The Crystal Stopper - Maurice Leblanc (best ereader for epub .txt) 📗

nets, rub up your weapons and grind away at the Complete Foreign-Post-Paper Burglar’s Handbook. You’ll need it. And now, good night. The rules of openhanded and disinterested hospitality demand that I should turn you out of doors. Hop it!”

Lupin remained silent for some time. With his eyes fixed on Daubrecq, he seemed to be taking his adversary’s size, gauging his weight, estimating his physical strength, discussing, in fine, in which exact part to attack him. Daubrecq clenched his fists and worked out his plan of defence to meet the attack when it came.

Half a minute passed. Lupin put his hand to his hip-pocket. Daubrecq did the same and grasped the handle of his revolver.

A few seconds more. Coolly, Lupin produced a little gold box of the kind that ladies use for holding sweets, opened it and handed it to Daubrecq:

“A lozenge?”

“What’s that?” asked the other, in surprise.

“Cough-drops.”

“What for?”

“For the draught you’re going to feel!”

And, taking advantage of the momentary fluster into which Daubrecq was thrown by his sally, he quickly took his hat and slipped away.

“Of course,” he said, as he crossed the hall, “I am knocked into fits. But all the same, that bit of commercial-traveller’s waggery was rather novel, in the circumstances. To expect a pill and receive a cough-drop is by way of being a sort of disappointment. It left the old chimpanzee quite flummoxed.”

As he closed the gate, a motorcar drove up and a man sprang out briskly, followed by several others.

Lupin recognized Prasville:

“Monsieur le secrétaire-général,” he muttered, “your humble servant. I have an idea that, some day, fate will bring us face to face: and I am sorry, for your sake; for you do not inspire me with any particular esteem and you have a bad time before you, on that day. Meanwhile, if I were not in such a hurry, I should wait till you leave and I should follow Daubrecq to find out in whose charge he has placed the child whom he is going to hand back to me. But I am in a hurry. Besides, I can’t tell that Daubrecq won’t act by telephone. So let us not waste ourselves in vain efforts, but rather join Victoire, Achille and our precious bag.”

Two hours later, Lupin, after taking all his measures, was on the lookout in his shed at Neuilly and saw Daubrecq turn out of an adjoining street and walk along with a distrustful air.

Lupin himself opened the double doors:

“Your things are in here, monsieur le député,” he said. “You can go round and look. There is a job-master’s yard next door: you have only to ask for a van and a few men. Where is the child?”

Daubrecq first inspected the articles and then took Lupin to the Avenue de Neuilly, where two closely veiled old ladies stood waiting with little Jacques.

Lupin carried the child to his car, where Victoire was waiting for him.

All this was done swiftly, without useless words and as though the parts had been got by heart and the various movements settled in advance, like so many stage entrances and exits.

At ten o’clock in the evening Lupin kept his promise and handed little Jacques to his mother. But the doctor had to be hurriedly called in, for the child, upset by all those happenings, showed great signs of excitement and terror. It was more than a fortnight before he was sufficiently recovered to bear the strain of the removal which Lupin considered necessary. Mme. Mergy herself was only just fit to travel when the time came. The journey took place at night, with every possible precaution and under Lupin’s escort.

He took the mother and son to a little seaside place in Brittany and entrusted them to Victoire’s care and vigilance.

“At last,” he reflected, when he had seen them settled, “there is no one between the Daubrecq bird and me. He can do nothing more to Mme. Mergy and the kid; and she no longer runs the risk of diverting the struggle through her intervention. By Jingo, we have made blunders enough! First, I have had to disclose myself to Daubrecq. Secondly, I have had to surrender my share of the Enghien movables. True, I shall get those back, sooner or later; of that there is not the least doubt. But, all the same, we are not getting on; and, in a week from now, Gilbert and Vaucheray will be up for trial.”

What Lupin felt most in the whole business was Daubrecq’s revelation of the whereabouts of the flat. The police had entered his place in the Rue Chateaubriand. The identity of Lupin and Michel Beaumont had been recognized and certain papers discovered; and Lupin, while pursuing his aim, while, at the same time, managing various enterprises on which he had embarked, while avoiding the searches of the police, which were becoming more zealous and persistent than ever, had to set to work and reorganize his affairs throughout on a fresh basis.

His rage with Daubrecq, therefore, increased in proportion to the worry which the deputy caused him. He had but one longing, to pocket him, as he put it, to have him at his bidding by fair means or foul, to extract his secret from him. He dreamt of tortures fit to unloose the tongue of the most silent of men. The boot, the rack, red-hot pincers, nailed planks: no form of suffering, he thought, was more than the enemy deserved; and the end to be attained justified every means.

“Oh,” he said to himself, “oh, for a decent bench of inquisitors and a couple of bold executioners!⁠ ⁠… What a time we should have!”

Every afternoon the Growler and the Masher watched the road which Daubrecq took between the Square Lamartine, the Chamber of Deputies and his club. Their instructions were to choose the most deserted street and the most favourable moment and, one evening, to hustle him into a motorcar.

Lupin, on his side, got ready an old building, standing in the middle