Memoirs of Arsène Lupin - Maurice Leblanc (books like beach read TXT) 📗

his keeper and went off, with his gun over his shoulder, to look at the sunset over the sea, from the top of the cliff. He did not turn up that night. Next day they found his body among the rocks uncovered by the ebbing tide.

“Suicide? Denis Saint-Hébert was rich, in the best of health, and of a happy disposition. Why should he have killed himself? A crime. No one dreamt of such a thing. An accident, then.

“In the following June we were again plunged into mourning under analogous conditions. George d’Isneauval, while shooting gulls in the early morning, slipped on the seaweed in such a disastrous fashion that he struck his head against a rock and fractured his skull. Some hours later two fishermen found him. He was dead. He left a widow and two little children.

“Again an accident, I suppose. Yes: an accident for his widow, his children and his family. But for us? Was it possible that Chance should for the second time have attacked the little group we had formed? Twelve friends form a league to discover a great secret, to attain an end of considerable importance. Two of them are struck down. Are we not compelled to presume the existence of a criminal conspiracy which, in attacking them, at the same time attacks their enterprise?

“It was the Prince of Arcola who opened our eyes and set us on the right path. He knew that we were not the only persons to know of the existence of this great secret. He knew that, in the course of a séance in the suite of rooms of the Empress Eugenie at the Tuileries, someone had revived the list of the four enigmas handed down to his descendants by Cagliostro, and that one of them was called by the very name of the enigma in which we are interested⁠—the enigma of the Candlestick with Seven Branches. Must we not therefore seek among those to whom the legend could have been handed down?

“Thanks to the excellent means of investigation which we had at our disposal, our inquiry bore fruit in barely a fortnight. In a private hotel in a quiet street in Paris was living a lady of the name of Pellegrini. Apparently she was leading an almost secluded life and often disappeared for months at a time. Of uncommon beauty, her behavior was discreetness itself. Indeed it appeared to be her main effort not to attract attention. Under the name of the Countess of Cagliostro she frequented certain circles which busied themselves with magic, the occult, and the black mass.

“We managed to get a photograph of her⁠—this one. We sent it to the Prince of Arcola, who was traveling in Spain. He was amazed to recognize the woman he had formerly known.

“We made inquiries about her movements. On the day of Saint-Hébert’s death, in the neighborhood of Le Havre, she was staying at Le Havre. She was staying at Dieppe when George d’Isneauval met his death at the foot of the Dieppe cliffs!

“I questioned the dead men’s families. The widow of George d’Isneauval confided to me that her husband, towards the end of his life, had had an affair with a woman who caused him, according to her, an infinite amount of suffering. In the other quarter a written confession of Saint-Hébert, and up to then kept secret by his mother, informed us that he had been so foolish as to jot down our twelve names and some facts about the Candlestick with the Seven Branches on one of the leaves of his pocketbook and that pocketbook had been stolen from him by a woman.

“After that everything was clear. Mistress of a part of our secrets, and desirous of knowing more, the woman who had been loved by Saint-Hébert had thrown herself across the path of George d’Isneauval and been loved by him. Then, having wormed their secrets out of them, in her fear of their denouncing her to their friends, she murdered them. That woman is here before us.”

Godfrey d’Etigues paused again. The silence once more became oppressive, so heavy that the judges seemed to be paralyzed in that burdensome atmosphere so loaded with anguish. Only the Countess of Cagliostro maintained her air of aloofness, as if no single word had concerned her.

Always stretched at full length in his post of observation, Ralph admired the young woman’s delightful and voluptuous beauty; at the same time he could not help feeling some distress at perceiving such a mass of evidence being piled up against her. The indictment gripped her tighter and tighter. From every quarter facts thronged to the assault; and Ralph suspected that she was threatened by a yet more direct attack.

“Am I to tell you about the third crime?” said the Baron.

She replied in weary accents:

“If you like. Everything you have been saying is quite unintelligible. You have been talking about people whose very names I never heard before. So a crime more or less⁠—”

“You didn’t know Saint-Hébert and George d’Isneauval?”

She shrugged her shoulders and did not answer.

Godfrey d’Etigues bent closer to her and in a lower voice he said:

“And Beaumagnan?”

She raised limpid eyes to his face:

“Beaumagnan?”

“Yes⁠—the third of our friends you murdered. And only a little while ago⁠ ⁠… A few weeks.⁠ ⁠… He died poisoned.⁠ ⁠… You did not know him?”

III A Tribunal of the Inquisition

What was the meaning of this accusation? Ralph looked at Beaumagnan. He had risen, without raising himself to his full height, and sheltering himself behind his friends drew nearer and nearer to Josephine Balsamo. With her eyes fixed intently on the Baron, she paid no attention to him.

Then Ralph understood why Beaumagnan had hidden himself and the formidable trap they were laying for the young woman. If she had really tried to poison Beaumagnan, if she really believed him dead, with what a fear she would be stricken when he stepped forward in person to face her, living, ready to accuse her! If, on the other hand,