The Confessions of Arsène Lupin Page 11

  Lupin spun round on his heel, went to the door, opened it and disappeared before Ganimard had even thought of taking a decision. The inspector rushed after him, but at once found that the handle of the door, by some trick of mechanism which he did not know, refused to turn. It took him ten minutes to unscrew the lock and ten minutes more to unscrew the lock of the hall-door. By the time that he had scrambled down the three flights of stairs, Ganimard had given up all hope of catching Arsène Lupin.

  Besides, he was not thinking of it. Lupin inspired him with a queer, complex feeling, made up of fear, hatred, involuntary admiration and also the vague instinct that he, Ganimard, in spite of all his efforts, in spite of the persistency of his endeavours, would never get the better of this particular adversary. He pursued him from a sense of duty and pride, but with the continual dread of being taken in by that formidable hoaxer and scouted and fooled in the face of a public that was always only too willing to laugh at the chief-inspector’s mishaps.

  This business of the red scarf, in particular, struck him as most suspicious. It was interesting, certainly, in more ways than one, but so very improbable! And Lupin’s explanation, apparently so logical, would never stand the test of a severe examination!

  “No,” said Ganimard, “this is all swank: a parcel of suppositions and guesswork based upon nothing at all. I’m not to be caught with chaff.”

  When he reached the headquarters of police, at 36 Quai des Orfèvres, he had quite made up his mind to treat the incident as though it had never happened.

  He went up to the Criminal Investigation Department. Here, one of his fellow-inspectors said:

  “Seen the chief?”

  “No.”

  “He was asking for you just now.”

  “Oh, was he?”

  “Yes, you had better go after him.”

  “Where?”

  “To the Rue de Berne … there was a murder there last night.”

  “Oh! Who’s the victim?”

  “I don’t know exactly … a music-hall singer, I believe.”

  Ganimard simply muttered:

  “By Jove!”

  Twenty minutes later he stepped out of the underground railway-station and made for the Rue de Berne.

  The victim, who was known in the theatrical world by her stage-name of Jenny Saphir, occupied a small flat on the second floor of one of the houses. A policeman took the chief-inspector upstairs and showed him the way, through two sitting-rooms, to a bedroom, where he found the magistrates in charge of the inquiry, together with the divisional surgeon and M. Dudouis, the head of the detective-service.

  Ganimard started at the first glance which he gave into the room. He saw, lying on a sofa, the corpse of a young woman whose hands clutched a strip of red silk! One of the shoulders, which appeared above the low-cut bodice, bore the marks of two wounds surrounded with clotted blood. The distorted and almost blackened features still bore an expression of frenzied terror.

  The divisional surgeon, who had just finished his examination, said:

  “My first conclusions are very clear. The victim was twice stabbed with a dagger and afterward strangled. The immediate cause of death was asphyxia.”

  “By Jove!” thought Ganimard again, remembering Lupin’s words and the picture which he had drawn of the crime.

  The examining-magistrate objected:

  “But the neck shows no discoloration.”

  “She may have been strangled with a napkin or a handkerchief,” said the doctor.

  “Most probably,” said the chief detective, “with this silk scarf, which the victim was wearing and a piece of which remains, as though she had clung to it with her two hands to protect herself.”

  “But why does only that piece remain?” asked the magistrate. “What has become of the other?”

  “The other may have been stained with blood and carried off by the murderer. You can plainly distinguish the hurried slashing of the scissors.”

  “By Jove!” said Ganimard, between his teeth, for the third time. “That brute of a Lupin saw everything without seeing a thing!”

  “And what about the motive of the murder?” asked the magistrate. “The locks have been forced, the cupboards turned upside down. Have you anything to tell me, M. Dudouis?”

  The chief of the detective-service replied:

  “I can at least suggest a supposition, derived from the statements made by the servant. The victim, who enjoyed a greater reputation on account of her looks than through her talent as a singer, went to Russia, two years ago, and brought back with her a magnificent sapphire, which she appears to havereceived from some person of importance at the court. Since then, she went by the name of Jenny Saphir and seems generally to have been very proud of that present, although, for prudence sake, she never wore it. I daresay that we shall not be far out if we presume the theft of the sapphire to have been the cause of the crime.”

  “But did the maid know where the stone was?”

  “No, nobody did. And the disorder of the room would tend to prove that the murderer did not know either.”

  “We will question the maid,” said the examining-magistrate.

  M. Dudouis took the chief-inspector aside and said:

  “You’re looking very old-fashioned, Ganimard. What’s the matter? Do you suspect anything?”

  “Nothing at all, chief.”

  “That’s a pity. We could do with a bit of showy work in the department. This is one of a number of crimes, all of the same class, of which we have failed to discover the perpetrator. This time we want the criminal … and quickly!”

  “A difficult job, chief.”

  “It’s got to be done. Listen to me, Ganimard. According to what the maid says, Jenny Saphir led a very regular life. For a month past she was in the habit of frequently receiving visits, on her return from the music-hall, that is to say, at about half-past ten, from a man who would stay until midnight or so. ‘He’s a society man,’ Jenny Saphir used to say, ‘and he wants to marry me.’ This society man took every precaution to avoid being seen, such as turning up his coat-collar and lowering the brim of his hat when he passed the porter’s box. And Jenny Saphir always made a point of sending away her maid, even before he came. This is the man whom we have to find.”

  “Has he left no traces?”

  “None at all. It is obvious that we have to deal with a very clever scoundrel, who prepared his crime beforehand and committed it with every possible chance of escaping unpunished. His arrest would be a great feather in our cap. I rely on you, Ganimard.”

  “Ah, you rely on me, chief?” replied the inspector. “Well, we shall see … we shall see … I don’t say no … Only …”

  He seemed in a very nervous condition, and his agitation struck M. Dudouis.

  “Only,” continued Ganimard, “only I swear … do you hear, chief? I swear …”

  “What do you swear?”

  “Nothing … We shall see, chief … we shall see …”

  Ganimard did not finish his sentence until he was outside, alone. And he finished it aloud, stamping his foot, in a tone of the most violent anger:

  “Only, I swear to Heaven that the arrest shall be effected by my own means, without my employing a single one of the clues with which that villain has supplied me. Ah, no! Ah, no! …”

  Railing against Lupin, furious at being mixed up in this business and resolved, nevertheless, to get to the bottom of it, he wandered aimlessly about the streets. His brain was seething with irritation; and he tried to adjust his ideas a little and to discover, among the chaotic facts, some trifling detail, unperceived by all, unsuspected by Lupin himself, that might lead him to success.

  He lunched hurriedly at a bar, resumed his stroll and suddenly stopped, petrified, astounded and confused. He was walking under the gateway of the very house in the Rue de Surène to which Lupin had enticed him a few hours earlier! A force stronger than his own will was drawing him there once more. The solution of the problem lay there. There and
there alone were all the elements of the truth. Do and say what he would, Lupin’s assertions were so precise, his calculations so accurate, that, worried to the innermost recesses of his being by so prodigious a display of perspicacity, he could not do other than take up the work at the point where his enemy had left it.

  Abandoning all further resistance, he climbed the three flights of stairs. The door of the flat was open. No one had touched the exhibits. He put them in his pocket and walked away.

  From that moment, he reasoned and acted, so to speak, mechanically, under the influence of the master whom he could not choose but obey.

  Admitting that the unknown person whom he was seeking lived in the neighbourhood of the Pont-Neuf, it became necessary to discover, somewhere between that bridge and the Rue de Berne, the first-class confectioner’s shop, open in the evenings, at which the cakes were bought. This did not take long to find. A pastry-cook near the Gare Saint-Lazare showed him some little cardboard boxes, identical in material and shape with the one in Ganimard’s possession. Moreover, one of the shop-girls remembered having served, on the previous evening, a gentleman whose face was almost concealed in the collar of his fur coat, but whose eyeglass she had happened to notice.

  “That’s one clue checked,” thought the inspector. “Our man wears an eyeglass.”

  He next collected the pieces of the racing-paper and showed them to a newsvendor, who easily recognized the Turf Illustré. Ganimard at once went to the offices of the Turf and asked to see the list of subscribers. Going through the list, he jotted down the names and addresses of all those who lived anywhere near the Pont-Neuf and principally—because Lupin had said so—those on the left bank of the river.

  He then went back to the Criminal Investigation Department, took half a dozen men and packed them off with the necessary instructions.

  At seven o’clock in the evening, the last of these men returned and brought good news with him. A certain M. Prévailles, a subscriber to the Turf, occupied an entresol flat on the Quai des Augustins. On the previous evening, he left his place, wearing a fur coat, took his letters and his paper, the Turf Illustré, from the porter’s wife, walked away and returned home at midnight. This M. Prévailles wore a single eyeglass. He was a regular race-goer and himself owned several hacks which he either rode himself or jobbed out.

  The inquiry had taken so short a time and the results obtained were so exactly in accordance with Lupin’s predictions that Ganimard felt quite overcome on hearing the detective’s report. Once more he was measuring the prodigious extent of the resources at Lupin’s disposal. Never in the course of his life—and Ganimard was already well-advanced in years—had he come across such perspicacity, such a quick and far-seeing mind.

  He went in search of M. Dudouis.

  “Everything’s ready, chief. Have you a warrant?”

  “Eh?”

  “I said, everything is ready for the arrest, chief.”

  “You know the name of Jenny Saphir’s murderer?”

  “Yes.”

  “But how? Explain yourself.”

  Ganimard had a sort of scruple of conscience, blushed a little and nevertheless replied:

  “An accident, chief. The murderer threw everything that was likely to compromise him into the Seine. Part of the parcel was picked up and handed to me.”

  “By whom?”

  “A boatman who refused to give his name, for fear of getting into trouble. But I had all the clues I wanted. It was not so difficult as I expected.”

  And the inspector described how he had gone to work.

  “And you call that an accident!” cried M. Dudouis. “And you say that it was not difficult! Why, it’s one of your finest performances! Finish it yourself, Ganimard, and be prudent.”

  Ganimard was eager to get the business done. He went to the Quai des Augustins with his men and distributed them around the house. He questionedthe portress, who said that her tenant took his meals out of doors, but made a point of looking in after dinner.

  A little before nine o’clock, in fact, leaning out of her window, she warned Ganimard, who at once gave a low whistle. A gentleman in a tall hat and a fur coat was coming along the pavement beside the Seine. He crossed the road and walked up to the house.

  Ganimard stepped forward:

  “M. Prévailles, I believe?”

  “Yes, but who are you?”

  “I have a commission to …”

  He had not time to finish his sentence. At the sight of the men appearing out of the shadow, Prévailles quickly retreated to the wall and faced his adversaries, with his back to the door of a shop on the ground-floor, the shutters of which were closed.

  “Stand back!” he cried. “I don’t know you!”

  His right hand brandished a heavy stick, while his left was slipped behind him and seemed to be trying to open the door.

  Ganimard had an impression that the man might escape through this way and through some secret outlet:

  “None of this nonsense,” he said, moving closer to him. “You’re caught … You had better come quietly.”

  But, just as he was laying hold of Prévailles’ stick, Ganimard remembered the warning which Lupin gave him: Prévailles was left-handed; and it was his revolver for which he was feeling behind his back.

  The inspector ducked his head. He had noticed the man’s sudden movement. Two reports rang out. No one was hit.

  A second later, Prévailles received a blow under the chin from the butt-end of a revolver, which brought him down where he stood. He was entered at the Dépôt soon after nine o’clock.

  Ganimard enjoyed a great reputation even at that time. But this capture, so quickly effected, by such very simple means, and at once made public by the police, won him a sudden celebrity. Prévailles was forthwith saddled with all the murders that had remained unpunished; and the newspapers vied with one another in extolling Ganimard’s prowess.

  The case was conducted briskly at the start. It was first of all ascertained that Prévailles, whose real name was Thomas Derocq, had already been in trouble. Moreover, the search instituted in his rooms, while not supplying any fresh proofs, at least led to the discovery of a ball of whip-cord similar to the cord used for doing up the parcel and also to the discovery of daggers which would have produced a wound similar to the wounds on the victim.

  But, on the eighth day, everything was changed. Until then Prévailles had refused to reply to the questions put to him; but now, assisted by his counsel, he pleaded a circumstantial alibi and maintained that he was at the Folies-Bergère on the night of the murder.

  As a matter of fact, the pockets of his dinner-jacket contained the counterfoil of a stall-ticket and a programme of the performance, both bearing the date of that evening.

  “An alibi prepared in advance,” objected the examining-magistrate.

  “Prove it,” said Prévailles.

  The prisoner was confronted with the witnesses for the prosecution. The young lady from the confectioner’s “thought she knew” the gentleman with the eyeglass. The hall-porter in the Rue de Berne “thought he knew” the gentleman who used to come to see Jenny Saphir. But nobody dared to make a more definite statement.

  The examination, therefore, led to nothing of a precise character, provided no solid basis whereon to found a serious accusation.

  The judge sent for Ganimard and told him of his difficulty.

  “I can’t possibly persist, at this rate. There is no evidence to support the charge.”

  “But surely you are convinced in your own mind, monsieur le juge d’instruction! Prévailles would never have resisted his arrest unless he was guilty.”

  “He says that he thought he was being assaulted. He also says that he never set eyes on Jenny Saphir; and, as a matter of fact, we can find no one to contradict his assertion. Then again, admitting that the sapphire has been stolen, we have not been able to find it at his flat.”

  “Nor anywhere else,” suggested Ganimard.

  “Quit
e true, but that is no evidence against him. I’ll tell you what we shall want, M. Ganimard, and that very soon: the other end of this red scarf.”

  “The other end?”

  “Yes, for it is obvious that, if the murderer took it away with him, the reason was that the stuff is stained with the marks of the blood on his fingers.”

  Ganimard made no reply. For several days he had felt that the whole business was tending to this conclusion. There was no other proof possible. Given the silk scarf—and in no other circumstances—Prévailles’ guilt was certain. Now Ganimard’s position required that Prévailles’ guilt should beestablished. He was responsible for the arrest, it had cast a glamour around him, he had been praised to the skies as the most formidable adversary of criminals; and he would look absolutely ridiculous if Prévailles were released.

  Unfortunately, the one and only indispensable proof was in Lupin’s pocket. How was he to get hold of it?

  Ganimard cast about, exhausted himself with fresh investigations, went over the inquiry from start to finish, spent sleepless nights in turning over the mystery of the Rue de Berne, studied the records of Prévailles’ life, sent ten men hunting after the invisible sapphire. Everything was useless.

  On the 28th of December, the examining-magistrate stopped him in one of the passages of the Law Courts:

  “Well, M. Ganimard, any news?”

  “No, monsieur le juge d’instruction.”

  “Then I shall dismiss the case.”