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

the repeater quivered and struck… one, two, three, four, five…

“Waldemar, old chap, pull the weights of the old clock.”

A moment of stupefaction. It was Lupin’s voice, speaking very calmly.

Waldemar, annoyed at the familiarity of the address, shrugged his shoulders.

“Do as he says, Waldemar,” said the Emperor. “Yes, do as I say, my dear count,” echoed Lupin, recovering his powers of chaff. “You know the ropes so well… all you have to do is to pull those of the clock… in turns… one, two… capital!… That’s how they used to wind it up in the old days.”

The pendulum, in fact, was started; and they heard its regular ticking.

“Now the hands,” said Lupin. “Set them at a little before twelve… Don’t move… Let me…”

He rose and walked to the face of the clock, standing two feet away, at most, with his eyes fixed, with every nerve attentive.

The twelve strokes sounded, twelve heavy, deep strokes.

A long silence. Nothing happened. Nevertheless, the Emperor waited, as though he were sure that something was going to happen. And Waldemar did not move, stood with wide-open eyes.

Lupin, who had stooped over the clock-face, now drew himself up, muttering:

“That’s it… I have it…”

He went back to his chair and commanded:

“Waldemar, set the hands at two minutes to twelve again. Oh, no, old chap, not backwards! The way the hands go!… Yes, I know, it will take rather long… but it can’t be helped.”

All the hours struck and the half hours, up to half-past eleven.

“Listen, Waldemar,” said Lupin.

And he spoke seriously, without jesting, as though himself excited and anxious:

“Listen, Waldemar. Do you see on the face of the clock a little round dot marking the first hour? That dot is loose, isn’t it? Put the forefinger of your left hand on it and press. Good. Do the same with your thumb on the dot marking the third hour. Good. With your right hand, push in the dot at the eighth hour. Good. Thank you. Go and sit down, my dear fellow.”

The minute-hand shifted, moved to the twelfth dot and the clock struck again.

Lupin was silent and very white. The twelve strokes rang out in the silence.

At the twelfth stroke, there was a sound as of a spring being set free. The clock stopped dead. The pendulum ceased swinging.

And suddenly, the bronze ornament representing a ram’s head, which crowned the dial, fell forwards, uncovering a sort of little recess cut out of the stone wall.

In this recess was a chased silver casket.

Lupin took it and carried it to the Emperor:

“Would Your Imperial Majesty be so good as to open it yourself? The letters which you instructed me to look for are inside.”

The Emperor raised the lid and seemed greatly astonished.

The casket was empty.

The casket was empty.

It was an enormous, unforeseen sensation. After the success of the calculation made by Lupin, after the ingenious discovery of the secret of the clock, the Emperor, who had no doubt left as to the ultimate success, appeared utterly confounded.

Opposite him was Lupin, pallid and wan, with drawn jaws and bloodshot eyes, gnashing his teeth with rage and impotent hate.

He wiped the perspiration from his forehead, then snatched up the casket, turned it over, examined it, as though he hoped to find a false bottom. At last, for greater certainty, in a fit of fury, he crushed it, with an irresistible grip.

That relieved him. He breathed more easily.

The Emperor said:

“Who has done this?”

“Still the same man, Sire, the one who is following the same road as I and pursuing the same aim: Mr. Kesselbach’s murderer.”

“When?”

“Last night. Ah, Sire, why did you not leave me free when I came out of prison! Had I been free, I should have come here without losing an hour. I should have arrived before him! I should have given Isilda money before he did! I should have read Malreich, the old French servant’s diary, before he did!”

“So you think that it was through the revelations in the diary… ?”

“Why, yes, Sire! He had time to read them. And, lurking I don’t know where, kept informed of all our movements by I don’t know whom, he put me to sleep last night, in order to get rid of me.”

“But the palace was guarded.”

“Guarded by your soldiers, Sire. Does that count with a man like him? Besides, I have no doubt that Waldemar concentrated his search upon the outbuildings, thus thinning the posts hi the palace.”

“But the sound of the clock! Those twelve strokes in the night!”

“It was mere child’s play, Sire, mere child’s play, to him, to prevent the clock from striking!”

“All this seems very impossible to my mind.”

“It all seems monstrous clear to mine, Sire! If it were possible to feel in every one of your soldiers’ pockets here and now, or to know how much money they will each of them spend during the next twelve months, we should be sure to find two or three who are, at this moment, in possession of a few banknotes: French banknotes, of course.”

“Oh!” protested Waldemar.

“But yes, my dear count, it is a question of price; and that makes no difference to ‘him.’ If ‘he’ wished, I am sure that you yourself…”

The Emperor, wrapped up in his own thoughts, was not listening. He walked across the room from left to right and right to left, then beckoned to one of the officers standing in the gallery:

“My car… And tell them to get ready… We’re starting.”

He stopped, watched Lupin for a moment and, going up to the count:

“You too, Waldemar, be off… Straight to Paris, without a break… “

Lupin pricked up his ears. He heard Waldemar reply:

“I should like to have a dozen additional guards… With that devil of a man..”

“Take them. And look sharp. You must get there tonight.”

Lupin stamped his foot violently on the floor:

“Well, no, Sire! No, no, no! It shan’t be, I swear it shan’t! No, no never!”

“What do you mean?”

“And the letters, Sire? The stolen letters?”

“Upon my word!…”

“So!” cried Lupin, indignantly folding his arms. “So your Imperial Majesty gives up the struggle? You look upon the defeat as irretrievable? You declare yourself beaten? Well, I do not, Sire. I have begun and I mean to finish.”

The Emperor smiled at this display of mettle:

“I do not give up, but my police will set to work.”

Lupin burst out laughing:

“Excuse me, Sire! It is so funny! Your police! Your Imperial Majesty’s police! Why, they’re worth just about as much as any other police, that is to say, nothing, nothing at all! No, Sire, I will not return to the Sant£! Prison I can afford to laugh at. But tune enough has been wasted as it is. I need my freedom against that man and I mean to keep it.”

The Emperor shrugged his shoulders:

“You don’t even know who the man is.”

“I shall know, Sire. And I alone can know. And he knows that I am the only one who can know. I am his only enemy. I am the only one whom he attacks. It was I whom he meant to hit, the other day, when he fired his revolver. He considered it enough to put me and me only to sleep, last night, to be free to do as he pleased. The fight lies between him and me. The outside world has nothing to say to it. No one can help me and no one can help him.There are two of us; and that is all. So far, chance has favored him. But, in the long run, it is inevitable, it is doomed that I should gain the day.”

“Why?”

“Because I am the better man.”

“Suppose he kills you?”

“He will not kill me. I shall draw his claws, I shall make him perfectly harmless. And you shall have the letters, Sire. They are yours. There is no power on earth than can prevent me from restoring them to you.”

He spoke with a violent conviction and a tone of certainty that gave to the things which he foretold the real appearance of things already accomplished.

The Emperor could not help undergoing a vague, inexplicable feeling in which there was a sort of admiration combined with a good deal of that confidence which Lupin was demanding in so masterful a manner. In reality, he was hesitating only because of his scruples against employing this man and making him, so to speak, his ally. And, anxiously, not knowing what decision to take, he walked from the gallery to the windows without saying a word.

At last, he asked:

“And who says that the letters were stolen last night?”

“The theft is dated, Sire.”

“What do you say?”

“Look at the inner side of the pediment which concealed the hiding-place. The date is written in white chalk: ‘Midnight, 24 August.’…”

“So it is,” muttered the Emperor, nonplussed. “How was it that I did not see?” And he added, betraying his curiosity, “Just as with those two ‘N’ painted on the wall… I can’t understand. This is the Minerva Room.”

“This is the room in which Napoleon, the Emperor of the French slept,” said Lupin.

“How do you know?”

“Ask Waldemar, Sire. As for myself, when I was turning over the old servants’ diary, it came upon me as a flash of light. I understood that Shears and I had been on the wrong scent. APOON, the imperfect word written by the Grand-duke Hermann on his death-bed, is a contraction not of Apollon, but of Napoleon.”

“That’s true… you are right,” said the Emperor. “The same letters occur in both words and in the same order. The grand-duke evidently meant to write ‘Napoleon.’ But that figure 813?…”

“Ah, that was the point that gave me most trouble. I always had an idea that we must add up the three figures 8, i and 3; and the number 12, thus obtained, seemed to me at once to apply to this room, which is the twelfth leading out of the gallery. But that was not enough for me. There must be something else, something which my enfeebled brain could not succeed in translating into words. The sight of that clock, situated precisely in the Napoleon Room, was a revelation to me. The number 12 evidently meant twelve o’clock. The hour of noon! The hour of midnight! Is this not the solemn moment which a man most readily selects? But why those three figures 8, 1 and 3, rather than any others which would have given the same total?… It was then that I thought of making the clock strike for the first time, by way of experiment. And it was while making it strike that I saw the dots of the first, third and eighth hour were movable and that they alone were movable. I therefore obtained three figures, i, 3 and 8, which, placed in a more prophetic order, gave the number 813. Waldemar pushed the three dots, the spring was released and Your Imperial Majesty knows the result… This, Sire, is the explanation of that mysterious word and of those three figures 8, 1, 3 which the grand-duke wrote with his dying hand and by the aid of which he hoped that his son would one day recover the secret of Veldenz and become the possessor of the famous letters which he had hidden there.”

The Emperor listened with eager attention, more and more surprised at the ingenuity, perspicacity, shrewdness and intelligent will which he observed in the man.

“Waldemar,” he said, when Lupin had finished.

“Sire?”

But, just as he was about to speak, shouts were heard in the gallery outside.

Waldemar left the room