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

with this horror the most tragic of realities associated indissolubly the image of the woman he loved.

He stayed away, but at the cost of what efforts! In what groans did his impotent revolt die away! Josephine stretched out her lovely arms to him and offered her mouth to his kisses. How resist the appeal of that voluptuous creature?

Moved to the lowest depths of his egotism, for the first time he became aware of the immense suffering he must have inflicted on Clarice d’Etigues. Now he could imagine her tears, the overwhelming distress of her shattered life. Shaken by remorse, he addressed to her discourses full of tenderness in which he recalled the moving hours of their love.

He did more. Knowing that the young girl received her letters direct, he dared to write to her:

Forgive me, dear Clarice. I have treated you like a scoundrel. Let us hope for a brighter future and think of me with all the indulgence of your generous heart. Once more, forgive me⁠—forgive.

Ralph.

“If only I were with her, how quickly I should forget all these horrible things!” he said to himself. “The essential thing is not to have innocent eyes and kissable lips but a loyal and serious spirit like that of Clarice.”

Only it was the eyes and the ambiguous smile of Josephine that he adored; and when he thought of her caresses, it was little he cared that she had a spirit which was neither loyal nor innocent.

In the meantime he set about hunting for the old lighthouse of which Madam Rousselin had spoken. Since he knew that she lived at Lillebonne he had no doubt that that lighthouse was in the neighborhood of it and that was the reason he had gone in the direction he did when he left Josephine.

He was not mistaken. He had only to make enquiries to learn, firstly, that there was an old, abandoned lighthouse in the woods which surrounded the Château de Tancarville, and secondly that the owner of that lighthouse had entrusted the keys of it to the Widow Rousselin, who, on the Tuesday of every week, went to clean it. A simple nocturnal expedition put him in possession of those keys.

It was only two days from the day on which the unknown person who possessed the casket was certainly going to meet the Widow Rousselin; and since she, a prisoner or an invalid, had not been able to put off the engagement, everything was arranged in a manner that would enable him to profit by an interview which he reckoned so important. This prospect soothed him. The problem which had been worrying him for weeks and of which the solution seemed to have become a matter of days, again took possesion of his mind.

To leave nothing to chance, on the Monday evening he paid a visit to the meeting-place, and on the Tuesday, when, an hour before the meeting he briskly traversed the woods of Tancarville success appeared to him inevitable; and he was brimming with pride and pleasure.

Part of these woods, beyond the park, stretches as far as the Seine and covers the cliffs. The roads run through it from central crossroads, and one of them leads through ravines and over steep ridges towards the rugged promontory, on which rises, half visible, the abandoned lighthouse. During the week the spot is absolutely deserted. Sometimes on a Sunday picnickers take possession of it.

If you ascend to the top of it, you get a glorious view over the Tancarville canal and the river estuary. But the bottom of it was at that time buried in brush wood. On the ground floor is a single room, of a fair size, pierced by two windows, and furnished with two chairs. It opens on the land side on an enclosure full of nettles and weeds.

As he drew near it Ralph’s pace slackened. He had a very natural impression that important events were about to happen and that they were not only thus meeting with an unknown and the definite conquest of a formidable secret, but that they were a continuation of the supreme battle in which the enemy would be definitely defeated.

And this enemy was the Countess of Cagliostro⁠—the Countess who knew as well as he the admissions torn from the Widow Rousselin, and who, incapable of accepting defeat and disposing of unlimited means of investigation, must have easily found this old lighthouse, in which the last act of the drama was about to be played.

“And not only,” said he under his breath, laughing at himself, “do I ask whether she will come to the meeting-place, but in reality I hope keenly that she will be there and that I shall see her again and that, both of us victors, we shall fall into one another’s arms.”

Through a gate in the little wall, the top of which was bristling with broken bottles, he went into the enclosure. There was no trace of anyone’s passage through the weeds; but it was possible to cross the wall in another place and to climb in through one of the windows at the side.

His heart was beating. His fists were clenched. He was ready for the struggle, if a trap had been laid for him.

“But how silly I am!” he thought. “Why a trap?”

He turned the handle of the worm-eaten door and entered.

On the instant he felt that someone was in hiding in the recess beside the door. He had no time to turn upon the assailant. Scarcely did he become aware of him, by instinct rather than by actual vision than a noose that dragged him backwards tightened round his neck and a knee came with brutal violence against the small of his back. Suffocated and jolted, he was at the mercy of his opponent and came heavily to the ground.

“A good stroke, Leonard!” he muttered. “A pretty revenge!”

He was wrong. It was not Leonard. He caught sight of his assailant’s profile and recognized Beaumagnan. Then while Beaumagnan was