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

The two of them dragged Beaumagnan into the recess. Leonard cut off the end of the rope which was round Ralph’s neck, and the two of them bound together the wounded man’s wrists and ankles. Then she looked at his shoulder and said: “That’s nothing⁠—two or three days in bed and he’ll be all right again. Come on.”

They went back to the door.

She had performed these actions quietly, without the slightest haste and, from the expression on her face, she might have been doing the most ordinary things in the world. Every gesture was quiet and easy; she gave her orders with no vestige of excitement. But there was a note of triumph in her voice that inspired Ralph with a growing uneasiness, and he was on the point of shouting to warn the person who, in his or her turn, was walking into the trap.

But what was the use? The measures of Josephine had been taken too carefully for his cry of warning to upset them. Besides he did not quite know what to do. All kinds of absurd notions were running through his mind. And then⁠—then it was too late. A groan burst from his lips.

Clarice d’Etigues came through the door!

Up to that moment Ralph had been feeling but a moderate apprehension. The danger only threatened him and Josephine. For his part, he trusted to his cleverness and lucky star; and as for Josephine, he knew that she was quite capable of defending herself against Beaumagnan.

But Clarice! Confronted by Josephine Balsamo, Clarice was a mere victim at the mercy of the treachery and cruelty of an enemy. And from that moment his fear was mingled with a kind of physical horror, which actually made his hair stand upright on his head and gave him what is vulgarly called gooseflesh. The implacable face of Leonard also added to his fear. He remembered the Widow Rousselin and her crushed fingers.

Truly he had seen clearly ahead when, coming to the meeting-place an hour before, he guessed that the great battle was before him and that he would come to grips with Josephine. Up to now they had had mere skirmishes, mere affairs of outposts. Now it was a struggle to the death between all these opposing forces; and he was confronting them with his hands bound, a rope round his neck, and this additional enfeeblement with which the coming of Clarice afflicted him.

“I’ve a lot to learn yet,” he said to himself with a groan. “I’m chiefly responsible for this horrible situation, and Clarice is once more my victim.”

The young girl stood speechless before the threat of the revolver which Leonard leveled at her. She had come on light feet, as one comes to meet someone one is glad to see again, and had stumbled into the midst of this scene of violence and crime, while the man she loved stood before her bound and motionless.

She stammered: “What’s the matter, Ralph? Why are you tied up like that?”

She stretched out her hands towards him, as much as to ask his help as to offer him hers. But what could either of them do? He noticed her worn features and the extreme lassitude of her bearing; and he could hardly refrain from tears at the thought of the painful confession her father had torn from her.

But, in spite of everything, he said with imperturbable assurance: “I’ve nothing to be frightened of, Clarice, no more have you. Absolutely nothing. I answer for everything.”

She looked round at the others and was astonished to recognize Beaumagnan. She said timidly to Leonard: “What is it you want? This is rather terrifying. Who was it made me come here?”

“I did, Mademoiselle,” said Josephine.

Clarice had already been struck by Josephine’s beauty. A scrap of hope came to her at the thought that nothing but help and protection could come from so beautiful a creature.

“Who are you, Madam? I don’t think I know you,” she said timidly.

“I know you,” said Josephine, whom the grace and sweetness of the young girl seemed to irritate, though she kept her anger under control. “You’re the daughter of Baron d’Etigues. I know, too, that you’re in love with Ralph d’Andresy.”

Clarice blushed but did not deny it.

Josephine said to Leonard: “Go and shut the gate. Put the chain and padlock you brought on it, and set up that old notice-board with ‘Private’ on it.”

“Am I to stay outside?” asked Leonard.

“Yes; I’ve no need of you at the moment,” said Josephine with an air which terrified Ralph. “Stay outside. And see that no one interrupts us⁠—on any account.”

Leonard forced Clarice to sit down on one of the chairs and drew her arms behind her with the intention of tying her wrists to the back of it.

“There’s no need to do that,” said Josephine. “Leave us.”

He did as she bade him.

She looked from one to another of her three victims in turn. All three disarmed and reduced to impotence, she was mistress of the field of battle and on pain of death could impose her inflexible decrees.

Ralph’s eyes never left her; he was trying to discover her intentions and her plans. Her calmness impressed him more than anything. She showed none of that excitement and feverishness which would have, so to speak, disarticulated the conduct of any other woman in her place. There was not a trace of triumph in her attitude. There was rather a certain weariness, as if she had acted under the impulsion of inner forces, which she was not strong enough to discipline. For the first time he divined in her a careless fatalism, as a rule concealed by her smiling beauty, which was perhaps the very essence and explanation of her enigmatic nature.

She sat down on the other chair close to Clarice, and with her eyes on her face said slowly, with a certain dryness and monotony in her intonation: “Three months ago, Mademoiselle, a