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

floor and Lupin slipped a pellet ,of paper into the hand of one of the brothers.

M. Formerie uttered a delicious phrase when Lupin entered his room accompanied by the deputy-chief:

“Ah, there you are! I knew we should lay hands on you some day or other!”

“So did I, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction,” said Lupin, “and I am glad that you have been marked out by fate to do justice to the honest man that I am.”

“He’s getting at me,” thought M. Formerie. And, in the same ironical and serious tone as Lupin, he retorted, “The honest man that you are, sir, will be asked what he has to say about three hundred and forty-four separate cases of larceny, burglary, swindling and forgery, blackmail, receiving and so on. Three hundred and forty-four!”

“What! Is that all?” cried Lupin. “I really feel quite ashamed.”

“Don’t distress yourself! I shall discover more. But let us proceed in order. ArsŽne Lupin, in spite of all our inquiries, we have no definite information as to your real name.”

“How odd! No more have I!”

“We are not even in a position to declare that you are the same ArsŽne Lupin who was confined in the Sant£ a few years back, and from there made his first escape.”

“‘His first escape’ is good, and does you credit.”

“It so happens, in fact,” continued M. Formerie, “that the ArsŽne Lupin card in the measuring department gives a description of ArsŽne Lupin which differs at all points from your real description.”

“How more and more odd!”

“Different marks, different measurements, different finger-prints… The two photographs even are quite unlike. I will therefore ask you to satisfy us as to your exact identity.”

“That’s just what I was going to ask you. I have lived under so many distinct names that I have ended by forgetting my own. I don’t know where I am.”

“So I must enter a refusal to answer?”

“An inability.”

“Is this a thought-out plan? Am I to expect the same silence in reply to all my questions?”

“Very nearly.”

“And why?”

Lupin struck a solemn attitude and said:

“M. le Juge d’Instruction, my life belongs to history. You have only to turn over the annals of the past fifteen years and your curiosity will be satisfied. So much for my part. As to the rest, it does not concern me: it is an affair between you and the murderers at the Palace Hotel.”

“ArsŽne Lupin, the honest man that you are will have to-day to explain the murder of Master Altenheim.”

“Hullo, this is new! Is the idea yours, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction?”

“Exactly.”

“Very clever! Upon my word, M. Formerie, you’re getting on!”

“The position in which you were captured leaves no doubt.”

“None at all; only, I will venture to ask you this: what sort of wound did Altenheim die of?”

“Of a wound in the throat caused by a knife.”

“And where is the knife?”

“It has not been found.”

“How could it not have been found, if I had been the assassin, considering that I was captured beside the very man whom I am supposed to have killed?““Who killed him, according to you?”

“The same man that killed Mr. Kesselbach, Chapman, and Beudot. The nature of the wound is a sufficient proof.”

“How did he get away?”

“Through a trap-door, which you will discover in the room where the tragedy took place.”

M. Formerie assumed an air of slyness:

“And how was it that you did not follow that useful example?”

“I tried to follow it. But the outlet was blocked by a door which I could not open. It was during this attempt that ‘the other one’ came back to the room and killed his accomplice for fear of the revelations which he would have been sure to make. At the same time, he hid in a cupboard, where it was subsequently found, the parcel of clothes which I had prepared.”

“What were those clothes for?”

“To disguise myself. When I went to the Glycines my plan was this: to hand Altenheim over to the police, to suppress my own identity as Prince Sernine and to reappear under the features…”

“Of M. Lenormand, I suppose?”

“Exactly.”

“No.”

“What!”

M. Formerie gave a knowing smile and wagged his forefinger from left to right and right to left:

“No,” he repeated.

“What do you mean by ‘no’?”

“That story about M. Lenormand…”

“Well?”

“Will do for the public, my friend. But you won’t make M. Formerie swallow that Lupin and Lenormand were one and the same man.” He burst out laughing. “Lupin, chief of the detective-service! No, anything you like, but not that!… There are limits… I am an easy-going fellow… I’ll believe anything… but still… Come, between ourselves, what was the reason of this fresh hoax?… I confess I can’t see…”

Lupin looked at him in astonishment. In spite of all that he knew of M. Formerie, he could not conceive such a degree of infatuation and blindness. There was at that moment only one person in the world who refused to believe in Prince Sernine’s double personality; and that was M. Formerie!…

Lupin turned to the deputy-chief, who stood listening open-mouthed:

“My dear Weber, I fear your promotion is not so certain as I thought. For, you see, if M. Lenormand is not myself, then he exists… and, if he exists, I have no doubt that M. Formerie, with all his acumen, will end by discovering him… in which case…”

“We shall discover him all right, M. Lupin,” cried the examining-magistrate. “I’ll undertake that, and I tell you that, when you and he are confronted, we shall see some fun.” He chuckled and drummed with his fingers on the table. “How amusing! Oh, one’s never bored when you’re there, that I’ll say for you! So you’re M. Lenormand, and it’s you who arrested your accomplice Marco!”

“Just so! Wasn’t it my duty to please the prime minister and save the cabinet? The fact is historical.”

M. Formerie held his sides:

“Oh, I shall die of laughing, I know I shall! Lord,what a joke! That answer will travel round the world. So, according to your theory, it was with you that I made the first enquiries at the Palace Hotel after the murder of Mr. Kesselbach?…”

“Surely it was with me that you investigated the case of the stolen coronet when I was Due de Chamerace,” retorted Lupin, in a sarcastic voice.

M. Formerie gave a start. All his merriment was dispelled by that odious recollection. Turning suddenly grave, he asked:

“So you persist in that absurd theory?”

“I must, because it is the truth. It would be easy for you to take a steamer to Cochin-China and to find at Saigon the proofs of the death of the real M. Lenormand, the worthy man whom I replaced and whose death-certificate I can show you.”

“Humbug!”

“Upon my word, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, I don’t care one way or the other. If it annoys you that I should be M. Lenormand, don’t let’s talk about it. We won’t talk about myself; we won’t talk about anything at all, if you prefer. Besides, of what use can it be to you? The Kesselbach case is such a tangled affair that I myself don’t know where I stand. There’s only one man who might help you. I have not succeeded in discovering him. And I don’t think that you…”

“What’s the man’s name?”

“He’s an old man, a German called Steinweg… But, of course, you’ve heard about him, Weber, and the way in which he was carried off in the middle of the Palais de Justice?”

M. Formerie threw an inquiring glance at the deputy-chief. M. Weber said:

“I undertake to bring that person to you, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction.”

“So that’s done,” said M. Formerie, rising from his chair. “As you see, Lupin, this was merely a formal examination to bring the two duelists together. Now that we have crossed swords, all that we need is the necessary witness of our fencing-match, your counsel.”

“Tut! Is it indispensable?”

“Indispensable.”

“Employ counsel in view of such an unlikely trial?”

“You must.”

“In that case, I’ll choose Maitre Quimbel.”

“The president of the corporation of the bar. You are wise, you will be well defended.”

The first sitting was over. M. Weber led the prisoner away.

As he went down the stairs of the “mouse-trap,” between the two Doudevilles, Lupin said, in short, imperative sentences:

“Watch Steinweg… Don’t let him speak to anybody… Be there tomorrow… I’ll give you some letters…one for you… important.”

Downstairs, he walked up to the municipal guards surrounding the taxicab:

“Home, boys,” he exclaimed, “and quick about it! I have an appointment with myself for two o’clock precisely.”

There were no incidents during the drive. On returning to his cell, Lupin wrote a long letter, full of detailed instructions, to the brothers Doudeville and, two other letters. One was for GeneviŽve:

“GeneviŽve, you now know who I am and you will understand why I concealed from you the name of him who twice carried you away in his arms when you were a little girl.”

“GeneviŽve, I was your mother’s friend, a distant friend, of whose double life she knew nothing, but upon whom she thought that she could rely. And that is why, before dying, she wrote me a few lines asking me to watch over you.

“Unworthy as I am of your esteem, GeneviŽve, I shall continue faithful to that trust. Do not drive me from your heart entirely.

“ArsŽne Lupin.”

The other letter was addressed to Dolores Kesselbach:

“Prince Sernine was led to seek Mrs. Kesselbach’s acquaintance by motives of self-interest alone. But a great longing to devote himself to her was the cause of his continuing it.

“Now that Prince Sernine has become merely ArsŽne Lupin, he begs Mrs. Kesselbach not to deprive him of the right of protecting her, at a distance and as a man protects one whom he will never see again.”

There were some envelopes on the table. He took up one and took up a second; then, when he took up the third, he noticed a sheet of white paper, the presence of which surprised him and which had words stuck upon it, evidently cut out of a newspaper. He read:

“You have failed in your fight with the baron. Give up interesting yourself in the case, and I will not oppose your escape.

“L. M.”

Once more, Lupin had that sense of repulsion and terror with which this nameless and fabulous being always inspired him, a sense of disgust which one feels at touching a venomous animal, a reptile:

“He again,” he said. “Even here!”

That also scared him, the sudden vision which he at times received of this hostile power, a power as great as his own and disposing of formidable means, the extent of which he himself was unable to realize.

He at once suspected his warder. But how had it been possible to corrupt that hard-featured, stern-eyed man?

“Well, so much the better, after all!” he cried. “I have never had to do except with dullards… In order to fight myself, I had to chuck myself into the command of the detective-service… This time, I have some one to deal with!… Here’s a man who puts me in his pocket… by sleight of hand, one might say… If I succeed, from my prison cell, in avoiding his blows and smashing him, in seeing old Steinweg and dragging his confession from him, in setting the Kesselbach case on its legs and turning the whole of it into cash, in defending Mrs. Kesselbach and winning fortune and happiness for GeneviŽve… well, then Lupin will be Lupin still!…”

Eleven days passed. On the twelfth day, Lupin woke very early and exclaimed:

“Let me see, if my calculations are correct and if the gods are on