The Confessions of Arsène Lupin Page 18

  “Come in here,” she said.

  “To your rooms?”

  “Yes.”

  Two maids were sitting up for her. Their mistress ordered them to retire to their bedrooms, on the third floor.

  Almost immediately after, there was a knock at the door of the outer room; and a voice called:

  “Angélique!”

  “Is that you, father?” she asked, suppressing her agitation.

  “Yes. Is your husband here?”

  “We have just come in.”

  “Tell him I want to speak to him. Ask him to come to my room. It’s important.”

  “Very well, father, I’ll send him to you.”

  She listened for a few seconds, then returned to the boudoir where her husband was and said:

  “I am sure my father is still there.”

  He moved as though to go out:

  “In that case, if he wants to speak to me …”

  “My father is not alone,” she said, quickly, blocking his way.

  “Who is with him?”

  “His nephew, Jacques d’Emboise.”

  There was a moment’s silence. He looked at her with a certain astonishment, failing quite to understand his wife’s attitude. But, without pausing to go into the matter:

  “Ah, so that dear old d’Emboise is there?” he chuckled. “Then the fat’s in the fire? Unless, indeed …”

  “My father knows everything,” she said. “I overheard a conversation between them just now. His nephew has read certain letters … I hesitated at first about telling you … Then I thought that my duty …”

  He studied her afresh. But, at once conquered by the queerness of the situation, he burst out laughing:

  “What? Don’t my friends on board ship burn my letters? And they have let their prisoner escape? The idiots! Oh, when you don’t see to everything yourself! … No matter, its distinctly humorous … D’Emboise versus d’Emboise … Oh, but suppose I were no longer recognized? Suppose d’Emboise himself were to confuse me with himself?”

  He turned to a wash-hand-stand, took a towel, dipped it in the basin and soaped it and, in the twinkling of an eye, wiped the make-up from his face and altered the set of his hair:

  “That’s it,” he said, showing himself to Angélique under the aspect in which she had seen him on the night of the burglary in Paris. “I feel more comfortable like this for a discussion with my father-in-law.”

  “Where are you going?” she cried, flinging herself in front of the door.

  “Why, to join the gentlemen.”

  “You shall not pass!”

  “Why not?”

  “Suppose they kill you?”

  “Kill me?”

  “That’s what they mean to do, to kill you … to hide your body somewhere … Who would know of it?”

  “Very well,” he said, “from their point of view, they are quite right. But, if I don’t go to them, they will come here. That door won’t stop them … Nor you, I’m thinking. Therefore, it’s better to have done with it.”

  “Follow me,” commanded Angélique.

  She took up the lamp that lit the room, went into her bedroom, pushed aside the wardrobe, which slid easily on hidden castors, pulled back an old tapestry-hanging, and said:

  “Here is a door that has not been used for years. My father believes the key to be lost. I have it here. Unlock the door with it. A staircase in the wall will take you to the bottom of the tower. You need only draw the bolts of another door and you will be free.”

  He could hardly believe his ears. Suddenly, he grasped the meaning of Angélique’s whole behaviour. In front of that sad, plain, but wonderfully gentle face, he stood for a moment discountenanced, almost abashed. He no longer thought of laughing. A feeling of respect, mingled with remorse and kindness, overcame him.

  “Why are you saving me?” he whispered.

  “You are my husband.”

  He protested:

  “No, no … I have stolen that title. The law will never recognize my marriage.”

  “My father does not want a scandal,” she said.

  “Just so,” he replied, sharply, “just so. I foresaw that; and that was why I had your cousin d’Emboise near at hand. Once I disappear, he becomes your husband. He is the man you have married in the eyes of men.”

  “You are the man I have married in the eyes of the Church.”

  “The Church! The Church! There are means of arranging matters with the Church … Your marriage can be annulled.”

  “On what pretext that we can admit?”

  He remained silent, thinking over all those points which he had not considered, all those points which were trivial and absurd for him, but which were serious for her, and he repeated several times:

  “This is terrible … this is terrible … I should have anticipated …”

  And, suddenly, seized with an idea, he clapped his hands and cried:

  “There, I have it! I’m hand in glove with one of the chief figures at the Vatican. The Pope never refuses me anything. I shall obtain an audience and I have no doubt that the Holy Father, moved by my entreaties …”

  His plan was so humorous and his delight so artless that Angélique could not help smiling; and she said:

  “I am your wife in the eyes of God.”

  She gave him a look that showed neither scorn nor animosity, nor even anger; and he realized that she omitted to see in him the outlaw and the evil-doer and remembered only the man who was her husband and to whom the priest had bound her until the hour of death.

  He took a step toward her and observed her more attentively. She did not lower her eyes at first. But she blushed. And never had he seen so pathetic a face, marked with such modesty and such dignity. He said to her, as on that first evening in Paris:

  “Oh, your eyes … the calm and sadness of your eyes … the beauty of your eyes!”

  She dropped her head and stammered:

  “Go away … go …”

  In the presence of her confusion, he received a quick intuition of the deeper feelings that stirred her, unknown to herself. To that spinster soul, of which he recognized the romantic power of imagination, the unsatisfied yearnings, the poring over old-world books, he suddenly represented, in that exceptional moment and in consequence of the unconventional circumstances of their meetings, somebody special, a Byronic hero, a chivalrous brigand of romance. One evening, in spite of all obstacles, he, the world-famed adventurer, already ennobled in song and story and exalted by his own audacity, had come to her and slipped the magic ring upon her finger: a mystic and passionate betrothal, as in the days of the Corsair and Hernani … Greatly moved and touched, he was on the verge of giving way to an enthusiastic impulse and exclaiming:

  “Let us go away together! … Let us fly! … You are my bride … my wife … Share my dangers, my sorrows and my joys … It will be a strange and vigorous, a proud and magnificent life …”

  But Angélique’s eyes were raised to his again; and they were so pure and so noble that he blushed in his turn. This was not the woman to whom such words could be addressed.

  He whispered:

  “Forgive me … I am a contemptible wretch … I have wrecked your life …”

  “No,” she replied, softly. “On the contrary, you have shown me where my real life lies.”

  He was about to ask her to explain. But she had opened the door and was pointing the way to him. Nothing more could be spoken between them. He went out without a word, bowing very low as he passed.

  A month later, Angélique de Sarzeau-Vendôme, Princesse de Bourbon-Condé, lawful wife of Arsène Lupin, took the veil and, under the name of Sister Marie-Auguste, buried herself within the walls of the Visitation Convent.

  On the day of the ceremony, the mother superior of the convent received a heavy sealed envelope containing a letter with the following words:

  “For Sister Marie-Auguste’s poor.”

  Enclosed with the letter were five hundred bank-notes of a thous
and francs each.

  IX. THE INVISIBLE PRISONER

  One day, at about four o’clock, as evening was drawing in, Farmer Goussot, with his four sons, returned from a day’s shooting. They were stalwart men, all five of them, long of limb, broad-chested, with faces tanned by sun and wind. And all five displayed, planted on an enormous neck and shoulders, the same small head with the low forehead, thin lips, beaked nose and hard and repellent cast of countenance. They were feared and disliked by all around them. They were a money-grubbing, crafty family; and their word was not to be trusted.

  On reaching the old barbican-wall that surrounds the Héberville property, the farmer opened a narrow, massive door, putting the big key back in his pocket after his sons had passed in. And he walked behind them, along the path that led through the orchards. Here and there stood great trees, stripped by the autumn winds, and clumps of pines, the last survivors of the ancient park now covered by old Goussot’s farm.

  One of the sons said:

  “I hope mother has lit a log or two.”

  “There’s smoke coming from the chimney,” said the father.

  The outhouses and the homestead showed at the end of a lawn; and, above them, the village church, whose steeple seemed to prick the clouds that trailed along the sky.

  “All the guns unloaded?” asked old Goussot.

  “Mine isn’t,” said the eldest. “I slipped in a bullet to blow a kestrel’s head off …”

  He was the one who was proudest of his skill. And he said to his brothers:

  “Look at that bough, at the top of the cherry tree. See me snap it off.”

  On the bough sat a scarecrow, which had been there since spring and which protected the leafless branches with its idiot arms.

  He raised his gun and fired.

  The figure came tumbling down with large, comic gestures, and was caught on a big, lower branch, where it remained lying stiff on its stomach, with a great top hat on its head of rags and its hay-stuffed legs swaying from right to left above some water that flowed past the cherry tree through a wooden trough.

  They all laughed. The father approved:

  “A fine shot, my lad. Besides, the old boy was beginning to annoy me. I couldn’t take my eyes from my plate at meals without catching sight of that oaf …”

  They went a few steps farther. They were not more than thirty yards from the house, when the father stopped suddenly and said:

  “Hullo! What’s up?”

  The sons also had stopped and stood listening. One of them said, under his breath:

  “It comes from the house … from the linen-room …”

  And another spluttered:

  “Sounds like moans … And mother’s alone!”

  Suddenly, a frightful scream rang out. All five rushed forward. Another scream, followed by cries of despair.

  “We’re here! We’re coming!” shouted the eldest, who was leading.

  And, as it was a roundabout way to the door, he smashed in a window with his fist and sprang into the old people’s bedroom. The room next to it was the linen-room, in which Mother Goussot spent most of her time.

  “Damnation!” he said, seeing her lying on the floor, with blood all over her face. “Dad! Dad!”

  “What? Where is she?” roared old Goussot, appearing on the scene. “Good lord, what’s this? … What have they done to your mother?”

  She pulled herself together and, with outstretched arm, stammered:

  “Run after him! … This way! … This way! … I’m all right … only a scratch or two … But run, you! He’s taken the money.”

  The father and sons gave a bound:

  “He’s taken the money!” bellowed old Goussot, rushing to the door to which his wife was pointing. “He’s taken the money! Stop thief!”

  But a sound of several voices rose at the end of the passage through which the other three sons were coming:

  “I saw him! I saw him!”

  “So did I! He ran up the stairs.”

  “No, there he is, he’s coming down again!”

  A mad steeplechase shook every floor in the house. Farmer Goussot, on reaching the end of the passage, caught sight of a man standing by the front door trying to open it. If he succeeded, it meant safety, escape through the market square and the back lanes of the village.

  Interrupted as he was fumbling at the bolts, the man turning stupid, lost his head, charged at old Goussot and sent him spinning, dodged the eldest brother and, pursued by the four sons, doubled back down the long passage, ran into the old couple’s bedroom, flung his legs through the broken window and disappeared.

  The sons rushed after him across the lawns and orchards, now darkened by the falling night.

  “The villain’s done for,” chuckled old Goussot. “There’s no way out for him. The walls are too high. He’s done for, the scoundrel!”

  The two farm-hands returned, at that moment, from the village; and he told them what had happened and gave each of them a gun:

  “If the swine shows his nose anywhere near the house,” he said, “let fly at him. Give him no mercy!”

  He told them where to stand, went to make sure that the farm-gates, which were only used for the carts, were locked, and, not till then, remembered that his wife might perhaps be in need of aid:

  “Well, mother, how goes it?”

  “Where is he? Have you got him?” she asked, in a breath.

  “Yes, we’re after him. The lads must have collared him by now.”

  The news quite restored her; and a nip of rum gave her the strength to drag herself to the bed, with old Goussot’s assistance, and to tell her story. For that matter, there was not much to tell. She had just lit the fire in the living-hall; and she was knitting quietly at her bedroom window, waiting for the men to return, when she thought that she heard a slight grating sound in the linen-room next door:

  “I must have left the cat in there,” she thought to herself.

  She went in, suspecting nothing, and was astonished to see the two doors of one of the linen-cupboards, the one in which they hid their money, wide open. She walked up to it, still without suspicion. There was a man there, hiding, with his back to the shelves.

  “But how did he get in?” asked old Goussot.

  “Through the passage, I suppose. We never keep the back door shut.”

  “And then did he go for you?”

  “No, I went for him. He tried to get away.”

  “You should have let him.”

  “And what about the money?”

  “Had he taken it by then?”

  “Had he taken it! I saw the bundle of bank-notes in his hands, the sweep! I would have let him kill me sooner … Oh, we had a sharp tussle, I give you my word!”

  “Then he had no weapon?”

  “No more than I did. We had our fingers, our nails and our teeth. Look here, where he bit me. And I yelled and screamed! Only, I’m an old woman you see … I had to let go of him …”

  “Do you know the man?”

  “I’m pretty sure it was old Trainard.”

  “The tramp? Why, of course it’s old Trainard!” cried the farmer. “I thought I knew him too … Besides, he’s been hanging round the house these last three days. The old vagabond must have smelt the money. Aha, Trainard, my man, we shall see some fun! A number-one hiding in the first place; and then the police … I say, mother, you can get up now, can’t you? Then go and fetch the neighbours … Ask them to run for the gendarmes … By the by, the attorney’s youngster has a bicycle … How that damned old Trainard scooted! He’s got good legs for his age, he has. He can run like a hare!”

  Goussot was holding his sides, revelling in the occurrence. He risked nothing by waiting. No power on earth could help the tramp escape or keep him from the sound thrashing which he had earned and from being conveyed, under safe escort, to the town gaol.

  The farmer took a gun and went out to his two labourers:

  “Anything fresh?”

  “No, Farmer Go
ussot, not yet.”

  “We sha’n’t have long to wait. Unless old Nick carries him over the walls …”

  From time to time, they heard the four brothers hailing one another in the distance. The old bird was evidently making a fight for it, was more active than they would have thought. Still, with sturdy fellows like the Goussot brothers …

  However, one of them returned, looking rather crestfallen, and made no secret of his opinion:

  “It’s no use keeping on at it for the present. It’s pitch dark. The old chap must have crept into some hole. We’ll hunt him out to-morrow.”

  “To-morrow! Why, lad, you’re off your chump!” protested the farmer.

  The eldest son now appeared, quite out of breath, and was of the same opinion as his brother. Why not wait till next day, seeing that the ruffian was as safe within the demesne as between the walls of a prison?

  “Well, I’ll go myself,” cried old Goussot. “Light me a lantern, somebody!”

  But, at that moment, three gendarmes arrived; and a number of village lads also came up to hear the latest.

  The sergeant of gendarmes was a man of method. He first insisted on hearing the whole story, in full detail; then he stopped to think; then he questioned the four brothers, separately, and took his time for reflection after each deposition. When he had learnt from them that the tramp had fled toward the back of the estate, that he had been lost sight of repeatedly and that he had finally disappeared near a place known as the Crows’ Knoll, he meditated once more and announced his conclusion:

  “Better wait. Old Trainard might slip through our hands, amidst all the confusion of a pursuit in the dark, and then good-night, everybody!”

  The farmer shrugged his shoulders and, cursing under his breath, yielded to the sergeant’s arguments. That worthy organized a strict watch, distributed the brothers Goussot and the lads from the village under his men’s eyes, made sure that the ladders were locked away and established his headquarters in the dining-room, where he and

  Farmer Goussot sat and nodded over a decanter of old brandy.

  The night passed quietly. Every two hours, the sergeant went his rounds and inspected the posts. There were no alarms. Old Trainard did not budge from his hole.