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

Then, speaking aloud, “Look out, old chap. Stand tight!”

He brought his two knees together with incredible force. The baron yelled, with a twisted thigh. Then Sernine, taking advantage of his adversary’s pain, made an effort, freed his right arm and seized him by the throat:

“That’s capital!… We shall be more comfortable like this… No, it’s not worth while getting out your knife… If you do, I’ll wring your neck like a chicken’s. You see, I’m polite and considerate… I’m not pressing too hard… just enough to keep you from even wanting to kick about.”

While speaking he took from his pocket a very thin cord and, with one hand, with extreme skill, fastened his wrists. For that matter, the baron, now at his last gasp, offered not the least resistance. With a few accurate movements, Sernine tied him up firmly:

“How well you’re behaving! What a good thing! I should hardly.know you. Here, in case you were thinking of escaping, I have a roll of wire that will finish off my little work… The wrists first… Now the ankles… That’s it!… By Jove, how nice you look!”

The baron had gradually come to himself again. He spluttered:

“If you give me up, GeneviŽve will die.”

“Really?… And how?… Explain yourself.”

“She is locked up. No one knows where she is. If I’m put away, she will die of starvation.”

Semine shuddered. He retorted:

“Yes, but you will speak.”

“Never!”

“Yes, you will speak. Not now; it’s too late. But tonight.” He bent down over him and, whispering in his ear, said, “Listen, Altenheim, and understand what I say. You’ll be caught presently. Tonight, you’ll sleep at the D6p6t. That is fatal, irrevocable. I myself can do nothing to prevent it now. And, tomorrow, they will take you to the SantŽ; and later, you know where… Well, I’m giving you one more chance of safety. Tonight, you understand, I shall come to your cell, at the D6p6t, and you shall tell me where GeneviŽve is. Two hours later, if you have told the truth, you shall be free. If not… it means that you don’t attach much value to your head.”

The other made no reply. Sernine stood up and listened. There was a great crash overhead. The entrance-door yielded. Footsteps beat the flags of the hall and the floor of the drawing room. M. Weber and his men were searching.

“Good-bye, baron. Think it over until this evening. The prison-cell is a good counsellor.” ;

He pushed his prisoner aside, so as to uncover the trap-door, and lifted it. As he expected, there was no longer any one below on the steps of the staircase.

He went down, taking care to leave the trap-door open behind him, as though he meant to come back.

There were twenty steps, at the bottom of which began the passage through which M. Lenormand and Gourel had come in the opposite direction. He entered it and gave an exclamation. He thought he felt somebody’s presence there.

He lit his pocket-lantern. The passage was empty.4 ‘Then he cocked his revolver and said aloud:. “All right… I’m going to fire.”

No reply. Not a sound.

“It’s an illusion, no doubt,” he thought. “That creature is becoming an obsession… Come, if I want to pull off my stroke and win the game, I must hurry… The hole in which I hid the parcel of clothes is not far off. I shall take the parcel… and the trick is done… And what a trick! One of Lupin’s best!…”

He came to a door that stood open and at once stopped. To the right was an excavation, the one which M. Lenonnand had made to escape from the rising water. He stooped and threw his light into the opening:

“Oh!” he said, with a start. “No, it’s not possible… Doudeville must have pushed the parcel farther along.”

But, search and pry into the darkness as he might, the parcel was gone; and he had no doubt but that it was once more the mysterious being who had taken it.

“What a pity! The thing was so neatly arranged! The adventure would have resumed its natural course, and I should have achieved my aim with greater certainty… As it is, I must push along as fast as I can… Doudeville is at the Pavilion Hortense… My retreat is insured… No more nonsense… I must hurry and set things straight again, if I can… And we’ll attend to ‘him’ afterward… ‘. Oh, he’d better keep clear of my claws, that one!”

But an exclamation of stupor escaped his lips; he had come to the other door; and this door, the last before the garden-house, was shut. He flung himself upon it. What was the good? What could he do?

“This time,” he muttered, “I’m badly done!”

And, seized with a sort of lassitude, he sat down. He had a sense of his weakness in the face of the mysterious being. Altenheim hardly counted. But the other, that person of darkness and silence, the other loomed up before him, upset all his plans and exhausted him with his cunning and infernal attacks.

He was beaten.

Weber would find him there, like an animal run to earth, at the bottom of his cave.

“Ah, no!” he cried, springing up with a bound. “No! If there were only myself, well and good!… But there is GeneviŽve, GenevieVe, who must be saved tonight… After all, the game is not yet lost… If the other one vanished just now, it proves that there is a second outlet somewhere near… Come, come, Weber and his merry men haven’t got me yet.”

He had already begun to explore the tunnel and, lantern in hand, was examining the bricks of which the horrible walls were formed, when a yell reached his ears, a dreadful yell that made his flesh creep with anguish.

It came from the direction of the trap-door. And he suddenly remembered that he had left the trap-door open, at the time when he intended to return to the Villa des Glycines.

He hurried back and passed through the first door. His lantern went out on the road; and he felt something, or rather somebody, brush past his knees, somebody crawl along the wall. And, at that same moment, he had a feeling that this being was disappearing, vanishing, he knew not which way.

Just then his foot knocked against a step.

“This is the outlet,” he thought, “the second outlet through which ‘he’ passes.”

Overhead, the cry sounded again, less loud, followed by moans, by a hoarse gurgling…

He ran up the stairs, came out in the basement room, and rushed to the baron.

Altenheim lay dying, with the blood streaming from his throat! His bonds were cut, but the wire that fastened his wrists and ankles was intact. His accomplice, being unable to release him, had cut his throat.

Semine gazed upon the sight with horror. An icy perspiration covered his whole body. He thought of GeneviŽve, imprisoned, helpless, abandoned to the most awful of deaths, because the baron alone knew where she was hidden.

He distinctly heard the policemen open the little back door in the hall. He distinctly heard them come down the kitchen stairs.

There was nothing between him and them save one door, that of the basement room in which he was. He bolted the door at the very moment when the aggressors were laying hold of the handle.

The trap-door was open beside him; it meant possible safety, because there remained the second outlet.

“No,” he said to himself, “GeneviŽve first. Afterward, if I have time, I will think of myself.”

He knelt down and put his hand on the baron’s breast. The heart was still beating.

He stooped lower still:

“You can hear me, can’t you?”

The eyelids flickered feebly.

The dying man was just breathing. Was there anything to be obtained from this faint semblance of life?

The policemen were attacking the door, the last rampart.

Sernine whispered.

“I will save you… I have infallible remedies… One word only… GeneviŽve?…”

It was as though this word of hope revived the man’s strength. Altenheim iiied to utter articulate sounds.

“Answer,” said Sernine, persisting. “Answer, and I will save you… Answer… It means your life to-day… your liberty tomorrow… Answer!…”

The door shook under the blows that rained upon it.

The baron gasped out unintelligible syllables. Leaning over him, affrighted, straining all his energy, all his will to the utmost, Sernine panted with anguish. He no longer gave a thought to the policemen, his inevitable capture, prison… But GeneviŽve… GeneviŽve dying of hunger, whom one word from that villain could set free!…

“Answer!… You must!…”

He ordered and entreated by turns. Altenheim stammered, as though hypnotized and defeated by that indomitable imperiousness:

“Ri… Rivoli…”

“Rue de Rivoli, is that it? You have locked her up in a house in that street… eh? Which number?”

A loud din… followed by shouts of triumph… The door was down.

“Jump on him, lads!” cried M. Weber. “Seize him… seize both of them!”

And Sernine, on his knees:

“The number… answer… If you love her, answer… Why keep silence now?”

“Twenty… twenty-seven,” whispered the baron.

Hands were laid on Sernine. Ten revolvers were pointed at him.

He rose and faced the policemen, who fell back with instinctive dread.

“If you stir, Lupin,” cried M. Weber, with his revolver leveled at him, “I’ll blow out your brains.”

“Don’t shoot,” said Sernine, solemnly. “It’s not necessary. I surrender.”

“Humbug! This is another of your tricks!”

“No,” replied Sernine, “the battle is lost. You have no right to shoot. I am not defending myself.”

He took out two revolvers and threw them on the floor.

“Humbug!” M. Weber repeated, implacably. “Aim straight at his heart, lads! At the least movement, fire! At the least word, fire!”

There were ten men there. He placed five more in position. He pointed their fifteen right arms at the mark. And, raging, shaking with joy and fear, he snarled:

“At his heart! At his head! And no pity! If he stirs, if he speaks… shoot him where he stands!”

Sernine smiled, impassively, with his hands in his pockets. Death was there, waiting for him, at two inches from his chest, at two inches from his temples. Fifteen fingers were curled round the triggers.

“Ah,” chuckled M. Weber, “this is nice, this is very nice!… And I think that this time we’ve scored… and it’s a nasty lookout for you, Master Lupin!…”

He made one of his men draw back the shutters of a large air-hole, which admitted a sudden burst of daylight, and he turned toward Altenheim. But, to his great amazement, the baron, whom he thought dead, opened his eyes, glazed, awful eyes, already filled with all the signs of the coming dissolution. He stared at M. Weber. Then he seemed to look for somebody and, catching sight of Sernine, had a convulsion of anger. He seemed to be waking from his torpor; and his suddenly reviving hatred restored a part of his strength.

He raised himself on his two wrists and tried to speak.

“You know him, eh?” asked M. Weber.

“Yes.”

“It’s Lupin, isn’t it?”

“Yes… Lupin…”

Sernine, still smiling, listened:

“Heavens, how I’m amusing myself!” he declared.

“Have you anything more to say?” asked M. Weber, who saw the baron’s lips making desperate attempts to move.

“Yes.”

“About M. Lenormand, perhaps?”

“Yes.”

“Have you shut him up? Where? Answer!…”

With all his heaving body, with all his tense glance, Altenheim pointed to a cupboard in the corner of the room.

“There… there…” he said.

“Ah, we’re burning!” chuckled Lupin.

M. Weber opened the cupboard. On one of the shelves was a parcel wrapped in black cloth. He open it and found a hat, a little box, some clothes… He gave a start. He had recognized M. Lenormand’s olive-green frock-coat.

“Oh, the villains!” he cried.