The Confessions of Arsène Lupin. Leblanc Maurice

able at my ease to watch, on his youthful features, that extraordinary mobility of expression which baffles all observers and constitutes his great strength and his chief safeguard. By what signs can one hope to identify a face which changes at pleasure, even without the help of make-up, and whose every transient expression seems to be the final, definite expression?.. By what signs? There was one which I knew well, an invariable sign: Two little crossed wrinkles that marked his forehead whenever he made a powerful effort of concentration. And I saw it at that moment, saw the tiny tell-tale cross, plainly and deeply scored.

      He put down the sheet of paper and muttered:

      "Child's play!"

      The clock struck half-past five.

      "What!" I cried. "Have you succeeded?.. In twelve minutes?.."

      He took a few steps up and down the room, lit a cigarette and said:

      "You might ring up Baron Repstein, if you don't mind, and tell him I shall be with him at ten o'clock this evening."

      "Baron Repstein?" I asked. "The husband of the famous baroness?"

      "Yes."

      "Are you serious?"

      "Quite serious."

      Feeling absolutely at a loss, but incapable of resisting him, I opened the telephone-directory and unhooked the receiver. But, at that moment, Lupin stopped me with a peremptory gesture and said, with his eyes on the paper, which he had taken up again:

      "No, don't say anything… It's no use letting him know… There's something more urgent … a queer thing that puzzles me… Why on earth wasn't the last sentence finished? Why is the sentence…"

      He snatched up his hat and stick:

      "Let's be off. If I'm not mistaken, this is a business that requires immediate solution; and I don't believe I am mistaken."

      He put his arm through mine, as we went down the stairs, and said:

      "I know what everybody knows. Baron Repstein, the company-promoter and racing-man, whose colt Etna won the Derby and the Grand Prix this year, has been victimized by his wife. The wife, who was well known for her fair hair, her dress and her extravagance, ran away a fortnight ago, taking with her a sum of three million francs, stolen from her husband, and quite a collection of diamonds, pearls and jewellery which the Princesse de Berny had placed in her hands and which she was supposed to buy. For two weeks the police have been pursuing the baroness across France and the continent: an easy job, as she scatters gold and jewels wherever she goes. They think they have her every moment. Two days ago, our champion detective, the egregious Ganimard, arrested a visitor at a big hotel in Belgium, a woman against whom the most positive evidence seemed to be heaped up. On enquiry, the lady turned out to be a notorious chorus-girl called Nelly Darbal. As for the baroness, she has vanished. The baron, on his side, has offered a reward of two hundred thousand francs to whosoever finds his wife. The money is in the hands of a solicitor. Moreover, he has sold his racing-stud, his house on the Boulevard Haussmann and his country-seat of Roquencourt in one lump, so that he may indemnify the Princesse de Berny for her loss."

      "And the proceeds of the sale," I added, "are to be paid over at once. The papers say that the princess will have her money to-morrow. Only, frankly, I fail to see the connection between this story, which you have told very well, and the puzzling sentence…"

      Lupin did not condescend to reply.

      We had been walking down the street in which I live and had passed some four or five houses, when he stepped off the pavement and began to examine a block of flats, not of the latest construction, which looked as if it contained a large number of tenants:

      "According to my calculations," he said, "this is where the signals came from, probably from that open window."

      "On the third floor?"

      "Yes."

      He went to the portress and asked her:

      "Does one of your tenants happen to be acquainted with Baron Repstein?"

      "Why, of course!" replied the woman. "We have M. Lavernoux here, such a nice gentleman; he is the baron's secretary and agent. I look after his flat."

      "And can we see him?"

      "See him?.. The poor gentleman is very ill."

      "Ill?"

      "He's been ill a fortnight … ever since the trouble with the baroness… He came home the next day with a temperature and took to his bed."

      "But he gets up, surely?"

      "Ah, that I can't say!"

      "How do you mean, you can't say?"

      "No, his doctor won't let any one into his room. He took my key from me."

      "Who did?"

      "The doctor. He comes and sees to his wants, two or three times a day. He left the house only twenty minutes ago … an old gentleman with a grey beard and spectacles… Walks quite bent… But where are you going sir?"

      "I'm going up, show me the way," said Lupin, with his foot on the stairs. "It's the third floor, isn't it, on the left?"

      "But I mustn't!" moaned the portress, running after him. "Besides, I haven't the key … the doctor…"

      They climbed the three flights, one behind the other. On the landing, Lupin took a tool from his pocket and, disregarding the woman's protests, inserted it in the lock. The door yielded almost immediately. We went in.

      At the back of a small dark room we saw a streak of light filtering through a door that had been left ajar. Lupin ran across the room and, on reaching the threshold, gave a cry:

      "Too late! Oh, hang it all!"

      The portress fell on her knees, as though fainting.

      I entered the bedroom, in my turn, and saw a man lying half-dressed on the carpet, with his legs drawn up under him, his arms contorted and his face quite white, an emaciated, fleshless face, with the eyes still staring in terror and the mouth twisted into a hideous grin.

      "He's dead," said Lupin, after a rapid examination.

      "But why?" I exclaimed. "There's not a trace of blood!"

      "Yes, yes, there is," replied Lupin, pointing to two or three drops that showed on the chest, through the open shirt. "Look, they must have taken him by the throat with one hand and pricked him to the heart with the other. I say, 'pricked,' because really the wound can't be seen. It suggests a hole made by a very long needle."

      He looked on the floor, all round the corpse. There was nothing to attract his attention, except a little pocket-mirror, the little mirror with which M. Lavernoux had amused himself by making the sunbeams dance through space.

      But, suddenly, as the portress was breaking into lamentations and calling for help, Lupin flung himself on her and shook her:

      "Stop that!.. Listen to me … you can call out later… Listen to me and answer me. It is most important. M. Lavernoux had a friend living in this street, had he not? On the same side, to the right? An intimate friend?"

      "Yes."

      "A friend whom he used to meet at the café in the evening and with whom he exchanged the illustrated papers?"

      "Yes."

      "Was the friend an Englishman?"

      "Yes."

      "What's his name?"

      "Mr. Hargrove."

      "Where does he live?"

      "At No. 92 in this street."

      "One word more: had that old doctor been attending him long?"

      "No. I did not know him. He came on the evening when M. Lavernoux was taken ill."

      Without another word, Lupin dragged me away once more, ran down the stairs and, once in the street, turned to the right, which took us past my flat again. Four doors further, he stopped at No. 92, a small, low-storied house, of which the ground-floor was occupied by the proprietor of a dram-shop, who stood smoking in his doorway, next to the entrance-passage.