813 - Maurice LeBlanc (best short novels of all time TXT) 📗

free to speak! “Is that all?” I shall be asked. That is all; but it had to be thought of.

“‘Permit me to be, Sir,

“‘Your obedient servant,

“‘ArsŽne Lupin.’”

An hour later, M. Lenormand was rung up on the telephone and informed that Valenglay, the prime minister, wished to see him at the Ministry of the Interior.

“How well you’re looking, my dear Lenormand! And I who thought that you were ill and dared not leave your room!”

“I am not ill, Monsieur le President.”

“So you were sulking in your tent!… But you were always a bad-tempered fellow.”

“I confess to the bad temper, Monsieur le President, but not to the sulking.”

“But you stay at home! And Lupin takes advantage of it to release his friends…”

“How could I stop him?”

“How? Why, Lupin’s trick was of the plainest. In accordance with his usual method, he announced the date of the escape beforehand; everybody believed in it; an apparent attempt was planned; the escape was not made; and, on the next day, when nobody is thinking about it—whoosh!—the bird takes flight.”

“Monsieur le President,” said the chief of the detective-service, solemnly, “Lupin disposes of such means that we are not in a position to prevent what he has decided on. The escape was mathematically certain. I preferred to pass the hand… and leave the laughter for others to face.”

Valenglay chuckled:

“It’s a fact that Monsieur le Preiet de Police and M. Weber cannot be enjoying themselves at the present moment… But, when all is said, can you explain to me, M. Lenormand…”

“All that we know, Monsieur le President, is that the escape took place from the Palais de Justice. The prisoner was brought in a prison-van and taken to M. Formerie’s room. He left M. Formerie’s room, but he did not leave the Palais de Justice. And yet nobody knows what became of him.”

“It’s most bewildering.”

“Most bewildering.”

“And has nothing else been discovered?”

“Yes. The inner corridor leading to the examining magistrates’ rooms was blocked by an absolutely unprecedented crowd of prisoners, warders, counsel and doorkeepers; and it was discovered that all those people had received forged notices to appear at the same hour. On the other hand, not one of the examining-magistrates who were supposed to have summoned them sat in his room that day; and this because of forged notices from the public prosecutor’s office, sending them to every part of Paris… and of the outskirts.”

“Is that all?”

“No. Two municipal guards and a prisoner were een to cross the courtyards. A cab was waiting for them outside and all three stepped in.

“And your supposition, Lenormand, your opinion…”

“My supposition, Monsieur le President, is that the two municipal guards were accomplices who, profiting by the disorder in the corridor, took the place of the three warders. And my opinion is that this escape succeeded only through such special circumstances and so strange a combination of facts that we must look upon the most unlikely cases of complicity as absolutely certain. Lupin, for that matter, has connections at the Palais that balk all our calculations. He has agents in your ministry. He has agents at the Prefecture of Police. He has agents around me. It is a formidable organization, a detective-service a thousand times more clever, more daring, more varied and more supple than that under my own orders.”

“And you stand this, Lenormand?”

“No, I do not.”

“Then why this slackness on your part since the beginning of the case? What have you done against Lupin?”

“I have prepared for the struggle.”

“Ah, capital! And, while you were preparing, he was acting.”

“So was I.”

“And do you know anything?”

“I know a great deal.”

“What? Speak!”

Leaning on his stick, M. Lenormand took a little contemplative walk across the spacious room. Then he sat down opposite Valenglay, brushed the facings of his olive-green coat with his finger-tips, settled his spectacles on his nose and said, plainly:

“M. le President, I hold three trump-cards in my hand. First, I know the name under which ArsŽne Lupin is hiding at this moment, the name under which he lived on the Boulevard Haussmann, receiving his assistants daily, reconstructing and directing his gang.”

“But then why, in heaven’s name, don’t you arrest him?”

“I did not receive these particulars until later. The prince—let us call him Prince Dash—has disappeared. He is abroad, on other business.”

“And, if he does not return…”

“The position which he occupies, the manner in which he has flung himself into the Kesselbach case, necessitate his return and under the same name.”

“Nevertheless…”

“Monsieur le President, I come to my second trump. I have at last discovered Pierre Leduc.”

“Nonsense!”

“Or rather Lupin discovered him, and before disappearing, settled him in a little villa in the neighborhood of Paris.”

“By Jove! But how did you know…”

“Oh, easily! Lupin has placed two of his accomplices with Pierre Leduc, to watch him and defend him. Now these accomplices are two of my own detectives, two brothers whom I employ in the greatest secrecy and who will hand him over to me at the first opportunity!”

“Well done you! So that…”

“So that, as Pierre Leduc, we may say, is the central point of the efforts of all those who are trying to solve the famous Kesselbach secret, I shall, sooner or later, through Pierre Leduc, catch, first, the author of the treble murder, because that miscreant substituted himself for Mr. Kesselbach in the accomplishment of an immense scheme and because Mr. Kesselbach had to find Pierre Leduc in order to be able to accomplish that scheme; and, secondly, ArsŽne Lupin, because ArsŽne Lupin is pursuing the same object.”

“Splendid! Pierre Leduc is the bait which you are throwing to the enemy.”

“And the fish is biting, Monsieur le President. I have just had word that a suspicious person was seen, a short time ago, prowling round the little villa where PierreLeduc is living under the protection of my officers. I shall be on the spot in four hours.”

“And the third trump, Lenormand?”

“Monsieur le President, a letter arrived yesterday, addressed to Mr. Rudolf Kesselbach, which I intercepted…”

“Intercepted, eh? You’re getting on!”

“Yes, I intercepted it, opened it and kept it for myself. Here it is. It is dated two months back. It bears the Capetown postmark and contains these words: ‘My dear Rudolf, I shall be in Paris on the ist of June and in just as wretched a plight as when you came to my assistance. But I have great hopes of this Pierre Leduc affair of which I told you. What a strange story it is! Have you found the man I mean? Where do we stand? I am most anxious to know.’ The letter is signed. ‘Steinweg.’ The first of June,” continued M. Lenormand, “is to-day. I have ordered one of my inspectors to hunt me out this Steinweg. I have no doubt that he will succeed.”

“Nor I, no doubt at all,” cried Valenglay, rising from his chair, “and I make you every apology, my dear Lenormand, and my humble confession: I was on the point of letting you slide… for good and all! Tomorrow I was expecting the prefect of police and M. Weber.”

“I knew that, Monsieur le President.”

“Impossible!”

“But for that, should I have put myself out? You now see my plan of campaign. On the one side, I am setting traps in which the murderer will be caught sooner or later. Pierre Leduc or Steinweg will deliver him into my hands. On the other side, I am on ArsŽne Lupin’s heels. Two of his agents are in my pay and he believes them to be his most devoted helpers. In addition to this, he is working for me, because he is pursuing the perpetrator of the threefold crime as I am. Only, he imagines that he is dishing me, whereas it is I who am dishing him. So I shall succeed, but on one condition…”

“What is that?”

“That I am given free scope and allowed to act according to the needs of the moment, without troubling about the public, who are growing impatient, or my superiors, who are intriguing against me.”

“I agree.”

“In that case, Monsieur le President,in a few days from this I shall be the victor… or I shall be dead.”

At Saint-Cloud. A little villa situated on one of the highest points of the upland, in an unfrequented road.

It was eleven o’clock at night. M. Lenormand left his car at Saint-Cloud and walked cautiously along the road. A shadow appeared.

“Is that you, Gourel?”

“Yes, chief.”

“Did you tell the brothers Doudeville that I was coming?”

“Yes, your room is ready, you can go to bed and sleep… unless they try to carry off Pierre Leduc tonight, which would not surprise me, considering the behavior of the fellow whom the Doudevilles saw.”

They walked across the garden, softly entered the house and went up to the first floor. The two brothers, Jean and Jacques Doudeville, were there.

“No news of Prince Sernine?” asked Lenormand.

“No, chief.”

“What about Pierre Leduc?”

“He spends the whole day lying flat on his back in his room on the ground-floor, or else in the garden. He never comes up to see us.”

“Is he better?”

“Much better. The rest has made a great change in his appearance.”

“Is he wholly devoted to Lupin?”

“To Prince Sernine, rather, for he does not suspect that the two are one and the same man. At least, I suppose so. One never knows, with him. He does not speak at all. Oh, he’s a queer fish! There’s only one person who has the gift of cheering him up, of making him talk and even laugh. That’s a young girl from Garches, to whom Prince Sernine introduced him. GeneviŽve Ernemont her name is. She has been here three times already… she was here to-day.” He added, jestingly, “I believe there’s a little flirting going on… It’s like his highness Prince Sernine and Mrs. Kesselbach… It seems he’s making eyes at her!… That devil of a Lupin!”

M. Lenormand did not reply. But it was obvious that all these details, to which he seemed to attach no importance, were noted in the recesses of his memory, to be used whenever he might need to draw the logical inferences from them. He lit a cigar, chewed it without smoking it, lit it again and dropped it.

He asked two or three more questions and then, dressed as he was, threw himself on his bed:

“If the least thing happens, let me be awakened… If not, I shall sleep through the night… Go to your posts, all of you.”

The others left the room.

An hour passed, two hours.

Suddenly, M. Lenormand felt some one touch him and Gourel said to him:

“Get up, chief; they have opened the gate.”

“One man or two?”

“I only saw one… the moon appeared just then… he crouched down against a hedge.”

“And the brothers Doudeville?”

“I sent them out by the back. They will cut off his retreat when the time comes.”

Gourel took M. Lenormand’s hand, led him downstairs and then into a little dark room:

“Don’t stir, chief; we are in Pierre Leduc’s dressing-room. I am opening the door of the recess in which his bed stands… Don’t be afraid… he has taken his veronal as he does every evening.. nothing can wake him. Come this way… It’s a good hiding-place, isn’t it?… These are the curtains of his bed… From here you can see the window and the whole side of the room between the window and the bed.”

The casement stood open and admitted a vague light, which became very precise at times, when the moon burst through her veil of clouds. The two men did not take their eyes from the