopper by Maurice Leblanc (good book club books .txt) 📗

learn something. But how the deuce did the beggar get in? Has he managed to draw the bolts and open the door? But, if so, why did he make the mistake of shutting it again?”

Not for a second—a curious anomaly in a man like Lupin, an anomaly to be explained only by the uncanny feeling which the whole adventure produced in him—not for a second did he suspect the very simple truth which was about to be revealed to him. Continuing his way down, he crouched on one of the bottom steps of the staircase, thus placing himself between the door of the bedroom and the hall-door, on the road which Daubrecq’s enemy must inevitably take in order to join his accomplices.

He questioned the darkness with an unspeakable anguish. He was on the point of unmasking that enemy of Daubrecq’s, who was also his own adversary. He would thwart his plans. And the booty captured from Daubrecq he would capture in his turn, while Daubrecq slept and while the accomplices lurking behind the hall-door or outside the garden-gate vainly awaited their leader’s return.

And that return took place. Lupin knew it by the renewed vibration of the balusters. And, once more, with every sense strained and every nerve on edge, he strove to discern the mysterious thing that was coming toward him. He suddenly realized it when only a few yards away. He himself, hidden in a still darker recess, could not be seen. And what he saw—in the very vaguest manner—was approaching stair by stair, with infinite precautions, holding on to each separate baluster.

“Whom the devil have I to do with?” said Lupin to himself, while his heart thumped inside his chest.

The catastrophe was hastened. A careless movement on Lupin’s part was observed by the stranger, who stopped short. Lupin was afraid lest the other should turn back and take to flight. He sprang at the adversary and was stupefied at encountering nothing but space and knocking against the stair-rail without seizing the form which he saw. But he at once rushed forward, crossed the best part of the hall and caught up his antagonist just as he was reaching the door opening on the garden.

There was a cry of fright, answered by other cries on the further side of the door.

“Oh, hang it, what’s this?” muttered Lupin, whose arms had closed, in the dark, round a little, tiny, trembling, whimpering thing.

Suddenly understanding, he stood for a moment motionless and dismayed, at a loss what to do with his conquered prey. But the others were shouting and stamping outside the door. Thereupon, dreading lest Daubrecq should wake up, he slipped the little thing under his jacket, against his chest, stopped the crying with his handkerchief rolled into a ball and hurried up the three flights of stairs.

“Here,” he said to Victoire, who woke with a start. “I’ve brought you the indomitable chief of our enemies, the Hercules of the gang. Have you a feeding-bottle about you?”

He put down in the easy-chair a child of six or seven years of age, the tiniest little fellow in a gray jersey and a knitted woollen cap, whose pale and exquisitely pretty features were streaked with the tears that streamed from the terrified eyes.

“Where did you pick that up?” asked Victoire, aghast.

“At the foot of the stairs, as it was coming out of Daubrecq’s bedroom,” replied Lupin, feeling the jersey in the hope that the child had brought a booty of some kind from that room.

Victoire was stirred to pity:

“Poor little dear! Look, he’s trying not to cry!... Oh, saints above, his hands are like ice! Don’t be afraid, sonnie, we sha’n’t hurt you: the gentleman’s all right.”

“Yes,” said Lupin, “the gentleman’s quite all right, but there’s another very wicked gentleman who’ll wake up if they go on making such a rumpus outside the hall-door. Do you hear them, Victoire?”

“Who is it?”

“The satellites of our young Hercules, the indomitable leader’s gang.”

“Well...?” stammered Victoire, utterly unnerved.

“Well, as I don’t want to be caught in the trap, I shall start by clearing out. Are you coming, Hercules?”

He rolled the child in a blanket, so that only its head remained outside, gagged its mouth as gently as possible and made Victoire fasten it to his shoulders:

“See, Hercules? We’re having a game. You never thought you’d find gentlemen to play pick-a-back with you at three o’clock in the morning! Come, whoosh, let’s fly away! You don’t get giddy, I hope?”

He stepped across the window-ledge and set foot on one of the rungs of the ladder. He was in the garden in a minute.

He had never ceased hearing and now heard more plainly still the blows that were being struck upon the front-door. He was astounded that Daubrecq was not awakened by so violent a din:

“If I don’t put a stop to this, they’ll spoil everything,” he said to himself.

He stood in an angle of the house, invisible in the darkness, and measured the distance between himself and the gate. The gate was open. To his right, he saw the steps, on the top of which the people were flinging themselves about; to his left, the building occupied by the portress.

The woman had come out of her lodge and was standing near the people, entreating them:

“Oh, do be quiet, do be quiet! He’ll come!”

“Capital!” said Lupin. “The good woman is an accomplice of these as well. By Jingo, what a pluralist!”

He rushed across to her and, taking her by the scruff of the neck, hissed:

“Go and tell them I’ve got the child... They can come and fetch it at my place, Rue Chateaubriand.”

A little way off, in the avenue, stood a taxi which Lupin presumed to be engaged by the gang. Speaking authoritatively, as though he were one of the accomplices, he stepped into the cab and told the man to drive him home.

“Well,” he said to the child, “that wasn’t much of a shake-up, was it?... What do you say to going to bye-bye on the gentleman’s bed?”

As his servant, Achille, was asleep, Lupin made the little chap comfortable and stroked his hair for him. The child seemed numbed. His poor face was as though petrified into a stiff expression made up, at one and the same time, of fear and the wish not to show fear, of the longing to scream and a pitiful effort not to scream.

“Cry, my pet, cry,” said Lupin. “It’ll do you good to cry.”

The child did not cry, but the voice was so gentle and so kind that he relaxed his tense muscles; and, now that his eyes were calmer and his mouth less contorted, Lupin, who was examining him closely, found something that he recognized, an undoubted resemblance.

This again confirmed certain facts which he suspected and which he had for