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

the murderer, and she, who was no more, the victim?

“Dolores!… Dolores! Dolores!…”

The daylight found Lupin seated beside the dead woman, remembering and thinking, while his lips, from time to time, uttered the disconsolate syllables:

“Dolores!… Dolores!…”

He had to act, however, and, in the disorder of his ideas, he did not know how to act nor with what act to begin:

“I must close her eyes first,” he said.

The eyes, all empty, filled only with death, those beautiful gold-spangled eyes, had still the melancholy softness that gave them their charm. Was it possible that those eyes were the eyes of a monster? In spite of himself and in the face of the implacable reality, Lupin was not yet able to blend into one single being those two creatures whose images remained so distinct at the back of his brain.

He stooped swiftly, lowered the long, silky eyelids, and covered the poor distorted face with a veil.

Then it seemed to him that Dolores was farther away and that the man in black was really there, this time, in his dark clothes, in his murderer’s disguise.

He now ventured to touch her, to feel in her clothes. In an inside pocket were two pocketbooks. He took one of them and opened it. He found first a letter signed by Steinweg, the old German. It contained the following lines:

“Should I die before being able to reveal the terrible secret, let it be known that the murderer of my friend Kesselbach is his wife, whose real name is Dolores de Malreich, sister to Altenheim and sister to Isilda.

“The initials L. and M. relate to her Kesselbach never, in their private life, called his wife Dolores, which is the name of sorrow, but Letitia, which denotes joy. L. M.—Letitia de Malreich—were the initials inscribed on all the presents which he used to give her, for instance, on the cigarette-case which was found at the Palace Hotel and which belonged to Mrs. Kesselbach. She had contracted the smoking-habit on her travels.

“Letitia! She was indeed the joy of his life for four years, four years of lies and hypocrisy, in which she prepared the death of the man who loved her so well and who trusted her so whole-heartedly.

“Perhaps I ought to have spoken at once. I had not the courage, in memory of my old friend Kesselbach, whose name she bore.

“And then I was afraid… On the day when I unmasked her, at the Palais de Justice, I read my doom in her eyes.

“Will my weakness save me?”

“Him also,” thought Lupin, “him also she killed!… Why, of course, he knew too much!… The initials… that name, Letitia… the secret habit of smoking!”

And he remembered the previous night, that smell of tobacco in her room.

He continued his inspection of the first pocketbook. There were scraps of letters, in cipher, no doubt handed to Dolores by her accomplices, in the course of their nocturnal meetings. There were also addresses on bits of paper, addresses of milliners and dressmakers, but addresses also of low haunts, of common hotels…And names… twenty, thirty names… queer names: Hector the Butcher. Armand of Crenelle, the Sick Man…

But a photograph caught Lupin’s eye. He looked at it. And, at once, as though shot from a spring, dropping the pocketbook, he bolted out of the room, out of the chalet and rushed into the park.

He had recognized the portrait of Louis de Malreich, the prisoner at the Sante!

Not till then, not till that exact moment did he remember: the execution was to take place next day.

And, as the man in black, as the murderer was none other than Dolores Kesselbach, Louis de Malreich’s name was really and truly Leon Massier and he was innocent!

Innocent? But the evidence found in his house, the Emperor’s letters, all, all the things that accused him beyond hope of denial, all those incontrovertible proofs?

Lupin stopped for a second, with his brain on fire:

“Oh,” he cried, “I shall go mad, I, too! Come, though, I must act… the sentence is to be executed… tomorrow… tomorrow at break of day.”

He looked at his watch:

“Ten o’clock… How long will it take me to reach Paris? Well… I shall be there presently… yes, presently, I must… And this very evening I shall take measures to prevent… But what measures? How can I prove his innocence?… How prevent the execution? Oh, never mind! Once I am there, I shall find a way. My name is not Lupin for nothing!… Come on!…”

He set off again at a run, entered the castle and called out: “Pierre! Pierre!… Has any one seen M. Pierre Leduc?. “Oh, there you are!… Listen…”

He took him on one side and jerked out, in imperious tones:

“Listen, Dolores is not here… Yes, she was called away on urgent business… she left last night in my motor… I am going too… Don’t interrupt, not a word!… A second lost means irreparable harm… You, send away all the servants, without any explanation. Here is money. In half an hour from now, the castle must be empty. And let no one enter it until I return… Not you either, do you understand?… I forbid you to enter the castle… I’ll explain later… serious reasons. Here, take the key with you… Wait for me in the village…”

And once more, he darted away.

Five minutes later, he was with Octave. He jumped into the car:

“Paris!”

The journey was a real race for life or death. Lupin, thinking that Octave was not driving fast enough, took the steering-wheel himself and drove at a furious, break-neck speed. On the road, through the villages, along the crowded streets of the towns they rushed at sixty miles an hour. People whom they nearly upset roared and yelled with rage: the meteor was far away, was out of sight.

“G—governor,” stammered Octave, livid with dismay, “we shall be stuck!”

“You, perhaps, the motor, perhaps; but I shall arrive!” said Lupin.

He had a feeling as though it were not the car that was carrying him, but he carrying the car and as though he were cleaving space by dint of his own strength, his own will-power. Then what miracle could prevent his arriving, seeing that his strength was inexhaustible, his will-power unbounded?

“I shall arrive because I have got to arrive,” he repeated.

And he thought of the man who would die, if he did not arrive in time to save him, of the mysterious Louis de Malreich, so disconcerting with his stubborn silence and his expressionless face.

And amid the roar of the road, under the trees whose branches made a noise as of furious waves, amid the buzzing of his thoughts, Lupin, all the same, strove to set up an hypothesis. And this hypothesis became gradually more denned, logical, probable, certain, he said to himself, now that he knew the hideous truth about Dolores and saw all the resources and all the odious designs of that crazy mind:

“Yes, it was she who contrived that most terrible plot against Malreich. What was it she wanted? To marry Pierre Leduc, whom she had bewitched, and to become the sovereign of the little principality from which she had been banished. The object was attainable, within reach of her hand. There was one sole obstacle… I, Lupin, who, for weeks and weeks, persistently barred her road; I, whom she encountered after every murder; I, whose perspicacity she dreaded; I, who would never lay down my arms before I had discovered the culprit and found the letters stolen from the Emperor… Well, the culprit should be Louis de Malreich, or rather, Leon Massier. Who was this Leon Massier? Did she know him before her marriage? Had she been in love with him? It is probable; but this, no doubt, we shall never know. One thing is certain, that she was struck by the resemblance to Leon Massier in figure and stature which she might attain by dressing up like him, in black clothes, and putting on a fair wig. She must have noticed the eccentric life led by that lonely man, his nocturnal expeditions, his manner of walking in the streets and of throwing any who might follow him off the scent. And it was in consequence of these observations and in anticipation of possible eventualities that she advised Mr. Kesselbach to erase the name of Dolores from the register of births and to replace it by the name of Louis, so that the initials might correspond with those of Leon Massier… The moment arrived at which she must act; and thereupon she concocted her plot and proceeded to put it into execution. Leon lived in the Rue Delaizement. She ordered her accomplices to take up their quarters in the street that backed on to it. And she herself told me the address of Dominique the head-waiter, and put me on the track of the seven scoundrels, knowing perfectly well that, once on the track, I was bound to follow it to the end, that is to say, beyond the seven scoundrels, till I came up with their leader, the man who watched them and who commanded them, the man in black, Leon Massier, Louis de Malreich… As a matter of fact, I came up with the seven scoundrels first. Then what would happen? Either I should be beaten or we should all destroy one another, as she must have hoped, that night in the Rue des Vignes. In either case Dolores would have been rid of me. But what really happened was this: I captured the seven scoundrels. Dolores fled from the Rue des Vignes. I found her in the Broker’s shed. She sent me after Leon Massier, that is to say, Louis de Malreich. I found in his house the Emperor’s letters, which she herself had placed there, and I delivered him to justice and I revealed the secret communication, which she herself had caused to be made, between the two coach houses, and I produced all the evidence which she herself had prepared, and I proved, by means of documents which she herself had forged, that Leon Massier had stolen the social status of Leon Massier and that his real name was Louis de Malreich… And Louis de Malreich was sentenced to death… And Dolores de Malreich, victorious at last, safe from all suspicion once the culprit was discovered, released from her infamous and criminal past, her husband dead, her brother dead, her sister dead, her two maids dead, Steinweg dead, delivered by me from her accomplices, whom I handed over to Weber all packed up, delivered, lastly, from herself by me, who was sending the innocent man whom she had substituted for herself to the scaffold, Dolores de Malreich, triumphant, rich with the wealth of her millions and loved by Pierre Leduc, Dolores de Malreich would sit upon the throne of her native grand-duchy… Ah,” cried Lupin, beside himself with excitement, “that man shall not die! I swear it as I live: he shall not die!”

“Look out, governor,” said Octave, scared, “we are near the town now… the outskirts… the suburbs…”

“What shall I care?”

“But we shall topple over… And the pavement is greasy… we are skidding…”

“Never mind.”

“Take care. Look ahead…”

“What?”

“A tram-car, at the turn…”

“Let it stop!”

“Do slow down, governor!”

“Never!”

“But we have no room to pass!”

“We shall get through.”

“We can’t get through.”

“Yes, we can.”

“Oh, Lord!”

A crash… outcries… The motor had run into the tram-car, cannoned against a fence, torn down ten yards of planking and, lastly, smashed itself against the corner of a slope.

“Driver, are you disengaged?”

Lupin, lying flat on the grass of the slope, had hailed a taxicab.

He scrambled to his feet, gave a glance at his shattered car and the people