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

class="calibre1">Had he commanded his usual acute discernment, he would have perceived the little start which M. Weber gave as he approached; but he saw nothing:

“M. Weber, I believe?” he asked.

“Yes… To whom have I the honor…?”

“Prince Sernine.”

“Ah, very good! Monsieur le Pr6fet de Police has told me of the great service which you are doing us, monsieur.”

“That service will not be complete until I have handed the ruffians over to you.”

“That won’t take long. I believe that one of those ruffians has just gone in; a powerful-looking man, with a swarthy complexion…”

“Yes, that’s Baron Altenheim. Are your men here, M.Weber?”

“Yes, concealed along the road, at two hundred yards from this.”

“Well, M. Weber, it seems to me that you might collect them and bring them to this lodge. From here we will go to the villa. As Baron Altenheim knows me, I presume they will open the door to me and I will go in… with you.”

“It is an excellent plan,” said M. Weber. “I shall come back at once.”

He left the garden and walked down the road, in the opposite direction to the Villa des Glycines.

Semine quickly took one of the brothers Doudeville by the arm:

“Run after him, Jacques… keep him engaged… long enough for me to get inside the Glycines… And then delay the attack as long as you can… Invent pretexts… I shall want ten minutes… Let the villa be surrounded… but not entered. And you, Jean, go and post yourself in the Pavilion Hortense, at the entrance to the underground passage. If the baron tries to go out that way, break his head.”

The Doudevilles moved away, as ordered. The prince slipped out and ran to a tall gate, barred with iron, which was the entrance to the Glycines.

Should he ring?…

There was no one in sight. With one bound, he leapt upon the gate, placing his foot on the lock; and, hanging on to the bars, getting a purchase with his knees and hoisting himself up with his wrists, he managed, at the risk of falling on the sharp points of the bars, to climb over the gate and jump down.

He found a paved courtyard, which he crossed briskly, and mounted the steps of a pillared peristyle, on which the windows looked out. These were all closed to the very top, with full shutters. As he stood thinking how he should make his way into the house, the door was half opened, with a noise of iron that reminded him of the door in the Villa Dupont, and Altenheim appeared:

“I say, prince, is that the way you trespass on private property? I shall be forced to call in the gendarmes, my dear fellow!”

Sernine caught him by the throat and, throwing him down on a bench:

“GeneviŽve?.. Where is GeneviŽve? If you don’t tell me what you’ve done with her, you villain…”

“Please observe,” stammered the baron, “that you are making it impossible for me to speak.”

Sernine released his hold of him:

“To the point!… And look sharp!… Answer… GeneviŽve?”

“There is one thing,” replied the baron, “which is much more urgent, especially where fellows like you and me are concerned, and that is to feel one’s self at home…”

And he carefully closed the front door, which he barricaded with bolts. Then, leading Sernine to the adjoining drawing-room, a room without furniture or curtains, he said: !. “Now I’m your man. What can I do for you, prince?”

“GeneviŽve?”

“She is in perfect health.”

“Ah, so you confess… ?”

“Of course! I may even tell you that your imprudence in this respect surprised me. Why didn’t you take a few precautions? It was inevitable…”

“Enough! Where is she?”

“You are not very polite.”

“Where is she?”

“Between four walls, free…”

“Free?”

“Yes, free to go from one wall to another.”

“Where? Where?”

1 “Come, prince, do you think I should be fool enough to tell you the secret by which I hold you? You love the little girl…”

“Hold your tongue!” shouted Sernine, beside himself. “I forbid you…”

“What next? Is there anything to be ashamed of? I love her myself and I have risked…”

He did not complete his sentence, frightened by the terrific anger of Sernine, a restrained, dumb anger that distorted the prince’s features.

They looked at each other for a long time, each of them seeking for the adversary’s weak point. “At last, Sernine stepped forward and, speaking very distinctly, like a man who is threatening rather than proposing a compact:

“Listen to me,” he said. “You remember the offer of partnership which you made me? The Kesselbach business for the two of us… we were to act together… we were to share the profits… I refused… Today, I accept…”

“Too late.”

“Wait! I accept more than that: I give the whole business up… I shall take no further part in it… You shall have it all… If necessary, I’ll help you.”

“What is the condition?”

“Tell me where GeneviŽve is.”

The baron shrugged his shoulders:

“You’re driveling, Lupin. I’m sorry for you.. ‘. at your age…”

There was a fresh silence between the two enemies, a terrible silence. Then the baron sneered:

“All the same, it’s a holy joy to see you like that, sniveling and begging. I say, it seems to me that the private soldier is giving his general a sound beating!”

“You ass!” muttered Sernine.

“Prince, I shall send you my seconds this evening… if you are still in this world.”

“You ass!” repeated Sernine, with infinite contempt.

“You would rather settle the matter here and now? As you please, prince: your last hour has struck. You can commend your soul to God. You smile! That’s a mistake. I have one immense advantage over you! I kill… when it’s necessary…”

“You ass!” said Sernine once more. He took cut his watch. “It is two o’clock, baron. You have only a few minutes left. At five past two, ten past at the very lastest, M. Weber and half-a-dozen sturdy men, without a scruple amongst them, will lay hands on you… Don’t you smile, either. The outlet on which you’re reckoning is discovered; I know it: it is guarded. So you are thoroughly caught. It means the scaffold, old chap.”

Altenheim turned livid. He stammered:

“You did this?… You have had the infamy—”

“The house is surrounded. The assault is at hand. Speak… and I will save you.”

“How?”

“The men watching the outlet in the Pavilion Hortense belong to me. I have only to give you a word for them and you are saved. Speak!”

Altenheim reflected for a few seconds and seemed to hesitate; but, suddenly, resolutely, declared:

“This is all bluff. You would never have been simple enough to rush into the lion’s mouth.”

“You’re forgetting GeneviŽve. But for her, do you think I should be here? Speak!”

“No.”

“Very well. Let us wait,” said Sernine. “A cigarrette?”

“Thank you.”

A few seconds passed.

“Do you hear?” asked Sernine.

“Yes… yes…” said Altenheim, rising.

Blows rang against the gate. Sernine observed:

“Not even the usual summons… no preliminaries… Your mind is still made up?”

“More so than ever.”

“You know that, with the tools they carry, they won’t take long?”

“If they were inside this room I should still refuse.”

The gate yielded. They heard it creak on its hinges.

“To allow one’s self to get nabbed,” said Sernine, “is admissible. But to hold out one’s own hands to the handcuffs is too silly. Come, don’t be obstinate. Speak… and bolt!”

“And you?”

“I shall remain. What have I to be afraid of?”

“Look!”

The baron pointed to a chink between the shutters. Sernine put his eye to it and jumped back with a start:

“Oh, you scoundrel, so you have denounced me,too! It’s not ten men that Weber’s bringing, but fifty men, a hundred, two hundred…”

The baron laughed open-heartedly:

“And, if there are so many of them, it’s because they’re after Lupin; that’s obvious! Half-a-dozen would have been enough for me.”

“You informed the police?”

“Yes.”

“What proof did you give?”

“Your name: Paul Sernine, that is to say, ArsenŽ Lupin.”

“And you found that out all by yourself, did you?… A thing which nobody else thought of?… Nonsense! It was the other one. Admit it!”

He looked out through the chink. Swarms of policemen were spreading round the villa; and the blows were now sounding on the door. He must, however, think of one of two things: either his escape, or else the execution of the plan which he had contrived. But to go away, even for a moment, meant leaving Altenheim; and who could guarantee that the baron had not another other at his disposal to escape by? This thought paralyzed Sernine. The baron free! The baron at liberty to go back to GeneviŽve and torture her and make her subservient to his odious love!

Thwarted in his designs, obliged to improvise a new plan on the very second, while subordinating everything to the danger which GeneviŽve was running, Sernine passed through a moment of cruel indecision. With his eyes fixed on the baron’s eyes, he would have liked to tear his secret from him and to go away; and he no longer even tried to convince him, so useless did all words seem to him. And, while pursuing his own thoughts, he asked himself what the baron’s thoughts could be, what his weapons, what his hope of safety?

The hall-door, though strongly bolted, though sheeted with iron, was beginning to give way.

The two men stood behind that door, motionless. The sound of voices, the sense of words reached them.

“You seem very sure of yourself,” said Sernine.

“I should think so!” cried the other, suddenly tripping him to the floor and running away.

Sernine sprang up at once, dived through a little door under the staircase, though which Altenheim had disappeared, and ran down the stone steps to the basement…”

A passage led to a large, low, almost pitch-dark room,where he found the baron on his knees, lifting the flap of a trap-door.

“Idiot!” shouted Sernine, flinging himself upon him. “You know that you will find my men at the end of this tunnel and that they have orders to kill you like a dog… Unless… unless you have an outlet that joins on to this… Ah, there, of course, I’ve guessed it!… And you imagine…”

The fight was a desperate one. Altenheim, a real colossus, endowed with exceptional muscular force, had caught his adversary round the arms and body and was pressing him against his own chest, numbing his arms and trying to smother him.

“Of course… of course,” Sernine panted, with difficulty, “of course… that’s well thought out… As long as I can’t use my arms to break some part of you, you will have the advantage… Only… can you…?”

He gave a shudder. The trap-door, which had closed again and on the flap of which they were bearing down with all their weight, the trap-door seemed to move beneath them. He felt the efforts that were being made to raise it; and the baron must have felt them too, for he desperately tried to shift the ground of the contest so that the trap-door might open.

“It’s ‘the other one’!” thought Sernine, with the sort of unreasoning terror which that mysterious being caused him. “It’s the other one… If he gets through, I’m done for.” “

By dint of imperceptible movements, Altenheim had succeeded in shifting his own position; and he tried to drag his adversary after him. But Sernine clung with his legs to the baron’s legs and, at the same tune, very gradually, tried to release one of his hands.

Above their heads great blows resounded, like the blows of a battering-ram…

“I have five minutes,” thought Sernine. “In one minute this fellow will have to…”