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

“Arsène Lupin and the Nicole man are one and the same individual.”

“I will save him, I will save him,” Lupin repeated, without ceasing, in the taxicab in which he and Clarisse drove away. “I swear that I will save him.”

Clarisse did not listen, sat as though numbed, as though possessed by some great nightmare of death, which left her ignorant of all that was happening outside her. And Lupin set forth his plans, perhaps more to reassure himself than to convince Clarisse. “No, no, the game is not lost yet. There is one trump left, a huge trump, in the shape of the letters and documents which Vorenglade, the ex-deputy, is offering to sell to Daubrecq and of which Daubrecq spoke to you yesterday at Nice. I shall buy those letters and documents of Stanislas Vorenglade at whatever price he chooses to name. Then we shall go back to the police-office and I shall say to Prasville, ‘Go to the Élysée at once⁠ ⁠… Use the list as though it were genuine, save Gilbert from death and be content to acknowledge tomorrow, when Gilbert is saved, that the list is forged.⁠ ⁠… Be off, quickly!⁠ ⁠… If you refuse, well, if you refuse, the Vorenglade letters and documents shall be reproduced tomorrow, Tuesday, morning in one of the leading newspapers.’ Vorenglade will be arrested. And M. Prasville will find himself in prison before night.”

Lupin rubbed his hands:

“He’ll do as he’s told!⁠ ⁠… He’ll do as he’s told!⁠ ⁠… I felt that at once, when I was with him. The thing appeared to me as a dead certainty. And I found Vorenglade’s address in Daubrecq’s pocketbooks, so⁠ ⁠… driver, Boulevard Raspail!”

They went to the address given. Lupin sprang from the cab, ran up three flights of stairs.

The servant said that M. Vorenglade was away and would not be back until dinnertime next evening.

“And don’t you know where he is?”

“M. Vorenglade is in London, sir.”

Lupin did not utter a word on returning to the cab. Clarisse, on her side, did not even ask him any questions, so indifferent had she become to everything, so absolutely did she look upon her son’s death as an accomplished fact.

They drove to the Place de Clichy. As Lupin entered the house he passed two men who were just leaving the porter’s box. He was too much engrossed to notice them. They were Prasville’s inspectors.

“No telegram?” he asked his servant.

“No, governor,” replied Achille.

“No news of the Masher and the Growler?”

“No, governor, none.”

“That’s all right,” he said to Clarisse, in a casual tone. “It’s only seven o’clock and we mustn’t reckon on seeing them before eight or nine. Prasville will have to wait, that’s all. I will telephone to him to wait.”

He did so and was hanging up the receiver, when he heard a moan behind him. Clarisse was standing by the table, reading an evening-paper. She put her hand to her heart, staggered and fell.

“Achille, Achille!” cried Lupin, calling his man. “Help me put her on my bed⁠ ⁠… And then go to the cupboard and get me the medicine-bottle marked number four, the bottle with the sleeping-draught.”

He forced open her teeth with the point of a knife and compelled her to swallow half the bottle:

“Good,” he said. “Now the poor thing won’t wake till tomorrow⁠ ⁠… after.”

He glanced through the paper, which was still clutched in Clarisse’ hand, and read the following lines:

“The strictest measures have been taken to keep order at the execution of Gilbert and Vaucheray, lest Arsène Lupin should make an attempt to rescue his accomplices from the last penalty. At twelve o’clock tonight a cordon of troops will be drawn across all the approaches to the Santé Prison. As already stated, the execution will take place outside the prison-walls, in the square formed by the Boulevard Arago and the Rue de la Santé.

“We have succeeded in obtaining some details of the attitude of the two condemned men. Vaucheray observes a stolid sullenness and is awaiting the fatal event with no little courage:

“ ‘Crikey,’ he says, ‘I can’t say I’m delighted; but I’ve got to go through it and I shall keep my end up.’ And he adds, ‘Death I don’t care a hang about! What worries me is the thought that they’re going to cut my head off. Ah, if the governor could only hit on some trick to send me straight off to the next world before I had time to say knife! A drop of Prussic acid, governor, if you please!’

“Gilbert’s calmness is even more impressive, especially when we remember how he broke down at the trial. He retains an unshaken confidence in the omnipotence of Arsène Lupin:

“ ‘The governor shouted to me before everybody not to be afraid, that he was there, that he answered for everything. Well, I’m not afraid. I shall rely on him until the last day, until the last minute, at the very foot of the scaffold. I know the governor! There’s no danger with him. He has promised and he will keep his word. If my head were off, he’d come and clap it on my shoulders and firmly! Arsène Lupin allow his chum Gilbert to die? Not he! Excuse my humour!’

“There is a certain touching frankness in all this enthusiasm which is not without a dignity of its own. We shall see if Arsène Lupin deserves the confidence so blindly placed in him.”

Lupin was hardly able to finish reading the article for the tears that dimmed his eyes: tears of affection, tears of pity, tears of distress.

No, he did not deserve the confidence of his chum Gilbert. Certainly, he had performed impossibilities; but there are circumstances in which we must perform more than impossibilities, in which we must show ourselves stronger than fate; and, this time, fate had been stronger than he. Ever since the first day and throughout this lamentable adventure, events had gone contrary to his anticipations, contrary to logic itself. Clarisse and he,