Arsène Lupin by Maurice Leblanc (best books to read TXT) 📗

“By Jove! So have I. I was forgetting. I’ve the last photograph I took of you and Mademoiselle Sonia.” Germaine frowned and shrugged her shoulders. “With your light frocks in the open air, you look like two big flowers,” said the Duke.

“You call that important!” cried Germaine.

“It’s very important—like all trifles,” said the Duke, smiling. “Look! isn’t it nice?” And he took a photograph from his pocket, and held it out to her.

“Nice? It’s shocking! We’re making the most appalling faces,” said Germaine, looking at the photograph in his hand.

“Well, perhaps you ARE making faces,” said the Duke seriously, considering the photograph with grave earnestness. “But they’re not appalling faces—not by any means. You shall be judge, Mademoiselle Sonia. The faces—well, we won’t talk about the faces—but the outlines. Look at the movement of your scarf.” And he handed the photograph to Sonia.

“Jacques!” said Germaine impatiently.

“Oh, yes, you’ve something important to tell me. What is it?” said the Duke, with an air of resignation; and he took the photograph from Sonia and put it carefully back in his pocket.

“Victoire has telephoned from Paris to say that we’ve had a paper-knife and a Louis Seize inkstand given us,” said Germaine.

“Hurrah!” cried the Duke in a sudden shout that made them both jump.

“And a pearl necklace,” said Germaine.

“Hurrah!” cried the Duke.

“You’re perfectly childish,” said Germaine pettishly. “I tell you we’ve been given a paper-knife, and you shout ‘hurrah!’ I say we’ve been given a pearl necklace, and you shout ‘hurrah!’ You can’t have the slightest sense of values.”

“I beg your pardon. This pearl necklace is from one of your father’s friends, isn’t it?” said the Duke.

“Yes; why?” said Germaine.

“But the inkstand and the paper-knife must be from the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and well on the shabby side?” said the Duke.

“Yes; well?”

“Well then, my dear girl, what are you complaining about? They balance; the equilibrium is restored. You can’t have everything,” said the Duke; and he laughed mischievously.

Germaine flushed, and bit her lip; her eyes sparkled.

“You don’t care a rap about me,” she said stormily.

“But I find you adorable,” said the Duke.

“You keep annoying me,” said Germaine pettishly. “And you do it on purpose. I think it’s in very bad taste. I shall end by taking a dislike to you—I know I shall.”

“Wait till we’re married for that, my dear girl,” said the Duke; and he laughed again, with a blithe, boyish cheerfulness, which deepened the angry flush in Germaine’s cheeks.

“Can’t you be serious about anything?” she cried.

“I am the most serious man in Europe,” said the Duke.

Germaine went to the window and stared out of it sulkily.

The Duke walked up and down the hall, looking at the pictures of some of his ancestors—somewhat grotesque persons—with humorous appreciation. Between addressing the envelopes Sonia kept glancing at him. Once he caught her eye, and smiled at her. Germaine’s back was eloquent of her displeasure. The Duke stopped at a gap in the line of pictures in which there hung a strip of old tapestry.

“I can never understand why you have left all these ancestors of mine staring from the walls and have taken away the quite admirable and interesting portrait of myself,” he said carelessly.

Germaine turned sharply from the window; Sonia stopped in the middle of addressing an envelope; and both the girls stared at him in astonishment.

“There certainly was a portrait of me where that tapestry hangs. What have you done with it?” said the Duke.

“You’re making fun of us again,” said Germaine.

“Surely your Grace knows what happened,” said Sonia.

“We wrote all the details to you and sent you all the papers three years ago. Didn’t you get them?” said Germaine.

“Not a detail or a newspaper. Three years ago I was in the neighbourhood of the South Pole, and lost at that,” said the Duke.

“But it was most dramatic, my dear Jacques. All Paris was talking of it,” said Germaine. “Your portrait was stolen.”

“Stolen? Who stole it?” said the Duke.

Germaine crossed the hall quickly to the gap in the line of pictures.

“I’ll show you,” she said.

She drew aside the piece of tapestry, and in the middle of the panel over which the portrait of the Duke had hung he saw written in chalk the words:

ARSÈNE LUPIN

“What do you think of that autograph?” said Germaine.

“‘Arsène Lupin?’” said the Duke in a tone of some bewilderment.

“He left his signature. It seems that he always does so,” said Sonia in an explanatory tone.

“But who is he?” said the Duke.

“Arsène Lupin? Surely you know who Arsène Lupin is?” said Germaine impatiently.

“I haven’t the slightest notion,” said the Duke.

“Oh, come! No one is as South-Pole as all that!” cried Germaine. “You don’t know who Lupin is? The most whimsical, the most audacious, and the most genial thief in France. For the last ten years he has kept the police at bay. He has baffled Ganimard, Holmlock Shears, the great English detective, and even Guerchard, whom everybody says is the greatest detective we’ve had in France since Vidocq. In fact, he’s our national robber. Do you mean to say you don’t know him?”

“Not even enough to ask him to lunch at a restaurant,” said the Duke flippantly. “What’s he like?”

“Like? Nobody has the slightest idea. He has a thousand disguises. He has dined two evenings running at the English Embassy.”

“But if nobody knows him, how did they learn that?” said the Duke, with a puzzled air.

“Because the second evening, about ten o’clock, they noticed that one of the guests had disappeared, and with him all the jewels of the ambassadress.”

“All of them?” said the Duke.

“Yes; and Lupin left his card behind him with these words scribbled on it:”

“‘This is not a robbery; it is a restitution. You took the Wallace collection from us.’”

“But it was a hoax, wasn’t it?” said the Duke.

“No, your Grace; and he has done better than that. You remember the affair of the Daray Bank—the savings bank for poor people?” said Sonia, her gentle face glowing with a sudden enthusiastic animation.

“Let’s see,” said the Duke. “Wasn’t that the financier who doubled his fortune at the expense of a heap of poor wretches and ruined two thousand people?”

“Yes; that’s the man,” said Sonia. “And Lupin stripped Daray’s house and took from him everything he had in his strong-box. He didn’t leave him a sou of the money. And then, when he’d taken it from him, he distributed it among all the poor wretches whom Daray had ruined.”

“But this isn’t a thief you’re talking about—it’s a philanthropist,” said the Duke.

“A fine sort of philanthropist!” broke in Germaine in a peevish tone. “There was a lot of philanthropy about his robbing papa, wasn’t there?”

“Well,” said the Duke, with an air of profound reflection, “if you come to think of it, that robbery was not worthy of this national hero. My portrait, if you except the charm and beauty of the face itself, is not worth much.”

“If you think he was satisfied with your portrait, you’re very much mistaken. All my father’s collections were robbed,” said Germaine.

“Your father’s collections?” said the Duke. “But they’re better guarded than the Bank of France. Your father is as careful of them as the apple of his eye.”

“That’s exactly it—he was too careful of them. That’s why Lupin succeeded.”

“This is very interesting,” said the Duke; and he sat down on a couch before the gap in the pictures, to go into the matter more at his ease. “I suppose he had accomplices in the house itself?”

“Yes, one accomplice,” said Germaine.

“Who was that?” asked the Duke.

“Papa!” said Germaine.

“Oh, come! what on earth do you mean?” said the Duke. “You’re getting quite incomprehensible, my dear girl.”

“Well, I’ll make it clear to you. One morning papa received a letter—but wait. Sonia, get me the Lupin papers out of the bureau.”

Sonia rose from the writing-table, and went to a bureau, an admirable example of the work of the great English maker, Chippendale. It stood on the other side of the hall between an Oriental cabinet and a sixteenth-century Italian cabinet—for all the world as if it were standing in a crowded curiosity shop—with the natural effect that the three pieces, by their mere incongruity, took something each from the beauty of the other. Sonia raised the flap of the bureau, and taking from one of the drawers a small portfolio, turned over the papers in it and handed a letter to the Duke.

“This is the envelope,” she said. “It’s addressed to M. Gournay-Martin, Collector, at the Chateau de Charmerace, Ile-et-Vilaine.”

The Duke opened the envelope and took out a letter.

“It’s an odd handwriting,” he said.

“Read it—carefully,” said Germaine.

It was an uncommon handwriting. The letters of it were small, but perfectly formed. It looked the handwriting of a man who knew exactly what he wanted to say, and liked to say it with extreme precision. The letter ran:

“DEAR SIR,”

“Please forgive my writing to you without our having been introduced to one another; but I flatter myself that you know me, at any rate, by name.”

“There is in the drawing-room next your hall a Gainsborough of admirable quality which affords me infinite pleasure. Your Goyas in the same drawing-room are also to my liking, as well as your Van Dyck. In the further drawing-room I note the Renaissance cabinets—a marvellous pair—the Flemish tapestry, the Fragonard, the clock signed Boulle, and various other objects of less importance. But above all I have set my heart on that coronet which you bought at the sale of the Marquise de Ferronaye, and which was formerly worn by the unfortunate Princesse de Lamballe. I take the greatest interest in this coronet: in the first place, on account of the charming and tragic memories which it calls up in the mind of a poet passionately fond of history, and in the second place—though it is hardly worth while talking about that kind of thing—on account of its intrinsic value. I reckon indeed that the stones in your coronet are, at the very lowest, worth half a million francs.”

“I beg you, my dear sir, to have these different objects properly packed up, and to forward them, addressed to me, carriage paid, to the Batignolles Station. Failing this, I shall Proceed to remove them myself on the night of Thursday, August 7th.”

“Please pardon the slight trouble to which I am putting you, and believe me,”

“Yours very sincerely,”
“ARSÈNE LUPIN.”

“P.S.—It occurs to me that the pictures have not glass before them. It would be as well to repair this omission before forwarding them to me, and I am sure that you will take this extra trouble cheerfully. I am aware, of course, that some of the best judges declare that a picture loses some of its quality when seen through glass. But it preserves them, and we should always be ready and willing to sacrifice a portion of our own pleasure for the benefit of posterity. France demands it of us.—A. L.”

The Duke laughed, and said, “Really, this is extraordinarily funny. It must have made your father laugh.”

“Laugh?” said Germaine. “You should have seen his face. He took it seriously enough, I can tell you.”

“Not to the point of forwarding the things to Batignolles, I hope,” said the Duke.

“No, but to the point of being driven wild,” said Germaine. “And since the police had always been baffled by Lupin, he had the brilliant idea of trying what soldiers could do. The Commandant at Rennes is a great friend of papa’s; and papa went to him, and told him about Lupin’s letter and what he feared. The colonel laughed at him; but he offered him a corporal and six soldiers to guard his collection, on the night of the seventh. It was arranged that they should come from Rennes by the last train so that the burglars should have no warning of their coming. Well, they came, seven picked men—men who had seen service in Tonquin. We gave them supper; and then the corporal posted them in the hall and the two drawing-rooms where the pictures and things were. At eleven we all went to bed, after promising the corporal that, in the event of any fight with the burglars, we would not stir from our rooms. I can tell you I felt awfully nervous. I couldn’t get to sleep for ages and ages. Then, when I did, I did not wake till morning. The night had passed absolutely quietly. Nothing out of the common had happened. There had not been the slightest noise. I awoke Sonia and my father. We dressed as quickly as we could, and rushed down to the drawing-room.”

She paused dramatically.

“Well?” said the Duke.

“Well, it was done.”

“What was done?” said the Duke.

“Everything,” said Germaine. “Pictures had gone, tapestries had gone, cabinets had gone, and the clock had gone.”

“And the coronet too?” said the Duke.

“Oh,