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

my side, there will be some news today. I have had four interviews with Formerie. The fellow must be worked up to the right point now. And the Doudevilles, on their side, must have been busy… We shall have some fun!”

He flung out his fists to right and left, brought them back to his chest, then flung them out again and brought them back again.

This movement, which executed thirty times in succession, was followed by a bending of his body backwards and forwards. Next came an alternate lifting of the legs and then an alternate swinging of the arms.

The whole performance occupied a quarter of an hour, the quarter of an hour which he devoted every morning to Swedish exercises to keep his muscles in condition.

Then he sat down to his table, took up some sheets of white paper, which were arranged in numbered packets, and, folding one of them, made it into an envelope, a work which he continued to do with a series of successive sheets. It was the task which he had accepted and which he forced himself to do daily, the prisoners having the right to choose the labor which they preferred: sticking envelopes, making paper fans, metal purses, and so on…

And, in this way, while occupying his hands with an automatic exercise and keeping his muscles supple with mechanical bendings, Lupin was able to have his thoughts constantly fixed on his affairs…

And his affairs were complicated enough, in all conscience!

There was one, for instance, which surpassed all the others hi importance, and for which he had to employ all the resources of his genius. How was he to have a long, quiet conversation with old Steinweg? The necessity was immediate. In a few days, Steinweg would have recovered from his imprisonment, would receive interviews, might blab… to say nothing of the inevitable interference of the enemy, ‘the other one.’ And it was essential that Steinweg’s secret, Pierre Leduc’s secret, should be revealed to no one but Lupin. Once published, the secret lost all its value…

The bolts grated, the key turned noisily in the lock.

“Ah, it’s you, most excellent of jailers! Has the moment come for the last toilet? The hair-cut that precedes the great final cut of all?”

“Magistrate’s examination,” said the man, laconically.

Lupin walked through the corridors of the prison and was received by the municipal guards, who locked him into the prison-van.

He reached the Palais de Justice twenty minutes later. One of the Doudevilles was waiting nearby the stairs. As they went up, he said to Lupin:

“You’ll be confronted to-day.”

“Everything settled?”

“Yes.”

“Weber?”

“Busy elsewhere.”

Lupin walked into M. Formerie’s room and at once recognized old Steinweg, sitting on a chair, looking ill and wretched. A municipal guard was standing behind him.

M. Formerie scrutinized the prisoner attentively, as though he hoped to draw important conclusions from his contemplation of him, and said:

“You know who this gentleman is?”

“Why, Steinweg, of course!…”

“Yes, thanks to the active inquiries of M. Weber and of his two officers, the brothers Doudeville, we have found Mr. Steinweg, who, according to you, knows the ins and outs of the Kesselbach case, the name of the murderer and all the rest of it.”

“I congratulate you, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction. Your examination will go swimmingly.”

“I think so. There is only one ‘but’: Mr. Steinweg refuses to reveal anything, except in your presence.”

“Well, I never! How odd of him! Does ArsŽne Lupin inspire him with so much affection and esteem?”

“Not ArsŽne Lupin, but Prince Sernine, who, he says, saved his life, and M. Lenormand, with whom, he says, he began a conversation…”

“At the time when I was chief of the detective-service,” Lupin broke in. “So you consent to admit.”

“Mr. Steinweg,” said the magistrate, “do you recognize M. Lenormand?”

“No, but I know that ArsŽne Lupin and he are one.”

“So you consent to speak?”

“Yes… but… we are not alone.”

“How do you mean? There is only my clerk here… and the guard…”

“Monsieur le judge d’Instruction, the secret which I am about to reveal is so important that you yourself would be sorry…”

“Guard, go outside, please,” said M. Formerie. “Come back at once, if I call. Do you object to my clerk, Steinweg?”

“No, no… it might be better.. but, however…”

“Then speak. For that matter, nothing that you reveal will be put down in black on white. One word more, though: I ask you for the last time, is it indispensable that the prisoner should be present at this interview?” i

“Quite indispensable. You will see the reason for yourself.”

He drew the chair up to the magistrate’s desk, Lupin remained standing, near the clerk. And the old man, speaking in a loud voice, said:

“It is now ten years since a series of circumstances, which I need not enter into, made me acquainted with an extraordinary story in which two persons are concerned.” “Their names, please.”

“I will give the names presently. For the moment, let me say that one of these persons occupies an exceptional position in France, and that the other, an Italian, or rather a Spaniard… yes, a Spaniard…”

A bound across the room, followed by two formidable blows of the fist… Lupin’s two arms had darted out to right and left, as though impelled by springs and his two fists, hard as cannon balls, caught the magistrate and his clerk on the jaw, just below the ear.

The magistrate and the clerk collapsed over their tables, in two lumps, without a moan.

“Well hit!” said Lupin. “That was a neat bit of work.”

He went to the door and locked it softly. Then returning:

“Steinweg, have you the chloroform?”

“Are you quite sure that they have fainted?” asks the old man, trembling with fear.

“What do you think! But it will only last for three or four minutes… And that is not long enough.”

The German produced from his pocket a bottle and two pads of cotton-wool, ready prepared.

Lupin uncorked the bottle, poured a few drops of the chloroform on the two pads and held them to the noses of the magistrate and his clerk.

“Capital! We have ten minutes of peace and quiet before us. That will do, but let’s make haste, all the same; and not a word too much, old man, do you hear?” He took him by the arm. “You see what I am able to do. Here we are, alone in the very heart of the Palais de Justice, because I wished it.”

“Yes,” said the old man.

“So you are going to tell me your secret?”

“Yes, I told it to Kesselbach, because he was rich and could turn it to better account than anybody I knew; but, prisoner and absolutely powerless though you are, I consider you a hundred times as strong as Kesselbach with his hundred millions.”

“In that case, speak; and let us take things in their proper order. The name of the murderer?”

“That’s impossible.”

“How do you mean, impossible? I thought you knew it and were going to tell me everything!”

“Everything, but not that.”

“But…”

“Later on.”

“You’re mad! Why?”

“I have no proofs. Later, when you are free, we will hunt together. Besides, what’s the good? And then, really, I can’t tell you.”

“You’re” afraid of him?”

“Yes.”

“Very well,” said Lupin. “After all, that’s not the most urgent matter. As to the rest, you’ve made up your mind to speak?”

“Without reserve.”

“Well, then, answer. Who is Pierre Leduc?”

“Hermann IV., Grand Duke of Zweibrucken-Veldenz, Prince of Berncastel, Count of Fistingen, Lord of Wiesbaden and other places.”

Lupin felt a thrill of joy at learning that his protege was definitely not the son of a pork-butcher!

“The devil!” he muttered. “So we have a handle to our name!… As far as I remember, the Grand-duchy of Zweibrucken-Veldenz is in Prussia?”

“Yes, on the Moselle. The house of Veldenz is a branch of the Palatine house of Zweibrucken. The grand-duchy was occupied by the French after the peace of Luneville and formed part of the department of Mont-Tonnerre. In 1814, it was restored in favor of Hermann I., the great grandfather of Pierre Leduc. His son, Hermann II., spent a riotous youth, ruined himself, squandered the finances of his country and made himself impossible to his subjects, who ended by partly burning the old castle at Veldenz and driving their sovereign out of his dominions. The grand-duchy was then administered and governed by three regents, in the name of Hermann II., who, by a curious anomaly, did not abdicate, but retained his title as reigning grand-duke. He lived, rather short of cash, in Berlin; later, he fought in the French war, by the side of Bismarck, of whom he was a friend. He was killed by a shell at the siege of Paris and, in dying, entrusted Bismarck with the charge of his son Hermann, that is, Hermann III.”

“The father, therefore, of our Leduc,” said Lupin.

“Yes. The chancellor took a liking to Hermann III., and used often to employ him as a secret envoy to persons of distinction abroad. At the fall of his patron Hermann III., left Berlin, travelled about and returned and settled in Dresden. When Bismarck died, Hermann III., was there. He himself died two years later. These are public facts, known to everybody in Germany; and that is the story of the three Hermanns, Grand-dukes of Zweibrucken-Veldenz in the nineteenth century.”

“But the fourth, Hermann IV., the one in whom we are interested?”

“We will speak of him presently. Let us now pass on to unknown facts.”

“Facts known to you alone,” said Lupin.

“To me alone and to a few others.”

“How do you mean, a few others? Hasn’t the secret been kept?”

“Yes, yes, the secret has been well kept by all who know it. Have no fear; it is very much to their interest, I assure you, not to divulge it.”

“Then how do you know it?”

“Through an old servant and private secretary of the Grand-duke Hermann, the last of the name. This servant, who died in my arms in South Africa, began by confiding to me that his master was secretly married and had left a son behind him. Then he told me the great secret.”

“The one which you afterwards revealed to Kesselbach.”

“Yes.”

“One second… Will you excuse me?…”

Lupin bent over M. Formerie, satisfied himself that all was well and the heart beating normally, and said:

“Go on.”

Steinweg resumed:

“On the evening of the day on which Bismarck died, the Grand-duke Hermann III. and his faithful manservant—my South African friend—took a train which brought them to Munich in time to catch the express for Vienna. From Vienna, they went to Constantinople, then to Cairo, then to Naples, then to Tunis, then to Spain, then to Paris, then to London, to St. Petersburg, to Warsaw… and in none of these towns did they stop. They took a cab, had their two bags put on the top, rushed through the streets, hurried to another station or to the landing-stage, and once more took the train or the steamer.”

“In short, they were being followed and were trying to put their pursuers off the scent,” ArsŽne Lupin concluded.

“One evening, they left the city of Treves, dressed in workmen’s caps and linen jackets, each with a bundle slung over his shoulder at the end of a stick. They covered on foot the twenty-two miles to Veldenz, where the old Castle of Zweibrucken stands, or rather the ruins of the old castle.”

“No descriptions, please.”

“All day long, they remained hidden in a neighboring forest. At night, they went up to the old walls. Hermann ordered his servant to wait for him and himself scaled the wall at a breach known as the Wolf’sGap. He returned