The Crystal Stopper - Maurice Leblanc (best ereader for epub .txt) 📗

recognizing that fact and believing the Inland Revenue to be in league with Daubrecq with the object of hiding the list of the Twenty-Seven from the legitimate curiosity of the government and the enterprising efforts of Arsène Lupin! Observe that all Daubrecq had to do, in order to introduce the crystal stopper, was to bear upon the band a little, loosen it, draw it back, unfold the yellow paper, remove the tobacco and fasten it up again. Observe also that all we had to do, in Paris, was to take the packet in our hands and examine it, in order to discover the hiding-place. No matter! The packet itself, the plug of Maryland made up and passed by the State and by the Inland Revenue Office, was a sacred, intangible thing, a thing above suspicion! And nobody opened it. That was how that demon of a Daubrecq allowed that untouched packet of tobacco to lie about for months on his table, among his pipes and among other unopened packets of tobacco. And no power on earth could have given anyone even the vaguest notion of looking into that harmless little cube. I would have you observe, besides⁠ ⁠…” Lupin went on pursuing his remarks relative to the packet of Maryland and the crystal stopper. His adversary’s ingenuity and shrewdness interested him all the more inasmuch as Lupin had ended by getting the better of him. But to Clarisse these topics mattered much less than did her anxiety as to the acts which must be performed to save her son; and she sat wrapped in her own thoughts and hardly listened to him.

“Are you sure,” she kept on repeating, “that you will succeed?”

“Absolutely sure.”

“But Prasville is not in Paris.”

“If he’s not there, he’s at the Havre. I saw it in the paper yesterday. In any case, a telegram will bring him to Paris at once.”

“And do you think that he has enough influence?”

“To obtain the pardon of Vaucheray and Gilbert personally. No. If he had, we should have set him to work before now. But he is intelligent enough to understand the value of what we are bringing him and to act without a moment’s delay.”

“But, to be accurate, are you not deceived as to that value?”

“Was Daubrecq deceived? Was Daubrecq not in a better position than any of us to know the full power of that paper? Did he not have twenty proofs of it, each more convincing than the last? Think of all that he was able to do, for the sole reason that people knew him to possess the list. They knew it; and that was all. He did not use the list, but he had it. And, having it, he killed your husband. He built up his fortune on the ruin and the disgrace of the Twenty-Seven. Only last week, one of the gamest of the lot, d’Albufex, cut his throat in a prison. No, take it from me, as the price of handing over that list, we could ask for anything we pleased. And we are asking for what? Almost nothing⁠ ⁠… less than nothing⁠ ⁠… the pardon of a child of twenty. In other words, they will take us for idiots. What! We have in our hands⁠ ⁠…”

He stopped. Clarisse, exhausted by so much excitement, sat fast asleep in front of him.

They reached Paris at eight o’clock in the morning.

Lupin found two telegrams awaiting him at his flat in the Place de Clichy.

One was from the Masher, dispatched from Avignon on the previous day and stating that all was going well and that they hoped to keep their appointment punctually that evening. The other was from Prasville, dated from the Havre and addressed to Clarisse:

“Impossible return tomorrow Monday morning. Come to my office five o’clock. Reckon on you absolutely.”

“Five o’clock!” said Clarisse. “How late!”

“It’s a first-rate hour,” declared Lupin.

“Still, if⁠ ⁠…”

“If the execution is to take place tomorrow morning: is that what you mean to say?⁠ ⁠… Don’t be afraid to speak out, for the execution will not take place.”

“The newspapers⁠ ⁠…”

“You haven’t read the newspapers and you are not to read them. Nothing that they can say matters in the least. One thing alone matters: our interview with Prasville. Besides⁠ ⁠…”

He took a little bottle from a cupboard and, putting his hand on Clarisse’s shoulder, said:

“Lie down here, on the sofa, and take a few drops of this mixture.”

“What’s it for?”

“It will make you sleep for a few hours⁠ ⁠… and forget. That’s always so much gained.”

“No, no,” protested Clarisse, “I don’t want to. Gilbert is not asleep. He is not forgetting.”

“Drink it,” said Lupin, with gentle insistence. She yielded all of a sudden, from cowardice, from excessive suffering, and did as she was told and lay on the sofa and closed her eyes. In a few minutes she was asleep.

Lupin rang for his servant:

“The newspapers⁠ ⁠… quick!⁠ ⁠… Have you bought them?”

“Here they are, governor.”

Lupin opened one of them and at once read the following lines:

“Arsène Lupin’s Accomplices”

“We know from a positive source that Arsène Lupin’s accomplices, Gilbert and Vaucheray, will be executed tomorrow, Tuesday, morning. M. Deibler has inspected the scaffold. Everything is ready.”

He raised his head with a defiant look.

“Arsène Lupin’s accomplices! The execution of Arsène Lupin’s accomplices! What a fine spectacle! And what a crowd there will be to witness it! Sorry, gentlemen, but the curtain will not rise. Theatre closed by order of the authorities. And the authorities are myself!”

He struck his chest violently, with an arrogant gesture:

“The authorities are myself!”

At twelve o’clock Lupin received a telegram which the Masher had sent from Lyons:

“All well. Goods will arrive without damage.”

At three o’clock Clarisse woke. Her first words were:

“Is it to be tomorrow?”

He did not answer. But she saw him look so calm and smiling that she felt herself permeated with an immense sense of peace and received the impression that everything was finished, disentangled, settled according to her companion’s will.

They left the house at ten minutes past four. Prasville’s secretary, who had received his chief’s instructions