Maurice Leblanc

“ Daubrecq made a furious gesture:
“You fool! You fool! You’ve been trapped! For hatred of me, I expect? And now you’re going to take your revenge?”
“With a certain satisfaction, Daubrecq. Remember my little friend, the opera-dancer, at Nice.... It’s your turn now to dance.”
“So it means prison?”
“I should think so,” said Prasville. “Besides, it doesn’t matter. You’re done for, anyhow. Deprived of the list, without defence of any kind, you’re bound to fall to pieces of your own weight. And I shall be present at the break-up. That’s my revenge.”
“And you believe that!” yelled Daubrecq, furiously. ”

“ And my name’s Daubrecq. My whole life has been one desperate battle, one long series of catastrophes and routs in which I spent all my energies until victory came: complete, decisive, crushing, irrevocable victory. I have against me the police, the government, France, the world. What difference do you expect it to make to me if I have M. Arsène Lupin against me into the bargain? I will go further: the more numerous and skilful my enemies, the more cautiously I am obliged to play. ”

“ He came back, took the hat, stick and overcoat which M. Nicole handed him and went out.
“Well done, sir,” said Lupin, between his teeth, when the door was closed. “You have behaved like a sportsman and a gentleman.... So did I, for that matter . . . perhaps with too obvious a touch of contempt . . . and a little too bluntly. But, tush, this sort of business has to be carried through with a high hand! The enemy’s got to be staggered! Besides, when one’s own conscience is clear, one can’t take up too bullying a tone with that sort of individual. Lift your head, Lupin. ”

“ Oh, Daubrecq’s game was clear as daylight! Did not Lupin know the unhappy woman’s hesitations? Did he not know—and the Growler and the Masher confirmed it most positively—that Clarisse looked upon the infamous bargain planned by Daubrecq in the light of a possible, an acceptable thing? In that case, how could he, Lupin, succeed? The logic of events, so powerfully moulded by Daubrecq, led to a fatal result: the mother must sacrifice herself and, to save her son, throw her scruples, her repugnance, her very honour, to the winds! ”

“ The hall-door was closed, very gently, and then the gate.
“It’s curious, say what one likes,” thought Lupin. “Here is a house in which Daubrecq carefully conceals his rascalities and is on his guard, not without good reason, against spies; and everybody walks in and out as in a booth at a fair. Victoire lets me in, the portress admits the emissaries of the police: that’s well and good; but who is playing false in these people’s favour? Are we to suppose that they are acting alone? But what fearlessness! And how well they know their way about!” ”

“ Daubrecq said nothing and sat silent, with his head turned to Lupin.
“Is he looking at me? Are his eyes open or shut?” Lupin asked himself.
It worried Lupin terribly not to see his adversary’s eyes, those eyes hidden by the double obstacle of spectacles and black glasses: weak, bloodshot eyes, Mme. Mergy had told him. How could he follow the secret train of the man’s thought without seeing the expression of his face? It was almost like fighting an enemy who wielded an invisible sword. ”

“ A man had ventured! A man had dared! A man done it!
Lupin raised his eyes to Clarisse. She was looking at him . . . with such a desperate, such a beseeching look! The look of a mother who demanded the impossible and who would have sacrificed anything to save her son.
“Masher,” he said, “get a strong rope, but very slender, so that I can roll it round my waist, and very long: fifty or sixty yards. You, Growler, go and look for three or four ladders and fasten them end to end.”
“Why, what are you thinking of, governor?” cried the two accomplices. “What, you mean to.... But it’s madness!” ”

“ The Marquis d’Albufex seemed in a great rage. He was striking the leg of his boot with his whip and mumbling angry words which Lupin was able to distinguish when the distance became less great:
“Ah, the hound!... I’ll make him speak.... I’ll come back to-night . . . to-night, at ten o’clock, do you hear, Sébastiani?... And we shall do what’s necessary.... Oh, the brute!”
Sébastiani unfastened the horses. D’Albufex turned to the woman:
“See that your sons keep a good watch.... If any one attempts to deliver him, so much the worse for him. The trapdoor is there. Can I rely upon them?” ”

“ She seemed exhausted by her protracted struggle with a man who was gaining ground daily and against whom it was impossible for her to fight. Lupin saw in her the prey conquered in advance, delivered to the victor’s whim. Clarisse Mergy, the loving wife of that Mergy whom Daubrecq had really murdered, the terrified mother of that Gilbert whom Daubrecq had led astray, Clarisse Mergy, to save her son from the scaffold, must, come what may and however ignominious the position, yield to Daubrecq’s wishes. ”

“ Nothing is more foolish than to infer one fact from another before finding a certain starting-point. That’s where you get up a tree. Listen to your instinct. Act according to your instinct. And as you are persuaded, outside all argument, outside all logic, one might say, that this business turns upon that confounded stopper, go for it boldly. Have at Daubrecq and his bit of crystal!”
Lupin did not wait to arrive at these conclusions before settling his actions accordingly. ”

“ I had no other dream, no other object in life. That is what I wanted: to see that man crushed, reduced to poverty, to tears—as though he still knew how to cry!—sobbing in the throes of despair....”
“You wanted his death,” said Lupin, remembering the scene between them in Daubrecq’s study.
“No, not his death. I have often thought of it, I have even raised my arm to strike him, but what would have been the good? He must have taken his precautions. The paper would remain. And then there is no revenge in killing a man.... ”

“ She had lost some part of her confidence in him and she shrugged her shoulders lightly:
“If d’Albufex has not purloined the list, one man alone can exercise any influence; one man alone: Daubrecq.”
She spoke these words in a low and absent voice that made him shudder. Was she still thinking, as he had often seemed to feel, of going back to Daubrecq and paying him for Gilbert’s life? ”

“ M. Nicole seemed to be waiting for the conversation to be resumed. Prasville, sheltered behind the piles of books on the table, sat with one hand grasping his revolver and the other touching the push of the electric bell. He felt the whole strength of his position with a keen zest. He held the list. He held Lupin:
“If he moves,” he thought, “I cover him with my revolver and I ring. If he attacks me, I shoot.” ”

“ She would be the mistress, the wife, the obedient slave of Daubrecq, of that monster with the appearance and the ways of a wild beast, that unspeakable person of whom Lupin could not think without revulsion and disgust.
Sitting down beside her, gently, with gestures of pity, he made her lift her head and, with his eyes on hers, said:
“Listen to me. I swear that I will save your son: I swear it.... Your son shall not die, do you understand?... There is not a power on earth that can allow your son’s head to be touched as long as I am alive.” ”

“ Look things in the face. By your own oath, you are my wife, you are my bride from this moment.... Clarisse, Clarisse, give me your lips....”
Half-fainting, she had hardly the strength to put out her arm and push him away; and, with a cynicism in which all his abominable nature stood revealed, Daubrecq, mingling words of cruelty and words of passion, continued:
“Save your son!... Think of the last morning: the preparations for the scaffold, when they snip away his shirt and cut his hair.... Clarisse, Clarisse, I will save him.... Be sure of it.... All my life shall be yours.... Clarisse....” ”

“ The list of the Twenty-seven had no more value than the most insignificant scrap of paper.
“The game’s up!” said Lupin. “It’s an absolute defeat. What if I do revenge myself on Daubrecq, ruin him and destroy him? He is the real victor, once Gilbert is going to die.” ”

“ Not for a second—a curious anomaly in a man like Lupin, an anomaly to be explained only by the uncanny feeling which the whole adventure produced in him—not for a second did he suspect the very simple truth which was about to be revealed to him. Continuing his way down, he crouched on one of the bottom steps of the staircase, thus placing himself between the door of the bedroom and the hall-door, on the road which Daubrecq’s enemy must inevitably take in order to join his accomplices. ”

“ The scoundrel lying on a sofa, well bound, bare-chested, making efforts to throw off the fumes of chloroform that dazed him. He breathes quicker.... He gasps.... He recovers consciousness . . . his lips move.... Already, Clarisse Mergy whispers, ‘It’s I . . . it’s I, Clarisse.... Will you answer, you wretch?’ She has put her finger on Daubrecq’s chest, at the spot where the heart stirs like a little animal hidden under the skin. ”

“ Daubrecq, deprived of the document that gives him his immense power, ceases to exist. It means immediate bankruptcy and disaster . . . under the most wretched conditions. That is what I have sought.”
“But Daubrecq must have been aware of your intentions?”
“Certainly. And, I assure you, those were strange meetings of ours: I watching him closely, trying to guess his secret behind his actions and his words, and he . . . he....”
“And he,” said Lupin, finishing Clarisse’s thought, “lying in wait for the prey which he desires . . . for the woman whom he has never ceased to love . . . ”

“ My husband knew the man he was dealing with, knew him to be implacable and filled with relentless hatred. He lost his head and shot himself.”
“How absurd!” Lupin could not help saying. “How absurd! Daubrecq possesses a list of twenty-seven names. To give up any one of those names he is obliged, if he would have his accusation believed, to publish the list itself—that is to say, to part with the document, or at least a photograph of it. Well, in so doing, he creates a scandal, it is true, but he deprives himself, at the same time, of all further means of levying blackmail.” ”

“ Prasville thought a number of things, especially that this Nicole was giving proof, to use a vulgar phrase, of the most infernal cheek, of a cheek so great that Prasville felt inclined to ask himself if he was really right in identifying Nicole with Lupin and Lupin with Nicole.
“I think, M. Nicole, that a man has to be a jolly good shot to kill a person whom he wants to kill, at a distance of a hundred yards, and to wound another person whom he only wants to wound.” ”

“ But what you don’t know, you silly ass, is that I have come straight from Stanislas Vorenglade’s and that Stanislas Vorenglade left Paris four days ago! Oh, what a joke! They’ve sold you waste paper! And your forty thousand francs! What an ass! What an ass!”
He walked out of the room, screaming with laughter and leaving Prasville absolutely dumbfounded.
So Arsène Lupin possessed no proof at all; and, when he was threatening and commanding and treating Prasville with that airy insolence, it was all a farce, all bluff!
“No, no, it’s impossible,” thought the secretary-general. ”

“ Once you’re beaten, there’s nothing for it but to submit to your conqueror, instead of allowing yourself to be tortured like an idiot.... Come, be sensible.”
He turned to Sébastiani:
“Tighten the rope . . . let him feel it a little that will wake him up.... He’s shamming death....” Sébastiani took hold of the stick again and turned until the cord touched the swollen flesh. Daubrecq gave a start.
“That’ll do, Sébastiani,” said the marquis. “Our friend seems favourably disposed and understands the need for coming to terms. That’s so, Daubrecq, is it not? You prefer to have done with it? ”

“ Whereas, like this, Master Lupin will be compelled to get his little story told in thirty minutes . . . unless he wants to get himself collared and his accomplices nabbed. What a shock! What a bolt from the blue! Thirty minutes and not a minute more. In thirty minutes from now, you’ll have to clear out, scud away like a hare and beat a disordered retreat. Ha, ha, ha, what fun! I say, Polonius, you really are unlucky, each time you come up against Bibi Daubrecq! For it was you who were hiding behind that curtain, wasn’t it, my ill-starred Polonius? ”

“ Clarisse Mergy is a young woman still and a pretty woman at that.”
Lupin shrugged his shoulders:
“You brute!” he mumbled. “You imagine that everybody is like yourself, heartless and pitiless. It takes your breath away, what, to think that a shark like me can waste his time playing the Don Quixote? And you wonder what dirty motive I can have? Don’t try to find out: it’s beyond your powers of perception. Answer me, instead: do you accept?”
“So you’re serious?” asked Daubrecq, who seemed but little disturbed by Lupin’s contemptuous tone. ”

“ I have a trump card, the son’s head, and I am playing it. When I have procured a nice little death-sentence for Gilbert, when the days go by and Gilbert’s petition for a reprieve is rejected by my good offices, you shall see, M. Lupin, that his mummy will drop all her objections to calling herself Mme. Alexis Daubrecq and giving me an unexceptionable pledge of her good-will. That fortunate issue is inevitable, whether you like it or not. It is foredoomed. All I can do for you is to invite you to the wedding and the breakfast. Does that suit you? No? You persist in your sinister designs? ”

“ He must learn the truth. Daubrecq’s secret was about to be expressed in syllables, in words wrung from him by pain. And Lupin began to think of his retreat, of the car which was waiting for him, of the wild rush to Paris, of the victory at hand. ”

“ Prasville, old boy, you’ve deserved it....”
He rubbed his hands together, revelling in his coming revenge. And he continued:
“You see, my dear Clarisse . . . there’s nothing to be done in that direction. What then? What straw will you cling to? Why, I was forgetting: M. Arsène Lupin! Mr. Growler! Mr. Masher!... Pah, you’ll admit that those gentlemen have not shone and that all their feats of prowess have not prevented me from going my own little way. It was bound to be. Those fellows imagine that there’s no one to equal them. ”