The Teeth of the Tiger by Maurice Leblanc (great novels to read txt) 📗

to avoid as far as possible the glare of the lanterns, of which he was beginning to see the gleams. And an amazing thing happened: the stone against which he was pushing toppled over slowly, as though moving on a pivot, and he fell backward into a second cavity situated behind it.

He quickly drew his legs after him and the stone swung back as slowly as before, not, however, without sending down a quantity of small stones, crumbling from the wall and half covering his legs.

"Well, well!" he chuckled. "Can Providence be siding with virtue and righteousness?"

He heard Mazeroux's voice saying:

"Nobody! And here's the end of the passage. Unless he ran away as we came—look, through the trapdoor at the top of this ladder."

Weber replied:

"Considering the slope by which we've come, it's certain that the trapdoor is on a level with the second floor. Well, the other little cross ought to mark the boudoir on the second floor, next to Don Luis's bedroom. That's what I supposed, and why I posted three of our men there. If he's tried to get out on that side, he's caught."

"We've only got to knock," said Mazeroux. "Our men will find the trapdoor and let us out. If not, we will break it down."

More blows echoed down the passage. Fifteen or twenty minutes after, the trapdoor gave way, and other voices now mingled with Weber's and Mazeroux's.

During this time, Don Luis examined his domain and perceived how extremely small it was. The most that he could do was to sit in it. It was a gallery, or, rather, a sort of gut, a yard and a half long and ending in an orifice, narrower still, heaped up with bricks. The walls, besides, were formed of bricks, some of which were lacking; and the building-stones which these should have kept in place crumbled at the least touch. The ground was strewn with them.

"By Jove!" thought Lupin, "I must not wriggle about too much, or I shall risk being buried alive! A pleasant prospect!"

Not only this, but the fear of making a noise kept him motionless. As a matter of fact, he was close to two rooms occupied by the detectives, first the boudoir and then the study, for the boudoir, as he knew, was over that part of his study which included the telephone box.

The thought of this suggested another. On reflection, remembering that he used sometimes to wonder how Count Malonyi's ancestress had managed to keep alive behind the curtain on the days when she had to hide there, he realized that there must have been a communication between the secret passage and what was now the telephone box, a communication too narrow to admit a person's body, but serving as a ventilating shaft.

As a precaution, in case the secret passage was discovered, a stone concealed the upper aperture of this shaft. Count Malonyi must have closed up the lower end when he restored the wainscoting of the study.

So there he was, imprisoned in the thickness of the walls, with no very definite intention beyond that of escaping from the clutches of the police. More hours passed.

Gradually, tortured with hunger and thirst, he fell into a heavy sleep, disturbed by painful nightmares which he would have given much to be able to throw off. But he slept too deeply to recover consciousness until eight o'clock in the evening.

When he woke up, feeling very tired, he saw his position in an unexpectedly hideous light and, at the same time, so accurately that, yielding to a sudden change of opinion marked by no little fear, he resolved to leave his hiding-place and give himself up. Anything was better than the torture which he was enduring and the dangers to which longer waiting exposed him.

But, on turning round to reach the entrance to his hole, he perceived first that the stone did not swing over when merely pushed, and, next, after several attempts, that he could not manage to find the mechanism which no doubt worked the stone. He persisted. His exertions were all in vain. The stone did not budge. Only, at each exertion, a few bits of stone came crumbling from the upper part of the wall and still further narrowed the space in which he was able to move.

It cost him a considerable effort to master his excitement and to say, jokingly:

"That's capital! I shall be reduced now to calling for help. I, Arsène
Lupin! Yes, to call in the help of those gentlemen of the police.
Otherwise, the odds on my being buried alive will increase every minute.
They're ten to one as it is!"

He clenched his fists.

"Hang it! I'll get out of this scrape by myself! Call for help? Not if
I know it!"

He summoned up all his energies to think, but his jaded brain gave him none but confused and disconnected ideas. He was haunted by Florence's image and by Marie Fauville's as well.

"It's to-night that I'm to save them," he said to himself. "And I certainly will save them, as they are not guilty and as I know the real criminal. But how shall I set about it to succeed?"

He thought of the Prefect of Police, of the meeting that was to take place at Fauville's house on the Boulevard Suchet. The meeting had begun. The police were watching the house. And this reminded him of the sheet of paper found by Weber in the eighth volume of Shakespeare's plays, and of the sentence written on it, which the Prefect had read out:

"Bear in mind that the explosion is independent of the letters, and that it will take place at three o'clock in the morning."

"Yes," thought Don Luis, accepting M. Desmalions's reasoning, "yes, in ten days' time. As there have been only three letters, the fourth will appear to-night; and the explosion will not take place until the fifth letter appears—that is in ten days from now."

He repeated:

"In ten days—with the fifth letter—in ten days—"

And suddenly he gave a start of fright. A horrible vision had flashed across his mind, a vision only too real. The explosion was to occur that very night! And all at once, knowing that he knew the truth, all at once, in a revival of his usual clear-sightedness, he accepted the theory as certain.

No doubt only three letters had appeared out of the mysterious darkness, but four letters ought to have appeared, because one of them had appeared not on the date fixed, but ten days later; and this for a reason which Don Luis knew. Besides, it was not a question of all this. It was not a question of seeking the truth amid this confusion of dates and letters, amid this intricate tangle in which no one could lay claim to any certainty,

No; one thing alone stood out above the situation: the sentence, "Bear in mind that the explosion is independent of the letters." And, as the explosion was put down for the night of the twenty-fifth of May, it would occur that very night, at three o'clock in the morning!

"Help! Help!" he cried.

This time he did not hesitate. So far, he had had the courage to remain huddled in his prison and to wait for the miracle that might come to his assistance; but he preferred to face every danger and undergo every penalty rather than abandon the Prefect of Police, Weber, Mazeroux, and their companions to the death that threatened them.

"Help! Help!"

Fauville's house would be blown up in three or four hours. That he knew with the greatest certainty. Just as punctually as the mysterious letters had reached their destination in spite of all the obstacles in the way, so the explosion would occur at the hour named. The infernal artificer of the accursed work had wished it so. At three o'clock in the morning there would be nothing left of the Fauvilles' house.

"Help! Help!"

He recovered enough strength to raise desperate shouts and to make his voice carry beyond the stones and beyond the wainscoting.

Then, when there seemed to be no answer to his call, he stopped and listened for a long time. There was not a sound. The silence was absolute.

Thereupon a terrible anguish covered him with a cold sweat. Supposing the detectives had ceased to watch the upper floors and confined themselves to spending the night in the rooms on the ground floor?

He madly took a brick and struck it repeatedly against the stone that closed the entrance, hoping that the noise would spread through the house. But an avalanche of small stones, loosened by the blows, at once fell upon him, knocking him down again and fixing him where he lay.

"Help! Help!"

More silence—a great, ruthless silence.

"Help! Help!"

He felt that his shouts did not penetrate the walls that stifled him. Besides, his voice was growing fainter and fainter, producing a hoarse groan that died away in his strained throat.

He ceased his cries and again listened, with all his anxious attention, to the great silence that surrounded as with layers of lead the stone coffin in which he lay imprisoned. Still nothing, not a sound. No one would come, no one could come to his assistance.

He continued to be haunted by Florence's name and image. And he thought also of Marie Fauville, whom he had promised to save. But Marie would die of starvation. And, like her, like Gaston Sauverand and so many others, he in his turn was the victim of this monstrous horror.

An incident occurred to increase his dismay. All of a sudden his electric lantern, which he had left alight to dispel the terrors of the darkness, went out. It was eleven o'clock at night.

He was overcome with a fit of giddiness. He could hardly breathe in the close and vitiated air. His brain suffered, as it were, a physical and exceedingly painful ailment, from the repetition of images that seemed to encrust themselves there; and it was always Florence's beautiful features or Marie's livid face. And, in his distraught brain, while Marie lay dying, he heard the explosion at the Fauvilles' house and saw the Prefect of Police and Mazeroux lying hideously mutilated, dead.

A numbness crept over him. He fell into a sort of swoon, in which he continued to stammer confused syllables:

"Florence—Marie—Marie—"

CHAPTER THIRTEEN THE EXPLOSION

The fourth mysterious letter! The fourth of those letters "posted by the devil and delivered by the devil," as one of the newspapers expressed it!

We all of us remember the really extraordinary agitation of the public as the night of the twenty-fifth of May drew near. And fresh news increased this interest to a yet higher degree.

People heard in quick succession of the arrest of Sauverand, the flight of his accomplice, Florence Levasseur, Don Luis Perenna's secretary, and the inexplicable disappearance of Perenna himself, whom they insisted, for the best of reasons, on identifying with Arsène Lupin.

The police, assured from this moment of victory and having nearly all the actors in the tragedy in their power, had gradually given way to indiscretion; and, thanks to the particulars revealed to this or that journalist, the public knew of Don Luis's change of attitude, suspected his passion for Florence Levasseur and the real cause of his right-about-face, and thrilled with excitement as they saw that astonishing figure enter upon a fresh struggle.

What was he going to do? If he wanted to save the woman he loved from prosecution and to release Marie and Sauverand from prison, he would have to intervene some time that night, to take part, somehow or other, in the event at hand, and to prove the innocence of the three accomplices, either by arresting the invisible bearer of the fourth letter or by suggesting some plausible explanation. In short, he would have to be there; and that was interesting indeed!

And then the news of Marie Fauville was not good. With unwavering obstinacy she persisted in her suicidal plans. She had to be artificially fed; and the doctors in the infirmary at Saint-Lazare did not conceal their anxiety. Would Don Luis Perenna arrive in time?

Lastly, there was that one other thing, the threat of an explosion which was to blow up Hippolyte Fauville's house ten days after the delivery of the fourth letter, a really impressive threat when it was remembered that the enemy had never announced anything that did not take place at the stated hour. And, although it was still ten days—at least, so people thought—from the date fixed for the catastrophe, the threat