The Hollow Needle (10 page)

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

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

There was a pause. Then Bredoux 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 Bredoux. “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 Bredoux. “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 Chateau d’Ambrumesy—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 Ambrumesy 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 Lycee 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 Etienne de Vaudreix was found in that same crypt and as the said Etienne 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-Veran’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 Sante prison. One would learn what had become, after the crime, of Bredoux 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 Bredoux, 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 AMBRUMESY 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,* 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.

“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.