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

though pursuing an identical aim, had wasted weeks in fighting each other. Then, at the moment when they were uniting their efforts, a series of ghastly disasters had come one after the other: the kidnapping of little Jacques, Daubrecq’s disappearance, his imprisonment in the Lovers’ Tower, Lupin’s wound, his enforced inactivity, followed by the cunning manoeuvres that dragged Clarisse⁠—and Lupin after her⁠—to the south, to Italy. And then, as a crowning catastrophe, when, after prodigies of willpower, after miracles of perseverance, they were entitled to think that the Golden Fleece was won, it all came to nothing. The list of the Twenty-Seven had no more value than the most insignificant scrap of paper.

“The game’s up!” said Lupin. “It’s an absolute defeat. What if I do revenge myself on Daubrecq, ruin him and destroy him? He is the real victor, once Gilbert is going to die.”

He wept anew, not with spite or rage, but with despair. Gilbert was going to die! The lad whom he called his chum, the best of his pals would be gone forever, in a few hours. He could not save him. He was at the end of his tether. He did not even look round for a last expedient. What was the use?

And his persuasion of his own helplessness was so deep, so definite that he felt no shock of any kind on receiving a telegram from the Masher that said:

“Motor accident. Essential part broken. Long repair. Arrive tomorrow morning.”

It was a last proof to show that fate had uttered its decree. He no longer thought of rebelling against the decision.

He looked at Clarisse. She was peacefully sleeping; and this total oblivion, this absence of all consciousness, seemed to him so enviable that, suddenly yielding to a fit of cowardice, he seized the bottle, still half-filled with the sleeping-draught, and drank it down.

Then he stretched himself on a couch and rang for his man:

“Go to bed, Achille, and don’t wake me on any pretence whatever.”

“Then there’s nothing to be done for Gilbert and Vaucheray, governor?” said Achille.

“Nothing.”

“Are they going through it?”

“They are going through it.”

Twenty minutes later Lupin fell into a heavy sleep. It was ten o’clock in the evening.

The night was full of incident and noise around the prison. At one o’clock in the morning the Rue de la Santé, the Boulevard Arago and all the streets abutting on the gaol were guarded by police, who allowed no one to pass without a regular cross-examination.

For that matter, it was raining in torrents; and it seemed as though the lovers of this sort of show would not be very numerous. The public-houses were all closed by special order. At four o’clock three companies of infantry came and took up their positions along the pavements, while a battalion occupied the Boulevard Arago in case of a surprise. Municipal guards cantered up and down between the lines; a whole staff of police-magistrates, officers and functionaries, brought together for the occasion, moved about among the troops.

The guillotine was set up in silence, in the middle of the square formed by the boulevard and the street; and the sinister sound of hammering was heard.

But, at five o’clock, the crowd gathered, notwithstanding the rain, and people began to sing. They shouted for the footlights, called for the curtain to rise, were exasperated to see that, at the distance at which the barriers had been fixed, they could hardly distinguish the uprights of the guillotine.

Several carriages drove up, bringing official persons dressed in black. There were cheers and hoots, whereupon a troop of mounted municipal guards scattered the groups and cleared the space to a distance of three hundred yards from the square. Two fresh companies of soldiers lined up.

And suddenly there was a great silence. A vague white light fell from the dark sky. The rain ceased abruptly.

Inside the prison, at the end of the passage containing the condemned cells, the men in black were conversing in low voices. Prasville was talking to the public prosecutor, who expressed his fears:

“No, no,” declared Prasville, “I assure you, it will pass without an incident of any kind.”

“Do your reports mention nothing at all suspicious, monsieur le secrétaire-général?”

“Nothing. And they can’t mention anything, for the simple reason that we have Lupin.”

“Do you mean that?”

“Yes, we know his hiding-place. The house where he lives, on the Place de Clichy, and where he went at seven o’clock last night, is surrounded. Moreover, I know the scheme which he had contrived to save his two accomplices. The scheme miscarried at the last moment. We have nothing to fear, therefore. The law will take its course.”

Meanwhile, the hour had struck.

They took Vaucheray first; and the governor of the prison ordered the door of his cell to be opened. Vaucheray leapt out of bed and cast eyes dilated with terror upon the men who entered.

“Vaucheray, we have come to tell you⁠ ⁠…”

“Stow that, stow that,” he muttered. “No words. I know all about it. Get on with the business.”

One would have thought that he was in a hurry for it to be over as fast as possible, so readily did he submit to the usual preparations. But he would not allow any of them to speak to him:

“No words,” he repeated. “What? Confess to the priest? Not worth while. I have shed blood. The law sheds my blood. It’s the good old rule. We’re quits.”

Nevertheless, he stopped short for a moment:

“I say, is my mate going through it too?”

And, when he heard that Gilbert would go to the scaffold at the same time as himself, he had two or three seconds of hesitation, glanced at the bystanders, seemed about to speak, was silent and, at last, muttered:

“It’s better so.⁠ ⁠… They’ll pull us through together⁠ ⁠… we’ll clink glasses together.”

Gilbert was not asleep either, when the men entered his cell.

Sitting on his bed, he listened to the terrible words, tried to stand up, began to tremble frightfully, from head to foot, like a skeleton when