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

go after him… I entreat you… Strike him!”

Fear, this time, instead of dejecting her, seemed to be giving her unwonted strength; and she repeated, with an immense longing to place her terrible enemy in his power:

“Go after him first… I can’t go on living like this… You must save me from him… I can’t go on living…”

He unfastened her bonds, laid her carefully on the sofa and said:

“You are right… Besides, you have nothing to fear here… Wait for me, I shall come back.”

As he was going away, she caught hold of his hand: “But you yourself?”

“Well?”

“If that man…”

It was as though she dreaded for Lupin the great, final contest to which she was exposing him and as though, at the last moment, she would have been glad to hold him back.

He said:

“Thank you, have no fear. What have I to be afraid of? He is alone.”

And, leaving her, he went to the back of the shed. As he expected, he found a ladder standing against the wall which brought him to the level of the little window through which he had watched the scoundrels hold their meeting. It was the way by which Malreich had returned to his house hi the Rue Delaizement.

He, therefore, took the same road, just as he had done a few hours earlier, climbed into the loft of the other coach-house and down into the garden. He found himself at the back of the villa occupied by Malreich.

Strange to say, he did not doubt, for a moment that Malreich was there. He would meet him inevitably; the formidable battle which they were waging against each other was nearing its end. A few minutes more and, one way or another, all would be over.

He was amazed, on grasping the handle of a door, to find that the handle turned and the door opened under his pressure. The villa was not even locked.

He passed through a kitchen, a hall and up a staircase; and he walked deliberately, without seeking to deaden the sound of his footsteps.

On the landing, he stopped. The perspiration streamed from his forehead; and his temples throbbed under the rush of his blood. Nevertheless, he remained calm, master of himself and conscious of his least thoughts. He laid two revolvers on a stair:

“No weapons,” he said to himself. “My hands only, just the effort of my two hands… That’s quite enough… That will be better…”

Opposite him were three doors. He chose the middle one, turned the handle and encountered no obstacle. He went in. There was no light in the room, but the rays of the night entered through the wide-open window and, amid the darkness, he saw the sheets and the white curtains of the bed.

And somebody was standing beside it.

He savagely cast the gleam of his lantern upon that form.

Malreich!

The pallid face of Malreich, his dim eyes, his cadaverous cheek-bones, his scraggy neck…

And all this stood motionless, opposite him, at five steps’ distance; and he could not have said whether that dull face, that death-face, expressed the least terror or even a grain of anxiety.

Lupin took a step forward… and a second… and a third…

The man did not move.

Did he see? Did he understand? It was as though the man’s eyes were gazing into space and that he thought himself possessed by an hallucination, rather than looking upon a real image.

One more step…

“He will defend himself,” thought Lupin, “he is bound to defend himself.”

And Lupin thrust out his arms.

The man did not make a movement. He did not retreat; his eyelids did not blink.

The contact took place.

And it was Lupin, scared and bewildered, who lost his head. He knocked the man back upon his bed, stretched him at full length, rolled him in the sheets, bound him in the blankets and held him under his knee, like a prey… whereas the man had not made the slightest movement of resistance.

“Ah!” shouted Lupin, drunk with delight and satisfied hatred. “At last I have crushed you, you odious brute! At last I am the master!”

He heard a noise outside, in the Rue Delaizement; men knocking at the gate. He ran to the window and cried:

“Is that you, Weber? Already? Well done! You are a model servant! Break down the gate, old chap, and come up here; delighted to see you!”

In a few minutes, he searched his prisoner’s clothes, got hold of his pocketbook, cleared the papers out of the drawers of the desk and the davenport, flung them on the table and went through them.

He gave a shout of joy: the bundle of letters was there, the famous bundle of letters which he had promised to restore to the Emperor.

He put back the papers in their place and went to the window:

“It’s all finished, Weber! You can come in! You will find Mr. Kesselbach’s murderer in his bed, all ready tied up… Good-bye, Weber!”

And Lupin, tearing down the stairs, ran to the coach house and went back to Dolores Kesselbach, while Weber was breaking into the villa.

Single-handed, he had arrested Altenheim’s seven companions!

And he had delivered to justice the mysterious leader of the gang, the infamous monster, Louis de Malreich!

A young man sat writing at a table on a wide wooden balcony.

From time to time, he raised his head and cast a vague glance toward the horizon of hills, where the trees, stripped by the autumn, were shedding their last leaves over the red roofs of the villas and the lawns of the gardens. Then he went on writing.

Presently he took up his paper and read aloud:

Nos jours s’en vont Ž la derive,

Comme emportds par un courant

Qui les pousse vers une rive

Oil l’on n’aborde qu’en mourant.*

“Not so bad,” said a voice behind him. “Mme. Amable Tastu might have written that, or Mrs. Felicia Hemans. However, we can’t all be Byrons or Lamartines!”

“You!… You!…” stammered the young man, in dismay.

“Yes, I, poet, I myself, ArsŽne Lupin come to see his dear friend Pierre Leduc.”

Pierre Leduc began to shake, as though shivering with fever. He asked, in a low voice:

“Has the hour come?”

“Yes, my dear Pierre Leduc: the hour has come for you to give up, or rather to interrupt the slack poet’s life which you have been leading for months at the feet of GeneviŽve Ernemont and Mrs. Kesselbach and to perform the part which I have allotted to you in my play… oh, a fine play, I assure you, thoroughly well-constructed, according to all the canons of art, with top notes, comic relief and gnashing of teeth galore! We have reached the fifth act; the grand finale is at hand; and you, Pierre Leduc, are the hero. There’s fame for you!”

The young man rose from his seat:

“And suppose I refuse?”

“Idiot!”

“Yes, suppose I refuse? After all, what obliges me to submit to your will? What obliges me to accept a part which I do not know, but which I loathe in advance and feel ashamed of?”

“Idiot!” repeated Lupin.

And forcing Pierre Leduc back into his chair, he sat down beside him and, in the gentlest of voices:

“You quite forget, my dear young man, that you are not Pierre Leduc, but GŽrard BauprŽ. That you bear the beautiful name of Pierre Leduc is due to the fact that you, Gerard BauprŽ, killed Pierre Leduc and robbed him of his individuality.”

The young man bounded with indignation:

“You are mad! You know as well as I do that you conceived the whole plot…”

“Yes, I know that, of course; but the law doesn’t know it; and what will the law say when I come forward with proof that the real Pierre Leduc died a violent death and that you have taken his place?”

The young man, overwhelmed with consternation, stammered:

“No one will believe you… Why should I have done that? With what object?”

“Idiot! The object is so self-evident that Weber himself could have perceived it. You lie when you say that you will not accept a part which you do not know. You know your part quite well. It is the part which Pierre Leduc would have played were he not dead.”

“But Pierre Leduc, to me, to everybody, was only a name. Who was he? Who am I?”

” What difference can that make to you?”

“I want to know. I want to know what I am doing!”

“And, if you know, will you go straight ahead?”

“Yes, if the object of which you speak is worth it.”

“If it were not, do you think I would take all this trouble?”

“Who am I? Whatever my destiny, you may be sure that I shall prove worthy of it. But I want to know. Who am I?”

ArsŽne Lupin took off his hat, bowed and said: “Hermann IV, Grand-duke of Zweibrucken-Veldenz, Prince of Berncastel, Elector of Treves and lord of all sorts of places.”

Three days later, ArsŽne Lupin took Mrs. Kesselbach away in a motorcar in the direction of the frontier. The journey was accomplished in silence, Lupin remembered with emotion Dolores’s terrified conduct and the words which she spoke in the house in the Rue des Vignes, when he was about to defend her against Altenheim’s accomplices. And she must have remembered also, for she remained embarrassed and evidently perturbed in his presence.

In the evening they reached a small castle, all covered with creepers and flowers, roofed with an enormous slate cap and standing in a large garden full of ancestral trees.

Here Mrs. Kesselbach found GeneviŽve already installed, after a visit to the neighboring town, where she had engaged a staff of servants from among the country-people.

“This will be your residence, madame,” said Lupin. “You are at Bruggen Castle. You will be quite safe here, while waiting the outcome of these events. I have written to Pierre Leduc and he will be your guest from tomorrow.”

He started off again at once, drove to Veldenz and handed over to Count von Waldemar the famous letters which he had recaptured:

“You know my conditions, my dear Waldemar,” said Lupin. “The first and most important thing is to restore the House of Zweibrucken-Veldenz and to reinstate the Grand-duke Hermann IV., in the grand-duchy.”

“I shall open negotiations with the Council of Regency to-day. According to my information, it will not be a difficult matter. But this Grand-duke Hermann…”

“His Royal Highness is at present staying at Bruggen Castle, under the name of Pierre Leduc. I will supply all the necessary proofs of his identity.”

That same evening, Lupin took the road back to Paris, with the intention of actively hurrying on the trial of Malreich and the seven scoundrels.

It would be wearisome to recapitulate the story of the case: the facts, down to the smallest details, are in the memory of one and all. It was one of those sensational events which still form a subject of conversation and discussion among the weather-beaten laborers in the remotest villages.

But what I wish to recall is the enormous part played by Lupin in the conduct of the case and in the incidents appertaining to the preliminary inquiry. As a matter of fact, it was he who managed the inquiry. From the very start, he took the place of the authorities, ordering police-searches, directing the measures to be taken, prescribing the questions to be put to the prisoners, assuming the responsibility for everything.

We can all remember the universal amazement when, morning after morning, we read in the papers those letters, so irresistible in their masterly logic, signed, by turns:

“ArsŽne LUPIN, Examining-magistrate.”

“ArsŽne LUPIN, Public Prosecutor.”

“ArsŽne LUPIN, Minister of Justice.”

“ArsŽne LUPIN, Copper.”

He flung himself