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

crowding round to Octave’s assistance and jumped into the cab:

“Go to the Ministry of the Interior, on the Place Beauvau… Twenty francs for yourself…”

He settled himself in the taxi and continued:

“No, no, he shall not die! No, a thousand times no, I will not have that on my conscience! It is bad enough to have been tricked by a woman and to have fallen into the snare like a schoolboy… That will do! No more blunders for me! I have had that poor wretch arrested… I have had him sentenced to death… I have brought him to the foot of the scaffold… but he shall not mount it!… Anything but that! If he mounts the scaffold, there will be nothing left for me but to put a bullet through my head.”

They were approaching the toll-house. He leant out:

“Twenty francs more, driver, if you don’t stop.”

And he shouted to the officials:

“Detective-service!”

They passed through.

“But don’t slow down, don’t slow down, hang it!” roared Lupin. “Faster!… Faster still! Are you afraid of running over the old ladies? Never mind about them! I’ll pay the damage!”

In a few minutes, they were at the Ministry of the Interior. Lupin hurried across the courtyard and ran up the main staircase. The waiting-room was full of people. He scribbled on a sheet of paper, “Prince Sernine,” and, hustling a messenger into a corner, said:

“You know me, don’t you? I’m Lupin. I procured you this berth; a snug retreat for your old age, eh? Only, you’ve got to show me in at once. There, take my name through. That’s all I ask of you. The premier will thank you, you may be sure of that… and so I will… But, hurry you fool! Valenglay is expecting me…”

Ten seconds later, Valenglay himself put his head through the door of his room and said:

“Show the prince in.”

Lupin rushed into the room, slammed the door and, interrupting the premier, said:

“No, no set phrases, you can’t arrest me… It would mean ruining yourself and compromising the Emperor… No, it’s not a question of that. Look here. Malreich is innocent… I have discovered the real criminal… It’s Dolores Kesselbach. She is dead. Her body is down there.I have undeniable proofs. There is no doubt possible. It was she…”

He stopped. Valenglay seemed not to understand.

“But, look here, Monsieur le President, we must save Malreich… Only think… a judicial error!… An innocent man guillotined!… Give your orders… say you have fresh information… anything you please… but, quick, there is no time to lose…”

Valenglay looked at him attentively, then went to a table, took up a newspaper and handed it to him, pointing his finger at an article as he did so.

Lupin cast his eye at the head-line and read:

“EXECUTION OF THE MONSTER”

“Louis de Malreich underwent the death-penalty this morning…”

He read no more. Thunderstruck, crushed, he fell into the premier’s chair with a moan of despair…

How long he remained like that he could not say. When he was outside again, he remembered a great silence and then Valenglay bending over him and sprinkling water on his forehead. He remembered, above all, the premier’s hushed voice whispering:

“Listen… you won’t say anything about this will you? Innocent, perhaps, I don’t say not… But what is the use of revelations, of a scandal? A judicial error can have serious consequences. Is it worthwhile?… A rehabilitation? For what purpose? He was not even sentenced under his own name. It is the name of Malreich which is held up to public execration… the name of the real criminal, as it happens… So…”

And, pushing Lupin gradually toward the door, he said:

“So go… Go back there… Get rid of the corpse… And let not a trace remain, eh? Not the slightest trace of all this business… I can rely on you, can I not?”

And Lupin went back. He went back like a machine, because he had been told to do so and because he had no will left of his own.

He waited for hours at the railway-station. Mechanically, he ate his dinner, took a ticket and settled down in a compartment.

He slept badly. His brain was on fire between nightmares and half-waking intervals in which he tried to make out why Malreich had not defended himself:

“He was a madman… surely… half a madman… He must have known her formerly… and she poisoned his life… she drove him crazy… So he felt he might as well die… Why defend himself?”

The explanation only half satisfied him, and he promised himself sooner or later to clear up the riddle and to discover the exact part which Massier had played in Dolores’ life. But what did it matter for the moment? One fact alone stood out clearly, which was Massier’s madness, and he repeated, persistently:

“He was a madman… Massier was undoubtedly mad. Besides, all those Massiers… a family of madmen…”

He raved, mixing up names in his enfeebled brain.

But, on alighting at Bruggen Station, in the cool,moist air of the morning, his consciousness revived. Things suddenly assumed a different aspect. And he exclaimed:

“Well, after all, it was his own lookout! He had only to protest… I accept no responsibility… It was he who committed suicide… He was only a dumb actor in the play… He has gone under… I am sorry. ‘… But it can’t be helped!”

The necessity for action stimulated him afresh. Wounded, tortured by that crime of which he knew himself to be the author for all that he might say, he nevertheless looked to the future:

“Those are the accidents of war,” he said. “Don’t let us think about it. Nothing is lost. On the contrary! Dolores was the stumbling-block, since Pierre Leduc loved her. Dolores is dead. Therefore Pierre Leduc belongs to me. And he shall marry GeneviŽve, as I have arranged! And he shall reign! And I shall be the master! And Europe, Europe is mine!”

He worked himself up, reassured, full of sudden confidence, and made feverish gestures as he walked along the road, whirling an imaginary sword, the sword of the leader whose will is law, who commands and triumphs:

“Lupin, you shall be king! You shall be king, ArsŽne Lupin!”

He inquired in the village of Bruggen and heard that Pierre Leduc had lunched yesterday at the inn. Since then, he had not been seen.

“Oh?” asked Lupin. “Didn’t he sleep here?”

“No.”

“But where did he go after his lunch?”

“He took the road to the castle.”

Lupin walked away in some surprise. After all, he had told the young man to lock the doors and not to return after the servants had gone.

He at once received a proof that Pierre had disobeyed him: the park gates were open.

He went in, hunted all over the castle, called out. No reply.

Suddenly, he thought of the chalet. Who could tell? Perhaps Pierre Leduc, worrying about the woman he loved and driven by an intuition, had gone to look for her in that direction. And Dolores’ corpse was there!

Greatly alarmed, Lupin began to run.

At first sight, there seemed to be no one in the chalet.

“Pierre! Pierre!” he cried.

Hearing no sound, he entered the front passage and the room which he had occupied.

He stopped short, rooted to the threshold.

Above Dolores’ corpse, hung Pierre Leduc, with a rope round his neck, dead.

Lupin impatiently pulled himself together from head to foot. He refused to yield to a single gesture of despair. He refused to utter a single violent word. After the cruel blows which fate had dealt him, after Dolores’ crimes and death, after Massier’s execution, after all those disturbances and catastrophes, he felt the absolute necessity of retaining all his self-command. If not, his brain would undoubtedly give way…

“Idiot!” he said, shaking his fist at Pierre Leduc. “You great idiot, couldn’t you wait? In ten years we should have had Alsace-Lorraine again!”

To relieve his mind, he sought for words to say, for attitudes; but his ideas escaped him and his head seemed on the point of bursting.

“Oh, no, no!” he cried. “None of that, thank you! Lupin mad too! No, old chap! Put a bullet through your head, if you like; and, when all is said, I don’t see any other way out. But Lupin drivelling, wheeled about in a bath-chair… no! Style, old fellow, finish in style!”

He walked up and down, stamping his feet and lifting his knees very high, as certain actors do when feigning madness. And he said:

“Swagger, my lad, swagger! The eyes of the gods are upon you! Lift up your head! Pull in your stomach, hang it! Throw out your chest!… Everything is breaking up around you. What do you care?… It’s the final disaster, I’ve played my last card, a kingdom in the gutter, I’ve lost Europe, the whole world ends in smoke… Well… and what of it? Laugh, laugh! Be Lupin, or you’re in the soup… Come, laugh! Louder than that, louder, louder! That’s right!… Lord, how funny it all is! Dolores, old girl, a cigarette!”

He bent down with a grin, touched the dead woman’s face, tottered for a second and fell to the ground unconscious.

After lying for an hour, he came to himself and stood up. The fit of madness was over; and, master of himself, with relaxed nerves, serious and silent, he considered the position.

He felt that the time had come for the irrevocable decisions that involve a whole existence. His had been utterly shattered, in a few days, under the assault of unforeseen catastrophes, rushing up, one after the other, at the very moment when he thought his triumph assured. What should he do? Begin again? Build up everything again? He had not the courage for it. What then?

The whole morning, he roamed tragically about the park and gradually realized his position in all its slightest details. Little by little, the thought of death enforced itself upon him with inflexible rigor.

But, whether he decided to kill himself or to live, there was first of all a series of definite acts which he was obliged to perform. And these acts stood out clearly in his brain, which had suddenly become quite cool.

The mid-day Angelus rang from the church-steeple.

“To work!” he said, firmly.

,He returned to the chalet in a very calm frame of mind, went to his room, climbed on a stool, and cut the rope by which Pierre Leduc was hanging:

“You poor devil!” he said. “You were doomed to end like that, with a hempen tie around your neck. Alas, you were not made for greatness: I ought to have foreseen that and not hooked my fortune to a rhymester!”

He felt in the young man’s clothes and found nothing. But, remembering Dolores’ second pocketbook, he took it from the pocket where he had left it.

He gave a start of surprise. The pocketbook contained a bundle of letters whose appearance was familiar to him; and he at once recognized the different writings.

“The Emperor’s letters!” he muttered, slowly. “The old chancellor’s letters! The whole bundle which I myself found at Leon Massier’s and which I handed to Count von Waldemar!… How did it happen?… Did she take them in her turn from that blockhead of a Waldemar?” And, suddenly, slapping his forehead, “Why, no, the blockhead is myself. These are the real letters! She kept them to blackmail the Emperor when the time came. And the others, the ones which I handed over, are copies, forged by herself, of course, or by an accomplice, and placed where she knew that I should find them… And I played her game for her, like a mug! By Jove, when women begin to interfere… !”

There was only a piece of pasteboard left in the pocketbook, a