Memoirs of Arsène Lupin - Maurice Leblanc (books like beach read TXT) 📗

in the middle of the bull’s-eye and when I was least expecting it.⁠ ⁠… How funny she must have found my songs of triumph! ‘I am cut out for conquest, for the extraordinary and the fabulous!’ Idiot that I was! When one is capable of such blunders, one should keep one’s mouth shut. What a smash!”

He flung himself on the door. What was the use? It was the door of a cell. He tried to jump up to the little window which let in that dim light. There was no way of reaching it.

Then a noise caught his ear; and he perceived that a loophole had been cut in the corner of the wall, just under the ceiling, and that the barrel of a rifle was pointing at him, and that it followed his every movement.

All his anger turned on the invisible marksman; and he abused him freely.

“Hog! Guttersnipe! Come out of that hole, and I’ll show you! A nice job yours is! Go and tell your mistress that she’s hardly on the way to heaven yet, and that before long⁠—”

He stopped short. It was a stupid waste of words. Then, passing suddenly from the height of fury to a quiet resignation, he lay down on a bed in an alcove which was fitted up as a dressing-room.

“You can kill me if you like,” he said. “But don’t stop me going to sleep.”

Really he never dreamed of going to sleep. The first thing was to consider his situation quietly and draw from it conclusions which promised to be uncommonly disagreeable. In fact, they could be summed up in a few words. Josephine Balsamo had substituted herself for him, with the intention of reaping the fruits of his victory.

But what an organization she must have to be able to act so successfully in so little time! Ralph had no doubt that Leonard, accompanied by a confederate, had followed them to Beaumagnan’s house and while he was in it had arranged with her the trap into which he had so simply fallen. This house must have been specially fitted up for such a purpose.

What could he do at his age against such enemies? On the one hand, Beaumagnan, with a whole world of correspondents and associates behind him; on the other hand, Josephine Balsamo, with so powerful and so well organized a gang.

He made a resolution. He said to himself: “Whether later I enter upon the straight path, as I hope to do, or whether, as is more probable, I keep on the path of adventure, I will equip myself with this indispensable organization! Woe to those who work by themselves! It is only leader of gangs who attain their ends. I mastered Josephine. Nevertheless, it is she who tonight will lay hands on the precious casket, while Ralph is groaning in his prison cell.”

He had reached this point in his meditations when he found that an inexplicable torpor was invading him. It was accompanied by a feeling of general discomfort. He struggled against this unusual drowsiness, but his brain became clouded very quickly. At the same time he felt sick, and his stomach began to ache.

By a strong effort he shook off his drowsiness and walked across the room. But the heaviness increased. Of a sudden he threw himself down on the bed, a prey to a horrible thought. He remembered that in the cab Josephine had taken from her pocket a little gold sweetmeat box which she always carried, and as she ate two or three chocolates had, with an apparently mechanical gesture, offered him one.

“She has poisoned me!” he murmured, breaking into a cold sweat. “That sweet she gave me was poisoned!” He had no time to consider the truth of this suggestion. In an access of giddiness he seemed to topple into a great hole, and sank into oblivion.

Such a strong belief that he was dying had taken possession of him that, when he opened his eyes, he was not sure that he was alive. He took several deep and rather painful breaths, pinched himself, and spoke out loud. He was alive. The distant noises of the street confirmed him in his belief.

“Certainly I’m not dead,” he said to himself. “But what a high opinion I’ve got of the woman I love! On account of a wretched narcotic she administered to me, as she had every right to do, I accuse her of poisoning me.”

He could not tell how long he had been asleep⁠—one day, or two, or more? His head was heavy; his mind was wandering; and his limbs were aching with a violent cramp. At the bottom of the wall he saw a basket of food which must have been let down through the loophole. No rifle was visible.

He was hungry and thirsty. He ate and drank. Such was his lassitude that he did not take the trouble to consider what might be the consequences of that meal. A narcotic? Poison? What did it matter? A passing sleep, or the sleep eternal, it made no difference to him. He went back to bed and fell asleep again for hours, for nights, for days.

In the end he came out of this deep slumber to become aware of certain sensations, much in the fashion in which one perceives gleams of light at the end of a tunnel. They were rather agreeable sensations. They were doubtless dreams, dreams of a pleasant rocking, accompanied by a continuous, rhythmical sound. At last he opened his eyes; then he perceived a framed picture, the canvas of which was covered with perpetually changing landscapes, shining or dark, full of sunlight or bathed in a golden mist.

Now he had only to stretch out his hand to find food. He began to enjoy the flavor of it more and more. He washed it down with a wine of a very delicate aroma. It seemed to him that, as he drank it, energy flowed into him. His eyes grew clear; the picture frame became an open window