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

to Clarisse. She was looking at him⁠ ⁠… with such a desperate, such a beseeching look! The look of a mother who demanded the impossible and who would have sacrificed anything to save her son.

“Masher,” he said, “get a strong rope, but very slender, so that I can roll it round my waist, and very long: fifty or sixty yards. You, Growler, go and look for three or four ladders and fasten them end to end.”

“Why, what are you thinking of, governor?” cried the two accomplices. “What, you mean to⁠ ⁠… But it’s madness!”

“Madness? Why? What another has done I can do.”

“But it’s a hundred chances to one that you break your neck.”

“Well, you see, Masher, there’s one chance that I don’t.”

“But, governor⁠ ⁠…”

“That’s enough, my friends. Meet me in an hour on the riverbank.”

The preparations took long in the making. It was difficult to find the material for a fifty-foot ladder that would reach the first ledge of the cliff; and it required an endless effort and care to join the different sections.

At last, a little after nine o’clock, it was set up in the middle of the river and held in position by a boat, the bows of which were wedged between two of the rungs, while the stern was rammed into the bank.

The road through the river-valley was little used, and nobody came to interrupt the work. The night was dark, the sky heavy with moveless clouds.

Lupin gave the Masher and the Growler their final instructions and said, with a laugh:

“I can’t tell you how amused I am at the thought of seeing Daubrecq’s face when they proceed to take his scalp or slice his skin into ribbons. Upon my word, it’s worth the journey.”

Clarisse also had taken a seat in the boat. He said to her:

“Until we meet again. And, above all, don’t stir. Whatever happens, not a movement, not a cry.”

“Can anything happen?” she asked.

“Why, remember the Sire de Tancarville! It was at the very moment when he was achieving his object, with his true love in his arms, that an accident betrayed him. But be easy: I shall be all right.”

She made no reply. She seized his hand and grasped it warmly between her own.

He put his foot on the ladder and made sure that it did not sway too much. Then he went up.

He soon reached the top rung.

This was where the dangerous ascent began, a difficult ascent at the start, because of the excessive steepness, and developing, midway, into an absolute escalade.

Fortunately, here and there were little hollows, in which his feet found a resting-place, and projecting stones, to which his hands clung. But twice those stones gave way and he slipped; and twice he firmly believed that all was lost. Finding a deeper hollow, he took a rest. He was worn out, felt quite ready to throw up the enterprise, asked himself if it was really worth while for him to expose himself to such danger:

“I say!” he thought. “Seems to me you’re showing the white feather, Lupin, old boy. Throw up the enterprise? Then Daubrecq will babble his secret, the marquis will possess himself of the list, Lupin will return empty-handed, and Gilbert⁠ ⁠…”

The long rope which he had fastened round his waist caused him needless inconvenience and fatigue. He fixed one of the ends to the strap of his trousers and let the rope uncoil all the way down the ascent, so that he could use it, on returning, as a handrail.

Then he once more clutched at the rough surface of the cliff and continued the climb, with bruised nails and bleeding fingers. At every moment he expected the inevitable fall. And what discouraged him most was to hear the murmur of voices rising from the boat, murmur so distinct that it seemed as though he were not increasing the distance between his companions and himself.

And he remembered the Sire de Tancarville, alone, he too, amid the darkness, who must have shivered at the noise of the stones which he loosened and sent bounding down the cliff. How the least sound reverberated through the silence! If one of Daubrecq’s guards was peering into the gloom from the Lovers’ Tower, it meant a shot⁠ ⁠… and death.

And he climbed⁠ ⁠… he climbed⁠ ⁠… He had climbed so long that he ended by imagining that the goal was passed. Beyond a doubt, he had slanted unawares to the right or left and he would finish at the patrol-path. What a stupid upshot! And what other upshot could there be to an attempt which the swift force of events had not allowed him to study and prepare?

Madly, he redoubled his efforts, raised himself by a number of yards, slipped, recovered the lost ground, clutched a bunch of roots that came loose in his hand, slipped once more and was abandoning the game in despair when, suddenly, stiffening himself and contracting his whole frame, his muscles and his will, he stopped still: a sound of voices seemed to issue from the very rock which he was grasping.

He listened. It came from the right. Turning his head, he thought that he saw a ray of light penetrating the darkness of space. By what effort of energy, by what imperceptible movements he succeeded in dragging himself to the spot he was never able exactly to realize. But suddenly he found himself on the ledge of a fairly wide opening, at least three yards deep, which dug into the wall of the cliff like a passage, while its other end, much narrower, was closed by three bars.

Lupin crawled along. His head reached the bars. And he saw⁠ ⁠…

VIII The Lovers’ Tower

The torture-chamber showed beneath him. It was a large, irregular room, divided into unequal portions by the four wide, massive pillars that supported its arched roof. A smell of damp and mildew came from its walls and from its flags moistened by the water that trickled from without. Its appearance at any time must have been gruesome. But,