The Hollow Needle - Maurice Leblanc (ebook e reader .txt) 📗

A baluster marked the entrance to the staircase, near the fissure. They started on their way down. From time to time, a little window pierced the wall of the cliff; and, each time, they caught sight of the Needle, whose mass seemed to them to grow more and more colossal.

A little before reaching high-water level, the windows ceased and all was dark.

Isidore counted the steps aloud. At the three hundred and fifty-eight, they emerged into a wider passage, which was barred by another iron door strengthened with slabs and nails.

“We know all about this,” said Beautrelet. “The document gives us 357 and a triangle dotted on the right. We have only to repeat the performance.”

The second door obeyed like the first. A long, a very long tunnel appeared, lit up at intervals by the gleam of a lantern swung from the vault. The walls oozed moisture and drops of water fell to the ground, so that, to make walking easier a regular pavement of planks had been laid from end to end.

“We are passing under the sea,” said Beautrelet. “Are you coming, Ganimard?”

Without replying, the inspector ventured into the tunnel, followed the wooden foot-plank and stopped before a lantern, which he took down.

“The utensils may date back to the Middle Ages, but the lighting is modern,” he said. “Our friends use incandescent mantles.”

He continued his way. The tunnel ended in another and a larger cave, with, on the opposite side, the first steps of a staircase that led upward.

“It’s the ascent of the Needle beginning,” said Ganimard. “This is more serious.”

But one of his men called him:

“There’s another flight here, sir, on the left.”

And, immediately afterward, they discovered a third, on the right.

“The deuce!” muttered the inspector. “This complicates matters. If we go by this way, they’ll make tracks by that.”

“Shall we separate?” asked Beautrelet.

“No, no⁠—that would mean weakening ourselves. It would be better for one of us to go ahead and scout.”

“I will, if you like⁠—”

“Very well, Beautrelet, you go. I will remain with my men⁠—then there will be no fear of anything. There may be other roads through the cliff than that by which we came and several roads also through the Needle. But it is certain that, between the cliff and the Needle, there is no communication except the tunnel. Therefore they must pass through this cave. And so I shall stay here till you come back. Go ahead, Beautrelet, and be prudent: at the least alarm, scoot back again.”

Isidore disappeared briskly up the middle staircase. At the thirtieth step, a door, an ordinary wooden door, stopped him. He seized the handle turned it. The door was not locked.

He entered a room that seemed to him very low owing to its immense size. Lit by powerful lamps and supported by squat pillars, with long vistas showing between them, it had nearly the same dimensions as the Needle itself. It was crammed with packing cases and miscellaneous objects⁠—pieces of furniture, oak settees, chests, credence-tables, strongboxes⁠—a whole confused heap of the kind which one sees in the basement of an old curiosity shop.

On his right and left, Beautrelet perceived the wells of two staircases, the same, no doubt, that started from the cave below. He could easily have gone down, therefore, and told Ganimard. But a new flight of stairs led upward in front of him and he had the curiosity to pursue his investigations alone.

Thirty more steps. A door and then a room, not quite so large as the last, Beautrelet thought. And again, opposite him, an ascending flight of stairs.

Thirty steps more. A door. A smaller room.

Beautrelet grasped the plan of the works executed inside the Needle. It was a series or rooms placed one above the other and, therefore, gradually decreasing in size. They all served as storerooms.

In the fourth, there was no lamp. A little light filtered in through clefts in the walls and Beautrelet saw the sea some thirty feet below him.

At that moment, he felt himself so far from Ganimard that a certain anguish began to take hold of him and he had to master his nerves lest he should take to his heels. No danger threatened him, however, and the silence around him was even so great that he asked himself whether the whole Needle had not been abandoned by Lupin and his confederates.

“I shall not go beyond the next floor,” he said to himself.

Thirty stairs again and a door. This door was lighter in construction and modern in appearance. He pushed it open gently, quite prepared for flight. There was no one there. But the room differed from the others in its purpose. There were hangings on the walls, rugs on the floor. Two magnificent sideboards, laden with gold and silver plate, stood facing each other. The little windows contrived in the deep, narrow cleft were furnished with glass panes.

In the middle of the room was a richly-decked table, with a lace-edged cloth, dishes of fruits and cakes, champagne in decanters and flowers, heaps of flowers.

Three places were laid around the table.

Beautrelet walked up. On the napkins were cards with the names of the party. He read first:

“Arsène Lupin.”

“Mme. Arsène Lupin.”

He took up the third card and started back with surprise. It bore his own name:

“Isidore Beautrelet!”

A curtain was drawn back.

“Good morning, my dear Beautrelet, you’re a little late. Lunch was fixed for twelve. However, it’s only a few minutes⁠—but what’s the matter? Don’t you know me? Have I changed so much?”

In the course of his fight with Lupin, Beautrelet had met with many surprises and he was still prepared, at the moment of the final catastrophe, to experience any number of further emotions; but the shock which he received this time was utterly unexpected. It was not astonishment, but stupefaction, terror. The man who stood before him, the man whom the brutal force of events compelled him to look upon as Arsène Lupin, was⁠—Valméras! Valméras, the owner of