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

young woman was secretly abducted on getting out of a train and transported to the Château of La Haie d’Etigues, where there were gathered together, in a large isolated chamber, a dozen of the noblemen of the Caux country. Among them were Beaumagnan, whom you see here, and your father. I will not tell you everything which was said at this meeting and of all the ignominy that was heaped on that young woman by these people who pretended to be her judges. But it came about that after a pretense of a trial, that evening, when the rest of the guests had gone, your father and his cousin de Bennetot carried her to the bottom of the cliff, tied her down in the bottom of a boat with a hole in it and heavily loaded with a big boulder, rowed her out to sea, and there abandoned her.”

Breathless with amazement Clarice stammered: “It isn’t true! It isn’t true!⁠ ⁠… My father would never do such a thing!⁠ ⁠… It isn’t true!”

Without paying any heed to her indignant protest, Josephine quietly continued: “Without any of the conspirators being aware of it, there was a spectator at that meeting at the château. That spectator kept watch on the two murderers⁠—there’s no other name for them, is there?⁠—followed them, clung to the scuttled boat, and when they abandoned it, rescued their victim. From where did that spectator come? Everything leads us to believe that he passed the previous night and morning in your room, received by you not as a fiancé, since your father refused to hear of his marrying you, but as a lover.”

This accusation and this insult struck Clarice like the blows of a mallet. On the instant she was overwhelmed and incapable of resisting or even of defending herself. Pale and fainting, she lay back in her chair and groaned: “But what a thing to say!”

“But you said it yourself⁠—to your father⁠—the day before yesterday,” said Josephine coldly. “Is there any need for me to go into the whole story and tell you what became of your lover? That very day Ralph d’Andresy abandoned you to follow the woman he had saved from a terrible death. He devoted himself to her, body and soul, won her heart, lived her life, and swore to her never to see you again. He took that oath in the most categorical fashion: ‘I did not love her,’ he said. ‘It was a mere passing flirtation. It is all over.’ Then following a passing misunderstanding between her and him, this woman discovered that he was writing to you, that he wrote the letter which I have here, in which he begged you to forgive him and gave you hopes of the future. You understand now that I have some right to treat you as an enemy?” She paused and added gloomily: “As a mortal enemy.”

Clarice was silent. Terror took possession of her, and she considered with an increasing apprehension the gentle and terrifying countenance of the woman who had taken Ralph from her and declared herself her enemy.

Trembling with pity and careless of exciting the anger of Josephine, Ralph said solemnly: “If I have ever sworn a solemn oath that I am resolved to keep in the face of everything and everyone, Clarice, it is the oath I have sworn that not a hair of your head shall be touched. You have nothing to fear. Inside of ten minutes you shall leave here safe and sound⁠—ten minutes, not more.”

Josephine did not take up the challenge; she continued quietly: “That, then, is the position in which we stand to one another, clearly set forth. Let us get on to the facts; and I’ll be quite brief. Your father, mademoiselle, Beaumagnan and their confederates, were engaged in a common enterprise; for my part, I am seeking the same end and Ralph is seeking it with passionate intensity. From that it comes about that we are waging an unceasing war against one another. Now, all of us have had relations with a woman of the name of Rousselin, who possessed an old casket which we had needed to succeed in that enterprise. She has parted with that casket to another person. We questioned her in the most pressing manner without getting from her the name of that person, who, it appears, had heaped benefits on her and whom she did not wish to compromise by any indiscreet statement. All that we could learn was⁠—it’s an old story, of which I propose to give you main facts, which you will follow with the greatest interest both from our point of view⁠ ⁠… and from your own.”

Ralph began to discern the course that Josephine was taking and the end to which she must inevitably come.

It was so frightful that he said angrily: “No, no: not that! There are things which should never be revealed!”

She did not appear to hear him, and went on inexorably: “This is the story: Twenty-two years, ago, during the war between France and Prussia, two men, who were flying from the invaders and escaping under the guidance of old Rousselin, murdered a servant of the name of Jaubert in order to steal his horse. With that horse they were able to escape. Moreover, they carried away with them a casket that they had also stolen from their victim, which contained jewels of great value. Later old Rousselin, whom they had compelled to accompany them and to whom they had given his share of the booty some worthless rings, came back to his wife at Rouen and almost immediately died there. To such an extent had this murder and his involuntary complicity in it depressed him. Thereupon relations were established between the widow and the murderers, who feared that she might let the truth slip out; and it came about I take it, mademoiselle, that you now understand with whom we are concerned?”

Clarice was listening to this revelation with so painful an air of terror that Ralph exclaimed: “Silence,