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

it lightened of its contents. There were not only a decent number of banknotes in it, but also the receipt from the warehouse where you stored the Enghien things which you took back from me. I thought I might as well save you the trouble of taking them out yourself. It ought to be done by now. No, don’t thank me: it’s not worth mentioning. Goodbye, Daubrecq. And, if you should want a louis or two, to buy yourself a new decanter-stopper, drop me a line. Goodbye, Daubrecq.”

He walked away.

He had not gone fifty steps when he heard the sound of a shot.

He turned round.

Daubrecq had blown his brains out.

“De profundis,” murmured Lupin, taking off his hat.

Two months later, Gilbert, whose sentence had been commuted to one of penal servitude for life, made his escape from the Île de Ré, on the day before that on which he was to have been transported to New Caledonia.

It was a strange escape. Its least details remained difficult to understand; and, like the two shots on the Boulevard Arago, it greatly enhanced Arsène Lupin’s prestige.

“Taken all round,” said Lupin to me, one day, after telling me the different episodes of the story, “taken all around, no enterprise has ever given me more trouble or cost me greater exertions than that confounded adventure which, if you don’t mind, we will call, The Crystal Stopper; or, Never Say Die. In twelve hours, between six o’clock in the morning and six o’clock in the evening, I made up for six months of bad luck, blunders, gropings in the dark and reverses. I certainly count those twelve hours among the finest and the most glorious of my life.”

“And Gilbert?” I asked. “What became of him?”

“He is farming his own land, way down in Algeria, under his real name, his only name of Antoine Mergy. He is married to an Englishwoman, and they have a son whom he insisted on calling Arsène. I often receive a bright, chatty, warmhearted letter from him.”

“And Mme. Mergy?”

“She and her little Jacques are living with them.”

“Did you see her again?”

“I did not.”

“Really!”

Lupin hesitated for a few moments and then said with a smile:

“My dear fellow, I will let you into a secret that will make me seem ridiculous in your eyes. But you know that I have always been as sentimental as a schoolboy and as silly as a goose. Well, on the evening when I went back to Clarisse Mergy and told her the news of the day⁠—part of which, for that matter, she already knew⁠—I felt two things very thoroughly. One was that I entertained for her a much deeper feeling than I thought; the other that she, on the contrary, entertained for me a feeling which was not without contempt, not without a rankling grudge nor even a certain aversion.”

“Nonsense! Why?”

“Why? Because Clarisse Mergy is an exceedingly honest woman and because I am⁠ ⁠… just Arsène Lupin.”

“Oh!”

“Dear me, yes, an attractive bandit, a romantic and chivalrous cracksman, anything you please. For all that, in the eyes of a really honest woman, with an upright nature and a well-balanced mind, I am only the merest riffraff.”

I saw that the wound was sharper than he was willing to admit, and I said:

“So you really loved her?”

“I even believe,” he said, in a jesting tone, “that I asked her to marry me. After all, I had saved her son, had I not?⁠ ⁠… So⁠ ⁠… I thought. What a rebuff!⁠ ⁠… It produced a coolness between us⁠ ⁠… Since then⁠ ⁠…”

“You have forgotten her?”

“Oh, certainly! But it required the consolations of one Italian, two Americans, three Russians, a German grand-duchess and a Chinawoman to do it!”

“And, after that⁠ ⁠… ?”

“After that, so as to place an insuperable barrier between myself and her, I got married.”

“Nonsense! You got married, you, Arsène Lupin?”

“Married, wedded, spliced, in the most lawful fashion. One of the greatest names in France. An only daughter. A colossal fortune⁠ ⁠… What! You don’t know the story? Well, it’s worth hearing.”

And, straightway, Lupin, who was in a confidential vein, began to tell me the story of his marriage to Angelique de Sarzeau-Vendôme, Princesse de Bourbon-Condé, today Sister Marie-Auguste, a humble nun in the Visitation Convent⁠ ⁠…7

But, after the first few words, he stopped, as though his narrative had suddenly ceased to interest him, and he remained pensive.

“What’s the matter, Lupin?”

“The matter? Nothing.”

“Yes, yes⁠ ⁠… There⁠ ⁠… now you’re smiling⁠ ⁠… Is it Daubrecq’s secret receptacle, his glass eye, that’s making you laugh?”

“Not at all.”

“What then?”

“Nothing, I tell you⁠ ⁠… only a memory.”

“A pleasant memory?”

“Yes!⁠ ⁠… Yes, a delightful memory even. It was at night, off the Île de Ré, on the fishing-smack in which Clarisse and I were taking Gilbert away.⁠ ⁠… We were alone, the two of us, in the stern of the boat⁠ ⁠… And I remember⁠ ⁠… I talked⁠ ⁠… I spoke words and more words⁠ ⁠… I said all that I had on my heart⁠ ⁠… And then⁠ ⁠… then came silence, a perturbing and disarming silence.”

“Well?”

“Well, I swear to you that the woman whom I took in my arms that night and kissed on the lips⁠—oh, not for long: a few seconds only, but no matter!⁠—I swear before heaven that she was something more than a grateful mother, something more than a friend yielding to a moment of susceptibility, that she was a woman also, a woman quivering with emotion⁠ ⁠…” And he continued, with a bitter laugh, “Who ran away next day, never to see me again.”

He was silent once more. Then he whispered:

“Clarisse⁠ ⁠… Clarisse⁠ ⁠… On the day when I am tired and disappointed and weary of life, I will come to you down there, in your little Arab house⁠ ⁠… in that little white house, Clarisse, where you are waiting for me⁠ ⁠…”

Endnotes

See 813, by Maurice Leblanc, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos. ↩

See The Hollow Needle by Maurice Leblanc, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, and later volumes of the Lupin series.