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The Hollow Needle; Further adventures of Arsène Lupin

by Maurice Leblanc · English · Gutenberg #4017 · 391,887 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Hollow Needle; Further adventures of Arsène Lupin

Author: Maurice Leblanc

Translator: Alexander Teixeira de Mattos


        
Release date: May 1, 2003 [eBook #4017]
                Most recently updated: July 18, 2022

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4017

Credits: Charles Franks, Greg Weeks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOLLOW NEEDLE; FURTHER ADVENTURES OF ARSÈNE LUPIN ***




The Hollow Needle

FURTHER ADVENTURES OF ARSÈNE LUPIN

by Maurice Leblanc

AUTHOR OF
“ARSÈNE LUPIN,” “THE BLONDE LADY,” ETC.

TRANSLATED BY ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS


Contents

 Chapter I. The Shot
 Chapter II. Isidore Beautrelet, Sixth-form Schoolboy
 Chapter III. The Corpse
 Chapter IV. Face to Face
 Chapter V. On the Track
 Chapter VI. An Historic Secret
 Chapter VII. The Treatise of the Needle
 Chapter VIII. From Cæsar to Lupin
 Chapter IX. Open, Sesame!
 Chapter X. The Treasures of the Kings of France


ILLUSTRATIONS


Valméras loved Raymonde’s melancholy charm

She put the gun to her shoulder, calmly took aim and fired

Two huge letters, each perhaps a foot long, appeared cut in relief in
the granite of the floor

“We’re going now. What do you think of my cockle-shell, Beautrelet?”


THE HOLLOW NEEDLE




CHAPTER ONE
THE SHOT


Raymonde listened. The noise was repeated twice over, clearly enough to
be distinguished from the medley of vague sounds that formed the great
silence of the night and yet too faintly to enable her to tell whether
it was near or far, within the walls of the big country-house, or
outside, among the murky recesses of the park.

She rose softly. Her window was half open: she flung it back wide. The
moonlight lay over a peaceful landscape of lawns and thickets, against
which the straggling ruins of the old abbey stood out in tragic
outlines, truncated columns, mutilated arches, fragments of porches and
shreds of flying buttresses. A light breeze hovered over the face of
things, gliding noiselessly through the bare motionless branches of the
trees, but shaking the tiny budding leaves of the shrubs.

And, suddenly, she heard the same sound again. It was on the left and
on the floor below her, in the living rooms, therefore, that occupied
the left wing of the house. Brave and plucky though she was, the girl
felt afraid. She slipped on her dressing gown and took the matches.

“Raymonde—Raymonde!”

A voice as low as a breath was calling to her from the next room, the
door of which had not been closed. She was feeling her way there, when
Suzanne, her cousin, came out of the room and fell into her arms:

“Raymonde—is that you? Did you hear—?”

“Yes. So you’re not asleep?”

“I suppose the dog woke me—some time ago. But he’s not barking now.
What time is it?”

“About four.”

“Listen! Surely, some one’s walking in the drawing room!”

“There’s no danger, your father is down there, Suzanne.”

“But there is danger for him. His room is next to the boudoir.”

“M. Daval is there too—”

“At the other end of the house. He could never hear.”

They hesitated, not knowing what course to decide upon. Should they
call out? Cry for help? They dared not; they were frightened of the
sound of their own voices. But Suzanne, who had gone to the window,
suppressed a scream:

“Look!—A man!—Near the fountain!”

A man was walking away at a rapid pace. He carried under his arm a
fairly large load, the nature of which they were unable to distinguish:
it knocked against his leg and impeded his progress. They saw him pass
near the old chapel and turn toward a little door in the wall. The door
must have been open, for the man disappeared suddenly from view and
they failed to hear the usual grating of the hinges.

“He came from the drawing room,” whispered Suzanne.

“No, the stairs and the hall would have brought him out more to the
left—Unless—”

The same idea struck them both. They leant out. Below them, a ladder
stood against the front of the house, resting on the first floor. A
glimmer lit up the stone balcony. And another man, who was also
carrying something, bestrode the baluster, slid down the ladder and ran
away by the same road as the first.

Suzanne, scared to the verge of swooning, fell on her knees,
stammering:

“Let us call out—let us call for help—”

“Who would come? Your father—and if there are more of them left—and
they throw themselves upon him—?”

“Then—then—we might call the servants—Your bell rings on their floor.”

“Yes—yes—perhaps, that’s better. If only they come in time!”

Raymonde felt for the electric push near her bed and pressed it with
her finger. They heard the bell ring upstairs and had an impression
that its shrill sound must also reach any one below.

They waited. The silence became terrifying and the very breeze no
longer shook the leaves of the shrubs.

“I’m frightened—frightened,” said Suzanne.

And, suddenly, from the profound darkness below them, came the sound of
a struggle, a crash of furniture overturned, words, exclamations and
then, horrible and ominous, a hoarse groan, the gurgle of a man who is
being murdered—

Raymonde leapt toward the door. Suzanne clung desperately to her arm:

“No—no—don’t leave me—I’m frightened—”

Raymonde pushed her aside and darted down the corridor, followed by
Suzanne, who staggered from wall to wall, screaming as she went.
Raymonde reached the staircase, flew down the stairs, flung herself
upon the door of the big drawing room and stopped short, rooted to the
threshold, while Suzanne sank in a heap by her side. Facing them, at
three steps’ distance, stood a man, with a lantern in his hand. He
turned it upon the two girls, blinding them with the light, stared long
at their pale faces, and then, without hurrying, with the calmest
movements in the world, took his cap, picked up a scrap of paper and
two bits of straw, removed some footmarks from the carpet, went to the
balcony, turned to the girls, made them a deep bow and disappeared.

Suzanne was the first to run to the little boudoir which separated the
big drawing-room from her father’s bedroom. But, at the entrance, a
hideous sight appalled her. By the slanting rays of the moon, she saw
two apparently lifeless bodies lying close to each other on the floor.
She leaned over one of them:

“Father!—Father!—Is it you? What has happened to you?” she cried,
distractedly.

After a moment, the Comte de Gesvres moved. In a broken voice, he said:

“Don’t be afraid—I am not wounded—Daval?—Is he alive?—The knife?—The
knife?—”

Two men-servants now arrived with candles. Raymonde flung herself down
before the other body and recognized Jean Daval, the count’s private
secretary. A little stream of blood trickled from his neck. His face
already wore the pallor of death.

Then she rose, returned to the drawing room, took a gun that hung in a
trophy of arms on the wall and went out on the balcony. Not more than
fifty or sixty seconds had elapsed since the man had set his foot on
the top rung of the ladder. He could not, therefore, be very far away,
the more so as he had taken the precaution to remove the ladder, in
order to prevent the inmates of the house from using it. And soon she
saw him skirting the remains of the old cloister. She put the gun to
her shoulder, calmly took aim and fired. The man fell.

“That’s done it! That’s done it!” said one of the servants. “We’ve got
this one. I’ll run down.”

“No, Victor, he’s getting up.... You had better go down by the
staircase and make straight for the little door in the wall. That’s the
only way he can escape.”

Victor hurried off, but, before he reached the park, the man fell down
again. Raymonde called the other servant:

“Albert, do you see him down there? Near the main cloister?—”

“Yes, he’s crawling in the grass. He’s done for—”

“Watch him from here.”

“There’s no way of escape for him. On the right of the ruins is the
open lawn—”

“And, Victor, do you guard the door, on the left,” she said, taking up
her gun.

“But, surely, you are not going down, miss?”

“Yes, yes,” she said, with a resolute accent and abrupt movements; “let
me be—I have a cartridge left—If he stirs—”

She went out. A moment later, Albert saw her going toward the ruins. He
called to her from the window:

“He’s dragged himself behind the cloister. I can’t see him. Be careful,
miss—”

Raymonde went round the old cloisters, to cut off the man’s retreat,
and Albert soon lost sight of her. After a few minutes, as he did not
see her return, he became uneasy and, keeping his eye on the ruins,
instead of going down by the stairs he made an effort to reach the
ladder. When he had succeeded, he scrambled down and ran straight to
the cloisters near which he had seen the man last. Thirty paces
farther, he found Raymonde, who was searching with Victor.

“Well?” he asked.

“There’s no laying one’s hands on him,” replied Victor.

“The little door?”

“I’ve been there; here’s the key.”

“Still—he must—”

“Oh, we’ve got him safe enough, the scoundrel—He’ll be ours in ten
minutes.”

The farmer and his son, awakened by the shot, now came from the farm
buildings, which were at some distance on the right, but within the
circuit of the walls. They had met no one.

“Of course not,” said Albert. “The ruffian can’t have left the
ruins—We’ll dig him out of some hole or other.”

They organized a methodical search, beating every bush, pulling aside
the heavy masses of ivy rolled round the shafts of the columns. They
made sure that the chapel was properly locked and that none of the
panes were broken. They went round the cloisters and examined every
nook and corner. The search was fruitless.

There was but one discovery: at the place where the man had fallen
under Raymonde’s gun, they picked up a chauffeur’s cap, in very soft
buff leather; besides that, nothing.

The gendarmerie of Ouville-la-Rivière were informed at six o’clock in
the morning and at once proceeded to the spot, after sending an express
to the authorities at Dieppe with a note describing the circumstances
of the crime, the imminent capture of the chief criminal and “the
discovery of his headgear and of the dagger with which the crime had
been committed.”

At ten o’clock, two hired conveyances came down the gentle slope that
led to the house. One of them, an old-fashioned calash, contained the
deputy public prosecutor and the examining magistrate, accompanied by
his clerk. In the other, a humble fly, were seated two reporters,
representing the _Journal de Rouen_ and a great Paris paper.

The old château came into view—once the abbey residence of the priors
of Ambrumésy, mutilated under the Revolution, both restored by the
Comte de Gesvres, who had now owned it for some twenty years. It
consists of a main building, surmounted by a pinnacled clock-tower, and
two wings, each of which is surrounded by a flight of steps with a
stone balustrade. Looking across the walls of the park and beyond the
upland supported by the high Norman cliffs, you catch a glimpse of the
blue line of the Channel between the villages of Sainte-Marguerite and
Varengeville.

Here the Comte de Gesvres lived with his daughter Suzanne, a delicate,
fair-haired, pretty creature, and his niece Raymonde de Saint-Véran,
whom he had taken to live with him two years before, when the
simultaneous death of her father and mother left Raymonde an orphan.
Life at the château was peaceful and regular. A few neighbors paid an
occasional visit. In the summer, the count took the two girls almost
every day to Dieppe. He was a tall man, with a handsome, serious face
and hair that was turning gray. He was very rich, managed his fortune
himself and looked after his extensive estates with the assistance of
his secretary, Jean Daval.

Immediately upon his arrival, the examining magistrate took down the
first observations of Sergeant Quevillon of the gendarmes. The capture
of the criminal, imminent though it might be, had not yet been
effected, but every outlet of the park was held. Escape was impossible.

The little company next crossed the chapter-hall and the refectory,
both of which are on the ground floor, and went up to the first story.
They at once remarked the perfect order that prevailed in the drawing
room. Not a piece of furniture, not an ornament but appeared to occupy
its usual place; nor was there any gap among the ornaments or
furniture. On the right and left walls hung magnificent Flemish
tapestries with figures. On the panels of the wall facing the windows
were four fine canvases, in contemporary frames, representing
mythological scenes. These were the famous pictures by Rubens which had
been left to the Comte de Gesvres, together with the Flemish
tapestries, by his maternal uncle, the Marqués de Bobadilla, a Spanish
grandee.

M. Filleul remarked:

“If the motive of the crime was theft, this drawing room, at any rate,
was not the object of it.”

“You can’t tell!” said the deputy, who spoke little, but who, when he
did, invariably opposed the magistrate’s views.

“Why, my dear sir, the first thought of a burglar would be to carry off
those pictures and tapestries, which are universally renowned.”

“Perhaps there was no time.”

“We shall see.”

At that moment, the Comte de Gesvres entered, accompanied by the
doctor. The count, who did not seem to feel the effects of the attack
to which he had been subjected, welcomed the two officials. Then he
opened the door of the boudoir.

This room, which no one had been allowed to enter since the discovery
of the crime, differed from the drawing room inasmuch as it presented a
scene of the greatest disorder. Two chairs were overturned, one of the
tables smashed to pieces and several objects—a traveling-clock, a
portfolio, a box of stationery—lay on the floor. And there was blood on
some of the scattered pieces of note-paper.

The doctor turned back the sheet that covered the corpse. Jean Daval,
dressed in his usual velvet suit, with a pair of nailed boots on his
feet, lay stretched on his back, with one arm folded beneath him. His
collar and tie had been removed and his shirt opened, revealing a large
wound in the chest.

“Death must have been instantaneous,” declared the doctor. “One blow of
the knife was enough.”

“It was, no doubt, the knife which I saw on the drawing-room
mantelpiece, next to a leather cap?” said the examining magistrate.

“Yes,” said the Comte de Gesvres, “the knife was picked up here. It
comes from the same trophy in the drawing room from which my niece,
Mlle. de Saint-Véran, snatched the gun. As for the chauffeur’s cap,
that evidently belongs to the murderer.”

M. Filleul examined certain further details in the room, put a few
questions to the doctor and then asked M. de Gesvres to tell him what
he had seen and heard. The count worded his story as follows:

“Jean Daval woke me up. I had been sleeping badly, for that matter,
with gleams of consciousness in which I seemed to hear noises, when,
suddenly opening my eyes, I saw Daval standing at the foot of my bed,
with his candle in his hand and fully dressed—as he is now, for he
often worked late into the night. He seemed greatly excited and said,
in a low voice: ‘There’s some one in the drawing room.’ I heard a noise
myself. I got up and softly pushed the door leading to this boudoir. At
the same moment, the door over there, which opens into the big drawing
room, was thrown back and a man appeared who leaped at me and stunned
me with a blow on the temple. I am telling you this without any
details, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, for the simple reason that I
remember only the principal facts, and that these facts followed upon
one another with extraordinary swiftness.”

“And after that?—”

“After that, I don’t know—I fainted. When I came to, Daval lay
stretched by my side, mortally wounded.”

“At first sight, do you suspect no one?”

“No one.”

“You have no enemy?”

“I know of none.”

“Nor M. Daval either?”

“Daval! An enemy? He was the best creature that ever lived. M. Daval
was my secretary for twenty years and, I may say, my confidant; and I
have never seen him surrounded with anything but love and friendship.”

“Still, there has been a burglary and there has been a murder: there
must be a motive for all that.”

“The motive? Why, it was robbery pure and simple.”

“Robbery? Have you been robbed of something, then?”

“No, nothing.”

“In that case—?”

“In that case, if they have stolen nothing and if nothing is missing,
they at least took something away.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. But my daughter and my niece will tell you, with
absolute certainty, that they saw two men in succession cross the park
and that those two men were carrying fairly heavy loads.”

“The young ladies—”

“The young ladies may have been dreaming, you think? I should be
tempted to believe it, for I have been exhausting myself in inquiries
and suppositions ever since this morning. However, it is easy enough to
question them.”

The two cousins were sent for to the big drawing room. Suzanne, still
quite pale and trembling, could hardly speak. Raymonde, who was more
energetic, more of a man, better looking, too, with the golden glint in
her brown eyes, described the events of the night and the part which
she had played in them.

“So I may take it, mademoiselle, that your evidence is positive?”

“Absolutely. The men who went across the park were carrying things away
with them.”

“And the third man?”

“He went from here empty-handed.”

“Could you describe him to us?”

“He kept on dazzling us with the light of his lantern. All that I could
say is that he is tall and heavily built.”

“Is that how he appeared to you, mademoiselle?” asked the magistrate,
turning to Suzanne de Gesvres.

“Yes—or, rather, no,” said Suzanne, reflecting. “I thought he was about
the middle height and slender.”

M. Filleul smiled; he was accustomed to differences of opinion and
sight in witnesses to one and the same fact:

“So we have to do, on the one hand, with a man, the one in the drawing
room, who is, at the same time, tall and short, stout and thin, and, on
the other, with two men, those in the park, who are accused of removing
from that drawing room objects—which are still here!”

M. Filleul was a magistrate of the ironic school, as he himself would
say. He was also a very ambitious magistrate and one who did not object
to an audience nor to an occasion to display his tactful resource in
public, as was shown by the increasing number of persons who now
crowded into the room. The journalists had been joined by the farmer
and his son, the gardener and his wife, the indoor servants of the
château and the two cabmen who had driven the flies from Dieppe.

M. Filleul continued:

“There is also the question of agreeing upon the way in which the third
person disappeared. Was this the gun you fired, mademoiselle, and from
this window?”

“Yes. The man reached the tombstone which is almost buried under the
brambles, to the left of the cloisters.”

“But he got up again?”

“Only half. Victor ran down at once to guard the little door and I
followed him, leaving the second footman, Albert, to keep watch here.”

Albert now gave his evidence and the magistrate concluded:

“So, according to you, the wounded man was not able to escape on the
left, because your fellow-servant was watching the door, nor on the
right, because you would have seen him cross the lawn. Logically,
therefore, he is, at the present moment, in the comparatively
restricted space that lies before our eyes.”

“I am sure of it.”

“And you, mademoiselle?”

“Yes.”

“And I, too,” said Victor.

The deputy prosecutor exclaimed, with a leer:

“The field of inquiry is quite narrow. We have only to continue the
search commenced four hours ago.”

“We may be more fortunate.”

M. Filleul took the leather cap from the mantel, examined it and,
beckoning to the sergeant of gendarmes, whispered:

“Sergeant, send one of your men to Dieppe at once. Tell him to go to
Maigret, the hatter, in the Rue de la Barre, and ask M. Maigret to tell
him, if possible, to whom this cap was sold.”

The “field of inquiry,” in the deputy’s phrase, was limited to the
space contained between the house, the lawn on the right and the angle
formed by the left wall and the wall opposite the house, that is to
say, a quadrilateral of about a hundred yards each way, in which the
ruins of Ambrumésy, the famous mediæval monastery, stood out at
intervals.

They at once noticed the traces left by the fugitive in the trampled
grass. In two places, marks of blackened blood, now almost dried up,
were observed. After the turn at the end of the cloisters, there was
nothing more to be seen, as the nature of the ground, here covered with
pine-needles, did not lend itself to the imprint of a body. But, in
that case, how had the wounded man succeeded in escaping the eyes of
Raymonde, Victor and Albert? There was nothing but a few brakes, which
the servants and the gendarmes had beaten over and over again, and a
number of tombstones, under which they had explored. The examining
magistrate made the gardener, who had the key, open the chapel, a real
gem of carving, a shrine in stone which had been respected by time and
the revolutionaries, and which, with the delicate sculpture work of its
porch and its miniature population of statuettes, was always looked
upon as a marvelous specimen of the Norman-Gothic style. The chapel,
which was very simple in the interior, with no other ornament than its
marble altar, offered no hiding-place. Besides, the fugitive would have
had to obtain admission. And by what means?

The inspection brought them to the little door in the wall that served
as an entrance for the visitors to the ruins. It opened on a sunk road
running between the park wall and a copsewood containing some abandoned
quarries. M. Filleul stooped forward: the dust of the road bore marks
of anti-skid pneumatic tires. Raymonde and Victor remembered that,
after the shot, they had seemed to hear the throb of a motor-car.

The magistrate suggested:

“The man must have joined his confederates.”

“Impossible!” cried Victor. “I was here while mademoiselle and Albert
still had him in view.”

“Nonsense, he must be somewhere! Outside or inside: we have no choice!”

“He is here,” the servants insisted, obstinately.

The magistrate shrugged his shoulders and went back to the house in a
more or less sullen mood. There was no doubt that it was an unpromising
case. A theft in which nothing had been stolen; an invisible prisoner:
what could be less satisfactory?

It was late. M. de Gesvres asked the officials and the two journalists
to stay to lunch. They ate in silence and then M. Filleul returned to
the drawing room, where he questioned the servants. But the sound of a
horse’s hoofs came from the courtyard and, a moment after, the gendarme
who had been sent to Dieppe entered.

“Well, did you see the hatter?” exclaimed the magistrate, eager at last
to obtain some positive information.

“I saw M. Maigret. The cap was sold to a cab-driver.”

“A cab-driver!”

“Yes, a driver who stopped his fly before the shop and asked to be
supplied with a yellow-leather chauffeur’s cap for one of his
customers. This was the only one left. He paid for it, without
troubling about the size, and drove off. He was in a great hurry.”

“What sort of fly was it?”

“A calash.”

“And on what day did this happen?”

“On what day? Why, to-day, at eight o’clock this morning.”

“This morning? What are you talking about?”

“The cap was bought this morning.”

“But that’s impossible, because it was found last night in the park. If
it was found there, it must have been there; and, consequently, it must
have been bought before.”

“The hatter told me it was bought this morning.”

There was a moment of general bewilderment. The nonplussed magistrate
strove to understand. Suddenly, he started, as though struck with a
gleam of light:

“Fetch the cabman who brought us here this morning! The man who drove
the calash! Fetch him at once!”

The sergeant of gendarmes and his subordinate ran off to the stables.
In a few minutes, the sergeant returned alone.

“Where’s the cabman?”

“He asked for food in the kitchen, ate his lunch and then—”

“And then—?”

“He went off.”

“With his fly?”

“No. Pretending that he wanted to go and see a relation at Ouville, he
borrowed the groom’s bicycle. Here are his hat and greatcoat.”

“But did he leave bare-headed?”

“No, he took a cap from his pocket and put it on.”

“A cap?”

“Yes, a yellow leather cap, it seems.”

“A yellow leather cap? Why, no, we’ve got it here!”

“That’s true, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, but his is just like it.”

The deputy sniggered:

“Very funny! Most amusing! There are two caps—One, the real one, which
constituted our only piece of evidence, has gone off on the head of the
sham flyman! The other, the false one, is in your hands. Oh, the fellow
has had us nicely!”

“Catch him! Fetch him back!” cried M. Filleul. “Two of your men on
horseback, Sergeant Quevillon, and at full speed!”

“He is far away by this time,” said the deputy.

“He can be as far as he pleases, but still we must lay hold of him.”

“I hope so; but I think, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, that your
efforts should be concentrated here above all. Would you mind reading
this scrap of paper, which I have just found in the pocket of the
coat?”

“Which coat?”

“The driver’s.”

And the deputy prosecutor handed M. Filleul a piece of paper, folded in
four, containing these few words written in pencil, in a more or less
common hand:

“Woe betide the young lady, if she has killed the governor!”

The incident caused a certain stir.

“A word to the wise!” muttered the deputy. “We are now forewarned.”

“Monsieur le Comte,” said the examining magistrate, “I beg you not to
be alarmed. Nor you either, mademoiselle. This threat is of no
importance, as the police are on the spot. We shall take every
precaution and I will answer for your safety. As for you, gentlemen. I
rely on your discretion. You have been present at this inquiry, thanks
to my excessive kindness toward the Press, and it would be making me an
ill return—”

He interrupted himself, as though an idea had struck him, looked at the
two young men, one after the other, and, going up to the first, asked:

“What paper do you represent, sir?”

“The _Journal de Rouen_.”

“Have you your credentials?”

“Here.”

The card was in order. There was no more to be said. M. Filleul turned
to the other reporter:

“And you, sir?”

“I?”

“Yes, you: what paper do you belong to?”

“Why, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, I write for a number of
papers—all over the place—”

“Your credentials?”

“I haven’t any.”

“Oh! How is that?”

“For a newspaper to give you a card, you have to be on its regular
staff.”

“Well?”

“Well, I am only an occasional contributor, a free-lance. I send
articles to this newspaper and that. They are published or declined
according to circumstances.”

“In that case, what is your name? Where are your papers?”

“My name would tell you nothing. As for papers, I have none.”

“You have no paper of any kind to prove your profession!”

“I have no profession.”

“But look here, sir,” cried the magistrate, with a certain asperity,
“you can’t expect to preserve your incognito after introducing yourself
here by a trick and surprising the secrets of the police!”

“I beg to remark, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, that you asked me
nothing when I came in, and that therefore I had nothing to say.
Besides, it never struck me that your inquiry was secret, when
everybody was admitted—including even one of the criminals!”

He spoke softly, in a tone of infinite politeness. He was quite a young
man, very tall, very slender and dressed without the least attempt at
fashion, in a jacket and trousers both too small for him. He had a pink
face like a girl’s, a broad forehead topped with close-cropped hair,
and a scrubby and ill-trimmed fair beard. His bright eyes gleamed with
intelligence. He seemed not in the least embarrassed and wore a
pleasant smile, free from any shade of banter.

M. Filleul looked at him with an aggressive air of distrust. The two
gendarmes came forward. The young man exclaimed, gaily:

“Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, you clearly suspect me of being an
accomplice. But, if that were so, would I not have slipped away at the
right moment, following the example of my fellow-criminal?”

“You might have hoped—”

“Any hope would have been absurd. A moment’s reflection, Monsieur le
Juge d’Instruction, will make you agree with me that, logically
speaking—”

M. Filleul looked him straight in the eyes and said, sharply:

“No more jokes! Your name?”

“Isidore Beautrelet.”

“Your occupation?”

“Sixth-form pupil at the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly.”

M. Filleul opened a pair of startled eyes.

“What are you talking about? Sixth-form pupil—”

“At the Lycée Janson, Rue de la Pompe, number—”

“Oh, look here,” exclaimed M. Filleul, “you’re trying to take me in!
This won’t do, you know; a joke can go too far!”

“I must say, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, that your astonishment
surprises me. What is there to prevent my being a sixth-form pupil at
the Lycée Janson? My beard, perhaps? Set your mind at ease: my beard is
false!”

Isidore Beautrelet pulled off the few curls that adorned his chin, and
his beardless face appeared still younger and pinker, a genuine
schoolboy’s face. And, with a laugh like a child’s, revealing his white
teeth:

“Are you convinced now?” he asked. “Do you want more proofs? Here, you
can read the address on these letters from my father: ‘_To Monsieur
Isidore Beautrelet, Indoor Pupil, Lycée Janson-de-Sailly_.’”

Convinced or not, M. Filleul did not look as if he liked the story. He
asked, gruffly:

“What are you doing here?”

“Why—I’m—I’m improving my mind.”

“There are schools for that: yours, for instance.”

“You forget, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, that this is the
twenty-third of April and that we are in the middle of the Easter
holidays.”

“Well?”

“Well, I have every right to spend my holidays as I please.”

“Your father—”

“My father lives at the other end of the country, in Savoy, and he
himself advised me to take a little trip on the North Coast.”

“With a false beard?”

“Oh, no! That’s my own idea. At school, we talk a great deal about
mysterious adventures; we read detective stories, in which people
disguise themselves; we imagine any amount of terrible and intricate
cases. So I thought I would amuse myself; and I put on this false
beard. Besides, I enjoyed the advantage of being taken seriously and I
pretended to be a Paris reporter. That is how, last night, after an
uneventful period of more than a week, I had the pleasure of making the
acquaintance of my Rouen colleague; and, this morning, when he heard of
the Ambrumésy murder, he very kindly suggested that I should come with
him and that we should share the cost of a fly.”

Isidore Beautrelet said all this with a frank and artless simplicity of
which it was impossible not to feel the charm. M. Filleul himself,
though maintaining a distrustful reserve, took a certain pleasure in
listening to him. He asked him, in a less peevish tone:

“And are you satisfied with your expedition?”

“Delighted! All the more as I had never been present at a case of the
sort and I find that this one is not lacking in interest.”

“Nor in that mysterious intricacy which you prize so highly—”

“And which is so stimulating, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction! I know
nothing more exciting than to see all the facts coming up out of the
shadow, clustering together, so to speak, and gradually forming the
probable truth.”

“The probable truth! You go pretty fast, young man! Do you suggest that
you have your little solution of the riddle ready?”

“Oh, no!” replied Beautrelet, with a laugh.

“Only—it seems to me that there are certain points on which it is not
impossible to form an opinion; and others, even, are so precise as to
warrant—a conclusion.”

“Oh, but this is becoming very curious and I shall get to know
something at last! For I confess, to my great confusion, that I know
nothing.”

“That is because you have not had time to reflect, Monsieur le Juge
d’Instruction. The great thing is to reflect. Facts very seldom fail to
carry their own explanation!”

“And, according to you, the facts which we have just ascertained carry
their own explanation?”

“Don’t you think so yourself? In any case, I have ascertained none
besides those which are set down in the official report.”

“Good! So that, if I were to ask you which were the objects stolen from
this room—”

“I should answer that I know.”

“Bravo! My gentleman knows more about it than the owner himself. M. de
Gesvres has everything accounted for: M. Isidore Beautrelet has not. He
misses a bookcase in three sections and a life-size statue which nobody
ever noticed. And, if I asked you the name of the murderer?”

“I should again answer that I know it.”

All present gave a start. The deputy and the journalist drew nearer. M.
de Gesvres and the two girls, impressed by Beautrelet’s tranquil
assurance, listened attentively.

“You know the murderer’s name?”

“Yes.”

“And the place where he is concealed, perhaps?”

“Yes.”

M. Filleul rubbed his hands.

“What a piece of luck! This capture will do honor to my career. And can
you make me these startling revelations now?”

“Yes, now—or rather, if you do not mind, in an hour or two, when I
shall have assisted at your inquiry to the end.”

“No, no, young man, here and now, please.” At that moment Raymonde de
Saint-Véran, who had not taken her eyes from Isidore Beautrelet since
the beginning of this scene, came up to M. Filleul:

“Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction—”

“Yes, mademoiselle?”

She hesitated for two or three seconds, with her eyes fixed on
Beautrelet, and then, addressing M. Filleul:

“I should like you to ask monsieur the reason why he was walking
yesterday in the sunk road which leads up to the little door.”

It was an unexpected and dramatic stroke. Isidore Beautrelet appeared
nonplussed:

“I, mademoiselle? I? You saw me yesterday?”

Raymonde remained thoughtful, with her eyes upon Beautrelet, as though
she were trying to settle her own conviction, and then said, in a
steady voice:

“At four o’clock in the afternoon, as I was crossing the wood, I met in
the sunk road a young man of monsieur’s height, dressed like him and
wearing a beard cut in the same way—and I received a very clear
impression that he was trying to hide.”

“And it was I?”

“I could not say that as an absolute certainty, for my recollection is
a little vague. Still—still, I think so—if not, it would be an unusual
resemblance—”

M. Filleul was perplexed. Already taken in by one of the confederates,
was he now going to let himself be tricked by this self-styled
schoolboy? Certainly, the young man’s manner spoke in his favor; but
one can never tell!

“What have you to say, sir?”

“That mademoiselle is mistaken, as I can easily show you with one word.
Yesterday, at the time stated, I was at Veules.”

“You will have to prove it, you will have to. In any case, the position
is not what it was. Sergeant, one of your men will keep monsieur
company.”

Isidore Beautrelet’s face denoted a keen vexation.

“Will it be for long?”

“Long enough to collect the necessary information.”

“Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, I beseech you to collect it with all
possible speed and discretion.”

“Why?”

“My father is an old man. We are very much attached to each other—and I
would not have him suffer on my account.”

The more or less pathetic note in his voice made a bad impression on M.
Filleul. It suggested a scene in a melodrama. Nevertheless, he
promised:

“This evening—or to-morrow at latest, I shall know what to think.”

The afternoon was wearing on. The examining magistrate returned to the
ruins of the cloisters, after giving orders that no unauthorized
persons were to be admitted, and patiently, methodically, dividing the
ground into lots which were successively explored, himself directed the
search. But at the end of the day he was no farther than at the start;
and he declared, before an army of reporters who, during that time, had
invaded the château:

“Gentlemen, everything leads us to suppose that the wounded man is
here, within our reach; everything, that is, except the reality, the
fact. Therefore, in our humble opinion, he must have escaped and we
shall find him outside.”

By way of precaution, however, he arranged, with the sergeant of
gendarmes, for a complete watch to be kept over the park and, after
making a fresh examination of the two drawing rooms, visiting the whole
of the château and surrounding himself with all the necessary
information, he took the road back to Dieppe, accompanied by the deputy
prosecutor.

Night fell. As the boudoir was to remain locked, Jean Daval’s body had
been moved to another room. Two women from the neighborhood sat up with
it, assisted by Suzanne and Raymonde. Downstairs, young Isidore
Beautrelet slept on the bench in the old oratory, under the watchful
eye of the village policeman, who had been attached to his person.
Outside, the gendarmes, the farmer and a dozen peasants had taken up
their position among the ruins and along the walls.

All was still until eleven o’clock; but, at ten minutes past eleven, a
shot echoed from the other side of the house.

“Attention!” roared the sergeant. “Two men remain here: you,
Fossier—and you, Lecanu—The others at the double!”

They all rushed forward and ran round the house on the left. A figure
was seen to make away in the dark. Then, suddenly, a second shot drew
them farther on, almost to the borders of the farm. And, all at once,
as they arrived, in a band, at the hedge which lines the orchard, a
flame burst out, to the right of the farmhouse, and other flames also
rose in a thick column. It was a barn burning, stuffed to the ridge
with straw.

“The scoundrels!” shouted the sergeant. “They’ve set fire to it. Have
at them, lads! They can’t be far away!”

But the wind was turning the flames toward the main building; and it
became necessary, before all things, to ward off the danger. They all
exerted themselves with the greater ardor inasmuch as M. de Gesvres,
hurrying to the scene of the disaster, encouraged them with the promise
of a reward. By the time that they had mastered the flames, it was two
o’clock in the morning. All pursuit would have been vain.

“We’ll look into it by daylight,” said the sergeant. “They are sure to
have left traces: we shall find them.”

“And I shall not be sorry,” added M. de Gesvres, “to learn the reason
of this attack. To set fire to trusses of straw strikes me as a very
useless proceeding.”

“Come with me, Monsieur le Comte: I may be able to tell you the
reason.”

Together they reached the ruins of the cloisters. The sergeant called
out:

“Lecanu!—Fossier!”

The other gendarmes were already hunting for their comrades whom they
had left standing sentry. They ended by finding them at a few paces
from the little door. The two men were lying full length on the ground,
bound and gagged, with bandages over their eyes.

“Monsieur le Comte,” muttered the sergeant, while his men were being
released; “Monsieur le Comte, we have been tricked like children.”

“How so?”

“The shots—the attack on the barn—the fire—all so much humbug to get us
down there—a diversion. During that time they were tying up our two men
and the business was done.”

“What business?”

“Carrying off the wounded man, of course!”

“You don’t mean to say you think—?”

“Think? Why, it’s as plain as a pikestaff! The idea came to me ten
minutes ago—but I’m a fool not to have thought of it earlier. We should
have nabbed them all.” Quevillon stamped his foot on the ground, with a
sudden attack of rage. “But where, confound it, where did they go
through? Which way did they carry him off? For, dash it all, we beat
the ground all day; and a man can’t hide in a tuft of grass, especially
when he’s wounded! It’s witchcraft, that’s what it is!—”

Nor was this the last surprise awaiting Sergeant Quevillon. At dawn,
when they entered the oratory which had been used as a cell for young
Isidore Beautrelet, they realized that young Isidore Beautrelet had
vanished.

On a chair slept the village policeman, bent in two. By his side stood
a water-bottle and two tumblers. At the bottom of one of those tumblers
a few grains of white powder.

On examination, it was proved, first, that young Isidore Beautrelet had
administered a sleeping draught to the village policeman; secondly,
that he could only have escaped by a window situated at a height of
seven or eight feet in the wall; and lastly—a charming detail,
this—that he could only have reached this window by using the back of
his warder as a footstool.




CHAPTER TWO
ISIDORE BEAUTRELET, SIXTH-FORM SCHOOLBOY


From the _Grand Journal_.

LATEST NEWS


DOCTOR DELATTRE KIDNAPPED
A MAD PIECE OF CRIMINAL DARING


At the moment of going to press, we have received an item of news which
we dare not guarantee as authentic, because of its very improbable
character. We print it, therefore, with all reserve.

Yesterday evening, Dr. Delattre, the well-known surgeon, was present,
with his wife and daughter, at the performance of _Hernani_ at the
Comédie Française. At the commencement of the third act, that is to
say, at about ten o’clock, the door of his box opened and a gentleman,
accompanied by two others, leaned over to the doctor and said to him,
in a low voice, but loud enough for Mme. Delattre to hear:

“Doctor, I have a very painful task to fulfil and I shall be very
grateful to you if you will make it as easy for me as you can.”

“Who are you, sir?”

“M. Thézard, commissary of police of the first district; and my
instructions are to take you to M. Dudouis, at the prefecture.”

“But—”

“Not a word, doctor, I entreat you, not a movement—There is some
regrettable mistake; and that is why we must act in silence and not
attract anybody’s attention. You will be back, I have no doubt, before
the end of the performance.”

The doctor rose and went with the commissary. At the end of the
performance, he had not returned. Mme. Delattre, greatly alarmed, drove
to the office of the commissary of police. There she found the real M.
Thézard and discovered, to her great terror, that the individual who
had carried off her husband was an impostor.

Inquiries made so far have revealed the fact that the doctor stepped
into a motor car and that the car drove off in the direction of the
Concorde.

Readers will find further details of this incredible adventure in our
second edition.

Incredible though it might be, the adventure was perfectly true.
Besides, the issue was not long delayed and the _Grand Journal_, while
confirming the story in its midday edition, described in a few lines
the dramatic ending with which it concluded:

THE STORY ENDS
AND
GUESS-WORK BEGINS


Dr. Delattre was brought back to 78, Rue Duret, at nine o’clock this
morning, in a motor car which drove away immediately at full speed.

No. 78, Rue Duret, is the address of Dr. Delattre’s clinical surgery,
at which he arrives every morning at the same hour. When we sent in our
card, the doctor, though closeted with the chief of the detective
service, was good enough to consent to receive us.

“All that I can tell you,” he said, in reply to our questions, “is that
I was treated with the greatest consideration. My three companions were
the most charming people I have ever met, exquisitely well-mannered and
bright and witty talkers: a quality not to be despised, in view of the
length of the journey.”

“How long did it take?”

“About four hours and as long returning.”

“And what was the object of the journey?”

“I was taken to see a patient whose condition rendered an immediate
operation necessary.”

“And was the operation successful?”

“Yes, but the consequences may be dangerous. I would answer for the
patient here. Down there—under his present conditions—”

“Bad conditions?”

“Execrable!—A room in an inn—and the practically absolute impossibility
of being attended to.”

“Then what can save him?”

“A miracle—and his constitution, which is an exceptionally strong one.”

“And can you say nothing more about this strange patient?”

“No. In the first place, I have taken an oath; and, secondly, I have
received a present of ten thousand francs for my free surgery. If I do
not keep silence, this sum will be taken from me.”

“You are joking! Do you believe that?”

“Indeed I do. The men all struck me as being very much in earnest.”

This is the statement made to us by Dr. Delattre. And we know, on the
other hand, that the head of the detective service, in spite of all his
insisting, has not yet succeeded in extracting any more precise
particulars from him as to the operation which he performed, the
patient whom he attended or the district traversed by the car. It is
difficult, therefore, to arrive at the truth.

This truth, which the writer of the interview confessed himself unable
to discover, was guessed by the more or less clear-sighted minds that
perceived a connection with the facts which had occurred the day before
at the Château d’Ambrumésy, and which were reported, down to the
smallest detail, in all the newspapers of that day. There was evidently
a coincidence to be reckoned with in the disappearance of a wounded
burglar and the kidnapping of a famous surgeon.

The judicial inquiry, moreover, proved the correctness of the
hypothesis. By following the track of the sham flyman, who had fled on
a bicycle, they were able to show that he had reached the forest of
Arques, at some ten miles’ distance, and that from there, after
throwing his bicycle into a ditch, he had gone to the village of
Saint-Nicolas, whence he had dispatched the following telegram:

A. L. N., _Post-office_ 45, Paris.
    Situation desperate. Operation urgently necessary. Send celebrity
    by national road fourteen.


The evidence was undeniable. Once apprised the accomplices in Paris
hastened to make their arrangements. At ten o’clock in the evening they
sent their celebrity by National Road No. 14, which skirts the forest
of Arques and ends at Dieppe. During this time, under cover of the fire
which they themselves had caused, the gang of burglars carried off
their leader and moved him to an inn, where the operation took place on
the arrival of the surgeon, at two o’clock in the morning.

About that there was no doubt. At Pontoise, at Gournay, at Forges,
Chief-inspector Ganimard, who was sent specially from Paris, with
Inspector Folenfant, as his assistant, ascertained that a motor car had
passed in the course of the previous night. The same on the road from
Dieppe to Ambrumésy. And, though the traces of the car were lost at
about a mile and a half from the château, at least a number of
footmarks were seen between the little door in the park wall and the
abbey ruins. Besides, Ganimard remarked that the lock of the little
door had been forced.

So all was explained. It remained to decide which inn the doctor had
spoken of: an easy piece of work for a Ganimard, a professional ferret,
a patient old stager of the police. The number of inns is limited and
this one, given the condition of the wounded man, could only be one
quite close to Ambrumésy. Ganimard and Sergeant Quevillon set to work.
Within a circle of five hundred yards, of a thousand yards, of fifteen
hundred yards, they visited and ransacked everything that could pass
for an inn. But, against all expectation, the dying man persisted in
remaining invisible.

Ganimard became more resolved than ever. He came back to sleep at the
château, on the Saturday night, with the intention of making his
personal inquiry on the Sunday. On Sunday morning, he learned that,
during the night, a posse of gendarmes had seen a figure gliding along
the sunk road, outside the wall. Was it an accomplice who had come back
to investigate? Were they to suppose that the leader of the gang had
not left the cloisters or the neighborhood of the cloisters?

That night, Ganimard openly sent the squad of gendarmes to the farm and
posted himself and Folenfant outside the walls, near the little door.

A little before midnight, a person passed out of the wood, slipped
between them, went through the door and entered the park. For three
hours, they saw him wander from side to side across the ruins,
stooping, climbing up the old pillars, sometimes remaining for long
minutes without moving. Then he went back to the door and again passed
between the two inspectors.

Ganimard caught him by the collar, while Folenfant seized him round the
body. He made no resistance of any kind and, with the greatest
docility, allowed them to bind his wrists and take him to the house.
But, when they attempted to question him, he replied simply that he
owed them no account of his doings and that he would wait for the
arrival of the examining magistrate. Thereupon, they fastened him
firmly to the foot of a bed, in one of the two adjoining rooms which
they occupied.

At nine o’clock on Monday morning, as soon as M. Filleul had arrived,
Ganimard announced the capture which he had made. The prisoner was
brought downstairs. It was Isidore Beautrelet.

“M. Isidore Beautrelet!” exclaimed M. Filleul with an air of rapture,
holding out both his hands to the newcomer. “What a delightful
surprise! Our excellent amateur detective here! And at our disposal
too! Why, it’s a windfall!—M. Chief-inspector, allow me to introduce to
you M. Isidore Beautrelet, a sixth-form pupil at the Lycée
Janson-de-Sailly.”

Ganimard seemed a little nonplussed. Isidore made him a very low bow,
as though he were greeting a colleague whom he knew how to esteem at
his true value, and, turning to M. Filleul:

“It appears, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, that you have received a
satisfactory account of me?”

“Perfectly satisfactory! To begin with, you were really at
Veules-les-Roses at the time when Mlle. de Saint-Véran thought she saw
you in the sunk road. I dare say we shall discover the identity of your
double. In the second place, you are in very deed Isidore Beautrelet, a
sixth-form pupil and, what is more, an excellent pupil, industrious at
your work and of exemplary behavior. As your father lives in the
country, you go out once a month to his correspondent, M. Bernod, who
is lavish in his praises of you.”

“So that—”

“So that you are free, M. Isidore Beautrelet.”

“Absolutely free?”

“Absolutely. Oh, I must make just one little condition, all the same.
You can understand that I can’t release a gentleman who administers
sleeping-draughts, who escapes by the window and who is afterward
caught in the act of trespassing upon private property. I can’t release
him without a compensation of some kind.”

“I await your pleasure.”

“Well, we will resume our interrupted conversation and you shall tell
me how far you have advanced with your investigations. In two days of
liberty, you must have carried them pretty far?” And, as Ganimard was
preparing to go, with an affectation of contempt for that sort of
practice, the magistrate cried, “Not at all, M. Inspector, your place
is here—I assure you that M. Isidore Beautrelet is worth listening to.
M. Isidore Beautrelet, according to my information, has made a great
reputation at the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly as an observer whom nothing
escapes; and his schoolfellows, I hear, look upon him as your
competitor and a rival of Holmlock Shears!”

“Indeed!” said Ganimard, ironically.

“Just so. One of them wrote to me, ‘If Beautrelet declares that he
knows, you must believe him; and, whatever he says, you may be sure
that it is the exact expression of the truth.’ M. Isidore Beautrelet,
now or never is the time to vindicate the confidence of your friends. I
beseech you, give us the exact expression of the truth.”

Isidore listened with a smile and replied:

“Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, you are very cruel. You make fun of
poor schoolboys who amuse themselves as best they can. You are quite
right, however, and I will give you no further reason to laugh at me.”

“The fact is that you know nothing, M. Isidore Beautrelet.”

“Yes, I confess in all humility that I know nothing. For I do not call
it ‘knowing anything’ that I happen to have hit upon two or three more
precise points which, I am sure, cannot have escaped you.”

“For instance?”

“For instance, the object of the theft.”

“Ah, of course, you know the object of the theft?”

“As you do, I have no doubt. In fact, it was the first thing I studied,
because the task struck me as easier.”

“Easier, really?”

“Why, of course. At the most, it’s a question of reasoning.”

“Nothing more than that?”

“Nothing more.”

“And what is your reasoning?”

“It is just this, stripped of all extraneous comment: on the one hand,
_there has been a theft_, because the two young ladies are agreed and
because they really saw two men running away and carrying things with
them.”

“There has been a theft.”

“On the other hand, _nothing has disappeared_, because M. de Gesvres
says so and he is in a better position than anybody to know.”

“Nothing has disappeared.”

“From those two premises I arrive at this inevitable result: granted
that there has been a theft and that nothing has disappeared, it is
because the object carried off has been replaced by an exactly similar
object. Let me hasten to add that possibly my argument may not be
confirmed by the facts. But I maintain that it is the first argument
that ought to occur to us and that we are not entitled to waive it
until we have made a serious examination.”

“That’s true—that’s true,” muttered the magistrate, who was obviously
interested.

“Now,” continued Isidore, “what was there in this room that could
arouse the covetousness of the burglars? Two things. The tapestry
first. It can’t have been that. Old tapestry cannot be imitated: the
fraud would have been palpable at once. There remain the four Rubens
pictures.”

“What’s that you say?”

“I say that the four Rubenses on that wall are false.”

“Impossible!”

“They are false _a priori_, inevitably and without a doubt.”

“I tell you, it’s impossible.”

“It is very nearly a year ago, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, since a
young man, who gave his name as Charpenais, came to the Château
d’Ambrumésy and asked permission to copy the Rubens pictures. M. de
Gesvres gave him permission. Every day for five months Charpenais
worked in this room from morning till dusk. The copies which he made,
canvases and frames, have taken the place of the four original pictures
bequeathed to M. de Gesvres by his uncle, the Marqués de Bobadilla.”

“Prove it!”

“I have no proof to give. A picture is false because it is false; and I
consider that it is not even necessary to examine these four.”

M. Filleul and Ganimard exchanged glances of unconcealed astonishment.
The inspector no longer thought of withdrawing. At last, the magistrate
muttered:

“We must have M. de Gesvres’s opinion.”

And Ganimard agreed:

“Yes, we must have his opinion.”

And they sent to beg the count to come to the drawing room.

The young sixth-form pupil had won a real victory. To compel two
experts, two professionals like M. Filleul and Ganimard to take account
of his surmises implied a testimony of respect of which any other would
have been proud. But Beautrelet seemed not to feel those little
satisfactions of self-conceit and, still smiling without the least
trace of irony, he placidly waited.

M. de Gesvres entered the room.

“Monsieur le Comte,” said the magistrate, “the result of our inquiry
has brought us face to face with an utterly unexpected contingency,
which we submit to you with all reserve. It is possible—I say that it
is possible—that the burglars, when breaking into the house, had it as
their object to steal your four pictures by Rubens—or, at least, to
replace them by four copies—copies which are said to have been made
last year by a painter called Charpenais. Would you be so good as to
examine the pictures and to tell us if you recognize them as genuine?”

The count appeared to suppress a movement of annoyance, looked at
Isidore Beautrelet and at M. Filleul and replied, without even
troubling to go near the pictures:

“I hoped, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, that the truth might have
remained unknown. As this is not so, I have no hesitation in declaring
that the four pictures are false.”

“You knew it, then?”

“From the beginning.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“The owner of a work is never in a hurry to declare that that work is
not—or, rather, is no longer genuine.”

“Still, it was the only means of recovering them.”

“I consider that there was another and a better.”

“Which was that?”

“Not to make the secret known, not to frighten my burglars and to offer
to buy back the pictures, which they must find more or less difficult
to dispose of.”

“How would you communicate with them?”

As the count did not reply, Isidore answered for him:

“By means of an advertisement in the papers. The paragraph inserted in
the agony column of the _Journal_, the _Écho de Paris_ and the _Matin_
runs, ‘Am prepared to buy back the pictures.’”

The count agreed with a nod. Once again, the young man was teaching his
elders. M. Filleul showed himself a good sportsman.

“There’s no doubt about it, my dear sir,” he exclaimed. “I’m beginning
to think your school-fellows were not quite wrong. By Jove, what an
eye! What intuition! If this goes on, there will be nothing left for M.
Ganimard and me to do.”

“Oh, none of this part was so very complicated!”

“You mean to say that the rest was more so I remember, in fact, that,
when we first met you seemed to know all about it. Let me see, a far as
I recollect, you said that you knew the name of the murderer.”

“So I do.”

“Well, then, who killed Jean Daval? Is the man alive? Where is he
hiding?”

“There is a misunderstanding between us, Monsieur le Juge
d’Instruction, or, rather, you have misunderstood the facts from the
beginning The murderer and the runaway are two distinct persons.”

“What’s that?” exclaimed M. Filleul. “The man whom M. de Gesvres saw in
the boudoir and struggled with, the man whom the young ladies saw in
the drawing-room and whom Mlle. de Saint-Véran shot at, the man who
fell in the park and whom we are looking for: do you suggest that he is
not the man who killed Jean Daval?”

“I do.”

“Have you discovered the traces of a third accomplice who disappeared
before the arrival of the young ladies?”

“I have not.”

“In that case, I don’t understand.—Well, who is the murderer of Jean
Daval?”

“Jean Daval was killed by—”

Beautrelet interrupted himself, thought for a moment and continued:

“But I must first show you the road which I followed to arrive at the
certainty and the very reasons of the murder—without which my
accusation would seem monstrous to you.—And it is not—no, it is not
monstrous at all.—There is one detail which has passed unobserved and
which, nevertheless, is of the greatest importance; and that is that
Jean Daval, at the moment when he was stabbed, had all his clothes on,
including his walking boots, was dressed, in short, as a man is dressed
in the middle of the day, with a waistcoat, collar, tie and braces. Now
the crime was committed at four o’clock in the morning.”

“I reflected on that strange fact,” said the magistrate, “and M. de
Gesvres replied that Jean Daval spent a part of his nights in working.”

“The servants say, on the contrary, that he went to bed regularly at a
very early hour. But, admitting that he was up, why did he disarrange
his bedclothes, to make believe that he had gone to bed? And, if he was
in bed, why, when he heard a noise, did he take the trouble to dress
himself from head to foot, instead of slipping on anything that came to
hand? I went to his room on the first day, while you were at lunch: his
slippers were at the foot of the bed. What prevented him from putting
them on rather than his heavy nailed boots?”

“So far, I do not see—”

“So far, in fact, you cannot see anything, except anomalies. They
appeared much more suspicious to me, however, when I learned that
Charpenais the painter, the man who copied the Rubens pictures, had
been introduced and recommended to the Comte de Gesvres by Jean Daval
himself.”

“Well?”

“Well, from that to the conclusion that Jean Daval and Charpenais were
accomplices required but a step. I took that step at the time of our
conversation.”

“A little quickly, I think.”

“As a matter of fact, a material proof was wanted. Now I had discovered
in Daval’s room, on one of the sheets of the blotting-pad on which he
used to write, this address: ‘Monsieur _A.L.N., Post-office_ 45,
_Paris_.’ You will find it there still, traced the reverse way on the
blotting-paper. The next day, it was discovered that the telegram sent
by the sham flyman from Saint-Nicolas bore the same address: ‘_A.L.N.,
Post-office_ 45.’ The material proof existed: Jean Daval was in
correspondence with the gang which arranged the robbery of the
pictures.”

M. Filleul raised no objection.

“Agreed. The complicity is established. And what conclusion do you
draw?”

“This, first of all, that it was not the runaway who killed Jean Daval,
because Jean Daval was his accomplice.”

“And after that?”

“Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, I will ask you to remember the first
sentence uttered by Monsieur le Comte when he recovered from fainting.
The sentence forms part of Mlle. de Gesvres’ evidence and is in the
official report: ‘I am not wounded.—Daval?—Is he alive?—The knife?’ And
I will ask you to compare it with that part of his story, also in the
report, in which Monsieur le Comte describes the assault: ‘The man
leaped at me and felled me with a blow on the temple!’ How could M. de
Gesvres, who had fainted, know, on waking, that Daval had been stabbed
with a knife?”

Isidore Beautrelet did not wait for an answer to his question. It
seemed as though he were in a hurry to give the answer himself and to
avoid all comment. He continued straightway:

“Therefore it was Jean Daval who brought the three burglars to the
drawing room. While he was there with the one whom they call their
chief, a noise was heard in the boudoir. Daval opened the door.
Recognizing M. de Gesvres, he rushed at him, armed with the knife. M.
de Gesvres succeeded in snatching the knife from him, struck him with
it and himself fell, on receiving a blow from the man whom the two
girls were to see a few minutes after.”

Once again, M. Filleul and the inspector exchanged glances. Ganimard
tossed his head in a disconcerted way. The magistrate said:

“Monsieur le Comte, am I to believe that this version is correct?”

M. de Gesvres made no answer.

“Come, Monsieur le Comte, your silence would allow us to suppose—I beg
you to speak.”

Replying in a very clear voice, M. de Gesvres said:

“The version is correct in every particular.”

The magistrate gave a start.

“Then I cannot understand why you misled the police. Why conceal an act
which you were lawfully entitled to commit in defense of your life?”

“For twenty years,” said M. de Gesvres, “Daval worked by my side. I
trusted him. If he betrayed me, as the result of some temptation or
other, I was, at least, unwilling, for the sake of the past, that his
treachery should become known.”

“You were unwilling, I agree, but you had no right to be.”

“I am not of your opinion, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction. As long as
no innocent person was accused of the crime, I was absolutely entitled
to refrain from accusing the man who was at the same time the culprit
and the victim. He is dead. I consider death a sufficient punishment.”

“But now, Monsieur le Comte, now that the truth is known, you can
speak.”

“Yes. Here are two rough drafts of letters written by him to his
accomplices. I took them from his pocket-book, a few minutes after his
death.”

“And the motive of his theft?”

“Go to 18, Rue de la Barre, at Dieppe, which is the address of a
certain Mme. Verdier. It was for this woman, whom he got to know two
years ago, and to supply her constant need of money that Daval turned
thief.”

So everything was cleared up. The tragedy rose out of the darkness and
gradually appeared in its true light.

“Let us go on,” said M. Filluel after the count had withdrawn.

“Upon my word,” said Beautrelet, gaily, “I have said almost all that I
had to say.”

“But the runaway, the wounded man?”

“As to that, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, you know as much as I do.
You have followed his tracks in the grass by the cloisters—you have—”

“Yes, yes, I know. But, since then, his friends have removed him and
what I want is a clue or two as regards that inn—”

Isidore Beautrelet burst out laughing:

“The inn! The inn does not exist! It’s an invention, a trick to put the
police on the wrong scent, an ingenious trick, too, for it seems to
have succeeded.”

“But Dr. Delattre declares—”

“Ah, that’s just it!” cried Beautrelet, in a tone of conviction. “It is
just because Dr. Delattre declares that we mustn’t believe him. Why,
Dr. Delattre refused to give any but the vaguest details concerning his
adventure! He refused to say anything that might compromise his
patient’s safety!—And suddenly he calls attention to an inn!—You may be
sure that he talked about that inn because he was told to. You may be
sure that the whole story which he dished up to us was dictated to him
under the threat of terrible reprisals. The doctor has a wife. The
doctor has a daughter. He is too fond of them to disobey people of
whose formidable power he has seen proofs. And that is why he has
assisted your efforts by supplying the most precise clues.”

“So precise that the inn is nowhere to be found.”

“So precise that you have never ceased looking for it, in the face of
all probability, and that your eyes have been turned away from the only
spot where the man can be, the mysterious spot which he has not left,
which he has been unable to leave ever since the moment when, wounded
by Mlle. de Saint-Véran, he succeeded in dragging himself to it, like a
beast to its lair.”

“But where, confound it all?—In what corner of Hades—?”

“In the ruins of the old abbey.”

“But there are no ruins left!—A few bits of wall!—A few broken
columns!”

“That’s where he’s gone to earth. Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction!”
shouted Beautrelet. “That’s where you will have to look for him! It’s
there and nowhere else that you will find Arsène Lupin!”

“Arsène Lupin!” yelled M. Filleul, springing to his feet.

There was a rather solemn pause, amid which the syllables of the famous
name seemed to prolong their sound. Was it possible that the vanquished
and yet invisible adversary, whom they had been hunting in vain for
several days, could really be Arsène Lupin? Arsène Lupin, caught in a
trap, arrested, meant immediate promotion, fortune, glory to any
examining magistrate!

Ganimard had not moved a limb. Isidore said to him:

“You agree with me, do you not, M. Inspector?”

“Of course I do!”

“You have not doubted either, for a moment have you, that he managed
this business?”

“Not for a second! The thing bears his signature. A move of Arsène
Lupin’s is as different from a move made by another man as one face is
from another. You have only to open your eyes.”

“Do you think so? Do you think so?” said M. Filleul.

“Think so!” cried the young man. “Look, here’s one little fact: what
are the initials under which those men correspond among themselves? ‘A.
L. N.,’ that is to say, the first letter of the name Arsène and the
first and last letters of the name Lupin.”

“Ah,” said Ganimard, “nothing escapes you! Upon my word, you’re a fine
fellow and old Ganimard lays down his arms before you!”

Beautrelet flushed with pleasure and pressed the hand which the
chief-inspector held out to him. The three men had drawn near the
balcony and their eyes now took in the extent of the ruins. M. Filleul
muttered:

“So he ought to be there.”

“_He is there_,” said Beautrelet, in a hollow voice. “He has been there
ever since the moment when he fell. Logically and practically, he could
not escape without being seen by Mlle. de Saint-Véran and the two
servants.”

“What proof have you?”

“His accomplices have furnished the proof. On the very morning, one of
them disguised himself as a flyman and drove you here—”

“To recover the cap, which would serve to identify him.”

“Very well, but also and more particularly to examine the spot, find
out and see for himself what had become of the ‘governor.’”

“And did he find out?”

“I presume so, as he knew the hiding-place. And I presume that he
became aware of the desperate condition of his chief, because, under
the impulse of his alarm, he committed the imprudence to write that
threat: ‘Woe betide the young lady, if she has killed the governor!’”

“But his friends were able to take him away afterward?”

“When? Your men have never left the ruins. And where could they have
moved him to? At most, a few hundred yards away, for one doesn’t let a
dying man travel—and then you would have found him. No, I tell you, he
is there. His friends would never have removed him from the safest of
hiding-places. It was there that they brought the doctor, while the
gendarmes were running to the fire like children.”

“But how is he living? How will he keep alive? To keep alive you need
food and drink.”

“I can’t say. I don’t know. But he is there, I will swear it. He is
there, because he can’t help being there. I am as sure of it as if I
saw as if I touched him. He is there.”

With his finger outstretched toward the ruins, he traced in the air a
little circle which became smaller and smaller until it was only a
point. And that point his two companions sought desperately, both
leaning into space, both moved by the same faith in Beautrelet and
quivering with the ardent conviction which he had forced upon them.
Yes, Arsène Lupin was there. In theory and in fact, he was there:
neither of them was now able to doubt it.

And there was something impressive and tragic in knowing that the
famous adventurer was lying in some dark shelter, below the ground,
helpless, feverish and exhausted.

“And if he dies?” asked M. Filleul, in a low voice.

“If he dies,” said Beautrelet, “and if his accomplices are sure of it,
then see to the safety of Mlle. de Saint-Véran. Monsieur le Juge
d’Instruction, for the vengeance will be terrible.”

A few minutes later and in spite of the entreaties of M. Filleul, who
would gladly have made further use of this fascinating auxiliary,
Isidore Beautrelet, whose holidays ended that day, went off by the
Dieppe Road. He stepped from the train in Paris at five o’clock and, at
eight o’clock, returned to the Lycée Janson together with his
schoolfellows.

Ganimard, after a minute, but utterly useless exploration of the ruins
of Ambrumésy, returned to Paris by the fast night-train. On reaching
his apartment in the Rue Pergolese, he found an express letter awaiting
him:

_Monsieur l’Inspecteur Principal:_
    Finding that I had a little time to spare at the end of the day, I
    have succeeded in collecting a few additional particulars which are
    sure to interest you.
    Arsène Lupin has been living in Paris for twelve months under the
    name of Étienne de Vaudreix. It is a name which you will often come
    across in the society notes or the sporting columns of the
    newspapers. He is a great traveler and is absent for long periods,
    during which, by his own account, he goes hunting tigers in Bengal
    or blue foxes in Siberia. He is supposed to be in business of some
    kind, although nobody is able to say for certain what his business
    is.
    His present address is 38, Rue Marbeuf; and I will call your
    attention to the fact that the Rue Marbeuf is close to Post-office
    Number 45. Since Thursday the twenty-third of April, the day before
    the burglary at Ambrumésy, there has been no news at all of Étienne
    de Vaudreix.
    With very many thanks for the kindness which you have shown me,
    believe me to be,


Monsieur l’Inspecteur Principal,
Yours sincerely,
ISIDORE BEAUTRELET.


P.S.—Please on no account think that it cost me any great trouble to
obtain this information. On the very morning of the crime, while M.
Filleul was pursuing his examination before a few privileged persons, I
had the fortunate inspiration to glance at the runaway’s cap, before
the sham flyman came to change it. The hatter’s name was enough, as you
may imagine, to enable me to find the clue that led to the
identification of the purchaser and his address.


The next morning, Ganimard called at 36, Rue Marbeuf. After questioning
the concierge, he made him open the door of the ground-floor flat on
the right, a very comfortable apartment, elegantly furnished, in which,
however, he discovered nothing beyond some cinders in the fireplace.
Two friends had come, four days earlier, to burn all compromising
papers.

But, just as he was leaving, Ganimard passed the postman, who was
bringing a letter for M. de Vaudreix. That afternoon, the public
prosecutor was informed of the case and ordered the letter to be given
up. It bore an American postmark and contained the following lines, in
English:

DEAR SIR:
    I write to confirm the answer which I gave your representative. As
    soon as you have M. de Gesvres’s four pictures in your possession,
    you can forward them as arranged.
    You may add the rest, if you are able to succeed, which I doubt.
    An unexpected business requires my presence in Europe and I shall
    reach Paris at the same time as this letter. You will find me at
    the Grand Hôtel.


Yours faithfully,
EPHRAIM B. HARLINGTON.


That same day, Ganimard applied for a warrant and took Mr. E. B.
Harlington, an American citizen, to the police-station, on a charge of
receiving and conspiracy.

Thus, within the space of twenty-four hours, all the threads of the
plot had been unraveled, thanks to the really unforeseen clues supplied
by a schoolboy of seventeen. In twenty-four hours, what had seemed
inexplicable became simple and clear. In twenty-four hours, the scheme
devised by the accomplices to save their leader was baffled; the
capture of Arsène Lupin, wounded and dying, was no longer in doubt, his
gang was disorganized, the address of his establishment in Paris and
the name which he assumed were known and, for the first time, one of
his cleverest and most carefully elaborated feats was seen through
before he had been able to ensure its complete execution.

An immense clamor of astonishment, admiration and curiosity arose among
the public. Already, the Rouen journalist, in a very able article, had
described the first examination of the sixth-form pupil, laying stress
upon his personal charm, his simplicity of manner and his quiet
assurance. The indiscretions of Ganimard and M. Filleul, indiscretions
to which they yielded in spite of themselves, under an impulse that
proved stronger than their professional pride, suddenly enlightened the
public as to the part played by Isidore Beautrelet in recent events. He
alone had done everything. To him alone the merit of the victory was
due.

The excitement was intense. Isidore Beautrelet awoke to find himself a
hero; and the crowd, suddenly infatuated, insisted upon the fullest
information regarding its new favorite. The reporters were there to
supply it. They rushed to the assault of the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly,
waited for the day-boarders to come out after schoolhours and picked up
all that related, however remotely, to Beautrelet. It was in this way
that they learned the reputation which he enjoyed among his
schoolfellows, who called him the rival of Holmlock Shears. Thanks to
his powers of logical reasoning, with no further data than those which
he was able to gather from the papers, he had, time after time,
proclaimed the solution of very complicated cases long before they were
cleared up by the police.

It had become a game at the Lycée Janson to put difficult questions and
intricate problems to Beautrelet; and it was astonishing to see with
what unhesitating and analytical power and by means of what ingenious
deductions he made his way through the thickest darkness. Ten days
before the arrest of Jorisse, the grocer, he showed what could be done
with the famous umbrella. In the same way, he declared from the
beginning, in the matter of the Saint-Cloud mystery, that the concierge
was the only possible murderer.

But most curious of all was the pamphlet which was found circulating
among the boys at the school, a typewritten pamphlet signed by
Beautrelet and manifolded to the number of ten copies. It was entitled,
_Arsène Lupin and his method, showing in how far the latter is based
upon tradition and in how far original. Followed by a comparison
between English humor and French irony._

It contained a profound study of each of the exploits of Arsène Lupin,
throwing the illustrious burglar’s operations into extraordinary
relief, showing the very mechanism of his way of setting to work, his
special tactics, his letters to the press, his threats, the
announcement of his thefts, in short, the whole bag of tricks which he
employed to bamboozle his selected victim and throw him into such a
state of mind that the victim almost offered himself to the plot
contrived against him and that everything took place, as it were, with
his own consent.

And the work was so just, regarded as a piece of criticism, so
penetrating, so lively and marked by a wit so clever and, at the same
time, so cruel that the lawyers at once passed over to his side, that
the sympathy of the crowd was summarily transferred from Lupin to
Beautrelet and that, in the struggle engaged upon between the two, the
schoolboy’s victory was loudly proclaimed in advance.

Be this as it may, both M. Filleul and the Paris public prosecutor
seemed jealously to reserve the possibility of this victory for him. On
the one hand, they failed to establish Mr. Harlington’s identity or to
furnish a definite proof of his connection with Lupin’s gang.
Confederate or not, he preserved an obstinate silence. Nay, more, after
examining his handwriting, it was impossible to declare that he was the
author of the intercepted letter. A Mr. Harlington, carrying a small
portmanteau and a pocket-book stuffed with bank-notes, had taken up his
abode at the Grand Hôtel: that was all that could be stated with
certainty.

On the other hand, at Dieppe, M. Filleul lay down on the positions
which Beautrelet had won for him. He did not move a step forward.
Around the individual whom Mlle. de Saint-Véran had taken for
Beautrelet, on the eve of the crime, the same mystery reigned as
heretofore. The same obscurity also surrounded everything connected
with the removal of the four Rubens pictures. What had become of them?
And what road had been taken by the motor car in which they were
carried off during the night?

Evidence of its passing was obtained at Luneray at Yerville, at Yvetot
and at Caudebec-en-Caux, where it must have crossed the Seine at
daybreak in the steam-ferry. But, when the matter came to be inquired
into more thoroughly, it was stated that the motor car was an uncovered
one and that it would have been impossible to pack four large pictures
into it unobserved by the ferryman.

It was very probably the same car; but then the question cropped up
again: what had become of the four Rubenses?

These were so many problems which M. Filleul unanswered. Every day, his
subordinates searched the quadrilateral of the ruins. Almost every day,
he came to direct the explorations. But between that and discovering
the refuge in which Lupin lay dying—if it were true that Beautrelet’s
opinion was correct—there was a gulf fixed which the worthy magistrate
did not seem likely to cross.

And so it was natural that they should turn once more to Isidore
Beautrelet, as he alone had succeeded in dispelling shadows which, in
his absence, gathered thicker and more impenetrable than ever. Why did
he not go on with the case? Seeing how far he had carried it, he
required but an effort to succeed.

The question was put to him by a member of the staff of the _Grand
Journal_, who had obtained admission to the Lycée Janson by assuming
the name of Bernod, the friend of Beautrelet’s father. And Isidore very
sensibly replied:

“My dear sir, there are other things besides Lupin in this world, other
things besides stories about burglars and detectives. There is, for
instance, the thing which is known as taking one’s degree. Now I am
going up for my examination in July. This is May. And I don’t want to
be plucked. What would my worthy parent say?”

“But what would he say if you delivered Arsène Lupin into the hands of
the police?”

“Tut! There’s a time for everything. In the next holidays—”

“Whitsuntide?”

“Yes—I shall go down on Saturday the sixth of June by the first train.”

“And, on the evening of that Saturday, Lupin will be taken.”

“Will you give me until the Sunday?” asked Beautrelet, laughing.

“Why delay?” replied the journalist, quite seriously.

This inexplicable confidence, born of yesterday and already so strong,
was felt with regard to the young man by one and all, even though, in
reality, events had justified it only up to a certain point. No matter,
people believed in him! Nothing seemed difficult to him. They expected
from him what they were entitled to expect at most from some phenomenon
of penetration and intuition, of experience and skill. That day of the
sixth of June was made to sprawl over all the papers. On the sixth of
June, Isidore Beautrelet would take the fast train to Dieppe: and Lupin
would be arrested on the same evening.

“Unless he escapes between this and then,” objected the last remaining
partisans of the adventurer.

“Impossible! Every outlet is watched.”

“Unless he has succumbed to his wounds, then,” said the partisans, who
would have preferred their hero’s death to his capture.

And the retort was immediate:

“Nonsense! If Lupin were dead, his confederates would know it by now,
and Lupin would be revenged. Beautrelet said so!”

And the sixth of June came. Half a dozen journalists were looking out
for Isidore at the Gare Saint-Lazare. Two of them wanted to accompany
him on his journey. He begged them to refrain.

He started alone, therefore, in a compartment to himself. He was tired,
thanks to a series of nights devoted to study, and soon fell asleep. He
slept heavily. In his dreams, he had an impression that the train
stopped at different stations and that people got in and out. When he
awoke, within sight of Rouen, he was still alone. But, on the back of
the opposite seat, was a large sheet of paper, fastened with a pin to
the gray cloth. It bore these words:

“Every man should mind his own business. Do you mind yours. If not, you
must take the consequences.”

“Capital!” he exclaimed, rubbing his hands with delight. “Things are
going badly in the adversary’s camp. That threat is as stupid and
vulgar as the sham flyman’s. What a style! One can see that it wasn’t
composed by Lupin.”

The train threaded the tunnel that precedes the old Norman city. On
reaching the station, Isidore took a few turns on the platform to
stretch his legs. He was about to re-enter his compartment, when a cry
escaped him. As he passed the bookstall, he had read, in an
absent-minded way, the following lines on the front page of a special
edition of the _Journal de Rouen;_ and their alarming sense suddenly
burst upon him:

STOP-PRESS NEWS


We hear by telephone from Dieppe that the Château d’Ambrumésy was
broken into last night by criminals, who bound and gagged Mlle. de
Gesvres and carried off Mlle. de Saint-Véran. Traces of blood have been
seen at a distance of five hundred yards from the house and a scarf has
been found close by, which is also stained with blood. There is every
reason to fear that the poor young girl has been murdered.


Isidore Beautrelet completed his journey to Dieppe without moving a
limb. Bent in two, with his elbows on his knees and his hands plastered
against his face, he sat thinking.

At Dieppe, he took a fly. At the door of Ambrumésy, he met the
examining magistrate, who confirmed the horrible news.

“You know nothing more?” asked Beautrelet.

“Nothing. I have only just arrived.”

At that moment, the sergeant of gendarmes came up to M. Filleul and
handed him a crumpled, torn and discolored piece of paper, which he had
picked up not far from the place where the scarf was found. M. Filleul
looked at it and gave it to Beautrelet, saying:

“I don’t suppose this will help us much in our investigations.”

Isidore turned the paper over and over. It was covered with figures,
dots and signs and presented the exact appearance reproduced below:

[Illustration]




CHAPTER THREE
THE CORPSE


At six o’clock in the evening, having finished all he had to do, M.
Filluel, accompanied by M. Brédoux, his clerk, stood waiting for the
carriage which was to take him back to Dieppe. He seemed restless,
nervous. Twice over, he asked:

“You haven’t seen anything of young Beautrelet, I suppose?”

“No, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, I can’t say I have.”

“Where on earth can he be? I haven’t set eyes on him all day!”

Suddenly, he had an idea, handed his portfolio to Brédoux, ran round
the château and made for the ruins. Isidore Beautrelet was lying near
the cloisters, flat on his face, with one arm folded under his head, on
the ground carpeted with pine-needles. He seemed drowsing.

“Hullo, young man, what are you doing here? Are you asleep?”

“I’m not asleep. I’ve been thinking.”

“Ever since this morning?”

“Ever since this morning.”

“It’s not a question of thinking! One must see into things first, study
facts, look for clues, establish connecting links. The time for
thinking comes after, when one pieces all that together and discovers
the truth.”

“Yes, I know.—That’s the usual way, the right one, I dare say.—Mine is
different.—I think first, I try, above all, to get the general hang of
the case, if I may so express myself. Then I imagine a reasonable and
logical hypothesis, which fits in with the general idea. And then, and
not before, I examine the facts to see if they agree with my
hypothesis.”

“That’s a funny method and a terribly complicated one!”

“It’s a sure method, M. Filleul, which is more than can be said of
yours.”

“Come, come! Facts are facts.”

“With your ordinary sort of adversary, yes. But, given an enemy endowed
with a certain amount of cunning, the facts are those which he happens
to have selected. Take the famous clues upon which you base your
inquiry: why, he was at liberty to arrange them as he liked. And you
see where that can lead you, into what mistakes and absurdities, when
you are dealing with a man like Arsène Lupin. Holmlock Shears himself
fell into the trap.”

“Arsène Lupin is dead.”

“No matter. His gang remains and the pupils of such a master are
masters themselves.”

M. Filleul took Isidore by the arm and, leading him away:

“Words, young man, words. Here is something of more importance. Listen
to me. Ganimard is otherwise engaged at this moment and will not be
here for a few days. On the other hand, the Comte de Gesvres has
telegraphed to Holmlock Shears, who has promised his assistance next
week. Now don’t you think, young man, that it would be a feather in our
cap if we were able to say to those two celebrities, on the day of
their arrival, ‘Awfully sorry, gentlemen, but we couldn’t wait. The
business is done’?”

It was impossible for M. Filleul to confess helplessness with greater
candor. Beautrelet suppressed a smile and, pretending not to see
through the worthy magistrate, replied:

“I confess. Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, that, if I was not present
at your inquiry just now, it was because I hoped that you would consent
to tell me the results. May I ask what you have learned?”

“Well, last night, at eleven o’clock, the three gendarmes whom Sergeant
Quevillon had left on guard at the château received a note from the
sergeant telling them to hasten with all speed to Ouville, where they
are stationed. They at once rode off, and when they arrived at
Ouville—”

“They discovered that they had been tricked, that the order was a
forgery and that there was nothing for them to do but return to
Ambrumésy.”

“This they did, accompanied by Sergeant Quevillon. But they were away
for an hour and a half and, during this time, the crime was committed.”

“In what circumstances?”

“Very simple circumstances, indeed. A ladder was removed from the farm
buildings and placed against the second story of the château. A pane of
glass was cut out and a window opened. Two men, carrying a dark
lantern, entered Mlle. de Gesvres’s room and gagged her before she
could cry out. Then, after binding her with cords, they softly opened
the door of the room in which Mlle. de Saint-Véran was sleeping. Mlle.
de Gesvres heard a stifled moan, followed by the sound of a person
struggling. A moment later, she saw two men carrying her cousin, who
was also bound and gagged. They passed in front of her and went out
through the window. Then Mlle. de Gesvres, terrified and exhausted,
fainted.”

“But what about the dogs? I thought M. de Gesvres had bought two almost
wild sheep-dogs, which were let loose at night?”

“They were found dead, poisoned.”

“By whom? Nobody could get near them.”

“It’s a mystery. The fact remains that the two men crossed the ruins
without let or hindrance and went out by the little door which we have
heard so much about. They passed through the copsewood, following the
line of the disused quarries. It was not until they were nearly half a
mile from the château, at the foot of the tree known as the Great Oak,
that they stopped—and executed their purpose.”

“If they came with the intention of killing Mlle. de Saint-Véran, why
didn’t they murder her in her room?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps the incident that settled their determination
only occurred after they had left the house. Perhaps the girl succeeded
in releasing herself from her bonds. In my opinion, the scarf which was
picked up was used to fasten her wrists. In any case, the blow was
struck at the foot of the Great Oak. I have collected indisputable
proofs—”

“But the body?”

“The body has not been found, but there is nothing excessively
surprising in that. As a matter of fact, the trail which I followed
brought me to the church at Varengeville and the old cemetery perched
on the top of the cliff. From there it is a sheer precipice, a fall of
over three hundred feet to the rocks and the sea below. In a day or
two, a stronger tide than usual will cast up the body on the beach.”

“Obviously. This is all very simple.”

“Yes, it is all very simple and doesn’t trouble me in the least. Lupin
is dead, his accomplices heard of it and, to revenge themselves, have
killed Mlle. de Saint-Véran. These are facts which did not even require
checking. But Lupin?”

“What about him?”

“What has become of him? In all probability, his confederates removed
his corpse at the same time that they carried away the girl; but what
proof have we? None at all. Any more than of his staying in the ruins,
or of his death, or of his life. And that is the real mystery, M.
Beautrelet. The murder of Mlle. Raymonde solves nothing. On the
contrary, it only complicates matters. What has been happening during
the past two months at the Château d’Ambrumésy? If we don’t clear up
the riddle, young man, others will give us the go-by.”

“On what day are those others coming?”

“Wednesday—Tuesday perhaps—”

Beautrelet seemed to be making an inward calculation and then declared:

“Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, this is Saturday. I have to be back at
school on Monday evening. Well, if you will have the goodness to be
here at ten o’clock exactly on Monday morning, I will try to give you
the key to the riddle.”

“Really, M. Beautrelet—do you think so? Are you sure?”

“I hope so, at any rate.”

“And where are you going now?”

“I am going to see if the facts consent to fit in with the general
theory which I am beginning to perceive.”

“And if they don’t fit in?”

“Well, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction,” said Beautrelet, with a laugh,
“then it will be their fault and I must look for others which, will
prove more tractable. Till Monday, then?”

“Till Monday.”

A few minutes later, M. Filleul was driving toward Dieppe, while
Isidore mounted a bicycle which he had borrowed from the Comte de
Gesvres and rode off along the road to Yerville and Caudebec-en-Caux.

There was one point in particular on which the young man was anxious to
form a clear opinion, because this just appeared to him to be the
enemy’s weakest point. Objects of the size of the four Rubens pictures
cannot be juggled away. They were bound to be somewhere. Granting that
it was impossible to find them for the moment, might one not discover
the road by which they had disappeared?

What Beautrelet surmised was that the four pictures had undoubtedly
been carried off in the motor car, but that, before reaching Caudebec,
they were transferred to another car, which had crossed the Seine
either above Caudebec or below it. Now the first horse-boat down the
stream was at Quillebeuf, a greatly frequented ferry and, consequently,
dangerous. Up stream, there was the ferry-boat at La Mailleraie, a
large, but lonely market-town, lying well off the main road.

By midnight, Isidore had covered the thirty-five or forty miles to La
Mailleraie and was knocking at the door of an inn by the waterside. He
slept there and, in the morning, questioned the ferrymen.

They consulted the counterfoils in the traffic-book. No motor-car had
crossed on Thursday the 23rd of April.

“A horse-drawn vehicle, then?” suggested Beautrelet. “A cart? A van?”

“No, not either.”

Isidore continued his inquiries all through the morning. He was on the
point of leaving for Quillebeuf, when the waiter of the inn at which he
had spent the night said:

“I came back from my thirteen days’ training on the morning of which
you are speaking and I saw a cart, but it did not go across.”

“Really?”

“No, they unloaded it onto a flat boat, a barge of sorts, which was
moored to the wharf.”

“And where did the cart come from?”

“Oh, I knew it at once. It belonged to Master Vatinel, the carter.”

“And where does he live?”

“At Louvetot.”

Beautrelet consulted his military map. The hamlet of Louvetot lay where
the highroad between Yvetot and Caudebec was crossed by a little
winding road that ran through the woods to La Mailleraie.

Not until six o’clock in the evening did Isidore succeed in discovering
Master Vatinel, in a pothouse. Master Vatinel was one of those artful
old Normans who are always on their guard, who distrust strangers, but
who are unable to resist the lure of a gold coin or the influence of a
glass or two:

“Well, yes, sir, the men in the motor car that morning had told me to
meet them at five o’clock at the crossroads. They gave me four great,
big things, as high as that. One of them went with me and we carted the
things to the barge.”

“You speak of them as if you knew them before.”

“I should think I did know them! It was the sixth time they were
employing me.”

Isidore gave a start:

“The sixth time, you say? And since when?”

“Why every day before that one, to be sure! But it was other things
then—great blocks of stone—or else smaller, longish ones, wrapped up in
newspapers, which they carried as if they were worth I don’t know what.
Oh, I mustn’t touch those on any account!—But what’s the matter? You’ve
turned quite white.”

“Nothing—the heat of the room—”

Beautrelet staggered out into the air. The joy, the surprise of the
discovery made him feel giddy. He went back very quietly to
Varengeville, slept in the village, spent an hour at the mayor’s
offices with the school-master and returned to the château. There he
found a letter awaiting him “care of M. le Comte de Gesvres.” It
consisted of a single line:

“Second warning. Hold your tongue. If not—”

“Come,” he muttered. “I shall have to make up my mind and take a few
precautions for my personal safety. If not, as they say—”

It was nine o’clock. He strolled about among the ruins and then lay
down near the cloisters and closed his eyes.

“Well, young man, are you satisfied with the results of your campaign?”

It was M. Filleul.

“Delighted, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction.”

“By which you mean to say—?”

“By which I mean to say that I am prepared to keep my promise—in spite
of this very uninviting letter.”

He showed the letter to M. Filleul.

“Pooh! Stuff and nonsense!” cried the magistrate. “I hope you won’t let
that prevent you—”

“From telling you what I know? No, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction. I
have given my word and I shall keep it. In less than ten minutes, you
shall know—a part of the truth.”

“A part?”

“Yes, in my opinion, Lupin’s hiding-place does not constitute the whole
of the problem. Far from it. But we shall see later on.”

“M. Beautrelet, nothing that you do could astonish me now. But how were
you able to discover—?”

“Oh, in a very natural way! In the letter from old man Harlington to M.
Étienne de Vaudreix, or rather to Lupin—”

“The intercepted letter?”

“Yes. There is a phrase which always puzzled me. After saying that the
pictures are to be forwarded as arranged, he goes on to say, ‘You may
add _the rest_, if you are able to succeed, which I doubt.’”

“Yes, I remember.”

“What was this ‘rest’? A work of art, a curiosity? The château contains
nothing of any value besides the Rubenses and the tapestries. Jewelry?
There is very little and what there is of it is not worth much. In that
case, what could it be?—On the other hand, was it conceivable that
people so prodigiously clever as Lupin should not have succeeded in
adding ‘the rest,’ which they themselves had evidently suggested? A
difficult undertaking, very likely; exceptional, surprising, I dare
say; but possible and therefore certain, since Lupin wished it.”

“And yet he failed: nothing has disappeared.”

“He did not fail: something has disappeared.”

“Yes, the Rubenses—but—”

“The Rubenses and something besides—something which has been replaced
by a similar thing, as in the case of the Rubenses; something much more
uncommon, much rarer, much more valuable than the Rubenses.”

“Well, what? You’re killing me with this procrastination!”

While talking, the two men had crossed the ruins, turned toward the
little door and were now walking beside the chapel. Beautrelet stopped:

“Do you really want to know, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction?”

“Of course, I do.”

Beautrelet was carrying a walking-stick, a strong, knotted stick.
Suddenly, with a back stroke of this stick, he smashed one of the
little statues that adorned the front of the chapel.

“Why, you’re mad!” shouted M. Filleul, beside himself, rushing at the
broken pieces of the statue. “You’re mad! That old saint was an
admirable bit of work—”

“An admirable bit of work!” echoed Isidore, giving a whirl which
brought down the Virgin Mary.

M. Filleul took hold of him round the body:

“Young man, I won’t allow you to commit—”

A wise man of the East came toppling to the ground, followed by a
manger containing the Mother and Child. . . .

“If you stir another limb, I fire!”

The Comte de Gesvres had appeared upon the scene and was cocking his
revolver. Beautrelet burst out laughing:

“That’s right, Monsieur le Comte, blaze away!—Take a shot at them, as
if you were at a fair!—Wait a bit—this chap carrying his head in his
hands—”

St. John the Baptist fell, shattered to pieces.

“Oh!” shouted the count, pointing his revolver. “You young
vandal!—Those masterpieces!”

“Sham, Monsieur le Comte!”

“What? What’s that?” roared M. Filleul, wresting the Comte de Gesvres’s
weapon from him.

“Sham!” repeated Beautrelet. “Paper-pulp and plaster!”

“Oh, nonsense! It can’t be true!”

“Hollow plaster, I tell you! Nothing at all!”

The count stooped and picked up a sliver of a statuette.

“Look at it, Monsieur le Comte, and see for yourself: it’s plaster!
Rusty, musty, mildewed plaster, made to look like old stone—but plaster
for all that, plaster casts!—That’s all that remains of your perfect
masterpiece!—That’s what they’ve done in just a few days!-That’s what
the Sieur Charpenais who copied the Rubenses, prepared a year ago.” He
seized M. Filleul’s arm in his turn. “What do you think of it, Monsieur
le Juge d’Instruction? Isn’t it fine? Isn’t it grand? Isn’t it
gorgeous? The chapel has been removed! A whole Gothic chapel collected
stone by stone! A whole population of statues captured and replaced by
these chaps in stucco! One of the most magnificent specimens of an
incomparable artistic period confiscated! The chapel, in short, stolen!
Isn’t it immense? Ah, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, what a genius the
man is!”

“You’re allowing yourself to be carried away, M. Beautrelet.”

“One can’t be carried away too much, monsieur, when one has to do with
people like that. Everything above the average deserves our admiration.
And this man soars above everything. There is in his flight a wealth of
imagination, a force and power, a skill and freedom that send a thrill
through me!”

“Pity he’s dead,” said M. Filleul, with a grin. “He’d have ended by
stealing the towers of Notre-Dame.”

Isidore shrugged his shoulders:

“Don’t laugh, monsieur. He upsets you, dead though he may be.”

“I don’t say not, I don’t say not, M. Beautrelet, I confess that I feel
a certain excitement now that I am about to set eyes on him—unless,
indeed, his friends have taken away the body.”

“And always admitting,” observed the Comte de Gesvres, “that it was
really he who was wounded by my poor niece.”

“It was he, beyond a doubt, Monsieur le Comte,” declared Beautrelet;
“it was he, believe me, who fell in the ruins under the shot fired by
Mlle. de Saint-Véran; it was he whom she saw rise and who fell again
and dragged himself toward the cloisters to rise again for the last
time—this by a miracle which I will explain to you presently—to rise
again for the last time and reach this stone shelter—which was to be
his tomb.”

And Beautrelet struck the threshold of the chapel with his stick.

“Eh? What?” cried M. Filleul, taken aback. “His tomb?—Do you think that
that impenetrable hiding-place—”

“It was here—there,” he repeated.

“But we searched it.”

“Badly.”

“There is no hiding-place here,” protested M. de Gesvres. “I know the
chapel.”

“Yes, there is, Monsieur le Comte. Go to the mayor’s office at
Varengeville, where they have collected all the papers that used to be
in the old parish of Ambrumésy, and you will learn from those papers,
which belong to the eighteenth century, that there is a crypt below the
chapel. This crypt doubtless dates back to the Roman chapel, upon the
site of which the present one was built.”

“But how can Lupin have known this detail?” asked M. Filleul.

“In a very simple manner: because of the works which he had to execute
to take away the chapel.”

“Come, come, M. Beautrelet, you’re exaggerating. He has not taken away
the whole chapel. Look, not one of the stones of this top course has
been touched.”

“Obviously, he cast and took away only what had a financial value: the
wrought stones, the sculptures, the statuettes, the whole treasure of
little columns and carved arches. He did not trouble about the
groundwork of the building itself. The foundations remain.”

“Therefore, M. Beautrelet, Lupin was not able to make his way into the
crypt.”

At that moment, M. de Gesvres, who had been to call a servant, returned
with the key of the chapel. He opened the door. The three men entered.
After a short examination Beautrelet said:

“The flag-stones on the ground have been respected, as one might
expect. But it is easy to perceive that the high altar is nothing more
than a cast. Now, generally, the staircase leading to the crypt opens
in front of the high altar and passes under it.”

“What do you conclude?”

“I conclude that Lupin discovered the crypt when working at the altar.”

The count sent for a pickaxe and Beautrelet attacked the altar. The
plaster flew to right and left. He pushed the pieces aside as he went
on.

“By Jove!” muttered M. Filleul, “I am eager to know—”

“So am I,” said Beautrelet, whose face was pale with anguish.

He hurried his blows. And, suddenly, his pickaxe, which, until then,
had encountered no resistance, struck against a harder material and
rebounded. There was a sound of something falling in; and all that
remained of the altar went tumbling into the gap after the block of
stone which had been struck by the pickaxe. Beautrelet bent forward. A
puff of cold air rose to his face. He lit a match and moved it from
side to side over the gap:

“The staircase begins farther forward than I expected, under the
entrance-flags, almost. I can see the last steps, there, right at the
bottom.”

“Is it deep?”

“Three or four yards. The steps are very high—and there are some
missing.”

“It is hardly likely,” said M. Filleul, “that the accomplices can have
had time to remove the body from the cellar, when they were engaged in
carrying off Mlle. de Saint-Véran—during the short absence of the
gendarmes. Besides, why should they?—No, in my opinion, the body is
here.”

A servant brought them a ladder. Beautrelet let it down through the
opening and fixed it, after groping among the fallen fragments. Holding
the two uprights firmly:

“Will you go down, M. Filleul?” he asked.

The magistrate, holding a candle in his hand, ventured down the ladder.
The Comte de Gesvres followed him and Beautrelet, in his turn, placed
his foot on the first rung.

Mechanically, he counted eighteen rungs, while his eyes examined the
crypt, where the glimmer of the candle struggled against the heavy
darkness. But, at the bottom, his nostrils were assailed by one of
those foul and violent smells which linger in the memory for many a
long day. And, suddenly, a trembling hand seized him by the shoulder.

“Well, what is it?”

“B-beautrelet,” stammered M. Filleul. “B-beau-trelet—”

He could not get a word out for terror.

“Come, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, compose yourself!”

“Beautrelet—he is there—”

“Eh?”

“Yes—there was something under the big stone that broke off the altar—I
pushed the stone—and I touched—I shall never—shall never forget.—”

“Where is it?”

“On this side.—Don’t you notice the smell?—And then look—see.”

He took the candle and held it towards a motionless form stretched upon
the ground.

“Oh!” exclaimed Beautrelet, in a horror-stricken tone.

The three men bent down quickly. The corpse lay half-naked, lean,
frightful. The flesh, which had the greenish hue of soft wax, appeared
in places through the torn clothes. But the most hideous thing, the
thing that had drawn a cry of terror from the young man’s lips, was the
head, the head which had just been crushed by the block of stone, the
shapeless head, a repulsive mass in which not one feature could be
distinguished.

Beautrelet took four strides up the ladder and fled into the daylight
and the open air.

M. Filleul found him again lying flat on the around, with his hands
glued to his face:

“I congratulate you, Beautrelet,” he said. “In addition to the
discovery of the hiding-place, there are two points on which I have
been able to verify the correctness of your assertions. First of all,
the man on whom Mlle. de Saint-Véran fired was indeed Arsène Lupin, as
you said from the start. Also, he lived in Paris under the name of
Étienne de Vaudreix. His linen is marked with the initials E. V. That
ought to be sufficient proof, I think: don’t you?”

Isidore did not stir.

“Monsieur le Comte has gone to have a horse put to. They’re sending for
Dr. Jouet, who will make the usual examination. In my opinion, death
must have taken place a week ago, at least. The state of decomposition
of the corpse—but you don’t seem to be listening—”

“Yes, yes.”

“What I say is based upon absolute reasons. Thus, for instance—”

M. Filleul continued his demonstrations, without, however, obtaining
any more manifest marks of attention. But M. de Gesvres’s return
interrupted his monologue. The comte brought two letters. One was to
tell him that Holmlock Shears would arrive next morning.

“Capital!” cried M. Filleul, joyfully. “Inspector Ganimard will be here
too. It will be delightful.”

“The other letter is for you, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction,” said the
comte.

“Better and better,” said M. Filleul, after reading it. “There will
certainly not be much for those two gentlemen to do. M. Beautrelet, I
hear from Dieppe that the body of a young woman was found by some
shrimpers, this morning, on the rocks.”

Beautrelet gave a start:

“What’s that? The body—”

“Of a young woman.—The body is horribly mutilated, they say, and it
would be impossible to establish the identity, but for a very narrow
little gold curb-bracelet on the right arm which has become encrusted
in the swollen skin. Now Mlle. de Saint-Véran used to wear a gold
curb-bracelet on her right arm. Evidently, therefore, Monsieur le
Comte, this is the body of your poor niece, which the sea must have
washed to that distance. What do you think, Beautrelet?”

“Nothing—nothing—or, rather, yes—everything is connected, as you
see—and there is no link missing in my argument. All the facts, one
after the other, however contradictory, however disconcerting they may
appear, end by supporting the supposition which I imagined from the
first.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You soon will. Remember, I promised you the whole truth.”

“But it seems to me—”

“A little patience, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction. So far, you have
had no cause to complain of me. It is a fine day. Go for a walk, lunch
at the château, smoke your pipe. I shall be back by four o’clock. As
for my school, well, I don’t care: I shall take the night train.”

They had reached the out-houses at the back of the château. Beautrelet
jumped on his bicycle and rode away.

At Dieppe, he stopped at the office of the local paper, the _Vigie_,
and examined the file for the last fortnight. Then he went on to the
market-town of Envermeu, six or seven miles farther. At Envermeu, he
talked to the mayor, the rector and the local policeman. The
church-clock struck three. His inquiry was finished.

He returned singing for joy. He pressed upon the two pedals turn by
turn, with an equal and powerful rhythm; his chest opened wide to take
in the keen air that blew from the sea. And, from time to time, he
forgot himself to the extent of uttering shouts of triumph to the sky,
when he thought of the aim which he was pursuing and of the success
that was crowning his efforts.

Ambrumésy appeared in sight. He coasted at full speed down the slope
leading to the château. The top rows of venerable trees that line the
road seemed to run to meet him and to vanish behind him forthwith. And,
all at once, he uttered a cry. In a sudden vision, he had seen a rope
stretched from one tree to another, across the road.

His machine gave a jolt and stopped short. Beautrelet was flung three
yards forward, with immense violence, and it seemed to him that only
chance, a miraculous chance, caused him to escape a heap of pebbles on
which, logically, he ought to have broken his head.

He lay for a few seconds stunned. Then, all covered with bruises, with
the skin flayed from his knees, he examined the spot. On the right lay
a small wood, by which his aggressor had no doubt fled. Beautrelet
untied the rope. To the tree on the left around which it was fastened a
small piece of paper was fixed with string. Beautrelet unfolded it and
read:

“The third and last warning.”

He went on to the château, put a few questions to the servants and
joined the examining magistrate in a room on the ground floor, at the
end of the right wing, where M. Filleul used to sit in the course of
his operations. M. Filleul was writing, with his clerk seated opposite
to him. At a sign from him, the clerk left the room; and the magistrate
exclaimed:

“Why, what have you been doing to yourself, M. Beautrelet? Your hands
are covered with blood.”

“It’s nothing, it’s nothing,” said the young man. “Just a fall
occasioned by this rope, which was stretched in front of my bicycle. I
will only ask you to observe that the rope comes from the château. Not
longer than twenty minutes ago, it was being used to dry linen on,
outside the laundry.”

“You don’t mean to say so!”

“Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, I am being watched here, by some one
in the very heart of the place, who can see me, who can hear me and
who, minute by minute, observes my actions and knows my intentions.”

“Do you think so?”

“I am sure of it. It is for you to discover him and you will have no
difficulty in that. As for myself, I want to have finished and to give
you the promised explanations. I have made faster progress than our
adversaries expected and I am convinced that they mean to take vigorous
measures on their side. The circle is closing around me. The danger is
approaching. I feel it.”

“Nonsense, Beautrelet—”

“You wait and see! For the moment, let us lose no time. And, first, a
question on a point which I want to have done with at once. Have you
spoken to anybody of that document which Sergeant Quevillon picked up
and handed you in my presence?”

“No, indeed; not to a soul. But do you attach any value—?”

“The greatest value. It’s an idea of mine, an idea, I confess, which
does not rest upon a proof of any kind—for, up to the present, I have
not succeeded in deciphering the document. And therefore I am
mentioning it—so that we need not come back to it.”

Beautrelet pressed his hand on M. Filleul’s and whispered:

“Don’t speak—there’s some one listening—outside—”

The gravel creaked. Beautrelet ran to the window and leaned out:

“There’s no one there—but the border has been trodden down—we can
easily identify the footprints—”

He closed the window and sat down again:

“You see, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, the enemy has even ceased to
take the most ordinary precautions—he has not time left—he too feels
that the hour is urgent. Let us be quick, therefore, and speak, since
they do not wish us to speak.”

He laid the document on the table and held it in position, unfolded:

“One observation, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction, to begin with. The
paper consists almost entirely of dots and figures. And in the first
three lines and the fifth—the only ones with which we have to do at
present, for the fourth seems to present an entirely different
character—not one of those figures is higher than the figure 5. There
is, therefore, a great chance that each of these figures represents one
of the five vowels, taken in alphabetical order. Let us put down the
result.”

He wrote on a separate piece of paper:

  e . a . a . . e . . e . a . . a . .
   a . . . e . e .        . e oi . e . . e .
   . ou . . e . o . . . e . . e . o . . e
   ai . ui . . e            . . eu . e


Then he continued:

“As you see, this does not give us much to go upon. The key is, at the
same time, very easy, because the inventor has contented himself with
replacing the vowels by figures and the consonants by dots, and very
difficult, if not impossible, because he has taken no further trouble
to complicate the problem.”

“It is certainly pretty obscure.”

“Let us try to throw some light upon it. The second line is divided
into two parts; and the second part appears in such a way that it
probably forms one word. If we now seek to replace the intermediary
dots by consonants, we arrive at the conclusion, after searching and
casting about, that the only consonants which are logically able to
support the vowels are also logically able to produce only one word,
the word _demoiselles_.”

“That would refer to Mlle. de Gesvres and Mlle. de Saint-Véran.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“And do you see nothing more?”

“Yes. I also note an hiatus in the middle of the last line; and, if I
apply a similar operation to the beginning of the line, I at once see
that the only consonant able to take the place of the dot between the
diphthongs _fai_ and _ui_ is the letter _g_ and that, when I have thus
formed the first five letters of the word, _aigui_, it is natural and
inevitable that, with the two next dots and the final _e_, I should
arrive at the word _aiguille_.”

“Yes, the word _aiguille_ forces itself upon us.”

“Finally, for the last word, I have three vowels and three consonants.
I cast about again, I try all the letters, one after the other, and,
starting with the principle that the two first letters are necessary
consonants, I find that three words apply: _fleuve_, _preuve_ and
_creuse_. I eliminate the words _fleuve_ and _preuve_, as possessing no
possible relation to a needle, and I keep the word _creuse_.”

“Making ‘hollow needle’! By jove! I admit that your solution is
correct, because it needs must be; but how does it help us?”

“Not at all,” said Beautrelet, in a thoughtful tone. “Not at all, for
the moment.—Later on, we shall see.—I have an idea that a number of
things are included in the puzzling conjunction of those two words,
_aiguille creuse_. What is troubling me at present is rather the
material on which the document is written, the paper employed.—Do they
still manufacture this sort of rather coarse-grained parchment? And
then this ivory color.—And those folds—the wear of those folds—and,
lastly, look, those marks of red sealing-wax, on the back—”

At that moment Beautrelet, was interrupted by Brédoux, the magistrate’s
clerk, who opened the door and announced the unexpected arrival of the
chief public prosecutor. M. Filleul rose:

“Anything new? Is Monsieur le Procureur Général downstairs?”

“No, Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction. Monsieur le Procureur Général has
not left his carriage. He is only passing through Ambrumésy and begs
you to be good enough to go down to him at the gate. He only has a word
to say to you.”

“That’s curious,” muttered M. Filleul. “However—we shall see. Excuse
me, Beautrelet, I shan’t be long.”

He went away. His footsteps sounded outside. Then the clerk closed the
door, turned the key and put it in his pocket.

“Hullo!” exclaimed Beautrelet, greatly surprised. “What are you locking
us in for?”

“We shall be able to talk so much better,” retorted Brédoux.

Beautrelet rushed toward another door, which led to the next room. He
had understood: the accomplice was Brédoux, the clerk of the examining
magistrate himself. Brédoux grinned:

“Don’t hurt your fingers, my young friend. I have the key of that door,
too.”

“There’s the window!” cried Beautrelet.

“Too late,” said Brédoux, planting himself in front of the casement,
revolver in hand.

Every chance of retreat was cut off. There was nothing more for Isidore
to do, nothing except to defend himself against the enemy who was
revealing himself with such brutal daring. He crossed his arms.

“Good,” mumbled the clerk. “And now let us waste no time.” He took out
his watch. “Our worthy M. Filleul will walk down to the gate. At the
gate, he will find nobody, of course: no more public prosecutor than my
eye. Then he will come back. That gives us about four minutes. It will
take me one minute to escape by this window, clear through the little
door by the ruins and jump on the motor cycle waiting for me. That
leaves three minutes, which is just enough.”

Brédoux was a queer sort of misshapen creature, who balanced on a pair
of very long spindle-legs a huge trunk, as round as the body of a
spider and furnished with immense arms. A bony face and a low, small
stubborn forehead pointed to the man’s narrow obstinacy.

Beautrelet felt a weakness in the legs and staggered. He had to sit
down:

“Speak,” he said. “What do you want?”

“The paper. I’ve been looking for it for three days.”

“I haven’t got it.”

“You’re lying. I saw you put it back in your pocket-book when I came
in.”

“Next?”

“Next, you must undertake to keep quite quiet. You’re annoying us.
Leave us alone and mind your own business. Our patience is at an end.”

He had come nearer, with the revolver still aimed at the young man’s
head, and spoke in a hollow voice, with a powerful stress on each
syllable that he uttered. His eyes were hard, his smile cruel.

Beautrelet gave a shudder. It was the first time that he was
experiencing the sense of danger. And such danger! He felt himself in
the presence of an implacable enemy, endowed with blind and
irresistible strength.

“And next?” he asked, with less assurance in his voice.

“Next? Nothing.—You will be free.—We will forget—”

There was a pause. Then Brédoux resumed:

“There is only a minute left. You must make up your mind. Come, old
chap, don’t be a fool.—We are the stronger, you know, always and
everywhere.—Quick, the paper—”

Isidore did not flinch. With a livid and terrified face, he remained
master of himself, nevertheless, and his brain remained clear amid the
breakdown of his nerves. The little black hole of the revolver was
pointing at six inches from his eyes. The finger was bent and obviously
pressing on the trigger. It only wanted a moment—

“The paper,” repeated Brédoux. “If not—”

“Here it is,” said Beautrelet.

He took out his pocket-book and handed it to the clerk, who seized it
eagerly.

“Capital! We’ve come to our senses. I’ve no doubt there’s something to
be done with you.—You’re troublesome, but full of common sense. I’ll
talk about it to my pals. And now I’m off. Good-bye!”

He pocketed his revolver and turned back the fastening of the window.
There was a noise in the passage.

“Good-bye,” he said again. “I’m only just in time.”

But the idea stopped him. With a quick movement, he examined the
pocket-book:

“Damn and blast it!” He grated through his teeth. “The paper’s not
there.—You’ve done me—”

He leaped into the room. Two shots rang out. Isidore, in his turn, had
seized his pistol and fired.

“Missed, old chap!” shouted Brédoux. “Your hand’s shaking.—You’re
afraid—”

They caught each other round the body and came down to the floor
together. There was a violent and incessant knocking at the door.
Isidore’s strength gave way and he was at once over come by his
adversary. It was the end. A hand was lifted over him, armed with a
knife, and fell. A fierce pain burst into his shoulder. He let go.

He had an impression of some one fumbling in the inside pocket of his
jacket and taking the paper from it. Then, through the lowered veil of
his eyelids, he half saw the man stepping over the window-sill.

The same newspapers which, on the following morning, related the last
episodes that had occurred at the Château d’Ambrumésy—the trickery at
the chapel, the discovery of Arsène Lupin’s body and of Raymonde’s body
and, lastly, the murderous attempt made upon Beautrelet by the clerk to
the examining magistrate—also announced two further pieces of news: the
disappearance of Ganimard, and the kidnapping of Holmlock Shears, in
broad daylight, in the heart of London, at the moment when he was about
to take the train for Dover.

Lupin’s gang, therefore, which had been disorganized for a moment by
the extraordinary ingenuity of a seventeen-year-old schoolboy, was now
resuming the offensive and was winning all along the line from the
first. Lupin’s two great adversaries, Shears and Ganimard, were put
away. Isidore Beautrelet was disabled. The police were powerless. For
the moment there was no one left capable of struggling against such
enemies.




CHAPTER FOUR
FACE TO FACE


One evening, five weeks later, I had given my man leave to go out. It
was the day before the 14th of July. The night was hot, a storm
threatened and I felt no inclination to leave the flat. I opened wide
the glass doors leading to my balcony, lit my reading lamp and sat down
in an easy-chair to look through the papers, which I had not yet seen.

It goes without saying that there was something about Arsène Lupin in
all of them. Since the attempt at murder of which poor Isidore
Beautrelet had been the victim, not a day had passed without some
mention of the Ambrumésy mystery. It had a permanent headline devoted
to it. Never had public opinion been excited to that extent, thanks to
the extraordinary series of hurried events, of unexpected and
disconcerting surprises. M. Filleul, who was certainly accepting the
secondary part allotted to him with a good faith worthy of all praise,
had let the interviewers into the secret of his young advisor’s
exploits during the memorable three days, so that the public was able
to indulge in the rashest suppositions. And the public gave itself free
scope. Specialists and experts in crime, novelists and playwrights,
retired magistrates and chief-detectives, erstwhile Lecocqs and budding
Holmlock Shearses, each had his theory and expounded it in lengthy
contributions to the press. Everybody corrected and supplemented the
inquiry of the examining magistrate; and all on the word of a child, on
the word of Isidore Beautrelet, a sixth-form schoolboy at the Lycée
Janson-de-Sailly!

For really, it had to be admitted, the complete elements of the truth
were now in everybody’s possession. What did the mystery consist of?
They knew the hiding-place where Arsène Lupin had taken refuge and lain
a-dying; there was no doubt about it: Dr. Delattre, who continued to
plead professional secrecy and refused to give evidence, nevertheless
confessed to his intimate friends—who lost no time in blabbing—that he
really had been taken to a crypt to attend a wounded man whom his
confederates introduced to him by the name of Arsène Lupin. And, as the
corpse of Étienne de Vaudreix was found in that same crypt and as the
said Étienne de Vaudreix was none other than Arsène Lupin—as the
official examination went to show—all this provided an additional
proof, if one were needed, of the identity of Arsène Lupin and the
wounded man. Therefore, with Lupin dead and Mlle. de Saint-Véran’s body
recognized by the curb-bracelet on her wrist, the tragedy was finished.

It was not. Nobody thought that it was, because Beautrelet had said the
contrary. Nobody knew in what respect it was not finished, but, on the
word of the young man, the mystery remained complete. The evidence of
the senses did not prevail against the statement of a Beautrelet. There
was something which people did not know, and of that something they
were convinced that he was in position to supply a triumphant
explanation.

It is easy, therefore, to imagine the anxiety with which, at first,
people awaited the bulletins issued by the two Dieppe doctors to whose
care the Comte de Gesvres entrusted his patient; the distress that
prevailed during the first few days, when his life was thought to be in
danger; and the enthusiasm of the morning when the newspapers announced
that there was no further cause for fear. The least details excited the
crowd. People wept at the thought of Beautrelet nursed by his old
father, who had been hurriedly summoned by telegram, and they also
admired the devotion of Mlle. Suzanne de Gesvres, who spent night after
night by the wounded lad’s bedside.

Next came a swift and glad convalescence. At last, the public were
about to know! They would know what Beautrelet had promised to reveal
to M. Filleul and the decisive words which the knife of the would-be
assassin had prevented him from uttering! And they would also know
everything, outside the tragedy itself, that remained impenetrable or
inaccessible to the efforts of the police.

With Beautrelet free and cured of his wound, one could hope for some
certainty regarding Harlington, Arsène Lupin’s mysterious accomplice,
who was still detained at the Santé prison. One would learn what had
become, after the crime, of Brédoux the clerk, that other accomplice,
whose daring was really terrifying.

With Beautrelet free, one could also form a precise idea concerning the
disappearance of Ganimard and the kidnapping of Shears. How was it
possible for two attempts of this kind to take place? Neither the
English detectives nor their French colleagues possessed the slightest
clue on the subject. On Whit-Sunday, Ganimard did not come home, nor on
the Monday either, nor during the five weeks that followed. In London,
on Whit-Monday, Holmlock Shears took a cab at eight o’clock in the
evening to drive to the station. He had hardly stepped in, when he
tried to alight, probably feeling a presentiment of danger. But two men
jumped into the hansom, one on either side, flung him back on the seat
and kept him there between them, or rather under them. All this
happened in sight of nine or ten witnesses, who had no time to
interfere. The cab drove off at a gallop. And, after that, nothing.
Nobody knew anything.

Perhaps, also, Beautrelet would be able to give the complete
explanation of the document, the mysterious paper to which. Brédoux,
the magistrate’s clerk, attached enough importance to recover it, with
blows of the knife, from the person in whose possession it was. The
problem of the Hollow Needle it was called, by the countless solvers of
riddles who, with their eyes bent upon the figures and dots, strove to
read a meaning into them. The Hollow Needle! What a bewildering
conjunction of two simple words! What an incomprehensible question was
set by that scrap of paper, whose very origin and manufacture were
unknown! The Hollow Needle! Was it a meaningless expression, the puzzle
of a schoolboy scribbling with pen and ink on the corner of a page? Or
were they two magic words which could compel the whole great adventure
of Lupin the great adventurer to assume its true significance? Nobody
knew.

But the public soon would know. For some days, the papers had been
announcing the approaching arrival of Beautrelet. The struggle was on
the point of recommencing; and, this time, it would be implacable on
the part of the young man, who was burning to take his revenge. And, as
it happened, my attention, just then, was drawn to his name, printed in
capitals. The _Grand Journal_ headed its front page with the following
paragraph:

_We have persuaded_


M. ISIDORE BEAUTRELET


_to give us the first right of printing his revelations. To-morrow,
Tuesday, before the police themselves are informed, the_ Grand Journal
_will publish the whole truth of the Ambrumésy mystery_.


“That’s interesting, eh? What do you think of it, my dear chap?”

I started from my chair. There was some one sitting beside me, some one
I did not know. I cast my eyes round for a weapon. But, as my visitor’s
attitude appeared quite inoffensive, I restrained myself and went up to
him.

He was a young man with strongly-marked features, long, fair hair and a
short, tawny beard, divided into two points. His dress suggested the
dark clothes of an English clergyman; and his whole person, for that
matter, wore an air of austerity and gravity that inspired respect.

“Who are you?” I asked. And, as he did not reply, I repeated, “Who are
you? How did you get in? What are you here for?”

He looked at me and said:

“Don’t you know me?”

“No—no!”

“Oh, that’s really curious! Just search your memory—one of your
friends—a friend of a rather special kind—however—”

I caught him smartly by the arm:

“You lie! You lie! No, you’re not the man you say you are—it’s not
true.”

“Then why are you thinking of that man rather than another?” he asked,
with a laugh.

Oh, that laugh! That bright and clear young laugh, whose amusing irony
had so often contributed to my diversion! I shivered. Could it be?

“No, no,” I protested, with a sort of terror. “It cannot be.”

“It can’t be I, because I’m dead, eh?” he retorted. “And because you
don’t believe in ghosts.” He laughed again. “Am I the sort of man who
dies? Do you think I would die like that, shot in the back by a girl?
Really, you misjudge me! As though I would ever consent to such a death
as that!”

“So it is you!” I stammered, still incredulous and yet greatly excited.
“So it is you! I can’t manage to recognize you.”

“In that case,” he said, gaily, “I am quite easy. If the only man to
whom I have shown myself in my real aspect fails to know me to-day,
then everybody who will see me henceforth as I am to-day is bound not
to know me either, when he sees me in my real aspect—if, indeed, I have
a real aspect—”

I recognized his voice, now that he was no longer changing its tone,
and I recognized his eyes also and the expression of his face and his
whole attitude and his very being, through the counterfeit appearance
in which he had shrouded it:

“Arsène Lupin!” I muttered.

“Yes, Arsène Lupin!” he cried, rising from his chair. “The one and only
Arsène Lupin, returned from the realms of darkness, since it appears
that I expired and passed away in a crypt! Arsène Lupin, alive and
kicking, in the full exercise of his will, happy and free and more than
ever resolved to enjoy that happy freedom in a world where hitherto he
has received nothing but favors and privileges!”

It was my turn to laugh:

“Well, it’s certainly you, and livelier this time than on the day when
I had the pleasure of seeing you, last year—I congratulate you.”

I was alluding to his last visit, the visit following on the famous
adventure of the diadem,[1] his interrupted marriage, his flight with
Sonia Kirchnoff and the Russian girl’s horrible death. On that day, I
had seen an Arsène Lupin whom I did not know, weak, down-hearted, with
eyes tired with weeping, seeking for a little sympathy and affection.

[1] _Arsène Lupin_, play in three acts and four scenes, by Maurice
Leblanc and Francis de Croisset.]


“Be quiet,” he said. “The past is far away.”

“It was a year ago,” I observed.

“It was ten years ago,” he declared. “Arsène Lupin’s years count for
ten times as much as another man’s.”

I did not insist and, changing the conversation:

“How did you get in?”

“Why, how do you think? Through the door, of course. Then, as I saw
nobody, I walked across the drawing room and out by the balcony, and
here I am.”

“Yes, but the key of the door—?”

“There are no doors for me, as you know. I wanted your flat and I came
in.”

“It is at your disposal. Am I to leave you?”

“Oh, not at all! You won’t be in the way. In fact, I can promise you an
interesting evening.”

“Are you expecting some one?”

“Yes. I have given him an appointment here at ten o’clock.” He took out
his watch. “It is ten now. If the telegram reached him, he ought to be
here soon.”

The front-door bell rang.

“What did I tell you? No, don’t trouble to get up: I’ll go.”

With whom on earth could he have made an appointment? And what sort of
scene was I about to assist at: dramatic or comic? For Lupin himself to
consider it worthy of interest, the situation must be somewhat
exceptional.

He returned in a moment and stood back to make way for a young man,
tall and thin and very pale in the face.

Without a word and with a certain solemnity about his movements that
made me feel ill at ease. Lupin switched on all the electric lamps, one
after the other, till the room was flooded with light. Then the two men
looked at each other, exchanged profound and penetrating glances, as
if, with all the effort of their gleaming eyes, they were trying to
pierce into each other’s souls.

It was an impressive sight to see them thus, grave and silent. But who
could the newcomer be?

I was on the point of guessing the truth, through his resemblance to a
photograph which had recently appeared in the papers, when Lupin turned
to me:

“My dear chap, let me introduce M. Isidore Beautrelet.” And, addressing
the young man, he continued, “I have to thank you, M. Beautrelet,
first, for being good enough, on receipt of a letter from me, to
postpone your revelations until after this interview and, secondly, for
granting me this interview with so good a grace.”

Beautrelet smiled:

“Allow me to remark that my good grace consists, above all, in obeying
your orders. The threat which you made to me in the letter in question
was the more peremptory in being aimed not at me, but at my father.”

“My word,” said Lupin laughing, “we must do the best we can and make
use of the means of action vouchsafed to us. I knew by experience that
your own safety was indifferent to you, seeing that you resisted the
arguments of Master Brédoux. There remained your father—your father for
whom you have a great affection—I played on that string.”

“And here I am,” said Beautrelet, approvingly.

I motioned them to be seated. They consented and Lupin resumed, in that
tone of imperceptible banter which is all his own:

“In any case, M. Beautrelet, if you will not accept my thanks, you will
at least not refuse my apologies.”

“Apologies! Bless my soul, what for?”

“For the brutality which Master Brédoux showed you.”

“I confess that the act surprised me. It was not Lupin’s usual way of
behaving. A stab—”

“I assure you I had no hand in it. Brédoux is a new recruit. My
friends, during the time that they had the management of our affairs,
thought that it might be useful to win over to our cause the clerk of
the magistrate himself who was conducting the inquiry.”

“Your friends were right.”

“Brédoux, who was specially attached to your person, was, in fact, most
valuable to us. But, with the ardor peculiar to any neophyte who wishes
to distinguish himself, he pushed his zeal too far and thwarted my
plans by permitting himself, on his own initiative, to strike you a
blow.”

“Oh, it was a little accident!”

“Not at all, not at all! And I have reprimanded him severely! I am
bound, however, to say in his favor that he was taken unawares by the
really unexpected rapidity of your investigation. If you had only left
us a few hours longer, you would have escaped that unpardonable
attempt.”

“And I should doubtless have enjoyed the enormous advantage of
undergoing the same fate as M. Ganimard and Mr. Holmlock Shears?”

“Exactly,” said Lupin, laughing heartily. “And I should not have known
the cruel terrors which your wound caused me. I have had an atrocious
time because of it, believe me, and, at this moment, your pallor fills
me with all the stings of remorse. Can you ever forgive me?”

“The proof of confidence which you have shown me in delivering yourself
unconditionally into my hands—it would have been so easy for me to
bring a few of Ganimard’s friends with me—that proof of confidence
wipes out everything.”

Was he speaking seriously? I confess frankly that I was greatly
perplexed. The struggle between the two men was beginning in a manner
which I was simply unable to understand. I had been present at the
first meeting between Lupin and Holmlock Shears, in the café near the
Gare Montparnesse,[2] and I could not help recalling the haughty
carriage of the two combatants, the terrific clash of their pride under
the politeness of their manners, the hard blows which they dealt each
other, their feints, their arrogance.

[2] _Arsène Lupin versus Holmlock Shears_, by Maurice Leblanc.


Here, it was quite different. Lupin, it is true, had not changed; he
exhibited the same tactics, the same crafty affability. But what a
strange adversary he had come upon! Was it even an adversary? Really,
he had neither the tone of one nor the appearance. Very calm, but with
a real calmness, not one assumed to cloak the passion of a man
endeavoring to restrain himself; very polite, but without exaggeration;
smiling, but without chaff, he presented the most perfect contrast to
Arsène Lupin, a contrast so perfect even that, to my mind, Lupin
appeared as much perplexed as myself.

No, there was no doubt about it: in the presence of that frail
stripling, with cheeks smooth as a girl’s and candid and charming eyes,
Lupin was losing his ordinary self-assurance. Several times over, I
observed traces of embarrassment in him. He hesitated, did not attack
frankly, wasted time in mawkish and affected phrases.

It also looked as though he wanted something. He seemed to be seeking,
waiting. What for? Some aid?

There was a fresh ring of the bell. He himself ran and opened the door.
He returned with a letter:

“Will you allow me, gentlemen?” he asked.

He opened the letter. It contained a telegram. He read it—and became as
though transformed. His face lit up, his figure righted itself and I
saw the veins on his forehead swell. It was the athlete who once more
stood before me, the ruler, sure of himself, master of events and
master of persons. He spread the telegram on the table and, striking it
with his fist, exclaimed:

“Now, M. Beautrelet, it’s you and I!”

Beautrelet adopted a listening attitude and Lupin began, in measured,
but harsh and masterful tones:

“Let us throw off the mask—what say you?—and have done with
hypocritical compliments. We are two enemies, who know exactly what to
think of each other; we act toward each other as enemies; and therefore
we ought to treat with each other as enemies.”

“To treat?” echoed Beautrelet, in a voice of surprise.

“Yes, to treat. I did not use that word at random and I repeat it, in
spite of the effort, the great effort, which it costs me. This is the
first time I have employed it to an adversary. But also, I may as well
tell you at once, it is the last. Make the most of it. I shall not
leave this flat without a promise from you. If I do, it means war.”

Beautrelet seemed more and more surprised. He said very prettily:

“I was not prepared for this—you speak so funnily! It’s so different
from what I expected! Yes, I thought you were not a bit like that! Why
this display of anger? Why use threats? Are we enemies because
circumstances bring us into opposition? Enemies? Why?”

Lupin appeared a little out of countenance, but he snarled and, leaning
over the boy:

“Listen to me, youngster,” he said. “It’s not a question of picking
one’s words. It’s a question of a fact, a positive, indisputable fact;
and that fact is this: in all the past ten years, I have not yet
knocked up against an adversary of your capacity. With Ganimard and
Holmlock Shears I played as if they were children. With you, I am
obliged to defend myself, I will say more, to retreat. Yes, at this
moment, you and I well know that I must look upon myself as worsted in
the fight. Isidore Beautrelet has got the better of Arsène Lupin. My
plans are upset. What I tried to leave in the dark you have brought
into the full light of day. You annoy me, you stand in my way. Well,
I’ve had enough of it—Brédoux told you so to no purpose. I now tell you
so again; and I insist upon it, so that you may take it to heart: I’ve
had enough of it!”

Beautrelet nodded his head:

“Yes, but what do you want?”

“Peace! Each of us minding his own business, keeping to his own side!”

“That is to say, you free to continue your burglaries undisturbed, I
free to return to my studies.”

“Your studies—anything you please—I don’t care. But you must leave me
in peace—I want peace.”

“How can I trouble it now?”

Lupin seized his hand violently:

“You know quite well! Don’t pretend not to know. You are at this moment
in possession of a secret to which I attach the highest importance.
This secret you were free to guess, but you have no right to give it to
the public.”

“Are you sure that I know it?”

“You know it, I am certain: day by day, hour by hour, I have followed
your train of thought and the progress of your investigations. At the
very moment when Brédoux struck you, you were about to tell all.
Subsequently, you delayed your revelations, out of solicitude for your
father. But they are now promised to this paper here. The article is
written. It will be set up in an hour. It will appear to-morrow.”

“Quite right.”

Lupin rose, and slashing the air with his hand,

“It shall not appear!” he cried.

“It shall appear!” said Beautrelet, starting up in his turn.

At last, the two men were standing up to each other. I received the
impression of a shock, as if they had seized each other round the body.
Beautrelet seemed to burn with a sudden energy. It was as though a
spark had kindled within him a group of new emotions: pluck,
self-respect, the passion of fighting, the intoxication of danger. As
for Lupin, I read in the radiance of his glance the joy of the duellist
who at length encounters the sword of his hated rival.

“Is the article in the printer’s hands?”

“Not yet.”

“Have you it there—on you?”

“No fear! I shouldn’t have it by now, in that case!”

“Then—”

“One of the assistant editors has it, in a sealed envelope. If I am not
at the office by midnight, he will have set it up.”

“Oh, the scoundrel!” muttered Lupin. “He has provided for everything!”

His anger was increasing, visibly and frightfully. Beautrelet chuckled,
jeering in his turn, carried away by his success.

“Stop that, you brat!” roared Lupin. “You’re forgetting who I am—and
that, if I wished—upon my word, he’s daring to laugh!”

A great silence fell between them. Then Lupin stepped forward and, in
muttered tones, with his eyes on Beautrelet’s:

“You shall go straight to the _Grand Journal_.”

“No.”

“Tear up your article.”

“No.”

“See the editor.”

“No.”

“Tell him you made a mistake.”

“No.”

“And write him another article, in which you will give the official
version of the Ambrumésy mystery, the one which every one has
accepted.”

“No.”

Lupin took up a steel ruler that lay on my desk and broke it in two
without an effort. His pallor was terrible to see. He wiped away the
beads of perspiration that stood on his forehead. He, who had never
known his wishes resisted, was being maddened by the obstinacy of this
child. He pressed his two hands on Beautrelet’s shoulder and,
emphasizing every syllable, continued:

“You shall do as I tell you, Beautrelet. You shall say that your latest
discoveries have convinced you of my death, that there is not the least
doubt about it. You shall say so because I wish it, because it has to
be believed that I am dead. You shall say so, above all, because, if
you do not say so—”

“Because, if I do not say so—?”

“Your father will be kidnapped to-night, as Ganimard and Holmlock
Shears were.”

Beautrelet gave a smile.

“Don’t laugh—answer!”

“My answer is that I am very sorry to disappoint you, but I have
promised to speak and I shall speak.”

“Speak in the sense which I have told you.”

“I shall speak the truth,” cried Beautrelet, eagerly. “It is something
which you can’t understand, the pleasure, the need, rather, of saying
the thing that is and saying it aloud. The truth is here, in this brain
which has guessed it and discovered it; and it will come out, all naked
and quivering. The article, therefore, will be printed as I wrote it.
The world shall know that Lupin is alive and shall know the reason why
he wished to be considered dead. The world shall know all.” And he
added, calmly, “And my father shall not be kidnapped.”

Once again, they were both silent, with their eyes still fixed upon
each other. They watched each other. Their swords were engaged up to
the hilt. And it was like the heavy silence that goes before the mortal
blow. Which of the two was to strike it?

Lupin said, between his teeth:

“Failing my instructions to the contrary, two of my friends have orders
to enter your father’s room to-night, at three o’clock in the morning,
to seize him and carry him off to join Ganimard and Holmlock Shears.”

A burst of shrill laughter interrupted him:

“Why, you highwayman, don’t you understand,” cried Beautrelet, “that I
have taken my precautions? So you think that I am innocent enough, ass
enough, to have sent my father home to his lonely little house in the
open country!” Oh, the gay, bantering laughter that lit up the boy’s
face! It was a new sort of laugh on his lips, a laugh that showed the
influence of Lupin himself. And the familiar form of address which he
adopted placed him at once on his adversary’s level. He continued:

“You see, Lupin, your great fault is to believe your schemes
infallible. You proclaim yourself beaten, do you? What humbug! You are
convinced that you will always win the day in the end—and you forget
that others can have their little schemes, too. Mine is a very simple
one, my friend.”

It was delightful to hear him talk. He walked up and down, with his
hands in his pockets and with the easy swagger of a boy teasing a caged
beast. Really, at this moment, he was revenging, with the most terrible
revenges, all the victims of the great adventurer. And he concluded:

“Lupin, my father is not in Savoy. He is at the other end of France, in
the centre of a big town, guarded by twenty of our friends, who have
orders not to lose sight of him until our battle is over. Would you
like details? He is at Cherbourg, in the house of one of the keepers of
the arsenal. And remember that the arsenal is closed at night and that
no one is allowed to enter it by day, unless he carries an
authorization and is accompanied by a guide.”

He stopped in front of Lupin and defied him, like a child making faces
at his playmate:

“What do you say to that, master?”

For some minutes, Lupin had stood motionless. Not a muscle of his face
had moved. What were his thoughts? Upon what action was he resolving?
To any one knowing the fierce violence of his pride the only possible
solution was the total, immediate, final collapse of his adversary. His
fingers twitched. For a second, I had a feeling that he was about to
throw himself upon the boy and wring his neck.

“What do you say to that, master?” Beautrelet repeated.

Lupin took up the telegram that lay on the table, held it out and said,
very calmly:

“Here, baby, read that.”

Beautrelet became serious, suddenly, impressed by the gentleness of the
movement. He unfolded the paper and, at once, raising his eyes,
murmured:

“What does it mean? I don’t understand.”

“At any rate, you understand the first word,” said Lupin, “the first
word of the telegram—that is to say, the name of the place from which
it was sent—look—‘Cherbourg.’”

“Yes—yes,” stammered Beautrelet. “Yes—I understand—‘Cherbourg’-and
then?”

“And then?—I should think the rest is quite plain: ‘Removal of luggage
finished. Friends left with it and will wait instructions till eight
morning. All well.’ Is there anything there that seems obscure? The
word ‘luggage’? Pooh, you wouldn’t have them write ‘M. Beautrelet,
senior’! What then? The way in which the operation was performed? The
miracle by which your father was taken out of Cherbourg Arsenal, in
spite of his twenty body-guards? Pooh, it’s as easy as A B C! And the
fact remains that the luggage has been dispatched. What do you say to
that, baby?”

With all his tense being, with all his exasperated energy, Isidore
tried to preserve a good countenance. But I saw his lips quiver, his
jaw shrink, his eyes vainly strive to fix upon a point. He lisped a few
words, then was silent and, suddenly, gave way and, with his hands
before his face, burst into loud sobs:

“Oh, father! Father!”

An unexpected result, which was certainly the collapse which Lupin’s
pride demanded, but also something more, something infinitely touching
and infinitely artless. Lupin gave a movement of annoyance and took up
his hat, as though this unaccustomed display of sentiment were too much
for him. But, on reaching the door, he stopped, hesitated and then
returned, slowly, step by step.

The soft sound of the sobs rose like the sad wailing of a little child
overcome with grief. The lad’s shoulders marked the heart-rending
rhythm. Tears appeared through the crossed fingers. Lupin leaned
forward and, without touching Beautrelet, said, in a voice that had not
the least tone of pleasantry, nor even of the offensive pity of the
victor:

“Don’t cry, youngster. This is one of those blows which a man must
expect when he rushes headlong into the fray, as you did. The worst
disasters lie in wait for him. The destiny of fighters will have it so.
We must suffer it as bravely as we can.” Then, with a sort of
gentleness, he continued, “You were right, you see: we are not enemies.
I have known it for long. From the very first, I felt for you, for the
intelligent creature that you are, an involuntary sympathy—and
admiration. And that is why I wanted to say this to you—don’t be
offended, whatever you do: I should be extremely sorry to offend
you—but I must say it: well, give up struggling against me. I am not
saying this out of vanity—nor because I despise you—but, you see, the
struggle is too unequal. You do not know—nobody knows all the resources
which I have at my command. Look here, this secret of the Hollow Needle
which you are trying so vainly to unravel: suppose, for a moment, that
it is a formidable, inexhaustible treasure—or else an invisible,
prodigious, fantastic refuge—or both perhaps. Think of the superhuman
power which I must derive from it! And you do not know, either, all the
resources which I have within myself—all that my will and my
imagination enable me to undertake and to undertake successfully. Only
think that my whole life—ever since I was born, I might almost say—has
tended toward the same aim, that I worked like a convict before
becoming what I am and to realize, in its perfection, the type which I
wished to create—which I have succeeded in creating. That being so—what
can you do? At that very moment when you think that victory lies within
your grasp, it will escape you—there will be something of which you
have not thought—a trifle—a grain of sand which I shall have put in the
right place, unknown to you. I entreat you, give up—I should be obliged
to hurt you; and the thought distresses me.” And, placing his hand on
the boy’s forehead, he repeated, “Once more, youngster, give up. I
should only hurt you. Who knows if the trap into which you will
inevitably fall has not already opened under your footsteps?”

Beautrelet uncovered his face. He was no longer crying. Had he heard
Lupin’s words? One might have doubted it, judging by his inattentive
air.

For two or three minutes, he was silent. He seemed to weigh the
decision which he was about to take, to examine the reasons for and
against, to count up the favorable and unfavorable chances. At last, he
said to Lupin:

“If I change the sense of the article, if I confirm the version of your
death and if I undertake never to contradict the false version which I
shall have sanctioned, do you swear that my father will be free?”

“I swear it. My friends have taken your father by motor car to another
provincial town. At seven o’clock to-morrow morning, if the article in
the _Grand Journal_ is what I want it to be, I shall telephone to them
and they will restore your father to liberty.”

“Very well,” said Beautrelet. “I submit to your conditions.”

Quickly, as though he saw no object in prolonging the conversation
after accepting his defeat, he rose, took his hat, bowed to me, bowed
to Lupin and went out. Lupin watched him go, listened to the sound of
the door closing and muttered:

“Poor little beggar!”

At eight o’clock the next morning, I sent my man out to buy the _Grand
Journal_. It was twenty minutes before he brought me a copy, most of
the kiosks being already sold out.

I unfolded the paper with feverish hands. Beautrelet’s article appeared
on the front page. I give it as it stood and as it was quoted in the
press of the whole world:

THE AMBRUMÉSY MYSTERY


I do not intend in these few sentences to set out in detail the mental
processes and the investigations that have enabled me to reconstruct
the tragedy—I should say the twofold tragedy—of Ambrumésy. In my
opinion, this sort of work and the judgments which it entails,
deductions, inductions, analyses and so on, are only interesting in a
minor degree and, in any case, are highly commonplace. No, I shall
content myself with setting forth the two leading ideas which I
followed; and, if I do that, it will be seen that, in so setting them
forth and in solving the two problems which they raise, I shall have
told the story just as it happened, in the exact order of the different
incidents.

It may be said that some of these incidents are not proved and that I
leave too large a field to conjecture. That is quite true. But, in my
view, my theory is founded upon a sufficiently large number of proved
facts to be able to say that even those facts which are not proved must
follow from the strict logic of events. The stream is so often lost
under the pebbly bed: it is nevertheless the same stream that reappears
at intervals and mirrors back the blue sky.

The first riddle that confronted me, a riddle not in detail, but as a
whole, was how came it that Lupin, mortally wounded, one might say,
managed to live for five or six weeks without nursing, medicine or
food, at the bottom of a dark hole?

Let us start at the beginning. On Thursday the sixteenth of April, at
four o’clock in the morning, Arsène Lupin, surprised in the middle of
one of his most daring burglaries, runs away by the path leading to the
ruins and drops down shot. He drags himself painfully along, falls
again and picks himself up in the desperate hope of reaching the
chapel. The chapel contains a crypt, the existence of which he has
discovered by accident. If he can burrow there, he may be saved. By
dint of an effort, he approaches it, he is but a few yards away, when a
sound of footsteps approaches. Harassed and lost, he lets himself go.
The enemy arrives. It is Mlle. Raymonde de Saint-Véran.

This is the prologue or rather the first scene of the drama.

What happened between them? This is the easier to guess inasmuch as the
sequel of the adventure gives us all the necessary clues. At the girl’s
feet lies a wounded man, exhausted by suffering, who will be captured
in two minutes. _This man has been wounded by herself_. Will she also
give him up?

If he is Jean Daval’s murderer, yes, she will let destiny take its
course. But, in quick sentences, he tells her the truth about this
awful murder committed by her uncle, M. de Gesvres. She believes him.
What will she do?

Nobody can see them. The footman Victor is watching the little door.
The other, Albert, posted at the drawing-room window, has lost sight of
both of them. _Will she give up the man she has wounded?_

The girl is carried away by a movement of irresistible pity, which any
woman will understand. Instructed by Lupin, with a few movements she
binds up the wound with his handkerchief, to avoid the marks which the
blood would leave. Then, with the aid of the key which he gives her,
she opens the door of the chapel. He enters, supported by the girl. She
locks the door again and walks away. Albert arrives.

If the chapel had been visited at that moment or at least during the
next few minutes, before Lupin had had time to recover his strength, to
raise the flagstone and disappear by the stairs leading to the crypt,
he would have been taken. But this visit did not take place until six
hours later and then only in the most superficial way. As it is, Lupin
is saved; and saved by whom? By the girl who very nearly killed him.

Thenceforth, whether she wishes it or no, Mlle. de Saint-Véran is his
accomplice. Not only is she no longer able to give him up, but she is
obliged to continue her work, else the wounded man will perish in the
shelter in which she has helped to conceal him. Therefore she
continues.

For that matter, if her feminine instinct makes the task a compulsory
one, it also makes it easy. She is full of artifice, she foresees and
forestalls everything. It is she who gives the examining magistrate a
false description of Arsène Lupin (the reader will remember the
difference of opinion on this subject between the cousins). It is she,
obviously, who, thanks to certain signs which I do not know of,
suspects an accomplice of Lupin’s in the driver of the fly. She warns
him. She informs him of the urgent need of an operation. It is she, no
doubt, who substitutes one cap for the other. It is she who causes the
famous letter to be written in which she is personally threatened. How,
after that, is it possible to suspect her?

It is she, who at that moment when I was about to confide my first
impressions to the examining magistrate, pretends to have seen me, the
day before, in the copsewood, alarms M. Filleul on my score and reduces
me to silence: a dangerous move, no doubt, because it arouses my
attention and directs it against the person who assails me with an
accusation which I know to be false; but an efficacious move, because
the most important thing of all is to gain time and close my lips.

Lastly, it is she who, during forty days, feeds Lupin, brings him his
medicine (the chemist at Ouville will produce the prescriptions which
he made up for Mlle. de Saint-Véran), nurses him, dresses his wound,
watches over him _and cures him_.

Here we have the first of our two problems solved, at the same time
that the Ambrumésy mystery is set forth. Arsène Lupin found, close at
hand, in the château itself, the assistance which was indispensable to
him in order, first, not to be discovered and, secondly, to live.

He now lives. And we come to the second problem, corresponding with the
second Ambrumésy mystery, the study of which served me as a conducting
medium. Why does Lupin, alive, free, at the head of his gang,
omnipotent as before, why does Lupin make desperate efforts, efforts
with which I am constantly coming into collision, to force the idea of
his death upon the police and the public?

We must remember that Mlle. de Saint-Véran was a very pretty girl. The
photographs reproduced in the papers after her disappearance give but
an imperfect notion of her beauty. That follows which was bound to
follow. Lupin, seeing this lovely girl daily for five or six weeks,
longing for her presence when she is not there, subjected to her charm
and grace when she is there, inhaling the cool perfume of her breath
when she bends over him, Lupin becomes enamored of his nurse. Gratitude
turns to love, admiration to passion. She is his salvation, but she is
also the joy of his eyes, the dream of his lonely hours, his light, his
hope, his very life.

He respects her sufficiently not to take advantage of the girl’s
devotion and not to make use of her to direct his confederates. There
is, in fact, a certain lack of decision apparent in the acts of the
gang. But he loves her also, his scruples weaken and, as Mlle. de
Saint-Véran refuses to be touched by a love that offends her, as she
relaxes her visits when they become less necessary, as she ceases them
entirely on the day when he is cured—desperate, maddened by grief, he
takes a terrible resolve. He leaves his lair, prepares his stroke and,
on Saturday the sixth of June, assisted by his accomplices, he carries
off the girl.

This is not all. The abduction must not be known. All search, all
surmises, all hope, even, must be cut short. Mlle. de Saint-Véran must
pass for dead. There is a mock murder: proofs are supplied for the
police inquiries. There is doubt about the crime, a crime, for that
matter, not unexpected, a crime foretold by the accomplices, a crime
perpetrated to revenge the chief’s death. And, through this very
fact—observe the marvelous ingenuity of the conception—through this
very fact, the belief in this death is, so to speak, stimulated.

It is not enough to suggest a belief; it is necessary to compel a
certainty. Lupin foresees my interference. I am sure to guess the
trickery of the chapel. I am sure to discover the crypt. And, as the
crypt will be empty, the whole scaffolding will come to the ground.

_The crypt shall not be empty._

In the same way, the death of Mlle. de Saint-Véran will not be
definite, unless the sea gives up her corpse.

_The sea shall give up the corpse of Mlle. de Saint-Véran._

The difficulty is tremendous. The double obstacle seems insurmountable.
Yes, to any one but Lupin, but not to Lupin.

As he had foreseen, I guess the trickery of the chapel, I discover the
crypt and I go down into the lair where Lupin has taken refuge. His
corpse is there!

Any person who had admitted the death of Lupin as possible would have
been baffled. But I had not admitted this eventuality for an instant
(first, by intuition and, secondly, by reasoning). Pretense thereupon
became useless and every scheme vain. I said to myself at once that the
block of stone disturbed by the pickaxe had been placed there with a
very curious exactness, that the least knock was bound to make it fall
and that, in falling, it must inevitably reduce the head of the false
Arsène Lupin to pulp, in such a way as to make it utterly
irrecognizable.

Another discovery: half an hour later, I hear that the body of Mlle. de
Saint-Véran has been found on the rocks at Dieppe—or rather a body
which is considered to be Mlle. de Saint-Véran’s, for the reason that
the arm has a bracelet similar to one of that young lady’s bracelets.
This, however, is the only mark of identity, for the corpse is
irrecognizable.

Thereupon I remember and I understand. A few days earlier, I happened
to read in a number of the _Vigie de Dieppe_ that a young American
couple staying at Envermeu had committed suicide by taking poison and
that their bodies had disappeared on the very night of the death. I
hasten to Envermeu. The story is true, I am told, except in so far as
concerns the disappearance, because the brothers of the victims came to
claim the corpses and took them away after the usual formalities. The
name of these brothers, no doubt, was Arsène Lupin & Co.

Consequently, the thing is proved. We know why Lupin shammed the murder
of the girl and spread the rumor of his own death. He is in love and
does not wish it known. And, to reach his ends, he shrinks from
nothing, he even undertakes that incredible theft of the two corpses
which he needs in order to impersonate himself and Mlle. de
Saint-Véran. In this way, he will be at ease. No one can disturb him.
No one will ever suspect the truth which he wishes to suppress.

No one? Yes—three adversaries, at the most, might conceive doubts:
Ganimard, whose arrival is hourly expected; Holmlock Shears, who is
about to cross the Channel; and I, who am on the spot. This constitutes
a threefold danger. He removes it. He kidnaps Ganimard. He kidnaps
Holmlock Shears. He has me stabbed by Brédoux.

One point alone remains obscure. Why was Lupin so fiercely bent upon
snatching the document about the Hollow Needle from me? He surely did
not imagine that, by taking it away, he could wipe out from my memory
the text of the five lines of which it consists! Then why? Did he fear
that the character of the paper itself, or some other clue, could give
me a hint?

Be that as it may, this is the truth of the Ambrumésy mystery. I repeat
that conjecture plays a certain part in the explanation which I offer,
even as it played a great part in my personal investigation. But, if
one waited for proofs and facts to fight Lupin, one would run a great
risk either of waiting forever or else of discovering proofs and facts
carefully prepared by Lupin, which would lead in a direction
immediately opposite to the object in view. I feel confident that the
facts, when they are known, will confirm my surmise in every respect.

So Isidore Beautrelet, mastered for a moment by Arsène Lupin,
distressed by the abduction of his father and resigned to defeat,
Isidore Beautrelet, in the end, was unable to persuade himself to keep
silence. The truth was too beautiful and too curious, the proofs which
he was able to produce were too logical and too conclusive for him to
consent to misrepresent it. The whole world was waiting for his
revelations. He spoke.

On the evening of the day on which his article appeared, the newspapers
announced the kidnapping of M. Beautrelet, senior. Isidore was informed
of it by a telegram from Cherbourg, which reached him at three o’clock.




CHAPTER FIVE
ON THE TRACK


Young Beautrelet was stunned by the violence of the blow. As a matter
of fact, although, in publishing his article, he had obeyed one of
those irresistible impulses which make a man despise every
consideration of prudence, he had never really believed in the
possibility of an abduction. His precautions had been too thorough. The
friends at Cherbourg not only had instructions to guard and protect
Beautrelet the elder: they were also to watch his comings and goings,
never to let him walk out alone and not even to hand him a single
letter without first opening it. No, there was no danger. Lupin,
wishing to gain time, was trying to intimidate his adversary.

The blow, therefore, was almost unexpected; and Isidore, because he was
powerless to act, felt the pain of the shock during the whole of the
remainder of the day. One idea alone supported him: that of leaving
Paris, going down there, seeing for himself what had happened and
resuming the offensive.

He telegraphed to Cherbourg. He was at Saint-Lazare a little before
nine. A few minutes after, he was steaming out of the station in the
Normandy express.

It was not until an hour later, when he mechanically unfolded a
newspaper which he had bought on the platform, that he became aware of
the letter by which Lupin indirectly replied to his article of that
morning:

_To the Editor of the Grand Journal._


SIR: I cannot pretend but that my modest personality, which would
certainly have passed unnoticed in more heroic times, has acquired a
certain prominence in the dull and feeble period in which we live. But
there is a limit beyond which the morbid curiosity of the crowd cannot
go without becoming indecently indiscreet. If the walls that surround
our private lives be not respected, what is to safeguard the rights of
the citizen?

Will those who differ plead the higher interest of truth? An empty
pretext in so far as I am concerned, because the truth is known and I
raise no difficulty about making an official confession of the truth in
writing. Yes, Mlle. de Saint-Véran is alive. Yes, I love her. Yes, I
have the mortification not to be loved by her. Yes, the results of the
boy Beautrelet’s inquiry are wonderful in their precision and accuracy.
Yes, we agree on every point. There is no riddle left. There is no
mystery. Well, then, what?

Injured to the very depths of my soul, bleeding still from cruel
wounds, I ask that my more intimate feelings and secret hopes may no
longer be delivered to the malevolence of the public. I ask for peace,
the peace which I need to conquer the affection of Mlle. de Saint-Véran
and to wipe out from her memory the thousand little injuries which she
has had to suffer at the hands of her uncle and cousin—this has not
been told—because of her position as a poor relation. Mlle. de
Saint-Véran will forget this hateful past. All that she can desire,
were it the fairest jewel in the world, were it the most unattainable
treasure, I shall lay at her feet. She will be happy. She will love me.

But, if I am to succeed, once more, I require peace. That is why I lay
down my arms and hold out the olive-branch to my enemies—while warning
them, with every magnanimity on my part, that a refusal on theirs might
bring down upon them the gravest consequences.

One word more on the subject of Mr. Harlington. This name conceals the
identity of an excellent fellow, who is secretary to Cooley, the
American millionaire, and instructed by him to lay hands upon every
object of ancient art in Europe which it is possible to discover. His
evil star brought him into touch with my friend Étienne de Vaudreix,
_alias_ Arsène Lupin, _alias_ myself. He learnt, in this way, that a
certain M. de Gesvres was willing to part with four pictures by Rubens,
ostensibly on the condition that they were replaced by copies and that
the bargain to which he was consenting remained unknown. My friend
Vaudreix also undertook to persuade M. de Gesvres to sell his chapel.
The negotiations were conducted with entire good faith on the side of
my friend Vaudreix and with charming ingenuousness on the side of Mr.
Harlington, until the day when the Rubenses and the carvings from the
chapel were in a safe place and Mr. Harlington in prison. There remains
nothing, therefore, to be done but to release the unfortunate American,
because he was content to play the modest part of a dupe; to brand the
millionaire Cooley, because, for fear of possible unpleasantness, he
did not protest against his secretary’s arrest; and to congratulate my
friend Étienne de Vaudreix, because he is revenging the outraged
morality of the public by keeping the hundred thousand francs which he
was paid on account by that singularly unattractive person, Cooley.

Pray, pardon the length of this letter and permit me to be, Sir,

Your obedient servant,
ARSÈNE LUPIN.


Isidore weighed the words of this communication as minutely, perhaps,
as he had studied the document concerning the Hollow Needle. He went on
the principle, the correctness of which was easily proved, that Lupin
had never taken the trouble to send one of his amusing letters to the
press without absolute necessity, without some motive which events were
sure, sooner or later, to bring to light.

What was the motive for this particular letter? For what hidden reason
was Lupin confessing his love and the failure of that love? Was it
there that Beautrelet had to seek, or in the explanations regarding Mr.
Harlington, or further still, between the lines, behind all those words
whose apparent meaning had perhaps no other object than to suggest some
wicked, perfidious, misleading little idea?

For hours, the young man, confined to his compartment, remained pensive
and anxious. The letter filled him with mistrust, as though it had been
written for his benefit and were destined to lead him, personally, into
error. For the first time and because he found himself confronted not
with a direct attack, but with an ambiguous, indefinable method of
fighting, he underwent a distinct sensation of fear. And, when he
thought of his good old, easy-going father, kidnapped through his
fault, he asked himself, with a pang, whether he was not mad to
continue so unequal a contest. Was the result not certain? Had Lupin
not won the game in advance?

It was but a short moment of weakness. When he alighted from his
compartment, at six o’clock in the morning, refreshed by a few hours’
sleep, he had recovered all his confidence.

On the platform, Froberval, the dockyard clerk who had given
hospitality to M. Beautrelet, senior, was waiting for him, accompanied
by his daughter Charlotte, an imp of twelve or thirteen.

“Well?” cried Isidore.

The worthy man beginning to moan and groan, he interrupted him, dragged
him to a neighboring tavern, ordered coffee and began to put plain
questions, without permitting the other the slightest digression:

“My father has not been carried off, has he? It was impossible.”

“Impossible. Still, he has disappeared.”

“Since when?”

“We don’t know.”

“What!”

“No. Yesterday morning, at six o’clock, as I had not seen him come down
as usual, I opened his door. He was gone.”

“But was he there on the day before, two days ago?”

“Yes. On the day before yesterday, he did not leave his room. He was a
little tired; and Charlotte took his lunch up to him at twelve and his
dinner at seven in the evening.”

“So it was between seven o’clock in the evening, on the day before
yesterday, and six o’clock on yesterday morning that he disappeared?”

“Yes, during the night before last. Only—”

“Only what?”

“Well, it’s like this: you can’t leave the arsenal at night.”

“Do you mean that he has not left it?”

“That’s impossible! My friends and I have searched the whole naval
harbor.”

“Then he has left it!”

“Impossible, every outlet is guarded!”

Beautrelet reflected and then said:

“What next?”

“Next, I hurried to the commandant’s and informed the officer in
charge.”

“Did he come to your house?”

“Yes; and a gentleman from the public prosecutor’s also. They searched
all through the morning; and, when I saw that they were making no
progress and that there was no hope left, I telegraphed to you.”

“Was the bed disarranged in his room?”

“No.”

“Nor the room disturbed in any way?”

“No. I found his pipe in its usual place, with his tobacco and the book
which he was reading. There was even this little photograph of yourself
in the middle of the book, marking the page.”

“Let me see it.”

Froberval passed him the photograph. Beautrelet gave a start of
surprise. He had recognized himself in the snapshot, standing, with his
two hands in his pockets, on a lawn from which rose trees and ruins.

Froberval added:

“It must be the last portrait of yourself which you sent him. Look, on
the back, you will see the date, 3 April, the name of the photographer,
R. de Val, and the name of the town, Lion—Lion-sur-Mer, perhaps.”

Isidore turned the photograph over and read this little note, in his
own handwriting:

“R. de Val.—3.4—Lion.”

He was silent for a few minutes and resumed:

“My father hadn’t shown you that snapshot yet?”

“No—and that’s just what astonished me when I saw it yesterday—for your
father used so often to talk to us about you.”

There was a fresh pause, greatly prolonged. Froberval muttered:

“I have business at the workshop. We might as well go in—”

He was silent. Isidore had not taken his eyes from the photograph, was
examining it from every point of view. At last, the boy asked:

“Is there such a thing as an inn called the Lion d’Or at a short league
outside the town?”

“Yes, about a league from here.”

“On the Route de Valognes, is it?”

“Yes, on the Route de Valognes.”

“Well, I have every reason to believe that this inn was the
head-quarters of Lupin’s friends. It was from there that they entered
into communication with my father.”

“What an idea! Your father spoke to nobody. He saw nobody.”

“He saw nobody, but they made use of an intermediary.”

“What proof have you?”

“This photograph.”

“But it’s your photograph!”

“It’s my photograph, but it was not sent by me. I was not even aware of
its existence. It was taken, without my knowledge, in the ruins of
Ambrumésy, doubtless by the examining-magistrate’s clerk, who, as you
know, was an accomplice of Arsène Lupin’s.”

“And then?”

“Then this photograph became the passport, the talisman, by means of
which they obtained my father’s confidence.”

“But who? Who was able to get into my house?”

“I don’t know, but my father fell into the trap. They told him and he
believed that I was in the neighborhood, that I was asking to see him
and that I was giving him an appointment at the Golden Lion.”

“But all this is nonsense! How can you assert—?”

“Very simply. They imitated my writing on the back of the photograph
and specified the meeting-place: Valognes Road, 3 kilometres 400, Lion
Inn. My father came and they seized him, that’s all.”

“Very well,” muttered Froberval, dumbfounded, “very well. I admit
it—things happened as you say—but that does not explain how he was able
to leave during the night.”

“He left in broad daylight, though he waited until dark to go to the
meeting-place.”

“But, confound it, he didn’t leave his room the whole of the day before
yesterday!”

“There is one way of making sure: run down to the dockyard, Froberval,
and look for one of the men who were on guard in the afternoon, two
days ago.—Only, be quick, if you wish to find me here.”

“Are you going?”

“Yes, I shall take the next train back.”

“What!—Why, you don’t know—your inquiry—”

“My inquiry is finished. I know pretty well all that I wanted to know.
I shall have left Cherbourg in an hour.”

Froberval rose to go. He looked at Beautrelet with an air of absolute
bewilderment, hesitated a moment and then took his cap:

“Are you coming, Charlotte?”

“No,” said Beautrelet, “I shall want a few more particulars. Leave her
with me. Besides, I want to talk to her. I knew her when she was quite
small.”

Froberval went away. Beautrelet and the little girl remained alone in
the tavern smoking room. A few minutes passed, a waiter entered,
cleared away some cups and left the room again. The eyes of the young
man and the child met; and Beautrelet placed his hand very gently on
the little girl’s hand. She looked at him for two or three seconds,
distractedly, as though about to choke. Then, suddenly hiding her head
between her folded arms, she burst into sobs.

He let her cry and, after a while, said:

“It was you, wasn’t it, who did all the mischief, who acted as
go-between? It was you who took him the photograph? You admit it, don’t
you? And, when you said that my father was in his room, two days ago,
you knew that it was not true, did you not, because you yourself had
helped him to leave it—?”

She made no reply. He asked:

“Why did you do it? They offered you money, I suppose—to buy ribbons
with a frock—?”

He uncrossed Charlotte’s arms and lifted up her head. He saw a poor
little face all streaked with tears, the attractive, disquieting,
mobile face of one of those little girls who seem marked out for
temptation and weakness.

“Come,” said Beautrelet, “it’s over, we’ll say no more about it. I will
not even ask you how it happened. Only you must tell me everything that
can be of use to me.—Did you catch anything—any remark made by those
men? How did they carry him off?”

She replied at once:

“By motor car. I heard them talking about it—”

“And what road did they take?”

“Ah, I don’t know that!”

“Didn’t they say anything before you—something that might help us?”

“No—wait, though: there was one who said, ‘We shall have no time to
lose—the governor is to telephone to us at eight o’clock in the
morning—’”

“Where to?”

“I can’t say.—I’ve forgotten—”

“Try—try and remember. It was the name of a town, wasn’t it?”

“Yes—a name—like Château—”

“Châteaubriant?—Château-Thierry?—”

“No-no—”

“Châteauroux?”

“Yes, that was it—Châteauroux—”

Beautrelet did not wait for her to complete her sentence. Already he
was on his feet and, without giving a thought to Froberval, without
even troubling about the child, who stood gazing at him in
stupefaction, he opened the door and ran to the station:

“Châteauroux, madame—a ticket for Châteauroux—”

“Over Mans and Tours?” asked the booking-clerk.

“Of course—the shortest way. Shall I be there for lunch?”

“Oh, no!”

“For dinner? Bedtime—?”

“Oh, no! For that, you would have to go over Paris. The Paris express
leaves at nine o’clock. You’re too late—”

It was not too late. Beautrelet was just able to catch the train.

“Well,” said Beautrelet, rubbing his hands, “I have spent only two
hours or so at Cherbourg, but they were well employed.”

He did not for a moment think of accusing Charlotte of lying. Weak,
unstable, capable of the worst treacheries, those petty natures also
obey impulses of sincerity; and Beautrelet had read in her affrighted
eyes her shame for the harm which she had done and her delight at
repairing it in part. He had no doubt, therefore, that Châteauroux was
the other town to which Lupin had referred and where his confederates
were to telephone to him.

On his arrival in Paris, Beautrelet took every necessary precaution to
avoid being followed. He felt that it was a serious moment. He was on
the right road that was leading him to his father: one act of
imprudence might ruin all.

He went to the flat of one of his schoolfellows and came out, an hour
later, irrecognizable, rigged out as an Englishman of thirty, in a
brown check suit, with knickerbockers, woolen stockings and a cap, a
high-colored complexion and a red wig. He jumped on a bicycle laden
with a complete painter’s outfit and rode off to the Gare d’Austerlitz.

He slept that night at Issoudun. The next morning, he mounted his
machine at break of day. At seven o’clock, he walked into the
Châteauroux post-office and asked to be put on to Paris. As he had to
wait, he entered into conversation with the clerk and learnt that, two
days before, at the same hour, a man dressed for motoring had also
asked for Paris.

The proof was established. He waited no longer.

By the afternoon, he had ascertained, from undeniable evidence, that a
limousine car, following the Tours road, had passed through the village
of Buzancais and the town of Châteauroux and had stopped beyond the
town, on the verge of the forest. At ten o’clock, a hired gig, driven
by a man unknown, had stopped beside the car and then gone off south,
through the valley of the Bouzanne. There was then another person
seated beside the driver. As for the car, it had turned in the opposite
direction and gone north, toward Issoudun.

Beautrelet easily discovered the owner of the gig, who, however, had no
information to supply. He had hired out his horse and trap to a man who
brought them back himself next day.

Lastly, that same evening, Isidore found out that the motor car had
only passed through Issoudun, continuing its road toward Orleans, that
is to say, toward Paris.

From all this, it resulted, in the most absolute fashion, that M.
Beautrelet was somewhere in the neighborhood. If not, how was it
conceivable that people should travel nearly three hundred miles across
France in order to telephone from Châteauroux and next to return, at an
acute angle, by the Paris road?

This immense circuit had a more definite object: to move M. Beautrelet
to the place assigned to him.

“And this place is within reach of my hand,” said Isidore to himself,
quivering with hope and expectation. “My father is waiting for me to
rescue him at ten or fifteen leagues from here. He is close by. He is
breathing the same air as I.”

He set to work at once. Taking a war-office map, he divided it into
small squares, which he visited one after the other, entering the
farmhouses making the peasants talk, calling on the schoolmasters, the
mayors, the parish priests, chatting to the women. It seemed to him
that he must attain his end without delay and his dreams grew until it
was no longer his father alone whom he hoped to deliver, but all those
whom Lupin was holding captive: Raymonde de Saint-Véran, Ganimard,
Holmlock Shears, perhaps, and others, many others; and, in reaching
them, he would, at the same time, reach Lupin’s stronghold, his lair,
the impenetrable retreat where he was piling up the treasures of which
he had robbed the wide world.

But, after a fortnight’s useless searching, his enthusiasm ended by
slackening and he very soon lost confidence. Because success was slow
in appearing, from one day to the next, almost, he ceased to believe in
it; and, though he continued to pursue his plan of investigations, he
would have felt a real surprise if his efforts had led to the smallest
discovery.

More days still passed by, monotonous days of discouragement. He read
in the newspapers that the Comte de Gesvres and his daughter had left
Ambrumésy and gone to stay near Nice. He also learnt that Harlington
had been released, that gentleman’s innocence having become
self-obvious, in accordance with the indications supplied by Arsène
Lupin.

Isidore changed his head-quarters, established himself for two days at
the Châtre, for two days at Argenton. The result was the same.

Just then, he was nearly throwing up the game. Evidently, the gig in
which his father had been carried off could only have furnished a
stage, which had been followed by another stage, furnished by some
other conveyance. And his father was far away.

He was thinking of leaving, when, one Monday morning, he saw, on the
envelope of an unstamped letter, sent on to him from Paris, a
handwriting that set him trembling with emotion. So great was his
excitement that, for some minutes, he dared not open the letter, for
fear of a disappointment. His hand shook. Was it possible? Was this not
a trap laid for him by his infernal enemy?

He tore open the envelope. It was indeed a letter from his father,
written by his father himself. The handwriting presented all the
peculiarities, all the oddities of the hand which he knew so well.

He read:

Will these lines ever reach you, my dear son? I dare not believe it.

During the whole night of my abduction, we traveled by motor car; then,
in the morning, by carriage. I could see nothing. My eyes were
bandaged. The castle in which I am confined should be somewhere in the
midlands, to judge by its construction and the vegetation in the park.
The room which I occupy is on the second floor: it is a room with two
windows, one of which is almost blocked by a screen of climbing
glycines. In the afternoon, I am allowed to walk about the park, at
certain hours, but I am kept under unrelaxing observation.

I am writing this letter, on the mere chance of its reaching you, and
fastening it to a stone. Perhaps, one day, I shall be able to throw it
over the wall and some peasant will pick it up.

But do not be distressed about me. I am treated with every
consideration.

Your old father, who is very fond of you and very sad to think of the
trouble he is giving you,

BEAUTRELET.


Isidore at once looked at the postmarks. They read, “Cuzion, Indre.”

The Indre! The department which he had been stubbornly searching for
weeks!

He consulted a little pocket-guide which he always carried. Cuzion, in
the canton of Éguzon—he had been there too.

For prudence’s sake, he discarded his personality as an Englishman,
which was becoming too well known in the district, disguised himself as
a workman and made for Cuzion. It was an unimportant village. He would
easily discover the sender of the letter.

For that matter, chance served him without delay:

“A letter posted on Wednesday last?” exclaimed the mayor, a respectable
tradesman in whom he confided and who placed himself at his disposal.
“Listen, I think I can give you a valuable clue: on Saturday morning,
Gaffer Charel, an old knife-grinder who visits all the fairs in the
department, met me at the end of the village and asked, ‘Monsieur le
maire, does a letter without a stamp on it go all the same?’ ‘Of
course,’ said I. ‘And does it get there?’ ‘Certainly. Only there’s
double postage to pay on it, that’s all the difference.’”

“And where does he live?”

“He lives over there, all alone—on the slope—the hovel that comes next
after the churchyard.—Shall I go with you?”

It was a hovel standing by itself, in the middle of an orchard
surrounded by tall trees. As they entered the orchard, three magpies
flew away with a great splutter and they saw that the birds were flying
out of the very hole in which the watch-dog was fastened. And the dog
neither barked nor stirred as they approached.

Beautrelet went up in great surprise. The brute was lying on its side,
with stiff paws, dead.

They ran quickly to the cottage. The door stood open. They entered. At
the back of a low, damp room, on a wretched straw mattress, flung on
the floor itself, lay a man fully dressed.

“Gaffer Charel!” cried the mayor. “Is he dead, too?”

The old man’s hands were cold, his face terribly pale, but his heart
was still beating, with a faint, slow throb, and he seemed not to be
wounded in any way.

They tried to resuscitate him and, as they failed in their efforts,
Beautrelet went to fetch a doctor. The doctor succeeded no better than
they had done. The old man did not seem to be suffering. He looked as
if he were just asleep, but with an artificial slumber, as though he
had been put to sleep by hypnotism or with the aid of a narcotic.

In the middle of the night that followed, however, Isidore, who was
watching by his side, observed that the breathing became stronger and
that his whole being appeared to be throwing off the invisible bonds
that paralyzed it.

At daybreak, he woke up and resumed his normal functions: ate, drank
and moved about. But, the whole day long, he was unable to reply to the
young man’s questions and his brain seemed as though still numbed by an
inexplicable torpor.

The next day, he asked Beautrelet:

“What are you doing here, eh?”

It was the first time that he had shown surprise at the presence of a
stranger beside him.

Gradually, in this way, he recovered all his faculties. He talked. He
made plans. But, when Beautrelet asked him about the events immediately
preceding his sleep, he seemed not to understand.

And Beautrelet felt that he really did not understand. He had lost the
recollection of all that had happened since the Friday before. It was
like a sudden gap in the ordinary flow of his life. He described his
morning and afternoon on the Friday, the purchases he had made at the
fair, the meals he had taken at the inn. Then—nothing—nothing more. He
believed himself to be waking on the morrow of that day.

It was horrible for Beautrelet. The truth lay there, in those eyes
which had seen the walls of the park behind which his father was
waiting for him, in those hands which had picked up the letter, in that
muddled brain which had recorded the whereabouts of that scene, the
setting, the little corner of the world in which the play had been
enacted. And from those hands, from that brain he was unable to extract
the faintest echo of the truth so near at hand!

Oh, that impalpable and formidable obstacle, against which all his
efforts hurled themselves in vain, that obstacle built up of silence
and oblivion! How clearly it bore the mark of Arsène Lupin! He alone,
informed, no doubt, that M. Beautrelet had attempted to give a signal,
he alone could have struck with partial death the one man whose
evidence could injure him. It was not that Beautrelet felt himself to
be discovered or thought that Lupin, hearing of his stealthy attack and
knowing that a letter had reached him, was defending himself against
him personally. But what an amount of foresight and real intelligence
it displayed to suppress any possible accusation on the part of that
chance wayfarer! Nobody now knew that within the walls of a park there
lay a prisoner asking for help.

Nobody? Yes, Beautrelet. Gaffer Charel was unable to speak. Very well.
But, at least, one could find out which fair the old man had visited
and which was the logical road that he had taken to return by. And,
along this road, perhaps it would at last be possible to find—

Isidore, as it was, had been careful not to visit Gaffer Charel’s hovel
except with the greatest precautions and in such a way as not to give
an alarm. He now decided not to go back to it. He made inquiries and
learnt that Friday was market-day at Fresselines, a fair-sized town
situated a few leagues off, which could be reached either by the rather
winding highroad or by a series of short cuts.

On the Friday, he chose the road and saw nothing that attracted his
attention, no high walled enclosure, no semblance of an old castle.

He lunched at an inn at Fresselines and was on the point of leaving
when he saw Gaffer Charel arrive and cross the square, wheeling his
little knife-grinding barrow before him. He at once followed him at a
good distance.

The old man made two interminable waits, during which he ground dozens
of knives. Then, at last, he went away by a quite different road, which
ran in the direction of Crozant and the market-town of Éguzon.

Beautrelet followed him along this road. But he had not walked five
minutes before he received the impression that he was not alone in
shadowing the old fellow. A man was walking along between them,
stopping at the same time as Charel and starting off again when he did,
without, for that matter, taking any great precautions against being
seen.

“He is being watched,” thought Beautrelet. “Perhaps they want to know
if he stops in front of the walls—”

His heart beat violently. The event was at hand.

The three of them, one behind the other, climbed up and down the steep
slopes of the country and arrived at Crozant, famed for the colossal
ruins of its castle. There Charel made a halt of an hour’s duration.
Next he went down to the riverside and crossed the bridge.

But then a thing happened that took Beautrelet by surprise. The other
man did not cross the river. He watched the old fellow move away and,
when he had lost sight of him, turned down a path that took him right
across the fields.

Beautrelet hesitated for a few seconds as to what course to take, and
then quietly decided. He set off in pursuit of the man.

“He has made sure,” he thought, “that Gaffer Charel has gone straight
ahead. That is all he wanted to know and so he is going—where? To the
castle?”

He was within touch of the goal. He felt it by a sort of agonizing
gladness that uplifted his whole being.

The man plunged into a dark wood overhanging the river and then
appeared once more in the full light, where the path met the horizon.

When Beautrelet, in his turn, emerged from the wood, he was greatly
surprised no longer to see the man. He was seeking him with his eyes
when, suddenly, he gave a stifled cry and, with a backward spring, made
for the line of trees which he had just left. On his right, he had seen
a rampart of high walls, flanked, at regular distances, by massive
buttresses.

It was there! It was there! Those walls held his father captive! He had
found the secret place where Lupin confined his victim.

He dared not quit the shelter which the thick foliage of the wood
afforded him. Slowly, almost on all fours, he bore to the right and in
this way reached the top of a hillock that rose to the level of the
neighboring trees. The walls were taller still. Nevertheless, he
perceived the roof of the castle which they surrounded, an old Louis
XIII. roof, surmounted by very slender bell-turrets arranged
corbel-wise around a higher steeple which ran to a point.

Beautrelet did no more that day. He felt the need to reflect and to
prepare his plan of attack without leaving anything to chance. He held
Lupin safe; and it was for Beautrelet now to select the hour and the
manner of the combat.

He walked away.

Near the bridge, he met two country-girls carrying pails of milk. He
asked:

“What is the name of the castle over there, behind the trees?”

“That’s the Château de l’Aiguille, sir.”

He had put his question without attaching any importance to it. The
answer took away his breath:

“The Château de l’Aiguille?—Oh!—But in what department are we? The
Indre?”

“Certainly not. The Indre is on the other side of the river. This side,
it’s the Creuse.”

Isidore saw it all in a flash. The Château de l’Aiguille! The
department of the Creuse! _L’Aiguille Creuse!_ The Hollow Needle! The
very key to the document! Certain, decisive, absolute victory!

Without another word, he turned his back on the two girls and went his
way, tottering like a drunken man.




CHAPTER SIX
AN HISTORIC SECRET


Beautrelet’s resolve was soon taken: he would act alone. To inform the
police was too dangerous. Apart from the fact that he could only offer
presumptions, he dreaded the slowness of the police, their inevitable
indiscretions, the whole preliminary inquiry, during which Lupin, who
was sure to be warned, would have time to effect a retreat in good
order.

At eight o’clock the next morning, with his bundle under his arm, he
left the inn in which he was staying near Cuzion, made for the nearest
thicket, took off his workman’s clothes, became once more the young
English painter that he had been and went to call on the notary at
Éguzon, the largest place in the immediate neighborhood.

He said that he liked the country and that he was thinking of taking up
his residence there, with his relations, if he could find a suitable
house.

The notary mentioned a number of properties. Beautrelet took note of
them and let fall that some one had spoken to him of the Château de
l’Aiguille, on the bank of the Creuse.

“Oh, yes, but the Château de l’Aiguille, which has belonged to one of
my clients

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