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

over, then stood up and said:

“Come along.”

“Where to?”

“Gare de Lyon.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am sure of nothing with Daubrecq. But, as we have to choose, according to the contents of the letter, between the Gare de l’Est and the Gare de Lyon, [*] I am presuming that his business, his pleasure and his health are more likely to take Daubrecq in the direction of Marseilles and the Riviera than to the Gare de l’Est.”

* These are the only two main-line stations in Paris with the word de in their name. The others have du, as the Gare du Nord or the Gare du Luxembourg, d’ as the Gare d’Orleans, or no participle at all, as the Gare Saint-Lazare or the Gare Montparnasse.—Translator’s Note.

It was past seven when Lupin and his companions left the Hotel Franklin. A motor-car took them across Paris at full speed, but they soon saw that Clarisse Mergy was not outside the station, nor in the waiting-rooms, nor on any of the platforms.

“Still,” muttered Lupin, whose agitation grew as the obstacles increased, “still, if Daubrecq booked a berth in a sleeping-car, it can only have been in an evening train. And it is barely half-past seven!”

A train was starting, the night express. They had time to rush along the corridor. Nobody... neither Mme. Mergy nor Daubrecq...

But, as they were all three going, a porter accosted them near the refreshment-room:

“Is one of you gentlemen looking for a lady?”

“Yes, yes,... I am,” said Lupin. “Quick, what is it?”

“Oh, it’s you, sir! The lady told me there might be three of you or two of you.... And I didn’t know...”

“But, in heaven’s name, speak, man! What lady?”

“The lady who spent the whole day on the pavement, with the luggage, waiting.”

“Well, out with it! Has she taken a train?”

“Yes, the train-de-luxe, at six-thirty: she made up her mind at the last moment, she told me to say. And I was also to say that the gentleman was in the same train and that they were going to Monte Carlo.”

“Damn it!” muttered Lupin. “We ought to have taken the express just now! There’s nothing left but the evening trains, and they crawl! We’ve lost over three hours.”

The wait seemed interminable. They booked their seats. They telephoned to the proprietor of the Hotel Franklin to send on their letters to Monte Carlo. They dined. They read the papers. At last, at half-past nine, the train started.

And so, by a really tragic series of circumstances, at the most critical moment of the contest, Lupin was turning his back on the battlefield and going away, at haphazard, to seek, he knew not where, and beat, he knew not how, the most formidable and elusive enemy that he had ever fought.

And this was happening four days, five days at most, before the inevitable execution of Gilbert and Vaucheray.

It was a bad and painful night for Lupin. The more he studied the situation the more terrible it appeared to him. On every side he was faced with uncertainty, darkness, confusion, helplessness.

True, he knew the secret of the crystal stopper. But how was he to know that Daubrecq would not change or had not already changed his tactics? How was he to know that the list of the Twenty-seven was still inside that crystal stopper or that the crystal stopper was still inside the object where Daubrecq had first hidden it?

And there was a further serious reason for alarm in the fact that Clarisse Mergy thought that she was shadowing and watching Daubrecq at a time when, on the contrary, Daubrecq was watching her, having her shadowed and dragging her, with diabolical cleverness, toward the places selected by himself, far from all help or hope of help.

Oh, Daubrecq’s game was clear as daylight! Did not Lupin know the unhappy woman’s hesitations? Did he not know—and the Growler and the Masher confirmed it most positively—that Clarisse looked upon the infamous bargain planned by Daubrecq in the light of a possible, an acceptable thing? In that case, how could he, Lupin, succeed? The logic of events, so powerfully moulded by Daubrecq, led to a fatal result: the mother must sacrifice herself and, to save her son, throw her scruples, her repugnance, her very honour, to the winds!

“Oh, you scoundrel!” snarled Lupin, in a fit of rage. “If I get hold of you, I’ll make you dance to a pretty tune! I wouldn’t be in your shoes for a great deal, when that happens.”

They reached Monte Carlo at three o’clock in the afternoon. Lupin was at once disappointed not to see Clarisse on the platform at the station.

He waited. No messenger came up to him.

He asked the porters and ticket-collectors if they had noticed, among the crowd, two travellers answering to the description of Daubrecq and Clarisse. They had not.

He had, therefore, to set to work and hunt through all the hotels and lodging-houses in the principality. Oh, the time wasted!

By the following evening, Lupin knew, beyond a doubt, that Daubrecq and Clarisse were not at Monte Carlo, nor at Monaco, nor at the Cap d’Ail, nor at La Turbie, nor at Cap Martin.

“Where can they be then?” he wondered, trembling with rage.

At last, on the Saturday, he received, at the poste restante, a telegram which had been readdressed from the Hotel Franklin and which said:

“He got out at Cannes and is going on to San Remo, Hotel Palace des Ambassadeurs. “CLARISSE.”

The telegram was dated the day before.

“Hang it!” exclaimed Lupin. “They passed through Monte Carlo. One of us ought to have remained at the station. I did think of it; but, in the midst of all that bustle...”

Lupin and his friends took the first train for Italy.

They crossed the frontier at twelve o’clock. The train entered the station at San Remo at twelve-forty.

They at once saw an hotel-porter, with “Ambassadeurs-Palace” on his braided cap, who seemed to be looking for some one among the arrivals.

Lupin went up to him:

“Are you looking for M. Nicole?”

“Yes, M. Nicole and two gentlemen.”

“From a lady?”

“Yes, Mme. Mergy.”

“Is she staying at your hotel?”

“No. She did not get out. She beckoned to me, described you three gentlemen and told me to say that she was going on to Genoa, to the Hotel Continental.”