HB Classics - Arsene Lupin The Collection

But the idea stopped him. With a quick movement, he examined the pocket-book:

"Damn and blast it!" He grated through his teeth. "The paper's not there.—You've done me—"

He leaped into the room. Two shots rang out. Isidore, in his turn, had seized his pistol and fired.

"Missed, old chap!" shouted Bredoux. "Your hand's shaking.—You're afraid—"

They caught each other round the body and came down to the floor together. There was a violent and incessant knocking at the door. Isidore's strength gave way and he was at once over come by his adversary. It was the end. A hand was lifted over him, armed with a knife, and fell. A fierce pain burst into his shoulder. He let go.

He had an impression of some one fumbling in the inside pocket of his jacket and taking the paper from it. Then, through the lowered veil of his eyelids, he half saw the man stepping over the window- sill.

The same newspapers which, on the following morning, related the last episodes that had occurred at the Chateau d'Ambrumesy—the trickery at the chapel, the discovery of Arsene Lupin's body and of Raymonde's body and, lastly, the murderous attempt made upon Beautrelet by the clerk to the examining magistrate—also announced two further pieces of news: the disappearance of Ganimard, and the kidnapping of Holmlock Shears, in broad daylight, in the heart of London, at the moment when he was about to take the train for Dover.

Lupin's gang, therefore, which had been disorganized for a moment by the extraordinary ingenuity of a seventeen-year-old schoolboy, was now resuming the offensive and was winning all along the line from the first. Lupin's two great adversaries, Shears and Ganimard, were put away. Isidore Beautrelet was disabled. The police were powerless. For the moment there was no one left capable of struggling against such enemies.

One evening, five weeks later, I had given my man leave to go out. It was the day before the 14th of July. The night was hot, a storm threatened and I felt no inclination to leave the flat. I opened wide the glass doors leading to my balcony, lit my reading lamp and sat down in an easy-chair to look through the papers, which I had not yet seen.

It goes without saying that there was something about Arsene Lupin in all of them. Since the attempt at murder of which poor Isidore Beautrelet had been the victim, not a day had passed without some mention of the Ambrumesy mystery. It had a permanent headline devoted to it. Never had public opinion been excited to that extent, thanks to the extraordinary series of hurried events, of unexpected and disconcerting surprises. M. Filleul, who was certainly accepting the secondary part allotted to him with a good faith worthy of all praise, had let the interviewers into the secret of his young advisor's exploits during the memorable three days, so that the public was able to indulge in the rashest suppositions. And the public gave itself free scope. Specialists and experts in crime, novelists and playwrights, retired magistrates and chief-detectives, erstwhile Lecocqs and budding Holmlock Shearses, each had his theory and expounded it in lengthy contributions to the press. Everybody corrected and supplemented the inquiry of the examining magistrate; and all on the word of a child, on the word of Isidore Beautrelet, a sixth-form schoolboy at the Lycee Janson-de-Sailly!

For really, it had to be admitted, the complete elements of the truth were now in everybody's possession. What did the mystery consist of? They knew the hiding-place where Arsene Lupin had taken refuge and lain a-dying; there was no doubt about it: Dr. Delattre, who continued to plead professional secrecy and refused to give evidence, nevertheless confessed to his intimate friends—who lost no time in blabbing—that he really had been taken to a crypt to attend a wounded man whom his confederates introduced to him by the name of Arsene Lupin. And, as the corpse of Etienne de Vaudreix was found in that same crypt and as the said Etienne de Vaudreix was none other than Arsene Lupin—as the official examination went to show—all this provided an additional proof, if one were needed, of the identity of Arsene Lupin and the wounded man. Therefore, with Lupin dead and Mlle. de Saint-Veran's body recognized by the curb- bracelet on her wrist, the tragedy was finished.

It was not. Nobody thought that it was, because Beautrelet had said the contrary. Nobody knew in what respect it was not finished, but, on the word of the young man, the mystery remained complete. The evidence of the senses did not prevail against the statement of a Beautrelet. There was something which people did not know, and of that something they were convinced that he was in position to supply a triumphant explanation.

It is easy, therefore, to imagine the anxiety with which, at first, people awaited the bulletins issued by the two Dieppe doctors to whose care the Comte de Gesvres entrusted his patient; the distress that prevailed during the first few days, when his life was thought to be in danger; and the enthusiasm of the morning when the newspapers announced that there was no further cause for fear. The least details excited the crowd. People wept at the thought of Beautrelet nursed by his old father, who had been hurriedly summoned by telegram, and they also admired the devotion of Mlle. Suzanne de Gesvres, who spent night after night by the wounded lad's bedside.

Next came a swift and glad convalescence. At last, the public were about to know! They would know what Beautrelet had promised to reveal to M. Filleul and the decisive words which the knife of the would-be assassin had prevented him from uttering! And they would also know everything, outside the tragedy itself, that remained impenetrable or inaccessible to the efforts of the police.

With Beautrelet free and cured of his wound, one could hope for some certainty regarding Harlington, Arsene Lupin's mysterious accomplice, who was still detained at the Sante prison. One would learn what had become, after the crime, of Bredoux the clerk, that other accomplice, whose daring was really terrifying.

With Beautrelet free, one could also form a precise idea concerning the disappearance of Ganimard and the kidnapping of Shears. How was it possible for two attempts of this kind to take place? Neither the English detectives nor their French colleagues possessed the slightest clue on the subject. On Whit-Sunday, Ganimard did not come home, nor on the Monday either, nor during the five weeks that followed. In London, on Whit-Monday, Holmlock Shears took a cab at eight o'clock in the evening to drive to the station. He had hardly stepped in, when he tried to alight, probably feeling a presentiment of danger. But two men jumped into the hansom, one on either side, flung him back on the seat and kept him there between them, or rather under them. All this happened in sight of nine or ten witnesses, who had no time to interfere. The cab drove off at a gallop. And, after that, nothing. Nobody knew anything.

Perhaps, also, Beautrelet would be able to give the complete explanation of the document, the mysterious paper to which. Bredoux, the magistrate's clerk, attached enough importance to recover it, with blows of the knife, from the person in whose possession it was. The problem of the Hollow Needle it was called, by the countless solvers of riddles who, with their eyes bent upon the figures and dots, strove to read a meaning into them. The Hollow Needle! What a bewildering conjunction of two simple words! What an incomprehensible question was set by that scrap of paper, whose very origin and manufacture were unknown! The Hollow Needle! Was it a meaningless expression, the puzzle of a schoolboy scribbling with pen and ink on the corner of a page? Or were they two magic words which could compel the whole great adventure of Lupin the great adventurer to assume its true significance? Nobody knew.