Attracted by the shots and the noise, the detectives were already rushing through the hall and up the staircase. When they reached the first floor and had gone through the anteroom, as the drawing-room doors were locked, the only outlet open to them was the passage, at the end of which they could hear the deputy shouting. They all six darted down it.
When the last of them had vanished round the bend in the passage, Don Luis softly pushed back the door that concealed him and locked it like the rest. The six detectives were as safely imprisoned as the deputy chief.
"Bottled!" muttered Don Luis. "It will take them quite five minutes to realize the situation, to bang at the locked doors, and to break down one of them. In five minutes we shall be far away."
He met two of his servants running up with scared faces, the chauffeur and the butler. He flung each of them a thousand-franc note and said to the chauffeur:
"Set the engine going, there's a sportsman, and let no one near the machine to block my way. Two thousand francs more for each of you if I get off in the motor. Don't stand staring at me like that: I mean what I say. Two thousand francs apiece: it's for you to earn it. Look sharp!"
He himself went up the second flight without undue haste, remaining master of himself. But, on the last stair, he was seized with such a feeling of elation that he shouted:
"Victory! The road is clear!"
The boudoir door was opposite. He opened it and repeated:
"Victory! But there's not a second to lose. Follow me."
He entered. A stifled oath escaped his lips.
The room was empty.
"What!" he stammered. "What does this mean? They're gone…. Florence—"
Certainly, unlikely though it seemed, he had hitherto supposed that Sauverand possessed a false key to the lock. But how could they both have escaped, in the midst of the detectives? He looked around him. And then he understood.
In the recess containing the window, the lower part of the wall, which formed a very wide box underneath the casement, had the top of its woodwork raised and resting against the panes, exactly like the lid of a chest. And inside the open chest he saw the upper rungs of a narrow descending ladder.
In a second, Don Luis conjured up the whole story of the past: Count Malonyi's ancestress hiding in the old family mansion, escaping the search of the perquisitors, and in this way living throughout the revolutionary troubles. Everything was explained. A passage contrived in the thickness of the wall led to some distant outlet. And this was how Florence used to come and go through the house; this was how Gaston went in and out in all security; and this also was how both of them were able to enter his room and surprise his secrets.
"Why not have told me?" he wondered. "A lingering suspicion, I suppose—"
But his eyes were attracted by a sheet of paper on the table. With a feverish hand, Gaston Sauverand had scribbled the following lines in pencil:
"We are trying to escape so as not to compromise you. If we are caught, it can't be helped. The great thing is that you should be free. All our hopes are centred in you."
Below were two words written by Florence: "Save Marie."
"Ah," he murmured, disconcerted by the turn of events and not knowing what to decide, "why, oh, why did they not obey my instructions? We are separated now—"
Downstairs the detectives were battering at the door of the passage in which they were imprisoned. Perhaps he would still have time to reach his motor before they succeeded in breaking down the door. Nevertheless, he preferred to take the same road as Florence and Sauverand, which gave him the hope of saving them and of rescuing them in case of danger.
He therefore stepped over the side of the chest, placed his foot on the top rung and went down. Some twenty bars brought him to the middle of the first floor. Here, by the light of his electric lantern, he entered a sort of low, vaulted tunnel, dug, as he thought, in the wall, and so narrow that he could only walk along it sideways.
Thirty yards farther there was a bend, at right angles; and next, at the end of another tunnel of the same length, a trapdoor, which stood open, revealing the rungs of a second ladder. He did not doubt that the fugitives had gone this way.
It was quite light at the bottom. Here he found himself in a cupboard which was also open and which, on ordinary occasions, must have been covered by curtains that were now drawn. This cupboard faced a bed that filled almost the whole space of an alcove. On passing through the alcove and reaching a room from which it was separated only by a slender partition, to his great surprise, he recognized Florence's sitting-room.
This time, he knew where he was. The exit, which was not secret, as it led to the Place du Palais-Bourbon, but nevertheless very safe, was that which Sauverand generally used when Florence admitted him.
Don Luis therefore went through the entrance hall and down the steps and, a little way before the pantry, came upon the cellar stairs. He ran down these and soon recognized the low door that served to admit the wine-casks. The daylight filtered in through a small, grated spy-hole. He groped till he found the lock. Glad to have come to the end of his expedition, he opened the door.
"Hang it all!" he growled, leaping back and clutching at the lock, which he managed to fasten again.
Two policemen in uniform were guarding the exits two policemen who had tried to seize him as he appeared.
Where did those two men come from? Had they prevented the escape of Sauverand and Florence? But in that case Don Luis would have met the two fugitives, as he had come by exactly the same road as they.
"No," he thought, "they effected their flight before the exit was watched. But, by Jove! it's my turn to clear out; and that's not easy. Shall I let myself be caught in my burrow like a rabbit?"
He went up the cellar stairs again, intending to hasten matters, to slip into the courtyard through the outhouses, to jump into his motor, and to clear a way for himself. But, when he was just reaching the yard, near the coach-house, he saw four detectives, four of those whom he had imprisoned, come up waving their arms and shouting. And he also became aware of a regular uproar near the main gate and the porter's lodge. A number of men were all talking together, raising their voices in violent discussion.
Perhaps he might profit by this opportunity to steal outside under cover of the disorder. At the risk of being seen, he put out his head. And what he saw astounded him.
Gaston Sauverand stood with his back to the wall of the lodge, surrounded by policemen and detectives who pushed and insulted him. The handcuffs were on his wrists.
Gaston Sauverand a prisoner! What had happened between the two fugitives and the police?
His heart wrung with anguish, he leaned out still farther. But he did not see Florence. The girl had no doubt succeeded in escaping.
Weber's appearance on the steps and the deputy chief's first words confirmed his hopes. Weber was mad with rage. His recent captivity and the humiliation of his defeat exasperated him.
"Ah!" he roared, as he saw the prisoner. "There's one of them, at any rate! Gaston Sauverand! Choice game, that!… Where did you catch him?"
"On the Place du Palais-Bourbon," said one of the inspectors. "We saw him slinking out through the cellar door."
"And his accomplice, the Levasseur girl?"
"We missed her, Deputy Chief. She was the first out."
"And Don Luis? You haven't let him leave the house, I hope? I gave orders."
"He tried to get out through the cellar door five minutes after."
"Who said so?"
"One of the men in uniform posted outside the door."
"Well?"
"The beggar went back into the cellar."
Weber gave a shout of delight.
"We've got him! And it's a nasty business for him! Charge of resisting the police!… Complicity … We shall be able to unmask him at last. Tally-ho, my lads, tally-ho! Two men to guard Sauverand, four men on the Place du Palais-Bourbon, revolver in hand. Two men on the roof. The rest stick to me. We'll begin with the Levasseur girl's room and we'll take his room next. Hark, forward, my lads!"
Don Luis did not wait for the enemies' attack. Knowing their intentions, he beat a retreat, unseen, toward Florence's rooms. Here, as Weber did not yet know the short cut through the outhouses, he had time to make sure that the trapdoor was in perfect working order, and that there was no reason why they should discover the existence of a secret cupboard at the back of the alcove, behind the curtains of the bed.
Once inside the passage, he went up the first staircase, followed the long corridor contrived in the wall, climbed the ladder leading to the boudoir, and, perceiving that this second trapdoor fitted the woodwork so closely that no one could suspect anything, he closed it over him. A few minutes later he heard the noise of men making a search above his head.
And so, on the twenty-fourth of May, at five o'clock in the afternoon, the position was as follows: Florence Levasseur with a warrant out against her, Gaston Sauverand in prison, Marie Fauville in prison and refusing all food, and Don Luis, who believed in their innocence and who alone could have saved them, Don Luis was being blockaded in his own house and hunted down by a score of detectives.
As for the Mornington inheritance, there could be no more question of that, because the legatee, in his turn, had set himself in open rebellion against society.
"Capital!" said Don Luis, with a grin. "This is life as I understand it. The question is a simple one and may be put in different ways. How can a wretched, unwashed beggar, with not a penny in his pocket, make a fortune in twenty-four hours without setting foot outside his hovel? How can a general, with no soldiers and no ammunition left, win a battle which he has lost? In short, how shall I, Arsène Lupin, manage to be present to-morrow evening at the meeting which will be held on the Boulevard Suchet and to behave in such a way as to save Marie Fauville, Florence Levasseur, Gaston Sauverand, and my excellent friend Don Luis Perenna in the bargain?"
Dull blows came from somewhere. The men must be hunting the roofs and sounding the walls.
Don Luis stretched himself flat on the floor, hid his face in his folded arms and, shutting his eyes, murmured:
"Let's think."
CHAPTER TWELVE
"HELP!"
When Lupin afterward told me this episode of the tragic story, he said, not without a certain self-complacency:
"What astonished me then, and what astonishes me still, as one of the most amazing victories on which I am entitled to pride myself, is that I was able to admit Sauverand and Marie Fauville's innocence on the spot, as a problem solved once and for all. It was a first-class performance, I swear, and surpassed the most famous deductions of the most famous investigators both in psychological value and in detective merit.
"After all, taking everything into account, there was not the shadow of a fresh fact to enable me to alter the verdict. The charges accumulated against the two prisoners were the same, and were so grave that no examining magistrate would have hesitated for a second to commit them for trial, nor any jury to bring them in guilty. I will not speak of Marie Fauville: you had only to think of the marks of her teeth to be absolutely certain. But Gaston Sauverand, the son of Victor Sauverand and consequently the heir of Cosmo Mornington—Gaston Sauverand, the man with the ebony walking-stick and the murderer of Chief Inspector Ancenis—was he not just as guilty as Marie Fauville, incriminated with her by the mysterious letters, incriminated by the very revelation of the husband whom they had killed?
"And yet why did that sudden change take place in me?" he asked. "Why did I go against the evidence? Why did I credit an incredible fact? Why did I admit the inadmissible? Why? Well, no doubt, because truth has an accent that rings in the ears in a manner all its own. On the one side, every proof, every fact, every reality, every certainty; on the other, a story, a story told by one of the three criminals, and therefore, presumptively, absurd and untrue from start to finish. But a story told in a frank voice, a clear, dispassionate, closely woven story, free from complications or improbabilities, a story which supplied no positive solution, but which, by its very honesty, obliged any impartial mind to reconsider the solution arrived at. I believed the story."
The explanation which Lupin gave me was not complete. I asked:
"And Florence Levasseur?"
"Florence?"
"Yes, you don't tell me what you thought. What was your opinion about her? Everything tended to incriminate her not only in your eyes, because, logically speaking, she had taken part in all the attempts to murder you, but also in the eyes of the police. They knew that she used to pay Sauverand clandestine visits at his house on the Boulevard Richard-Wallace. They had found her photograph in Inspector Vérot's memorandum-book, and then—and then all the rest: your accusations, your certainties. Was all that modified by Sauverand's story? To your mind, was Florence innocent or guilty?"
He hesitated, seemed on the point of replying directly and frankly to my question, but could not bring himself to do so, and said:
"I wished to have confidence. In order to act, I must have full and entire confidence, whatever doubts might still assail me, whatever darkness might still enshroud this or that part of the adventure. I therefore believed. And, believing, I acted according to my belief."
Acting, to Don Luis Perenna, during those hours of forced inactivity, consisted solely in perpetually repeating to himself Gaston Sauverand's account of the events. He tried to reconstitute it in all its details, to remember the very least sentences, the apparently most insignificant phrases. And he examined those sentences, scrutinized those phrases one by one, in order to extract such particle of the truth as they contained.
For the truth was there. Sauverand had said so and Perenna did not doubt it. The whole sinister affair, all that constituted the case of the Mornington inheritance and the tragedy of the Boulevard Suchet, all that could throw light upon the plot hatched against Marie Fauville, all that could explain the undoing of Sauverand and Florence—all this lay in Sauverand's story. Don Luis had only to understand, and the truth would appear like the moral which we draw from some obscure fable.
Don Luis did not once deviate from his method. If any objection suggested itself to his mind, he at once replied:
"Very well. It may be that I am wrong and that Sauverand's story will not enlighten me on any point capable of guiding me. It may be that the truth lies outside it. But am I in a position to get at the truth in any other way? All that I possess as an instrument of research, without attaching undue importance to certain gleams of light which the regular appearance of the mysterious letters has shed upon the case, all that I possess is Gaston Sauverand's story. Must I not make use of it?"
And, once again, as when one follows a path by another person's tracks, he began to live through the adventure which Sauverand had been through. He compared it with the picture of it which he had imagined until then. The two were in opposition; but could not the very clash of their opposition be made to produce a spark of light?
"Here is what he said," he thought, "and there is what I believed. What does the difference mean? Here is the thing that was, and there is the thing that appeared to be. Why did the criminal wish the thing that was to appear under that particular aspect? To remove all suspicion from him? But, in that case, was it necessary that suspicion should fall precisely on those on whom it did?"
The questions came crowding one upon the other. He sometimes answered them at random, mentioning names and uttering words in succession, as though the name mentioned might be just that of the criminal, and the words uttered those which contained the unseen reality.
Then at once he would take up the story again, as schoolboys do when parsing and analyzing a passage, in which each expression is carefully sifted, each period discussed, each sentence reduced to its essential value.
* * * * *
Hours and hours passed. Suddenly, in the middle of the night, he gave a start. He took out his watch. By the light of his electric lamp he saw that it was seventeen minutes to twelve.
"So at seventeen minutes to twelve at night," he said, "I fathomed the mystery."
He tried to control his emotion, but it was too great; and his nerves were so immensely staggered by the trial that he began to shed tears. He had caught sight of the appalling truth, all of a sudden, as when at night one half sees a landscape under a lightning-flash.
There is nothing more unnerving than this sudden illumination when we have been groping and struggling in the dark. Already exhausted by his physical efforts and by the want of food, from which he was beginning to suffer, he felt the shock so intensely that, without caring to think a moment longer, he managed to go to sleep, or, rather, to sink into sleep, as one sinks into the healing waters of a bath.
When he woke, in the small hours, alert and well despite the discomfort of his couch, he shuddered on thinking of the theory which he had accepted; and his first instinct was to doubt it. He had, so to speak, no time.
All the proofs came rushing to his mind of their own accord and at once transformed the theory into one of those certainties which it would be madness to deny. It was that and nothing else. As he had foreseen, the truth lay recorded in Sauverand's story. And he had not been mistaken, either, in saying to Mazeroux that the manner in which the mysterious letters appeared had put him on the track of the truth.
And the truth was terrible. He felt, at the thought of it, the same fears that had maddened Inspector Vérot when, already tortured by the poison, he stammered:
"Oh, I don't like this, I don't like the look of this!… The whole thing has been planned in such an infernal manner!"
Infernal was the word! And Don Luis remained stupefied at the revelation of a crime which looked as if no human brain could have conceived it.
For two hours more he devoted all his mental powers to examining the situation from every point of view. He was not much disturbed about the result, because, being now in possession of the terrible secret, he had nothing more to do but make his escape and go that evening to the meeting on the Boulevard Suchet, where he would show them all how the murder was committed.
But when, wishing to try his chance of escaping, he went up through the underground passage and climbed to the top of the upper ladder—that is to say, to the level of the boudoir—he heard through the trapdoor the voices of men in the room.
"By Jove!" he said to himself, "the thing is not so simple as I thought! In order to escape the minions of the law I must first leave my prison; and here is at least one of the exits blocked. Let's look at the other."
He went down to Florence's apartments and worked the mechanism, which consisted of a counterweight. The panel of the cupboard moved in the groove.
Driven by horror and hoping to find some provisions which enable him to withstand a siege without being reduced to famine, he was about to pass through the alcove, behind the curtains, when he was stopped short by a sound of footsteps. Some one had entered the room.
"Well, Mazeroux, have you spent the night here? Nothing new!"
Don Luis recognized the Prefect of Police by his voice; and the question put by the Prefect told him, first, that Mazeroux had been released from the dark closet where he had bound him up, and, secondly, that the sergeant was in the next room. Fortunately, the sliding panel had worked without the least sound; and Don Luis was able to overhear the conversation between the two men.
"No, nothing new, Monsieur le Préfet," replied Mazeroux.
"That's funny. The confounded fellow must be somewhere. Or can he have got away over the roof?"
"Impossible, Monsieur le Préfet," said a third voice, which Don Luis recognized as that of Weber, the deputy chief detective. "Impossible. We made certain yesterday, that unless he has wings—"
"Then what do you think, Weber?"
"I think, Monsieur le Préfet, that he is concealed in the house. This is an old house and probably contains some safe hiding-place—"
"Of course, of course," said M. Desmalions, whom Don Luis, peeping through the curtains, saw walking to and fro in front of the alcove. "You're right; and we shall catch him in his burrow. Only, is it really necessary?"
"Monsieur le Préfet!"
"Well, you know my opinion on the subject, which is also the Prime Minister's opinion. Unearthing Lupin would be a blunder which we should end by regretting. After all, he's become an honest man, you know; he's useful to us and he does no harm—"
"No harm, Monsieur le Préfet? Do you think so?" said Weber stiffly.
M. Desmalions burst out laughing.
"Oh, of course, yesterday's trick, the telephone trick! You must admit it was funny. The Premier had to hold his sides when I told him of it."
"Upon my word, I see nothing to laugh at!"
"No, but, all the same, the rascal is never at a loss. Funny or not, the trick was extraordinarily daring. To cut the telephone wire before your eyes and then blockade you behind that iron curtain! By the way, Mazeroux, you must get the telephone repaired this morning, so as to keep in touch with the office. Have you begun your search in these two rooms?"
"As you ordered, Monsieur le Préfet. The deputy chief and I have been hunting round for the last hour."
"Yes," said M. Desmalions, "that Florence Levasseur strikes me as a troublesome creature. She is certainly an accomplice. But what were her relations with Sauverand and what was her connection with Don Luis Perenna? That's what I should like to know. Have you discovered nothing in her papers?"
"No, Monsieur le Préfet," said Mazeroux. "Nothing but bills and tradesmen's letters."
"And you, Weber?"
"I've found something very interesting, Monsieur le Préfet."
Weber spoke in a triumphant tone, and, in answer to M. Desmalions's question, went on:
"This is a volume of Shakespeare, Monsieur le Préfet, Volume VIII. You will see that, contrary to the other volumes, the inside is empty and the binding forms a secret receptacle for hiding documents."
"Yes. What sort of documents?"
"Here they are: sheets of paper, blank sheets, all but three. One of them gives a list of the dates on which the mysterious letters were to appear."
"Oho!" said M. Desmalions. "That's a crushing piece of evidence against Florence Levasseur. And also it tells us where Don Luis got his list from."
Perenna listened with surprise: he had utterly forgotten this particular; and Gaston Sauverand had made no reference to it in his narrative. And yet it was a strange and serious detail. From whom had Florence received that list of dates?
"And what's on the other two sheets?" asked M. Desmalions.
Don Luis pricked up his ears. Those two other sheets had escaped his attention on the day of his interview with Florence in this room.
"Here is one of them," said Weber.
M. Desmalions took the paper and read:
"Bear in mind that the explosion is independent of the letters, and that it will take place at three o'clock in the morning."
"Yes," he said, "the famous explosion which Don Luis foretold and which is to accompany the fifth letter, as announced on the list of dates. Tush! We have plenty of time, as there have been only three letters and the fourth is due to-night. Besides, blowing up that house on the Boulevard Suchet would be no easy job, by Jove! Is that all?"
"Monsieur le Préfet," said Weber, producing the third sheet, "would you mind looking at these lines drawn in pencil and enclosed in a large square containing some other smaller squares and rectangles of all sizes? Wouldn't you say that it was the plan of a house?"
"Yes, I should."
"It is the plan of the house in which we are," declared Weber solemnly. "Here you see the front courtyard, the main building, the porter's lodge, and, over there, Mlle. Levasseur's lodge. From this lodge, a dotted line, in red pencil, starts zigzagging toward the main building. The commencement of this line is marked by a little red cross which stands for the room in which we are, or, to be more correct, the alcove. You will see here something like the design of a chimney, or, rather, a cupboard—a cupboard recessed behind the bed and probably hidden by the curtains."
"But, in that case, Weber," said M. Desmalions, "this dotted line must represent a passage leading from this lodge to the main building. Look, there is also a little red cross at the other end of the line."
"Yes, Monsieur le Préfet, there is another cross. We shall discover later for certain what position it marks. But, meanwhile, and acting on a mere guess, I have posted some men in a small room on the second floor where the last secret meeting between Don Luis, Florence Levasseur, and Gaston Sauverand was held yesterday. And, meanwhile, at any rate, we hold one end of the line and, through that very fact, we know Don Luis Perenna's retreat."
There was a pause, after which the deputy chief resumed in a more and more solemn voice:
"Monsieur le Préfet, yesterday I suffered a cruel outrage at the hands of that man. It was witnessed by our subordinates. The servants must be aware of it. The public will know of it before long. This man has brought about the escape of Florence Levasseur. He tried to bring about the escape of Gaston Sauverand. He is a ruffian of the most dangerous type. Monsieur le Préfet, I am sure that you will not refuse me leave to dig him out of his hole. Otherwise—otherwise, Monsieur le Préfet, I shall feel obliged to hand in my resignation."
"With good reasons to back it up!" said the Prefect, laughing. "There's no doubt about it; you can't stomach the trick of the iron curtain. Well, go ahead! It's Don Luis's own lookout; he's brought it on himself. Mazeroux, ring me up at the office as soon as the telephone is put right. And both of you meet me at the Fauvilles' house this evening. Don't forget it's the night for the fourth letter."
"There won't be any fourth letter, Monsieur le Préfet," said Weber.
"Why not?"
"Because between this and then Don Luis will be under lock and key."
"Oh, so you accuse Don Luis also of—"
Don Luis did not wait to hear more. He softly retreated to the cupboard, took hold of the panel and pushed it back without a sound.
So his hiding-place was known!
"By Jingo," he growled, "this is a bit awkward! I'm in a nice plight!"
He had run halfway along the underground passage, with the intention of reaching the other exit. But he stopped.
"It's not worth while, as the exit's watched. Well, let's see; am I to let myself be collared? Wait a bit, let's see—"
Already there came from the alcove below a noise of blows striking on the panel, the hollow sound of which had probably attracted the deputy chief's attention. And, as Weber was not compelled to take the same precautions as Don Luis, and seemed to be breaking down the panel without delaying to look for the mechanism, the danger was close at hand.
"Oh, hang it all!" muttered Don Luis. "This is too silly. What shall I do? Have a dash at them? Ah, if I had all my strength!"
But he was exhausted by want of food. His legs shook beneath him and his brain seemed to lack its usual clearness.
The increasing violence of the blows in the alcove drove him, in spite of all, toward the upper exit; and, as he climbed the ladder, he moved his electric lantern over the stones of the wall and the wood of the trapdoor. He even tried to lift the door with his shoulder. But he again heard a sound of footsteps above his head. The men were still there.
Then, consumed with fury and helpless, he awaited the deputy's coming.
A crash came from below; its echo spread through the tunnel, followed by a tumult of voices.
"That's it," he said to himself. "The handcuffs, the lockup, the cell! Good Lord, what luck—and what nonsense! And Marie Fauville, who's sure to do away with herself. And Florence—Florence—"
Before extinguishing his lantern, he cast its light around him for the last time.
At a couple of yards' distance from the ladder, about three quarters of the way up and set a little way back, there was a big stone missing from the inner wall, leaving a space just large enough to crouch in.
Although the recess did not form much of a hiding-place, it was just possible that they might omit to inspect it. Besides, Don Luis had no choice. At all events, after putting out the light, he leaned toward the edge of the hole, reached it, and managed to scramble in by bending himself in two.
Weber, Mazeroux, and their men were coming along. Don Luis propped himself against the back of his hiding-hole to avoid as far as possible the glare of the lanterns, of which he was beginning to see the gleams. And an amazing thing happened: the stone against which he was pushing toppled over slowly, as though moving on a pivot, and he fell backward into a second cavity situated behind it.
He quickly drew his legs after him and the stone swung back as slowly as before, not, however, without sending down a quantity of small stones, crumbling from the wall and half covering his legs.
"Well, well!" he chuckled. "Can Providence be siding with virtue and righteousness?"
He heard Mazeroux's voice saying:
"Nobody! And here's the end of the passage. Unless he ran away as we came—look, through the trapdoor at the top of this ladder."
Weber replied:
"Considering the slope by which we've come, it's certain that the trapdoor is on a level with the second floor. Well, the other little cross ought to mark the boudoir on the second floor, next to Don Luis's bedroom. That's what I supposed, and why I posted three of our men there. If he's tried to get out on that side, he's caught."