The Blonde Lady
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He thought for a moment and asked:
"And did she go out on Sunday morning?"
"The day after the robbery?"
"Yes."
The baron called his wife and put the question to her. She replied:
"Mademoiselle took the children to the eleven o'clock mass, as usual."
"But before that?"
"Before? No.... Or rather.... But I was so upset by the theft!… Still, I remember that, on the evening before, she asked leave to go out on Sunday morning … to see a cousin who was passing through Paris, I think. But surely you don't suspect her?"
"Certainly not. But I should like to see her."
He went up to Wilson's room. A woman dressed like a hospital nurse, in a long gray linen gown, was stooping over the sick man and giving him a draught. When she turned round, Shears recognized the girl who had spoken to him outside the Gare du Nord.
Not the slightest explanation passed between them. Alice Demun smiled gently, with her grave and charming eyes, without a trace of embarrassment. The Englishman wanted to speak, tried to utter a syllable or two and was silent. Then she resumed her task, moved about peacefully before Shears's astonished eyes, shifted bottles, rolled and unrolled linen bandages and again gave him her bright smile.
Shears turned on his heels, went downstairs, saw M. d'Imblevalle's motor in the courtyard, got into it and told the chauffeur to drive him to the yard at Levallois of which the address was marked on the cab-ticket given him by the child. Duprêt, the driver who had taken out No. 8279 on Sunday morning, was not there and Shears sent back the motor-car and waited until he came to change horses.
Duprêt the driver said yes, he had taken up a lady near the Parc Monceau, a young lady in black, with a big veil on her: she seemed very excited.
"Was she carrying a parcel?"
"Yes, a longish parcel."
"And where did you drive her to?"
"Avenue des Ternes, at the corner of the Place Saint-Ferdinand. She stayed for ten minutes or so; and then we went back to the Parc Monceau."
"Would you know the house again, in the Avenue des Ternes?"
"Rather! Shall I take you there?"
"Presently. Go first to 36, Quai des Orfèvres."
At the police headquarters he had the good fortune to come upon Chief-Inspector Ganimard:
"Are you disengaged, M. Ganimard?"
"If it's about Lupin, no."
"It is about Lupin."
"Then I shan't stir."
"What! You give up…!"
"I give up the impossible. I am tired of this unequal contest of which we are certain to have the worst. It's cowardly, it's ridiculous, it's anything you please.... I don't care! Lupin is stronger than we are. Consequently, there's nothing to do but give in."
"I'm not giving in!"
"He'll make you give in like the rest of us."
"Well, it's a sight that can't fail to please you."
"That's true enough," said Ganimard, innocently. "And, as you seem to want another beating, come along!"
Ganimard and Shears stepped into the cab. They told the driver to stop a little way before he came to the house and on the other side of the avenue, in front of a small café. They sat down outside it, among tubs of laurels and spindle-trees. The light was beginning to wane.
"Waiter!" said Shears. "Pen and ink!"
He wrote a note and, calling the waiter again, said:
"Take this to the concierge of the house opposite. It's the man in the cap smoking his pipe in the gateway."
The concierge hurried across and, after Ganimard had announced himself as a chief-inspector, Shears asked if a young lady in black had called at the house on Sunday morning.
"In black? Yes, about nine o'clock: it's the one who goes up to the second floor."
"Do you see much of her?"
"No, but she's been oftener lately: almost every day during the past fortnight."
"And since Sunday?"
"Only once … without counting to-day."
"What! Has she been to-day?"
"She's there now."
"She's there now?"
"Yes, she came about ten minutes ago. Her cab is waiting on the Place Saint-Ferdinand, as usual. I passed her in the gateway."
"And who is the tenant of the second floor?"
"There are two: a dressmaker, Mademoiselle Langeais, and a gentleman who hired a couple of furnished rooms, a month ago, under the name of Bresson."
"What makes you say 'under the name'?"
"I have an idea that it's an assumed name. My wife does his rooms: well, he hasn't two articles of clothing marked with the same initials."
"How does he live?"
"Oh, he's almost always out. Sometimes, he does not come home for three days together."
"Did he come in on Saturday night?"
"On Saturday night?… Wait, while I think.... Yes, he came in on Saturday night and hasn't stirred out since."
"And what sort of a man is he?"
"Faith, I couldn't say. He changes so! He's tall, he's short, he's fat, he's thin … dark and fair. I don't always recognize him."
Ganimard and Shears exchanged glances.
"It's he," muttered Ganimard. "It must be he."
For a moment, the old detective experienced a real agitation, which betrayed itself by a deep breath and a clenching of the fists.
Shears too, although more master of himself, felt something clutching at his heart.
"Look out!" said the concierge. "Here comes the young lady."
As he spoke, mademoiselle appeared in the gateway and crossed the square.
"And here is M. Bresson."
"M. Bresson? Which is he?"
"The gentleman with a parcel under his arm."
"But he's taking no notice of the girl. She is going to her cab alone."
"Oh, well, I've never seen them together."
The two detectives rose hurriedly. By the light of the street-lamps, they recognized Lupin's figure, as he walked away in the opposite direction to the square.
"Which will you follow?" asked Ganimard.
"'Him,' of course. He's big game."
"Then I'll shadow the young lady," suggested Ganimard.
"No, no," said the Englishman quickly, not wishing to reveal any part of the case to Ganimard. "I know where to find the young lady when I want her.... Don't leave me."
At a distance and availing themselves of the occasional shelter of the passers-by and the kiosks, Ganimard and Shears set off in pursuit of Lupin. It was an easy enough pursuit, for he did not turn round and walked quickly, with a slight lameness in the right leg, so slight that it needed the eye of a trained observer to perceive it.
"He's pretending to limp!" said Ganimard. And he continued, "Ah, if we could only pick up two or three policemen and pounce upon the fellow! As it is, here's a chance of our losing him."
But no policeman appeared in sight before the Porte des Ternes; and, once the fortifications were passed, they could not reckon on the least assistance.
"Let us separate," said Shears. "The place is deserted."
They were on the Boulevard Victor-Hugo. They each took a different pavement and followed the line of the trees.
They walked like this for twenty minutes, until the moment when Lupin turned to the left and along the Seine. Here they saw him go down to the edge of the river. He remained there for a few seconds, during which they were unable to distinguish his movements. Then he climbed up the bank again and returned by the way he had come. They pressed back against the pillars of a gate. Lupin passed in front of them. He no longer carried a parcel.
And, as he moved away, another figure appeared from behind the corner of a house and slipped in between the trees.
Shears said, in a low voice:
"That one seems to be following him too."
"Yes, I believe I saw him before, as we came."
The pursuit was resumed, but was now complicated by the presence of this figure. Lupin followed the same road, passed through the Porte des Ternes again, and entered the house on the Place Saint-Ferdinand.
The concierge was closing the door for the night when Ganimard came up:
"You saw him, I suppose?"
"Yes, I was turning off the gas on the stairs. He has bolted his door."
"Is there no one with him?"
"No one: he doesn't keep a servant … he never has his meals here."
"Is there no back staircase?"
"No."
Ganimard said to Shears:
"The best thing will be for me to place myself outside Lupin's door, while you go to the Rue Demours and fetch the commissary of police. I'll give you a line for him."
Shears objected:
"Suppose he escapes meanwhile?"
"But I shall be here!…"
"Single-handed, it would be an unequal contest between you and him."
"Still, I can't break into his rooms. I'm not entitled to, especially at night."
Shears shrugged his shoulders:
"Once you've arrested Lupin, no one will haul you over the coals for the particular manner in which you effected the arrest. Besides, we may as well ring the bell, what! Then we'll see what happens."
They went up the stairs. There was a double door on the left of the landing. Ganimard rang the bell.
Not a sound. He rang again. No one stirred.
"Let's go in," muttered Shears.
"Yes, come along."
Nevertheless, they remained motionless, irresolute. Like people who hesitate before taking a decisive step, they were afraid to act; and it suddenly seemed to them impossible that Arsène Lupin should be there, so near to them, behind that frail partition, which they could smash with a blow of their fists. They both of them knew him too well, demon that he was, to admit that he would allow himself to be nabbed so stupidly. No, no, a thousand times no; he was not there. He must have escaped, by the adjoining houses, by the roofs, by some suitably prepared outlet; and, once again, the shadow of Arsène Lupin was all that they could hope to lay hands upon.
They shuddered. An imperceptible sound, coming from the other side of the door, had, as it were, grazed the silence. And they received the impression, the certainty that he was there after all, separated from them by that thin wooden partition, and that he was listening to them, that he heard them.
What were they to do? It was a tragic situation. For all their coolness as old stagers of the police, they were overcome by so great an excitement that they imagined they could hear the beating of their own hearts.
Ganimard consulted Shears with a silent glance and then struck the door violently with his fist.
A sound of footsteps was now heard, a sound which there was no longer any attempt to conceal.
Ganimard shook the door. Shears gave an irresistible thrust with his shoulder and burst it open; and they both rushed in.
Then they stopped short. A shot resounded in the next room. And another, followed by the thud of a falling body.
When they entered, they saw the man lying with his face against the marble of the mantel-piece. He gave a convulsive movement. His revolver slipped from his hand.
Ganimard stooped and turned the dead man's head, it was covered with blood, which trickled from two large wounds in the cheek and temple.
"There's no recognizing him," he whispered.
"One thing is certain," said Shears. "It's not 'he.'"
"How do you know? You haven't even examined him."
The Englishman sneered:
"Do you think Arsène Lupin is the man to kill himself?"
"Still, we believed we knew him outside."
"We believed, because we wanted to believe. The fellow besets our minds."
"Then it's one of his accomplices."
"Arsène Lupin's accomplices do not kill themselves."
"Then who is it?"
They searched the body. In one pocket, Holmlock Shears found an empty note-case; in another, Ganimard found a few louis. There were no marks on his linen or on his clothes.
The trunks—a big box and two bags—contained nothing but personal effects. There was a bundle of newspapers on the mantel-piece. Ganimard opened them. They all spoke of the theft of the Jewish lamp.
An hour later, when Ganimard and Shears left the house, they knew no more about the strange individual whom their intervention had driven to suicide.
Who was he? Why had he taken his life? What link connected him with the disappearance of the Jewish lamp? Who was it that dogged his steps during his walk? These were all complicated questions … so many mysteries.
Holmlock Shears went to bed in a very bad temper. When he woke, he received an express letter couched in these words:
"Arsène Lupin begs to inform you of his tragic decease in the person of one Bresson and requests the honour of your company at his funeral, which will take place, at the public expense, on Thursday, the 25th of June."
CHAPTER II
"You see, old chap," said Holmlock Shears to Wilson, waving Arsène Lupin's letter in his hand, "the worst of this business is that I feel the confounded fellow's eye constantly fixed upon me. Not one of my most secret thoughts escape him. I am behaving like an actor, whose steps are ruled by the strictest stage-directions, who moves here or there and says this or that because a superior will has so determined it. Do you understand, Wilson?"
Wilson would no doubt have understood had he not been sleeping the sound sleep of a man whose temperature is fluctuating between 102 and 104 degrees. But whether he heard or not made no difference to Shears, who continued:
"It will need all my energy and all my resources not to be discouraged. Fortunately, with me, these little gibes are only so many pin-pricks which stimulate me to further exertions. Once the sting is allayed and the wound in my self-respect closed, I always end by saying: 'Laugh away, my lad. Sooner or later, you will be betrayed by your own hand.' For, when all is said, Wilson, wasn't it Lupin himself who, with his first telegram and the reflection which it suggested to that little Henriette, revealed to me the secret of his correspondence with Alice Demun? You forget that detail, old chap."
He walked up and down the room, with resounding strides, at the risk of waking old chap:
"However, things might be worse; and, though the paths which I am following appear a little dark, I am beginning to see my way. To start with, I shall soon know all about Master Bresson. Ganimard and I have an appointment on the bank of the Seine, at the spot where Bresson flung his parcel, and we shall find out who he was and what he wanted. As regards the rest, it's a game to be played out between Alice Demun and me. Not a very powerful adversary, eh, Wilson? And don't you think I shall soon know the sentence in the album and what those two single letters mean, the C and the H? For the whole mystery lies in that, Wilson."
At this moment, mademoiselle entered the room and, seeing Shears wave his arms about, said: "Mr. Shears, I shall be very angry with you if you wake my patient. It's not nice of you to disturb him. The doctor insists upon absolute calm."
He looked at her without a word, astonished, as on the first day, at her inexplicable composure.
"Why do you look at me like that, Mr. Shears?… You always seem to have something at the back of your mind.... What is it? Tell me, please."
She questioned him with all her bright face, with her guileless eyes, her smiling lips and with her attitude too, her hands joined together, her body bent slightly forward. And so great was her candour that it roused the Englishman's anger. He came up to her and said, in a low voice:
"Bresson committed suicide yesterday."
She repeated, without appearing to understand:
"Bresson committed suicide yesterday?"
As a matter of fact, her features underwent no change whatever; nothing revealed the effort of a lie.
"You have been told," he said, irritably. "If not, you would at least have started.... Ah, you are cleverer than I thought! But why pretend?"
He took the picture-book, which he had placed on a table close at hand, and, opening it at the cut page:
"Can you tell me," he asked, "in what order I am to arrange the letters missing here, so that I may understand the exact purport of the note which you sent to Bresson four days before the theft of the Jewish Lamp?"
"In what order?… Bresson?… The theft of the Jewish Lamp?"
She repeated the words, slowly, as though to make out their meaning.
He insisted:
"Yes, here are the letters you used … on this scrap of paper. What were you saying to Bresson?"
"The letters I used…? What was I saying to…?"
Suddenly she burst out laughing:
"I see! I understand! I am an accomplice in the theft! There is a M. Bresson who stole the Jewish Lamp and killed himself. And I am the gentleman's friend! Oh, how amusing!"
"Then whom did you go to see yesterday evening, on the second floor of a house in the Avenue des Ternes?"
"Whom? Why, my dressmaker, Mlle. Langeais! Do you mean to imply that my dressmaker and my friend M. Bresson are one and the same person?"
Shears began to doubt, in spite of all. It is possible to counterfeit almost any feeling in such a way as to put another person off: terror, joy, anxiety; but not indifference, not happy and careless laughter.
However, he said:
"One last word. Why did you accost me at the Gare du Nord the other evening? And why did you beg me to go back at once without busying myself about the robbery?"
"Oh, you're much too curious, Mr. Shears," she replied, still laughing in the most natural way. "To punish you, I will tell you nothing and, in addition, you shall watch the patient while I go to the chemist.... There's an urgent prescription to be made up.... I must hurry!"
She left the room.
"I have been tricked," muttered Shears. "I've not only got nothing out of her, but I have given myself away."
And he remembered the case of the blue diamond and the cross-examination to which he had subjected Clotilde Destange. Mademoiselle had encountered him with the same serenity as the blonde lady and he felt that he was again face to face with one of those creatures who, protected by Arsène Lupin and under the direct action of his influence, preserved the most inscrutable calmness amid the very agony of danger.
"Shears.... Shears...."
It was Wilson calling him. He went to the bed and bent over him:
"What is it, old chap? Feeling bad?"
Wilson moved his lips, but was unable to speak. At last, after many efforts, he stammered out:
"No … Shears … it wasn't she … it can't have been...."
"What nonsense are you talking now? I tell you that it was she! It's only when I'm in the presence of a creature of Lupin's, trained and drilled by him, that I lose my head and behave so foolishly.... She now knows the whole story of the album.... I bet you that Lupin will be told in less than an hour. Less than an hour? What am I talking about? This moment, most likely! The chemist, the urgent prescription: humbug!"
Without a further thought of Wilson, he rushed from the room, went down the Avenue de Messine and saw Mademoiselle enter a chemist's shop. She came out, ten minutes later, carrying two or three medicine-bottles wrapped up in white paper. But, when she returned up the avenue, she was accosted by a man who followed her, cap in hand and with an obsequious air, as though he were begging.
She stopped, gave him an alms and then continued on her way.
"She spoke to him," said the Englishman to himself.
It was an intuition rather than a certainty, but strong enough to induce him to alter his tactics. Leaving the girl, he set off on the track of the sham beggar.
They arrived in this way, one behind the other, on the Place Saint-Ferdinand; and the man hovered long round Bresson's house, sometimes raising his eyes to the second-floor windows and watching the people who entered the house.
At the end of an hour's time, he climbed to the top of a tram-car that was starting for Neuilly. Shears climbed up also and sat down behind the fellow, at some little distance, beside a gentleman whose features were concealed by the newspaper which he was reading. When they reached the fortifications, the newspaper was lowered, Shears recognized Ganimard and Ganimard, pointing to the fellow, said in his ear:
"It's our man of last night, the one who followed Bresson. He's been hanging round the square for an hour."
"Nothing new about Bresson?"
"Yes, a letter arrived this morning addressed to him."
"This morning? Then it must have been posted yesterday, before the writer knew of Bresson's death."
"Just so. It is with the examining magistrate, but I can tell you the exact words: 'He accepts no compromise. He wants everything, the first thing as well as those of the second business. If not, he will take steps.' And no signature," added Ganimard. "As you can see, those few lines won't be of much use to us."
"I don't agree with you at all, M. Ganimard: on the contrary, I consider them very interesting."
"And why, bless my soul?"
"For reasons personal to myself," said Shears, with the absence of ceremony with which he was accustomed to treat his colleague.
The tram stopped at the terminus in the Rue du Château. The man climbed down and walked away quietly. Shears followed so closely on his heels that Ganimard took alarm:
"If he turns round, we are done."
"He won't turn round now."
"What do you know about it?"
"He is an accomplice of Arsène Lupin's and the fact that an accomplice of Lupin's walks away like that, with his hands in his pockets, proves, in the first place, that he knows he's followed, and in the second, that he's not afraid."
"Still, we're running him pretty hard!"
"No matter, he can slip through our fingers in a minute, if he wants. He's too sure of himself."
"Come, come; you're getting at me! There are two cyclist police at the door of that café over there. If I decide to call on them and to tackle our friend, I should like to know how he's going to slip through our fingers."
"Our friend does not seem much put out by that contingency. And he's calling on them himself!"
"By Jupiter!" said Ganimard. "The cheek of the fellow!"
The man, in fact, had walked up to the two policemen just as these were preparing to mount their bicycles. He spoke a few words to them and then, suddenly, sprang upon a third bicycle, which was leaning against the wall of the café, and rode away quickly with the two policemen.
The Englishman burst with laughter:
"There, what did I tell you? Off before we knew where we were; and with two of your colleagues, M. Ganimard! Ah, he looks after himself, does Arsène Lupin! With cyclist policemen in his pay! Didn't I tell you our friend was a great deal too calm!"
"What then?" cried Ganimard, angrily. "What could I do? It's very easy to laugh!"
"Come, come, don't be cross. We'll have our revenge. For the moment, what we want is reinforcements."
"Folenfant is waiting for me at the end of the Avenue de Neuilly."
"All right, pick him up and join me, both of you."
Ganimard went away, while Shears followed the tracks of the bicycles, which were easily visible on the dust of the road because two of the machines were fitted with grooved tires. And he soon saw that these tracks were leading him to the bank of the Seine and that the three men had turned in the same direction as Bresson on the previous evening. He thus came to the gate against which he himself had hidden with Ganimard and, a little farther on, he saw a tangle of grooved lines which showed that they had stopped there. Just opposite, a little neck of land jutted into the river and, at the end of it, an old boat lay fastened.
This was where Bresson must have flung his parcel, or, rather, dropped it. Shears went down the incline and saw that, as the bank sloped very gently, and the water was low, he would easily find the parcel … unless the three men had been there first.
"No, no," he said to himself, "they have not had time … a quarter of an hour at most..... And, yet, why did they come this way?"
A man was sitting in the boat, fishing. Shears asked him:
"Have you seen three men on bicycles?"
The angler shook his head.
The Englishman insisted:
"Yes, yes.... Three men.... They stopped only a few yards from where you are."
The angler put his rod under his arm, took a note-book from his pocket, wrote something on one of the pages, tore it out and handed it to Shears.
A great thrill shook the Englishman. At a glance, in the middle of the page which he held in his hand, he recognized the letters torn from the picture-book: