The Blonde Lady

C D E H N O P R Z E O—237

The sun hung heavily over the river. The angler had resumed his work, sheltered under the huge brim of his straw hat; his jacket and waistcoat lay folded by his side. He fished attentively, while the float of his line rocked idly on the current.

Quite a minute elapsed, a minute of solemn and awful silence.

"Is it he?" thought Shears, with an almost painful anxiety.

And then the truth burst upon him:

"It is he! It is he! He alone is capable of sitting like that, without a tremor of uneasiness, without the least fear as to what will happen.... And who else could know the story of the picture-book? Alice must have told him by her messenger."

Suddenly, the Englishman felt that his hand, that his own hand, had seized the butt-end of his revolver and that his eyes were fixed on the man's back, just below the neck. One movement and the whole play was finished; a touch of the trigger and the life of the strange adventurer had come to a miserable end.

The angler did not stir.

Shears nervously gripped his weapon with a fierce longing to fire and have done with it and, at the same time, with horror of a deed against which his nature revolted. Death was certain. It would be over.

"Oh," he thought, "let him get up, let him defend himself.... If not, he will have only himself to blame.... Another second … and I fire."

But a sound of footsteps made him turn his head and he saw Ganimard arrive, accompanied by the inspectors.

Then, changing his idea, he leapt forward, sprang at one bound into the boat, breaking the painter with the force of the jump, fell upon the man and held him in a close embrace. They both rolled to the bottom of the boat.

"Well?" cried Lupin, struggling. "And then? What does this prove? Suppose one of us reduces the other to impotence: what will he have gained? You will not know what to do with me nor I with you. We shall stay here like a couple of fools!"

The two oars slipped into the water. The boat began to drift. Mingled exclamations resounded along the bank and Lupin continued:

"Lord, what a business! Have you lost all sense of things?… Fancy being so silly at your age! You great schoolboy! You ought to be ashamed!"

He succeeded in releasing himself.

Exasperated, resolved to stick at nothing, Shears put his hand in his pocket. An oath escaped him. Lupin had taken his revolver.

Then he threw himself on his knees and tried to catch hold of one of the oars, in order to pull to the shore, while Lupin made desperate efforts after the other, in order to pull out to mid-stream.

"Got it!… Missed it!" said Lupin. "However, it makes no difference.... If you get your oar, I'll prevent your using it.... And you'll do as much for me.... But there, in life, we strive to act … without the least reason, for it's always fate that decides.... There, you see, fate … well, she's deciding for her old friend Lupin!… Victory! The current's favouring me!"

The boat, in fact, was drifting away.

"Look out!" cried Lupin.

Some one, on the bank, pointed a revolver. Lupin ducked his head; a shot rang out; a little water spurted up around them. He burst out laughing:

"Heaven help us, it's friend Ganimard!… Now that's very wrong of you, Ganimard. You have no right to fire except in self-defence.... Does poor Arsène make you so furious that you forget your duties?… Hullo, he's starting again!… But, wretched man, be careful: you'll hit my dear maître here!"

He made a bulwark of his body for Shears and, standing up in the boat, facing Ganimard:

"There, now I don't mind!… Aim here, Ganimard, straight at my heart!… Higher … to the left.... Missed again … you clumsy beggar!… Another shot?… But you're trembling, Ganimard!… At the word of command, eh? And steady now … one, two, three, fire!… Missed! Dash it all, does the Government give you toys for pistols?"

He produced a long, massive, flat revolver and fired without taking aim.

The inspector lifted his hand to his hat: a bullet had made a hole through it.

"What do you say to that, Ganimard? Ah, this is a better make! Hats off, gentlemen: this is the revolver of my noble friend, Maître Holmlock Shears!"

And he tossed the weapon to the bank, right at the inspector's feet.

Shears could not help giving a smile of admiration. What superabundant life! What young and spontaneous gladness! And how he seemed to enjoy himself! It was as though the sense of danger gave him a physical delight, as though life had no other object for this extraordinary man than the search of dangers which he amused himself afterward by averting.

Meantime, crowds had gathered on either side of the river and Ganimard and his men were following the craft, which swung down the stream, carried very slowly by the current. It meant inevitable, mathematical capture.

"Confess, maître," cried Lupin, turning to the Englishman, "that you would not give up your seat for all the gold in the Transvaal! You are in the first row of the stalls! But, first and before all, the prologue … after which we will skip straight to the fifth act, the capture or the escape of Arsène Lupin. Therefore, my dear maître, I have one request to make of you and I beg you to answer yes or no, to save all ambiguity. Cease interesting yourself in this business. There is yet time and I am still able to repair the harm which you have done. Later on, I shall not be. Do you agree?"

"No."

Lupin's features contracted. This obstinacy was causing him visible annoyance. He resumed:

"I insist. I insist even more for your sake than my own, for I am certain that you will be the first to regret your interference. Once more, yes or no?"

"No."

Lupin squatted on his heels, shifted one of the planks at the bottom of the boat and, for a few minutes, worked at something which Shears could not see. Then he rose, sat down beside the Englishman and spoke to him in these words:

"I believe, maître, that you and I came to the river-bank with the same purpose, that of fishing up the object which Bresson got rid of, did we not? I, for my part, had made an appointment to meet a few friends and I was on the point, as my scanty costume shows, of effecting a little exploration in the depths of the Seine when my friends gave me notice of your approach. I am bound to confess that I was not surprised, having been kept informed, I venture to say, hourly, of the progress of your inquiry. It is so easy! As soon as the least thing likely to interest me occurs in the Rue Murillo, quick, they ring me up and I know all about it! You can understand that, in these conditions...."

He stopped. The plank which he had removed now rose a trifle and water was filtering in, all around, in driblets.

"The deuce! I don't know how I managed it, but I have every reason to think that there's a leak in this old boat. You're not afraid, maître?"

Shears shrugged his shoulders. Lupin continued:

"You can understand, therefore, that, in these conditions and knowing beforehand that you would seek the contest all the more greedily the more I strove to avoid it, I was rather pleased at the idea of playing a rubber with you the result of which is certain, seeing that I hold all the trumps. And I wished to give our meeting the greatest possible publicity, so that your defeat might be universally known and no new Comtesse de Crozon nor Baron d'Imblevalle be tempted to solicit your aid against me. And, in all this, my dear maître, you must not see …"

He interrupted himself again, and, using his half-closed hands as a field-glass, he watched the banks:

"By Jove! They've freighted a splendid cutter, a regular man-of-war's boat, and they're rowing like anything! In five minutes they will board us and I shall be lost. Mr. Shears, let me give you one piece of advice: throw yourself upon me, tie me hand and foot and deliver me to the law of my country.... Does that suit you?… Unless we suffer shipwreck meanwhile, in which case there will be nothing for us to do but make our wills. What do you say?"

Their eyes met. This time, Shears understood Lupin's operations: he had made a hole in the bottom of the boat.

And the water was rising. It reached the soles of their boots. It covered their feet; they did not move.

It came above their ankles: the Englishman took his tobacco-pouch, rolled a cigarette and lit it.

Lupin continued:

"And, in all this, my dear maître, you must not see anything more than the humble confession of my powerlessness in face of you. It is tantamount to yielding to you, when I accept only those contests in which my victory is assured, in order to avoid those of which I shall not have selected the field. It is tantamount to recognizing that Holmlock Shears is the only enemy whom I fear and proclaiming my anxiety as long as Shears is not removed from my path. This, my dear maître, is what I wished to tell you, on this one occasion when fate has allowed me the honour of a conversation with you. I regret only one thing, which is that this conversation should take place while we are having a foot-bath … a position lacking in dignity, I must confess.... And what was I saying?… A foot-bath!… A hip-bath rather!"

The water, in fact, had reached the seat on which they were sitting and the boat sank lower and lower in the water.

Shears sat imperturbable, his cigarette at his lips, apparently wrapped in contemplation of the sky. For nothing in the world, in the face of that man surrounded by dangers, hemmed in by the crowd, hunted down by a posse of police and yet always retaining his good humour, for nothing in the world would he have consented to display the least sign of agitation.

"What!" they both seemed to be saying. "Do people get excited about such trifles? Is it not a daily occurrence to get drowned in a river? Is this the sort of event that deserves to be noticed?"

And the one chattered and the other mused, while both concealed under the same mask of indifference the formidable clash of their respective prides.

Another minute and they would sink.

"The essential thing," said Lupin, "is to know if we shall sink before or after the arrival of the champions of the law! All depends upon that. For the question of shipwreck is no longer in doubt. Maître, the solemn moment has come to make our wills. I leave all my real and personal estate to Holmlock Shears, a citizen of the British Empire.... But, by Jove, how fast they are coming, those champions of the law! Oh, the dear people! It's a pleasure to watch them! What precision of stroke! Ah, is that you, Sergeant Folenfant? Well done! That idea of the man-of-war's cutter was capital. I shall recommend you to your superiors, Sergeant Folenfant.... And weren't you hoping for a medal? Right you are! Consider it yours!… and where's your friend Dieuzy? On the left bank, I suppose, in the midst of a hundred natives.... So that, if I escape shipwreck, I shall be picked up on the left by Dieuzy and his natives or else on the right by Ganimard and the Neuilly tribes. A nasty dilemma...."

There was an eddy. The boat swung round and Shears was obliged to cling to the row-locks.

"Maître," said Lupin, "I beg of you to take off your jacket. You will be more comfortable for swimming. You won't? Then I shall put on mine again."

He slipped on his jacket, buttoned it tightly like Shears's and sighed:

"What a fine fellow you are! And what a pity that you should persist in a business … in which you are certainly doing the very best you can, but all in vain! Really, you are throwing away your distinguished talent."

"M. Lupin," said Shears, at last abandoning his silence, "you talk a great deal too much and you often err through excessive confidence and frivolity."

"That's a serious reproach."

"It was in this way that, without knowing it, you supplied me, a moment ago, with the information I wanted."

"What! You wanted some information, and you never told me!"

"I don't require you or anybody. In three hours' time I shall hand the solution of the puzzle to M. and reply …"

He did not finish his sentence. The boat had suddenly foundered, dragging them both with her. She rose to the surface at once, overturned, with her keel in the air. Loud shouts came from the two banks, followed by an anxious silence and, suddenly, fresh cries: one of the shipwrecked men had reappeared.

It was Holmlock Shears.

An excellent swimmer, he struck out boldly for Folenfant's boat.

"Cheerly, Mr. Shears!" roared the detective-sergeant. "You're all right!… Keep on … we'll see about him afterward.... We've got him right enough … one more effort, Mr. Shears … catch hold...."

The Englishman seized a rope which they threw to him. But, while they were dragging him on board, a voice behind him called out:

"Yes, my dear maître, you shall have the solution. I am even surprised that you have not hit upon it already.... And then? What use will it be to you? It's just then that you will have lost the battle...."

Seated comfortably astride the hulk, of which he had scaled the sides while talking, Arsène Lupin continued his speech with solemn gestures and as though he hoped to convince his hearers:

"Do you understand, my dear maître, that there is nothing to be done, absolutely nothing.... You are in the deplorable position of a gentleman who …"

Folenfant took aim at him:

"Lupin, surrender!"

"You're an ill-bred person, Sergeant Folenfant; you've interrupted me in the middle of a sentence. I was saying …"

"Lupin, surrender!"

"But, dash it all, Sergeant Folenfant, one only surrenders when in danger! Now surely you have not the face to believe that I am running the least danger!"

"For the last time, Lupin, I call on you to surrender!"

"Sergeant Folenfant, you have not the smallest intention of killing me; at the most you mean to wound me, you're so afraid of my escaping! And supposing that, by accident, the wound should be mortal? Oh, think of your remorse, wretched man, of your blighted old age …"

The shot went off.

Lupin staggered, clung for a moment to the overturned boat, then let go and disappeared.

It was just three o'clock when these events happened. At six o'clock precisely, as he had declared, Holmlock Shears, clad in a pair of trousers too short and a jacket too tight for him, which he had borrowed from an inn-keeper at Neuilly, and wearing a cap and a flannel shirt with a silk cord and tassels, entered the boudoir in the Rue Murillo, after sending word to M. and Mme. d'Imblevalle to ask for an interview.

They found him walking up and down. And he looked to them so comical in his queer costume that they had a difficulty in suppressing their inclination to laugh. With a pensive air and a bent back, he walked, like an automaton, from the window to the door and the door to the window, taking each time the same number of steps and turning each time in the same direction.

He stopped, took up a knick-knack, examined it mechanically and then resumed his walk.

At last, planting himself in front of them, he asked:

"Is mademoiselle here?"

"Yes, in the garden, with the children."

"Monsieur le baron, as this will be our final conversation, I should like Mlle. Demun to be present at it."

"So you decidedly…?"

"Have a little patience, monsieur. The truth will emerge plainly from the facts which I propose to lay before you with the greatest possible precision."

"Very well. Suzanne, do you mind…?"

Mme. d'Imblevalle rose and returned almost at once, accompanied by Alice Demun. Mademoiselle, looking a little paler than usual, remained standing, leaning against a table and without even asking to know why she had been sent for.

Shears appeared not to see her and, turning abruptly toward M. d'Imblevalle, made his statement in a tone that admitted of no reply:

"After an inquiry extending over several days, and although certain events for a moment altered my view, I will repeat what I said from the first, that the Jewish lamp was stolen by some one living in this house."

"The name?"

"I know it."

"Your evidence?"

"The evidence which I have is enough to confound the culprit."

"It is not enough that the culprit should be confounded. He must restore...."

"The Jewish lamp? It is in my possession!"

"The opal necklace? The snuff-box?…"

"The opal necklace, the snuff-box, in short everything that was stolen on the second occasion is in my possession."

Shears loved this dry, claptrap way of announcing his triumphs.

As a matter of fact, the baron and his wife seemed stupefied and looked at him with a silent curiosity which was, in itself, the highest praise.

He next summed up in detail all that he had done during those three days. He told how he had discovered the picture-book, wrote down on a sheet of paper the sentence formed by the letters which had been cut out, then described Bresson's expedition to the bank of the Seine and his suicide and, lastly, the struggle in which he, Shears, had just been engaged with Lupin, the wreck of the boat and Lupin's disappearance.

When he had finished, the baron said, in a low voice:

"Nothing remains but that you should reveal the name of the thief. Whom do you accuse?"

"I accuse the person who cut out the letters from this alphabet and communicated, by means of those letters, with Arsène Lupin."

"How do you know that this person's correspondent was Arsène Lupin?"

"From Lupin himself."

He held out a scrap of moist and crumpled paper. It was the page which Lupin had torn from his note-book in the boat, and on which he had written the sentence.

"And observe," said Shears, in a gratified voice, "that there was nothing to compel him to give me this paper and thus make himself known. It was a mere schoolboy prank on his part, which gave me the information I wanted."

"What information?" asked the baron. "I don't see...."

Shears copied out the letters and figures in pencil:

C D E H N O P R Z E O—237

"Well?" said M. d'Imblevalle. "That's the formula which you have just shown us yourself."

"No. If you had turned this formula over and over, as I have done, you would have seen at once that it contains two more letters than the first, an E and an O."

"As a matter of fact, I did not notice...."

"Place these two letters beside the C and H which remained over from the word Répondez, and you will see that the only possible word is 'ÉCHO.'"

"Which means…?"

"Which means the Écho de France, Lupin's newspaper, his own organ, the one for which he reserves his official communications. 'Send reply to the Écho de France, agony column, No. 237.' That was the key for which I had hunted so long and with which Lupin was kind enough to supply me. I have just come from the office of the Écho de France."

"And what have you found?"

"I have found the whole detailed story of the relations between Arsène Lupin and … his accomplice."

And Shears spread out seven newspapers, opened at the fourth page, and picked out the following lines:

1. ARS. LUP. Lady impl. protect. 540.

2. 540. Awaiting explanations. A. L.

3. A. L. Under dominion of enemy. Lost.

4. 540. Write address. Will make enq.

5. A. L. Murillo.

6. 540. Park 3 p. m. Violets.

7. 237. Agreed Sat. Shall be park. Sun. morn.

"And you call that a detailed story!" exclaimed M. d'Imblevalle.

"Why, of course; and, if you will pay attention, you will think the same. First of all, a lady, signing herself 540, implores the protection of Arsène Lupin. To this Lupin replies with a request for explanations. The lady answers that she is under the dominion of an enemy, Bresson, no doubt, and that she is lost unless some one comes to her assistance. Lupin, who is suspicious and dares not yet have an interview with the stranger, asks for the address and suggests an inquiry. The lady hesitates for four days—see the dates—and, at last, under the pressure of events and the influence of Bresson's threats, gives the name of her street, the Rue Murillo. The next day, Arsène Lupin advertises that he will be in the Parc Monceau at three o'clock and asks the stranger to wear a bunch of violets as a token. Here follows an interruption of eight days in the correspondence. Arsène Lupin and the lady no longer need write through the medium of the paper: they see each other or correspond direct. The plot is contrived: to satisfy Bresson's requirements, the lady will take the Jewish lamp. It remains to fix the day. The lady, who, from motives of prudence, corresponds by means of words cut out and stuck together, decides upon Saturday, and adds, 'Send reply Écho 237.' Lupin replies that it is agreed and that, moreover, he will be in the park on Sunday morning. On Sunday morning, the theft took place."

"Yes, everything fits in," said the baron, approvingly, "and the story is complete."

Shears continued:

"So the theft took place. The lady goes out on Sunday morning, tells Lupin what she has done and carries the Jewish lamp to Bresson. Things then happen as Lupin foresaw. The police, misled by an open window, four holes in the ground and two scratches on a balcony, at once accept the burglary suggestion. The lady is easy in her mind."

"Very well," said the baron. "I accept this explanation as perfectly logical. But the second theft...."

"The second theft was provoked by the first. After the newspapers had told how the Jewish lamp had disappeared, some one thought of returning to the attack and seizing hold of everything that had not been carried away. And, this time, it was not a pretended theft, but a real theft, with a genuine burglary, ladders, and so on."

"Lupin, of course…?"

"No, Lupin does not act so stupidly. Lupin does not fire at people without very good reason."

"Then who was it?"

"Bresson, no doubt, unknown to the lady whom he had been blackmailing. It was Bresson who broke in here, whom I pursued, who wounded my poor Wilson."

"Are you quite sure?"

"Absolutely. One of Bresson's accomplices wrote him a letter yesterday, before his suicide, which shows that this accomplice and Lupin had entered upon a parley for the restitution of all the articles stolen from your house. Lupin demanded everything, 'the first thing,' that is to say, the Jewish lamp, 'as well as those of the second business.' Moreover, he watched Bresson. When Bresson went to the bank of the Seine yesterday evening, one of Lupin's associates was dogging him at the same time as ourselves."

"What was Bresson doing at the bank of the Seine?"

"Warned of the progress of my inquiry...."

"Warned by whom?"

"By the same lady, who very rightly feared lest the discovery of the Jewish lamp should entail the discovery of her adventure.... Bresson, therefore, warned, collected into one parcel all that might compromise him and dropped it in a place where it would be possible for him to recover it, once the danger was past. It was on his return that, hunted down by Ganimard and me and doubtless having other crimes on his conscience, he lost his head and shot himself."

"But what did the parcel contain?"

"The Jewish lamp and your other things."

"Then they are not in your possession?"

"Immediately after Lupin's disappearance, I took advantage of the bath which he had compelled me to take to drive to the spot chosen by Bresson; and I found your stolen property wrapped up in linen and oil-skin. Here it is, on the table."

Without a word, the baron cut the string, tore through the pieces of wet linen, took out the lamp, turned a screw under the foot, pressed with both hands on the receiver, opened it into two equal parts and revealed the golden chimera, set with rubies and emeralds. It was untouched.

In all this scene, apparently so natural and consisting of a simple statement of facts, there was something that made it terribly tragic, which was the formal, direct, irrefutable accusation which Shears hurled at mademoiselle with every word he uttered. And there was also Alice Demun's impressive silence.

During that long, that cruel accumulation of small super-added proofs, not a muscle of her face had moved, not a gleam of rebellion or fear had disturbed the serenity of her limpid glance. What was she thinking? And, still more, what would she say at the solemn moment when she must reply, when she must defend herself and break the iron circle in which the Englishman had so cleverly imprisoned her?