The Crystal Stopper

Lupin hesitated. He would have liked to talk big and to come out with a farewell phrase, a parting speech, like an actor making a showy exit from the stage, and at least to disappear with the honours of war. But his defeat was so pitiable that he could think of nothing better than to bang his hat on his head and stamp his feet as he followed the portress down the hall. It was a poor revenge.

“You rascally beggar!” he shouted, once he was outside the door, shaking his fist at Daubrecq’s windows. “Wretch, scum of the earth, deputy, you shall pay for this!… Oh, he allows himself…! Oh, he has the cheek to…! Well, I swear to you, my fine fellow, that, one of these days…”

He was foaming with rage, all the more as, in his innermost heart, he recognized the strength of his new enemy and could not deny the masterly fashion in which he had managed this business. Daubrecq’s coolness, the assurance with which he hoaxed the police-officials, the contempt with which he lent himself to their visits at his house and, above all, his wonderful self-possession, his easy bearing and the impertinence of his conduct in the presence of the ninth person who was spying on him: all this denoted a man of character, a strong man, with a well-balanced mind, lucid, bold, sure of himself and of the cards in his hand.

But what were those cards? What game was he playing? Who held the stakes? And how did the players stand on either side? Lupin could not tell. Knowing nothing, he flung himself headlong into the thick of the fray, between adversaries desperately involved, though he himself was in total ignorance of their positions, their weapons, their resources and their secret plans. For, when all was said, he could not admit that the object of all those efforts was to obtain possession of a crystal stopper!

One thing alone pleased him: Daubrecq had not penetrated his disguise. Daubrecq believed him to be in the employ of the police. Neither Daubrecq nor the police, therefore, suspected the intrusion of a third thief in the business. This was his one and only trump, a trump that gave him a liberty of action to which he attached the greatest importance.

Without further delay, he opened the letter which Daubrecq had handed him for the secretary-general of police. It contained these few lines:

“Within reach of your hand, my dear Prasville, within reach of yourhand!  You touched it!  A little more and the trick was done… Butyou’re too big a fool.  And to think that they couldn’t hit uponany one better than you to make me bite the dust.  Poor old France!“Good-bye, Prasville.  But, if I catch you in the act, it will be abad lookout for you: my maxim is to shoot at sight.

“DAUBRECQ”

“Within reach of your hand,” repeated Lupin, after reading the note. “And to think that the rogue may be writing the truth! The most elementary hiding-places are the safest. We must look into this, all the same. And, also, we must find out why Daubrecq is the object of such strict supervision and obtain a few particulars about the fellow generally.”

The information supplied to Lupin by a private inquiry-office consisted of the following details:

      “ALEXIS DAUBRECQ, deputy of the Bouches-du-Rhone for the past twoyears; sits among the independent members.  Political opinions notvery clearly defined, but electoral position exceedingly strong,because of the enormous sums which he spends in nursing hisconstituency.  No private income.  Nevertheless, has a house inParis, a villa at Enghien and another at Nice and loses heavily atplay, though no one knows where the money comes from.  Has greatinfluence and obtains all he wants without making up to ministersor, apparently, having either friends or connections in politicalcircles.”

“That’s a trade docket,” said Lupin to himself. “What I want is a domestic docket, a police docket, which will tell me about the gentleman’s private life and enable me to work more easily in this darkness and to know if I’m not getting myself into a tangle by bothering about the Daubrecq bird. And time’s getting short, hang it!”

One of the residences which Lupin occupied at that period and which he used oftener than any of the others was in the Rue Chateaubriand, near the Arc de l’Etoile. He was known there by the name of Michel Beaumont. He had a snug flat here and was looked after by a manservant, Achille, who was utterly devoted to his interests and whose chief duty was to receive and repeat the telephone-messages addressed to Lupin by his followers.

Lupin, on returning home, learnt, with great astonishment, that a woman had been waiting to see him for over an hour:

“What! Why, no one ever comes to see me here! Is she young?”

“No… I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so!”

“She’s wearing a lace shawl over her head, instead of a hat, and you can’t see her face… She’s more like a clerk… or a woman employed in a shop. She’s not well-dressed…”

“Whom did she ask for?”

“M. Michel Beaumont,” replied the servant.

“Queer. And why has she called?”

“All she said was that it was about the Enghien business… So I thought that…”

“What! The Enghien business! Then she knows that I am mixed up in that business… She knows that, by applying here…”

“I could not get anything out of her, but I thought, all the same, that I had better let her in.”

“Quite right. Where is she?”

“In the drawing-room. I’ve put on the lights.”

Lupin walked briskly across the hall and opened the door of the drawing-room:

“What are you talking about?” he said, to his man. “There’s no one here.”

“No one here?” said Achille, running up.

And the room, in fact, was empty.

“Well, on my word, this takes the cake!” cried the servant. “It wasn’t twenty minutes ago that I came and had a look, to make sure. She was sitting over there. And there’s nothing wrong with my eyesight, you know.”

“Look here, look here,” said Lupin, irritably. “Where were you while the woman was waiting?”

“In the hall, governor! I never left the hall for a second! I should have seen her go out, blow it!”

“Still, she’s not here now…”

“So I see,” moaned the man, quite flabbergasted.

“She must have got tired of waiting and gone away. But, dash it all, I should like to know how she got out!”

“How she got out?” said Lupin. “It doesn’t take a wizard to tell that.”

“What do you mean?”

“She got out through the window. Look, it’s still ajar. We are on the ground-floor… The street is almost always deserted, in the evenings. There’s no doubt about it.”

He had looked around him and satisfied himself that nothing had been taken away or moved. The room, for that matter, contained no knick-knack of any value, no important paper that might have explained the woman’s visit, followed by her sudden disappearance. And yet why that inexplicable flight?

“Has any one telephoned?” he asked.

“No.”

“Any letters?”

“Yes, one letter by the last post.”

“Where is it?”

“I put it on your mantel-piece, governor, as usual.”

Lupin’s bedroom was next to the drawing-room, but Lupin had permanently bolted the door between the two. He, therefore, had to go through the hall again.

Lupin switched on the electric light and, the next moment, said:

“I don’t see it…”

“Yes… I put it next to the flower-bowl.”

“There’s nothing here at all.”

“You must be looking in the wrong place, governor.”

But Achille moved the bowl, lifted the clock, bent down to the grate, in vain: the letter was not there.

“Oh blast it, blast it!” he muttered. “She’s done it… she’s taken it… And then, when she had the letter, she cleared out… Oh, the slut!…”

Lupin said:

“You’re mad! There’s no way through between the two rooms.”

“Then who did take it, governor?”

They were both of them silent. Lupin strove to control his anger and collect his ideas. He asked:

“Did you look at the envelope?”

“Yes.”

“Anything particular about it?”

“Yes, it looked as if it had been written in a hurry, or scribbled, rather.”

“How was the address worded?… Do you remember?” asked Lupin, in a voice strained with anxiety.

“Yes, I remembered it, because it struck me as funny…”

“But speak, will you? Speak!”

“It said, ‘Monsieur de Beaumont, Michel.’”

Lupin took his servant by the shoulders and shook him:

“It said ‘de’ Beaumont? Are you sure? And ‘Michel’ after ‘Beaumont’?”

“Quite certain.”

“Ah!” muttered Lupin, with a choking throat. “It was a letter from Gilbert!”

He stood motionless, a little pale, with drawn features. There was no doubt about it: the letter was from Gilbert. It was the form of address which, by Lupin’s orders, Gilbert had used for years in corresponding with him. Gilbert had at last—after long waiting and by dint of endless artifices—found a means of getting a letter posted from his prison and had hastily written to him. And now the letter was intercepted! What did it say? What instructions had the unhappy prisoner given? What help was he praying for? What stratagem did he suggest?

Lupin looked round the room, which, contrary to the drawing-room, contained important papers. But none of the locks had been forced; and he was compelled to admit that the woman had no other object than to get hold of Gilbert’s letter.

Constraining himself to keep his temper, he asked:

“Did the letter come while the woman was here?”

“At the same time. The porter rang at the same moment.”

“Could she see the envelope?”

“Yes.”

The conclusion was evident. It remained to discover how the visitor had been able to effect her theft. By slipping from one window to the other, outside the flat? Impossible: Lupin found the window of his room shut. By opening the communicating door? Impossible: Lupin found it locked and barred with its two inner bolts.

Nevertheless, a person cannot pass through a wall by a mere operation of will. To go in or out of a room requires a passage; and, as the act was accomplished in the space of a few minutes, it was necessary, in the circumstances, that the passage should be previously in existence, that it should already have been contrived in the wall and, of course, known to the woman. This hypothesis simplified the search by concentrating it upon the door; for the wall was quite bare, without a cupboard, chimney-piece or hangings of any kind, and unable to conceal the least outlet.

Lupin went back to the drawing-room and prepared to make a study of the door. But he at once gave a start. He perceived, at the first glance, that the left lower panel of the six small panels contained within the cross-bars of the door no longer occupied its normal position and that the light did not fall straight upon it. On leaning forward, he saw two little tin tacks sticking out on either side and holding the panel in place, similar to a wooden board behind a picture-frame. He had only to shift these. The panel at once came out.

Achille gave a cry of amazement. But Lupin objected:

“Well? And what then? We are no better off than before. Here is an empty oblong, eight or nine inches wide by sixteen inches high. You’re not going to pretend that a woman can slip through an opening which would not admit the thinnest child of ten years old!”

“No, but she can have put her arm through and drawn the bolts.”

“The bottom bolt, yes,” said Lupin. “But the top bolt, no: the distance is far too great. Try for yourself and see.”

Achille tried and had to give up the attempt.

Lupin did not reply. He stood thinking for a long time. Then, suddenly, he said:

“Give me my hat… my coat…”

He hurried off, urged by an imperative idea. And, the moment he reached the street, he sprang into a taxi:

“Rue Matignon, quick!…”

As soon as they came to the house where he had been robbed of the crystal stopper, he jumped out of the cab, opened his private entrance, went upstairs, ran to the drawing-room, turned on the light and crouched at the foot of the door leading to his bedroom.

He had guessed right. One of the little panels was loosened in the same manner.

And, just as in his other flat in the Rue Chateaubriand, the opening was large enough to admit a man’s arm and shoulder, but not to allow him to draw the upper bolt.

“Hang!” he shouted, unable any longer to master the rage that had been seething within him for the last two hours. “Blast! Shall I never have finished with this confounded business?”

In fact, an incredible ill-luck seemed to dog his footsteps, compelling him to grope about at random, without permitting him to use the elements of success which his own persistency or the very force of things placed within his grasp. Gilbert gave him the crystal stopper. Gilbert sent him a letter. And both had disappeared at that very moment.

And it was not, as he had until then believed, a series of fortuitous and independent circumstances. No, it was manifestly the effect of an adverse will pursuing a definite object with prodigious ability and incredible boldness, attacking him, Lupin, in the recesses of his safest retreats and baffling him with blows so severe and so unexpected that he did not even know against whom he had to defend himself. Never, in the course of his adventures, had he encountered such obstacles as now.

And, little by little, deep down within himself, there grew a haunting dread of the future. A date loomed before his eyes, the terrible date which he unconsciously assigned to the law to perform its work of vengeance, the date upon which, in the light of a wan April morning, two men would mount the scaffold, two men who had stood by him, two comrades whom he had been unable to save from paying the awful penalty…

CHAPTER III. THE HOME LIFE OF ALEXIS DAUBRECQ

When Daubrecq the deputy came in from lunch on the day after the police had searched his house he was stopped by Clemence, his portress, who told him that she had found a cook who could be thoroughly relied on.

The cook arrived a few minutes later and produced first-rate characters, signed by people with whom it was easy to take up her references. She was a very active woman, although of a certain age, and agreed to do the work of the house by herself, without the help of a man-servant, this being a condition upon which Daubrecq insisted.

Her last place was with a member of the Chamber of Deputies, Comte Saulevat, to whom Daubrecq at once telephoned. The count’s steward gave her a perfect character, and she was engaged.

As soon as she had fetched her trunk, she set to work and cleaned and scrubbed until it was time to cook the dinner.

Daubrecq dined and went out.

At eleven o’clock, after the portress had gone to bed, the cook cautiously opened the garden-gate. A man came up.

“Is that you?” she asked.

“Yes, it’s I, Lupin.”

She took him to her bedroom on the third floor, overlooking the garden, and at once burst into lamentations:

“More of your tricks and nothing but tricks! Why can’t you leave me alone, instead of sending me to do your dirty work?”

“How can I help it, you dear old Victoire? [*] When I want a person of respectable appearance and incorruptible morals, I think of you. You ought to be flattered.”

     * See The Hollow Needle by Maurice Leblanc, translated by     Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, and later volumes of the Lupin     series.

“That’s all you care about me!” she cried. “You run me into danger once more; and you think it’s funny!”

“What are you risking?”

“How do you mean, what am I risking? All my characters are false.”

“Characters are always false.”

“And suppose M. Daubrecq finds out? Suppose he makes inquiries?”

“He has made inquiries.”

“Eh? What’s that?”

“He has telephoned to the steward of Comte Saulevat, in whose service you say that you have had the honour of being.”

“There, you see, I’m done for!”

“The count’s steward could not say enough in your praise.”

“He does not know me.”

“But I know him. I got him his situation with Comte Saulevat. So you understand…”

Victoire seemed to calm down a little:

“Well,” she said, “God’s will be done… or rather yours. And what do you expect me to do in all this?”

“First, to put me up. You were my wet-nurse once. You can very well give me half your room now. I’ll sleep in the armchair.”

“And next?”

“Next? To supply me with such food as I want.”

“And next?”

“Next? To undertake, with me and under my direction, a regular series of searches with a view…”

“To what?”

“To discovering the precious object of which I spoke to you.”

“What’s that?”

“A crystal stopper.”

“A crystal stopper… Saints above! A nice business! And, if we don’t find your confounded stopper, what then?”

Lupin took her gently by the arm and, in a serious voice:

“If we don’t find it, Gilbert, young Gilbert whom you know and love, will stand every chance of losing his head; and so will Vaucheray.”

“Vaucheray I don’t mind… a dirty rascal like him! But Gilbert…”

“Have you seen the papers this evening? Things are looking worse than ever. Vaucheray, as might be expected, accuses Gilbert of stabbing the valet; and it so happens that the knife which Vaucheray used belonged to Gilbert. That came out this morning. Whereupon Gilbert, who is intelligent in his way, but easily frightened, blithered and launched forth into stories and lies which will end in his undoing. That’s how the matter stands. Will you help me?”

Thenceforth, for several days, Lupin moulded his existence upon Daubrecq’s, beginning his investigations the moment the deputy left the house. He pursued them methodically, dividing each room into sections which he did not abandon until he had been through the tiniest nooks and corners and, so to speak, exhausted every possible device.

Victoire searched also. And nothing was forgotten. Table-legs, chair-rungs, floor-boards, mouldings, mirror- and picture-frames, clocks, plinths, curtain-borders, telephone-holders and electric fittings: everything that an ingenious imagination could have selected as a hiding-place was overhauled.

And they also watched the deputy’s least actions, his most unconscious movements, the expression of his face, the books which he read and the letters which he wrote.

It was easy enough. He seemed to live his life in the light of day. No door was ever shut. He received no visits. And his existence worked with mechanical regularity. He went to the Chamber in the afternoon, to the club in the evening.

“Still,” said Lupin, “there must be something that’s not orthodox behind all this.”

“There’s nothing of the sort,” moaned Victoire. “You’re wasting your time and we shall be bowled out.”

The presence of the detectives and their habit of walking up and down outside the windows drove her mad. She refused to admit that they were there for any other purpose than to trap her, Victoire. And, each time that she went shopping, she was quite surprised that one of those men did not lay his hand upon her shoulder.

One day she returned all upset. Her basket of provisions was shaking on her arm.

“What’s the matter, my dear Victoire?” said Lupin. “You’re looking green.”

“Green? I dare say I do. So would you look green…”

She had to sit down and it was only after making repeated efforts that she succeeded in stuttering:

“A man… a man spoke to me… at the fruiterer’s.”

“By jingo! Did he want you to run away with him?”

“No, he gave me a letter…”

“Then what are you complaining about? It was a love-letter, of course!”

“No. ‘It’s for your governor,’ said he. ‘My governor?’ I said. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘for the gentleman who’s staying in your room.’”

“What’s that?”

This time, Lupin had started:

“Give it here,” he said, snatching the letter from her. The envelope bore no address. But there was another, inside it, on which he read:

“Monsieur Arsene Lupin,

c/o Victoire.”

“The devil!” he said. “This is a bit thick!” He tore open the second envelope. It contained a sheet of paper with the following words, written in large capitals:

“Everything you are doing is useless and dangerous… Give it up.”

Victoire uttered one moan and fainted. As for Lupin, he felt himself blush up to his eyes, as though he had been grossly insulted. He experienced all the humiliation which a duellist would undergo if he heard the most secret advice which he had received from his seconds repeated aloud by a mocking adversary.

However, he held his tongue. Victoire went back to her work. As for him, he remained in his room all day, thinking.

That night he did not sleep.

And he kept saying to himself:

“What is the good of thinking? I am up against one of those problems which are not solved by any amount of thought. It is certain that I am not alone in the matter and that, between Daubrecq and the police, there is, in addition to the third thief that I am, a fourth thief who is working on his own account, who knows me and who reads my game clearly. But who is this fourth thief? And am I mistaken, by any chance? And… oh, rot!… Let’s get to sleep!…”

But he could not sleep; and a good part of the night went in this way.

At four o’clock in the morning he seemed to hear a noise in the house. He jumped up quickly and, from the top of the staircase, saw Daubrecq go down the first flight and turn toward the garden.

A minute later, after opening the gate, the deputy returned with a man whose head was buried in an enormous fur collar and showed him into his study.

Lupin had taken his precautions in view of any such contingency. As the windows of the study and those of his bedroom, both of which were at the back of the house, overlooked the garden, he fastened a rope-ladder to his balcony, unrolled it softly and let himself down by it until it was level with the top of the study windows.

These windows were closed by shutters; but, as they were bowed, there remained a semi-circular space at the top; and Lupin, though he could not hear, was able to see all that went on inside.

He then realized that the person whom he had taken for a man was a woman: a woman who was still young, though her dark hair was mingled with gray; a tall woman, elegantly but quite unobtrusively dressed, whose handsome features bore the expression of weariness and melancholy which long suffering gives.

“Where the deuce have I seen her before?” Lupin asked himself. “For I certainly know that face, that look, that expression.”

She stood leaning against the table, listening impassively to Daubrecq, who was also standing and who was talking very excitedly. He had his back turned to Lupin; but Lupin, leaning forward, caught sight of a glass in which the deputy’s image was reflected. And he was startled to see the strange look in his eyes, the air of fierce and brutal desire with which Daubrecq was staring at his visitor.

It seemed to embarrass her too, for she sat down with lowered lids. Then Daubrecq leant over her and it appeared as though he were ready to fling his long arms, with their huge hands, around her. And, suddenly, Lupin perceived great tears rolling down the woman’s sad face.

Whether or not it was the sight of those tears that made Daubrecq lose his head, with a brusque movement he clutched the woman and drew her to him. She repelled him, with a violence full of hatred. And, after a brief struggle, during which Lupin caught a glimpse of the man’s bestial and contorted features, the two of them stood face to face, railing at each other like mortal enemies.

Then they stopped. Daubrecq sat down. There was mischief in his face, and sarcasm as well. And he began to talk again, with sharp taps on the table, as though he were dictating terms.

She no longer stirred. She sat haughtily in her chair and towered over him, absent-minded, with roaming eyes. Lupin, captivated by that powerful and sorrowful countenance, continued to watch her; and he was vainly seeking to remember of what or of whom she reminded him, when he noticed that she had turned her head slightly and that she was imperceptibly moving her arm.

And her arm strayed farther and farther and her hand crept along the table and Lupin saw that, at the end of the table, there stood a water-bottle with a gold-topped stopper. The hand reached the water-bottle, felt it, rose gently and seized the stopper. A quick movement of the head, a glance, and the stopper was put back in its place. Obviously, it was not what the woman hoped to find.