4
A Few Gleams in the Darkness
However well tempered the character of a man may be – and Sholmes is one of those beings over which bad fortune scarcely has any hold – there are however certain circumstances in which the most intrepid person feels the need to summon up his strength before chancing his luck in battle.
“I’m taking a little break today,” he said.
“And me?”
“You, Wilson, are going to buy some clothes and linen to restock our wardrobe. During that time I shall take a rest.”
“Take a rest, Sholmes. I’ll keep watch.”
Wilson spoke these words with all the self-importance of a sentry placed in an outpost where he is consequently exposed to the worst dangers. He thrust out his chest. His muscles tensed. With a keen eye he scanned the space in the little hotel room where they had taken up residence.
“Yes, keep watch, Wilson. I shall take advantage of the time to prepare a plan of campaign better suited to the opponent whom we have to combat. You see, we were mistaken about Lupin. We must take things from the beginning again.”
“Even from before then, if possible. But do we have time?”
“Nine days, old friend! That’s five too many.”
All afternoon the Englishman spent smoking and sleeping. It was not till the following day that he started operations.
“Wilson, I’m ready. Now let’s get going.”
“Let’s get going,” exclaimed Wilson, full of martial fervour. “I confess that for my part I’m itching to get off.”
Sholmes conducted three long meetings – first with Maître Detinan, whose apartment he studied in the minutest detail; then with Suzanne Gerbois, whom he summoned by telegram and questioned about the Blonde Woman; and finally with Sister Auguste, who had withdrawn into the convent of the Visitandines since the murder of Baron d’Hautrec.
At each visit, Wilson waited outside, and each time he asked:
“Happy?”
“Very happy.”
“I was certain we were on the right track. Let’s go!”
And they did go around a lot. They visited the two buildings which flank the house on Avenue Henri-Martin, and then they went to the Rue Clapeyron. And while he was examining the façade of number 25, Sholmes continued to explain:
“It is clear that there are secret passages between all these houses… but what I don’t understand…”
Deep down inside and for the first time, Wilson doubted his brilliant collaborator’s omniscience. Why did he talk so much and do so little?
“Why?” exclaimed Sholmes, in reply to the intimate reflections of Wilson. “Because with this devil Lupin we are working in unknown territory, without any clear direction, and instead of extracting the truth from precise facts we have to drag it out of our own minds to check if it fits the events.”
“What about the secret passages though?”
“And then what? Even if I knew where they were, if I knew the one which allowed Lupin to gain entry to the lawyer’s apartment, or the one which the Blonde Woman went through after the murder of Baron d’Hautrec, would I be that much further forward? Would it provide me with weapons with which to attack him?”
“Let’s attack anyway,” exclaimed Wilson.
He had barely uttered these words when he moved back, with a cry. Something had just fallen at their feet, a sack half-full of sand, which could have seriously injured them.
Sholmes raised his head: above them some labourers were working on scaffolding hanging from the balcony on the fifth floor.
“Well, we’re lucky, a foot closer and we would have had the sack of one of those clumsy oafs on our skulls. One could really almost think…”
He interrupted himself and leapt off towards the house, ascended the five floors, rang the bell, burst into the apartment, to the great terror of the valet de chambre, and went out onto the balcony. There was no one there.
“Where are the labourers who were here?” he asked the valet de chambre.
“They’ve just gone.”
“Which way?”
“Down the backstairs.”
Sholmes leant out. He saw two men leaving the house, pushing their bicycles as they went. They got onto the saddles and disappeared.
“Have they been working on this scaffolding for long?”
“Those men? Only since this morning. They were new workers.”
Sholmes rejoined Wilson.
They went back in a melancholy mood, and this second day ended in gloomy silence.
The next day their programme was the same. They sat on the same bench in the Avenue Henri-Martin and, to the great despair of Wilson, they sat there facing the three buildings interminably.
“What do you hope will happen, Sholmes? That Lupin will come out of one of these houses?”
“No.”
“That the Blonde Woman will appear?”
“No.”
“Well, what?”
“Well, I hope that some small fact will materialize, some ordinary little fact, which will serve me as a point of departure.”
“And it hasn’t materialized?”
“In this case something has materialized in me, a spark which will bring things to a head.”
One incident disrupted the monotony of that morning, but in a way which was rather disagreeable.
A gentleman’s horse, which was following the bridle path situated between the avenue’s dual carriageway, shied and hit the bench where they were sitting, so that its hindquarters brushed against Sholmes’s shoulder.
“Hey! Hey!” he chuckled. “A little closer and you would have smashed my shoulder.”
The gentleman was struggling with his horse. The Englishman drew out his revolver and aimed. But Wilson swiftly seized his arm.
“Are you mad, Herlock! Look… what are you doing? You’re going to kill that gentleman?”
“Let go, Wilson… let go.”
They struggled with each other, and while that was happening, the gentleman brought his mount under control and set off away from them.
“Now you can shoot at him,” exclaimed Wilson triumphantly, when the horse-rider was some distance away.
“You absolute imbecile, don’t you realize that he was an accomplice of Arsène Lupin?”
Sholmes was shaking with anger. Wilson was crestfallen and mumbled:
“What’s that you say? That gentleman?…”
“…is an accomplice of Lupin, like the two labourers who threw the sack on our heads.”
“Is it credible?”
“Credible or not, we had the means there of getting some proof.”
“By killing that gentleman?”
“By simply shooting down his horse. But for you I would have got one of Lupin’s accomplices. Now do you understand how stupid you were?”
It was a gloomy afternoon. They did not address a single word to each other. At five o’clock, while they were pacing up and down the Rue Clapeyron, taking care to keep their distance from the houses, three young labourers who were singing with their arms around each other bumped into them and were going to continue on their way without separating. Sholmes, who was in a bad mood, stood in their way. They jostled each other for a short time. Sholmes took up the pose of a boxer, and shot a blow with his fist into the chest of one of them, and a blow into the face of another. He beat up two of the three young men who, unable to keep it up any longer, went off as their companion had already done.
“Ah!” he exclaimed. “That did me good!… My nerves were tense… That was an excellent bit of work.”
But noticing Wilson against the wall, he said to him:
“What is it? What’s the matter, old friend. You’re quite pale.”
The old friend showed him his arm, which was hanging down inert, and he mumbled:
“I don’t know what I… there’s some pain in my arm.”
“Some pain in the arm? Is it serious?”
“Yes… yes… it’s the right arm…”
In spite of all his efforts he could not manage to move it. Herlock felt it, softly at first, then more roughly, “to determine,” he said, “the precise degree of pain.” The precise degree of pain was so high that he went into a nearby chemist’s, where Wilson came over faint.
The chemist and his assistants fussed around him. They established that the arm was broken, and it was a question of finding a surgeon straight away, undergoing an operation and getting him to a clinic. In the meantime, they undressed the patient who, shaking with pain, started to yell.
“Good… good… perfect,” said Sholmes, who had been given the job of holding the arm, “just a little patience, old friend… in five or six weeks, there’ll be no more sign of it… but I’ll see that they pay for it, those scoundrels! Do you hear… him above all… for it’s that miserable Lupin again who’s behind it… Oh, I swear that if ever…”
He interrupted himself suddenly, let go of the arm, which caused Wilson to have such a burst of pain that the poor man fainted again and, striking himself on the forehead, he said:
“Wilson, I’ve got an idea… Can it be by chance…”
He did not move, but gazed fixedly, and muttered short, broken phrases.
“Yes, that’s it… that would explain it all… We’ve been seeking afar what is actually right next to us… My God, I knew I only had to think about it… Oh, Wilson, my good friend, I think you’ll be pleased!”
And leaving his old friend in the lurch, he leapt out into the street and went to number 25. Above and to the right of the door there was an inscription on one of the stones: Destange, architect, 1875.
At number 23 there was the same inscription.
So far, it was quite natural. But over on Avenue Henri-Martin, what would he read there?
A carriage passed.
“Driver, Avenue Henri-Martin, number 134, at the double.”
Standing up in the carriage he urged on the horse and offered tips to the driver. ‘Faster!… Much faster!”
He became very anxious at the bend in the Rue de la Pompe. Had he caught a glimpse of the truth?
On one of the stones of the house the following words were engraved: Destange, architect, 1874.
On the neighbouring houses, there was the same inscription: Destange, architect, 1874.
The after-effect of these feelings were such that he collapsed on the bottom of the carriage for a few minutes, trembling with delight. Finally, there was a faint light flickering in the midst of the darkness! In the great dark forest where a thousand paths crossed each other, he had found the first sign of a track followed by the enemy.
In a post office he asked to be connected by telephone with the Château of Crozon. The countess herself answered.
“Hello!… Is that you, Madame?”
“Mr Sholmes, is it? Is everything all right?”
“Perfectly all right, but please tell me, as quickly as possible… Hello?… Just briefly please…”
“I’m listening.”
“In what period was the Château of Crozon built?”
“It burned down thirty years ago, and was reconstructed.”
“By whom? And in what year?”
“The inscription over the steps to the front door reads: Lucien Destange, architect, 1877.”
“Thank you, Madame, and goodbye.”
He went off murmuring:
“Destange… Lucien Destange… I’m not unfamiliar with this name.”
Having noticed a reading room nearby, he went to consult a dictionary of modern biography and copied out the note devoted to “Lucien Destanges, born in 1840, Grand Prix of Rome,1 officer of the Légion d’Honneur, author of highly valued works on architecture… etc.”
Then he went back to the chemist’s and from there to the hospital where Wilson had been taken. Lying on his bed and tortured with pain, his arm trapped in a cradling splint and shivering with fever, his old friend was delirious.
“Victory! Victory!” exclaimed Sholmes. “I’ve got one end of the thread.”
“What thread?”
“The one that will lead us to our goal! I shall be walking on solid ground, on which there will be footprints, clues…”
“Some cigarette ash?” asked Wilson, who was revived by the interesting situation.
“And many other things! Just think, Wilson, I have worked out the mysterious link which joined the various adventures of the Blonde Woman together. Why were these three abodes, in which these three adventures were conducted, chosen by Lupin?”
“Yes, why?”
“Because, Wilson, these three abodes were built by the same architect. It was easy to work out, wouldn’t you say? Certainly… But nobody thought of it.”
“Nobody except you.”
“Except me, who now knows that the same architect, by combining three similar plans, has made it possible to accomplish three deeds which are in appearance miraculous, but in reality are simple and easy.”
“What good luck!”
“And it was high time, my old friend. I was beginning to lose patience. We are already on the fourth day.”
“Out of ten.”
“Oh! From now on…”
He could not keep still, and was exuberant and happy, which was not usual with him.
“But when I think that earlier, in the street, those rogues could have broken my arm as well as yours. What do you think, Wilson?”
Wilson contented himself with just shuddering at this horrible idea.
And Sholmes continued:
“Let this be a lesson to us! You see, Wilson, our big mistake has been to fight Lupin openly, and present ourselves obligingly to his blows. But it’s not as bad as all that, since he only managed to get at you—”
“And I got off with a broken arm,” moaned Wilson.
“—when it could have been both of us. But enough of all this boasting. I was beaten in broad daylight while we were being watched. In the shadows and free to move as I want, I have the advantage, whatever my enemy’s strengths.”
“Ganimard could help you.”
“Never! The day when I am able to say where Arsène Lupin is, this is where he’s hiding and here’s how to get hold of him, then I’ll pack Ganimard off to one of the two addresses he gave me: his home on Rue Pergolèse or the Swiss tavern on the Place du Châtelet. Until then, I work alone.”
He approached the bed, put his hand on Wilson’s shoulder – on the injured shoulder of course – and said to him with great affection:
“Take care, my old friend. Your role from now on consists in keeping two or three of Arsène Lupin’s men occupied. They will wait vainly for me to come and get news of you, in order to get on my track again. It’s a role that requires trust.”
“A role that requires trust, and I thank you for it,” replied Wilson, deeply grateful. “I shall make every effort to fulfill it conscientiously. But, the way I see it, you won’t be coming back again?”
“For what reason?” Sholmes asked coldly.
“Indeed… indeed… I’ll be leaving as soon as possible. Then there’s one more thing you can do for me, Herlock: could you give me something to drink?”
“To drink?”
“Yes. I’m dying of thirst, and with this fever—”
“But of course! Immediately…”
He fiddled with two or three bottles, caught sight of a packet of tobacco, lit his pipe and suddenly, as if he had not even heard his friend’s request, he went off, with his old friend giving him a begging look for an inaccessible glass of water.
“M. Destange!”
The servant looked the individual up and down to whom he had just opened the door of the mansion – the magnificent mansion which forms the corner of the Place Malesherbes and the Rue Montchanin. And at the sight of this little man, grey-haired, unshaven, and whose long black frock coat, of doubtful cleanliness, matched the odd qualities of a body rendered strangely ugly by nature, he replied with suitable disdain:
“M. Destange is in, or he is not in. That depends. Does the gentleman have a visiting card?”
The gentleman did not have a card, but he had a letter of introduction, and the servant was obliged to take this letter to M. Destange. M. Destange ordered him to bring the new arrival into his presence.
He was introduced into an immense round room, which occupied one of the wings of the mansion and the walls of which were covered with books. The architect said to him:
“You are M. Stickmann?”
“Yes, sir.”
“My secretary has informed me that he is ill and sends you to continue the general catalogue of books that he started under my direction, more specifically the catalogue of German books. Are you familiar with this sort of work?”
“Yes, I’ve had much experience of it,” replied M. Stickmann with a strong Teutonic accent.
This being the case the agreement was quickly concluded. And M. Destange, without further delay, got down to work with his new secretary.
Herlock Sholmes had got himself inside the house.
In order to avoid detection by Lupin and to get into the mansion where Lucien Destange lived with his daughter Clotilde, the illustrious detective had had to make a leap in the dark, come up with a series of stratagems, gain, under all kinds of names, the favours of a host of people and, in short, lead the most complicated existence for forty-eight hours.
He had found out the following information: M. Destange, in poor health and desirous of a peaceful existence, had retired from work and was living among the collections of books on architecture that he had put together. No other pleasure interested him except looking at and handling dusty old volumes.
As for his daughter Clotilde, she was regarded as eccentric. Shut away from the world, like her father, but in another part of the mansion, she never went out.
“All that,” he said to himself, as he inscribed in a register the titles which M. Destange dictated to him, “all that is not yet decisive, but what a step forward! It is impossible for me not to discover the solution to one of these fascinating problems: is M. Destange associated with Arsène Lupin? Does he continue to see him? Do documents relating to the construction of the three buildings exist? And won’t such documents provide me with the addresses of other buildings that have been similarly tampered with, and which Lupin has kept for himself and his gang?”
M. Destange as an accomplice of Arsène Lupin! This venerable man, an officer of the Légion d’Honneur, together with a burglar! It was an idea that was difficult to accept. Besides, if such complicity is admitted, how could M. Destange have foreseen, thirty years beforehand, the escapes planned by Arsène Lupin, who would still have been a babe in arms at the time.
It doesn’t matter! The Englishman persevered. With his marvellous flair, and that instinct which is uniquely his, he sensed a mystery lurking around somewhere. It could be discerned by little things that he could not specify, but which impressed themselves on him since his arrival in the mansion.
On the morning of the second day he had not yet made any interesting discovery. At two o’clock he had his first sight of Clotilde Destange, who came to find a book in the library. She was a woman of about thirty, brunette, who moved slowly and silently, and whose face retained that indifferent expression of those people who keep themselves very much to themselves. She exchanged a few words with M. Destange, and then left without even looking at Sholmes.
The afternoon dragged on monotonously. At five o’clock, M. Destange announced that he was going out. Sholmes was left alone in the circular gallery which was fixed halfway up inside the rotunda. The daylight was fading. He too was about to leave, when a cracking sound was heard, and at the same time he had the feeling that there was someone in the room. The minutes dragged on, one after the other. Suddenly he shuddered: a shadow emerged from the semi-darkness, very close to him, on the balcony. Was it credible? For how long had this invisible person been keeping him company? And where had he come from?
The man went down the steps and moved towards a large oak cabinet. Concealed behind the drapes which hung from the handrail of the gallery and down on his knees, Sholmes was watching, and saw the man rummaging through the papers with which the cabinet was cluttered. What was he looking for?
And then suddenly the door opened and Mlle Destange entered swiftly, saying to someone who was following her:
“So you’re really not going out, Father? In that case I’ll put the lights on… Just a second… Don’t move…”
The man pushed back the two wings of the cabinet door and hid himself in the frame of a large window, pulling the curtains across in front of him. How could Mlle Destange not see him? How could she not hear him? Calmly she switched on the lights and made way for her father. They sat down next to each other. She picked up a volume that she had brought with her and started to read.
“So your secretary is no longer here?” she said after a few moments.
“No… as you can see.”
“Are you still satisfied with him?” she continued, as if she did not know about the illness of the real secretary and his replacement by Stickmann.
“Still… still…”
M. Destange’s head rolled from right to left. He was falling asleep. A few moments went by. The young woman went on reading. But one of the curtains on the window was pulled aside, and the man slid along the wall towards the door, a movement which caused him to pass behind M. Destange, but facing Clotilde, and in such a way that Sholmes could see him clearly. It was Arsène Lupin.
The Englishman trembled with pleasure. His calculations had been correct, he had got to the very heart of the mysterious affair, and Lupin was at the anticipated place.
Clotilde did not move however, although it was impossible that a single movement of this man had escaped her. Lupin was almost in reach of the door, and he was already stretching out his arm towards the handle, when an object fell from a table, brushed against by his clothes. M. Destange woke up with a start. Arsène Lupin was already standing in front of him, with his hat in his hand, and smiling.
“Maxime Bermond,” exclaimed M. Destange joyfully, “my dear Maxime!… What favourable wind has brought you here?”
“The wish to see you, as well as Mlle Destange.”
“So you’ve just come back from your trip?”
“Yesterday.”
“You’ll stay and have dinner with us?”
“No, I’m dining at a restaurant with my friends.”
“So, tomorrow then? Clotilde, you must insist that he come tomorrow. Oh, Maxime, my good chap… I’ve been thinking about you just these past few days.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I was putting some papers in order from the old days, in this cabinet, and I found our last account.”
“What account?”
“The one for the Avenue Henri-Martin.”
“What! You keep such paperwork? What for?”
All three of them sat down in a small room which was joined to the rotunda by a large bay.
“Is it really Lupin?” wondered Sholmes, suddenly overcome with doubt.
Yes, to all appearances it was him, but at the same time he was another man, who resembled Arsène Lupin in certain respects, but who nevertheless retained his own distinct individuality, his personal traits, his facial expression, his own hair colour…
Dressed in a suit, wearing a white tie and a soft shirt hugging his chest, he talked in a joyful way, telling some stories which M. Destange laughed at heartily and brought a smile to Clotilde’s lips. And each of these smiles seemed to be a reward which Arsène Lupin was seeking and which he was delighted to have obtained. It intensified his own wit and cheerful mood, and imperceptibly, at the sound of this happy, clear voice, Clotilde’s face became animated and lost that expression of coldness which made it not very likeable.
“They’re in love with each other,” thought Sholmes, “but what the devil can Clotilde, Destange and Maxim Bermond have in common? Does she know that Maxime is none other than Arsène Lupin?”
Until seven o’clock he listened anxiously, learning as much as he could from their slightest word. Then, with precautions, he climbed down and went across the side of the room where he did not risk being seen from the salon.
Once outside, Sholmes made sure that there was neither car nor cab parked nearby, and went off limping slightly along the Boulevard Malesherbes. But in a road adjacent to it, he put on the overcoat which he was carrying on his arm, bent his hat back out of its shape, stood up straight and, having thus transformed himself, he returned to the square, where he waited, with eyes fixed on the Destange mansion.
Arsène Lupin came out almost immediately and, via Rue de Constantinople and Rue de Londres, made his way towards the centre of Paris. Herlock was walking a hundred paces behind him.
These were really delicious moments for the Englishman. He sniffed the air avidly, like a good dog scenting a completely fresh track. It really gave him infinite delight to follow his adversary. And it was no longer him under surveillance, but Arsène Lupin, the invisible Arsène Lupin. He held him, as it were, just within his sights, as though attached by strings which were impossible to break. And it gave him great pleasure to consider that among the passers-by there was this prey which belonged to him.
But it was not long before he was struck by a strange phenomenon: in the middle of the space which separated him from Arsène Lupin some other persons were moving forward in the same direction, notably two large strapping men in round hats on the left-hand pavement, and two others on the right-hand pavement in caps and with cigarettes in their lips.
It was perhaps only a chance event. But Sholmes was very surprised when, after Lupin went into a tobacco kiosk, the four men stopped – and was even more surprised when they set off again at the same time as he did, but independently, each of them following the Chaussée d’Antin on his own.
“Curse it!” thought Sholmes. “He’s got away!”
The idea that others were on the track of Arsène Lupin, that others were robbing him, not of the glory – he was not worried about that so much – but the enormous pleasure, the burning desire to crush, by himself, the most formidable enemy that he had ever encountered, this was the thought which infuriated him. But he could not possibly be wrong: the men had that air of detachment, a too natural air of men who, adjusting their pace to the pace of another person, try not to attract attention.
“Does Ganimard know much more about it than he lets on?” murmured Sholmes. “Is he playing with me?”
He wanted to accost one of the four individuals, to consult with him. But as they got near to the boulevard, the crowd became denser, and he was afraid of losing Lupin and quickened his pace. He came to the corner of the Rue du Helder just as Lupin was climbing up the steps of the Hungarian restaurant. The door was open in such a way as to enable Sholmes, sitting on a bench on the other side of the boulevard, to see him sit down at a luxuriously set table decorated with flowers, where three gentlemen in suits and two very elegant women were already sitting. They welcomed him with great displays of affection.
Herlock looked around for the four individuals and caught sight of them, spread around among the groups who were listening to the gypsy orchestra in a nearby café. The strange thing was that they did not seem to be concerned about Arsène Lupin, but more about the people he was with.
Suddenly one of the men drew a cigarette out of his pocket and approached a gentleman in a frock coat and a high hat. The gentleman held out his cigar, and Sholmes had the impression that they were having a conversation, and for a much longer time than was required for the act of lighting a cigarette. Finally the gentleman went up the steps and glanced around the dining room of the restaurant. Catching sight of Lupin he went towards him, talked with him for a few moments, and then chose a table nearby. Sholmes noted that it was none other than the horse-rider from the Avenue Henri-Martin.
Then he understood. Not only wasn’t Arsène Lupin being tailed, but these men belonged to his gang, ensuring his own security! They were his bodyguards, his satellites, his attentive escort. Wherever the master was in danger, the accomplices were there, ready to ward it off, ready to defend him. The four individuals were his accomplices! And the man in the frock coat was also his accomplice!
A shudder ran through the Englishman. Would he ever be able to get hold of this inaccessible being? What limitless power such an organization represented, directed by such a boss!
He tore a page from his notebook, and wrote a few lines in pencil, which he then put in an envelope, and he spoke to a lad of fifteen years or so, who had been lying on the bench:
“Here, boy, get a cab and take this letter to the woman at the cashier’s desk of the Swiss tavern, Place du Châtelet. Quickly…”
He gave him a five-franc coin and the lad disappeared.
Half an hour went by. The crowd had grown bigger, and Sholmes could only make out Lupin’s henchmen from time to time. But then someone brushed against him and a voice said in his ear:
“So, what’s happening Mr Sholmes?”
“Oh, it’s you, Monsieur Ganimard.”
“Yes, I got your note at the tavern. What’s happening?”
“He’s there.”
“What’s that you say?”
“Over there, at the back of the restaurant. Lean to the right… Can you see him?”
“No.”
“He’s pouring out some champagne for the woman next to him.”
“But that’s not him.”
“It’s him.”
“But I tell you… And yet… indeed, it could be him… the scoundrel, what a resemblance he has!…” murmured Ganimard naively. “And the others, are they his accomplices?”
“No, the woman next to him is Lady Cliveden, the other is the Duchess of Cleath, and opposite them is the Spanish ambassador to London.”
Ganimard stepped forward, but Herlock held him back.
“Don’t be so rash! You are on your own.”
“But so is he.”
“No, he has some men on the boulevard who are mounting guard… not to mention that man inside the restaurant…”
“But if I collared Arsène Lupin and shouted out his name, I’d have the whole room on my side, and all the waiters.”
“I would prefer you to have some officers with you.”
“It’s for just such a move that Arsène Lupin’s friends are keeping a lookout… No, look. Mr Sholmes, we haven’t any choice.”
He was right, and Sholmes realized it. It was better to welcome the chance and take advantage of this exceptional opportunity. He just advised Ganimard:
“Try to ensure that you are recognized as late as possible…”
And he slipped behind a newspaper kiosk, without losing sight of Arsène Lupin, who over there was leaning towards the woman next to him and smiling.
The inspector crossed the road, with his hands in his pockets, like a man who is going to walk straight ahead. But scarcely had he got to the opposite pavement when he swiftly turned aside and with one bound climbed up the flight of steps.
There was a piercing whistle… Ganimard collided with the maître d’hôtel, who had suddenly placed himself across the doorway and pushed him back indignantly, as he would have done to an intruder whose questionable attire would have brought the luxurious nature of the restaurant into disrepute. Ganimard wavered. At the same moment the man in the frock coat came out. He took the inspector’s side, and both he and the maître d’hôtel argued furiously, while hanging on to Ganimard, the one holding him back, the other pushing him forward, in such a way that, in spite of all his efforts, the poor fellow was pushed down to the bottom of the steps.
A crowd immediately gathered. Two police officers, attracted by the noise, tried to push their way through the crowd, but some incomprehensible resistance brought them to a standstill, without them being able to free themselves from the shoulders pressing against them and the backs which barred their way.
And suddenly, as if by magic, a way becomes free! The maître d’hôtel, realizing his mistake, apologizes profusely, and the man in the frock coat gives up defending the inspector, the crowd moves away, the officers get through and Ganimard rushes towards the table with the six guests… There are now only five! He looks around him… there is no other exit except the doorway.
“Where is the person who was sitting in this place?” he shouts out to the five astonished guests. “Yes, there were six of you… Where’s the sixth person?”
“M. Destro?”
“No, Arsène Lupin!”
A waiter comes up to him:
“The gentleman in question has just gone up to the mezzanine.”
Ganimard rushed off. The mezzanine consists of private rooms and has its own special exit onto the boulevard!
“Go and find him at once,” moaned Ganimard. “He’s got right away!”
He was not very far away, about two hundred metres at the very most, in the Madeleine-Bastille omnibus, which was rolling along peacefully at the gentle trotting pace of its three horses. It went across the Place de l’Opéra and off along the Boulevard des Capucines. On the platform two strapping young men in bowler hats were talking to each other. On the upper deck, at the top of the stairs, a little old gentleman was dozing: it was Herlock Sholmes. With his head nodding, and rocked by the movement of the vehicle, the Englishman was saying to himself:
“If good old Wilson could see me, he would be proud of his collaborator!… Bah!… It was easy to foretell, when someone whistled, that the game was lost, and that there was nothing better to do than keep an eye on the surroundings of the restaurant. But there is certainly never a dull moment with this devil of a man!”
At the final stop, Herlock, leaning over, saw Arsène Lupin passing in front of his bodyguards, and he heard him say: “At Place de l’Étoile.”
“At l’Étoile – perfect, they’ve arranged a meeting. I’ll be there. Let them go off in their motorized cab, and we’ll drive after the two companions.”
The two companions went off on foot, and did indeed arrive at l’Étoile, and rang at the door of a narrow house at number 40 Rue Chalgrin. At the bend of this street, which was not very busy, Sholmes was able to hide himself in the shade of a recess. One of the windows on the ground floor opened and a man in a round hat closed the shutters. Above the shutters the fanlight lit up.
After ten minutes, a gentleman came and rang at the same door, and then, immediately afterwards, another person came. Finally a motorized cab stopped nearby, and Sholmes saw two people getting out of it: Arsène Lupin and a woman wrapped in a coat and a heavy veil.
“It’s the Blonde Woman, no doubt about it,” Sholmes said to himself, as the cab drove away.
He let a few moments go by and then approached the house, climbed up onto the window sill and, standing on tiptoe, he could see into the room via the fanlight.
Leaning on the mantelpiece, Arsène Lupin was talking animatedly. The others stood around him, listening attentively. Among them Sholmes could recognize the man in the frock coat and he also thought he could recognize the maître d’hôtel of the restaurant. As for the Blonde Woman, she was sitting in an armchair with her back turned towards him.
“They’re holding a meeting,” he thought. “The events of this evening have disturbed them and they feel the need to discuss things. Oh, if only I could catch them all at the same time, with one blow!”
As one of the accomplices had moved, he leapt down to the ground and concealed himself in the shadows. The gentleman in the frock coat and the maître d’hôtel left the house. Immediately the lights went on on the first floor, and someone closed the shutters on the windows. And all was dark both above and below.
“He and she have stayed on the ground floor,” Herlock said to himself. “The two accomplices live on the second floor.”
He waited for part of the night without moving, fearing that Arsène Lupin might go away if he wasn’t there. At four o’clock, noticing two policemen at the end of the road, he went up to them, explained the situation and entrusted to them the surveillance of the house.
Then he went to Ganimard’s home on the Rue Pergolèse and woke him up.
“I’ve got him again.”
“Arsène Lupin?”
“Yes.”
“If you’ve got him in the same way you had him a little while ago, then I might as well go back to bed. Anyway, let’s go to the police station.”
They went to Rue Mesnil, and from there to the home of the superintendent, M. Decointre. And then, accompanied by half a dozen men, they returned to Rue Chalgrin.
“Anything new?” Sholmes asked the two officers on duty.
“Nothing.”
Daylight was slowly brightening the sky when, having made his arrangements, the superintendent rang the bell and went to the concierge’s lodge. Alarmed by this invasion and trembling all over, the woman replied that there were no tenants on the ground floor.
“What, no tenants?” exclaimed Ganimard.
“No, it’s the ones on the first floor. The two Leroux gentlemen. They have furnished the downstairs flat for some relatives from the provinces.”
“A man and a woman?”
“Yes.”
“Who came with them yesterday evening?”
“Quite possibly… I was asleep… though, I don’t think… here is the key… they didn’t ask for it.”
With this key the superintendent opened the door on the other side of the hallway. The ground-floor flat had only two rooms, and they were empty.
“Impossible!” exclaimed Sholmes. “I saw them, her and him.”
The superintendent chuckled:
“No doubt you did, but they’re not there now.”
“Let’s go up to the first floor. They must be there.”
“The first floor is inhabited by the two Leroux gentlemen.”
“Then we shall question these Leroux gentlemen.”
They all went up the stairs and the superintendent rang the bell. When he rang a second time an individual, who was none other than one of the bodyguards, appeared, in his shirtsleeves and in an angry mood.
“What’s going on? What an awful racket… Do you think it’s all right to wake people up…”
But he stopped, confused.
“God forgive me… but am I really not dreaming? It’s M. Decointre!… And you too, Monsieur Ganimard? So how may I help you?”
There was an enormous burst of laughter. Ganimard also burst out laughing, in a fit of hilarity which made him double up and made his face flushed.
“It’s you, Leroux,” he stammered. “Oh, how funny… Leroux, an accomplice of Arsène Lupin… Oh, I’ll die laughing… and the other Leroux, your brother, can I see him?”
“Edmond, where are you? Monsieur Ganimard’s paying us a visit.”
Another person came forward, the sight of whom intensified Ganimard’s good mood.
“Is it possible? We had no idea! Oh my friends, you’ve landed yourselves in a fine mess… Who would ever have believed it? It’s a good job that old Ganimard is on hand, and above all that he has friends to help him… friends who have come from a long way away!”
And turning towards Sholmes, he introduced them:
“Victor Leroux, inspector at the Sûreté, one of the best of the best in the iron brigade… and Edmond Leroux, head clerk in the anthropometric department…”
1 Grand Prix of Rome: A prestigious French scholarship which enabled young painters, sculptors, engravers, architects and musicians to live and study in Rome for up to five years.