The Teeth of the Tiger, Maurice Leblanc [top 10 inspirational books TXT] 📗

I had five staunch, invisible friends, resolved to do anything I wanted and suspected by nobody.

“My plan was being carried out before we reached the last halting-place. My five secret agents collected all the arms during the night. They dashed the daggers to the ground and broke them. They removed the bullets from the pistols. They damped the powder. Everything was ready for ringing up the curtain.”

Valenglay bowed.

“My compliments! You are a man of resource. And your scheme was not lacking in charm. For I take it that your five ladies were pretty?”

Don Luis put on a bantering expression. He closed his eyes, as if to recall his bliss, and let fall the one word:

“Hags!”

The epithet gave rise to a burst of merriment. But Don Luis, as though in a hurry to finish his story, at once went on:

“In any case, they saved my life, the hussies, and their aid never failed me. My forty-two watchdogs, deprived of their arms and shaking with fear in those solitudes where everything is a trap and where death lies in wait for you at any minute, gathered round me as their real protector. When we joined the great tribe to which they belonged I was their actual chief. And it took me less than three months of dangers faced in common, of ambushes defeated under my advice, of raids and pillages effected by my direction, to become the chief also of the whole tribe.

“I spoke their language, I practised their religion, I wore their dress, I conformed to their customs: alas! had I not five wives? Henceforward, my dream, which had gradually taken definite shape in my mind, became possible.

“I sent one of my most faithful adherents to France, with sixty letters to hand to sixty men whose names and addresses he learned by heart. Those sixty men were sixty associates whom Arsène Lupin had disbanded before he threw himself from the Capri cliffs. All had retired from business, with a hundred thousand francs apiece in ready money and a small trade or public post to keep them occupied. I had provided one with a tobacconist’s shop, another with a job as a park-keeper, others with sinecures in the government offices. In short, they were respectable citizens.

“To all of them⁠—whether public servants, farmers, municipal councillors, grocers, sacristans, or whatnot⁠—I wrote the same letter, made the same offer, and gave the same instructions in case they should accept.⁠ ⁠… Monsieur le Président, I thought that, of the sixty, ten or fifteen at most would come and join me: sixty came, Monsieur le President, sixty, and not one less! Sixty men punctually arrived at the appointed place.

“On the day fixed, at the hour named, my old armed cruiser, the Ascendam, which they had brought back, anchored in the mouth of the Wady Draa, on the Atlantic coast, between Cape Nun and Cape Juby. Two longboats plied to and fro and landed my friends and the munitions of war which they had brought with them: camp furniture, quick-firing guns, ammunition, motorboats, stores and provisions, trading wares, glass beads, and cases of gold as well, for my sixty good men and true had insisted on turning their share of the old profits into cash and on putting into the new venture the six million francs which they had received from their governor.⁠ ⁠…

“Need I say more, Monsieur le Président? Must I tell you what a chief like Arsène Lupin was able to attempt seconded by sixty fine fellows of that stamp and backed by an army of ten thousand well-armed and well-trained Moorish fanatics? He attempted it; and his success was unparalleled.

“I do not think that there has ever been an idyl like that through which we lived during those fifteen months, first on the heights of the Atlas range and then in the infernal plains of the Sahara: an idyl of heroism, of privation, of superhuman torture and superhuman joy; an idyl of hunger and thirst, of total defeat and dazzling victory.⁠ ⁠…

“My sixty trusty followers threw themselves into their work with might and main. Oh, what men! You know them, Monsieur le Président du Conseil! You’ve had them to deal with, Monsieur le Préfet de Police! The beggars! Tears come to my eyes when I think of some of them.

“There were Charolais and his son, who distinguished themselves in the case of the Princesse de Lamballe’s tiara. There were Marco, who owed his fame to the Kesselbach case, and Auguste, who was your chief messenger, Monsieur le Président. There were the Growler and the Masher, who achieved such glory in the hunt for the crystal stopper. There were the brothers Beuzeville, whom I used to call the two Ajaxes. There were Philippe d’Antrac, who was better born than any Bourbon, and Pierre Le Grand and Tristan Le Roux and Joseph Le Jeune.”

“And there was Arsène Lupin,” said Valenglay, roused to enthusiasm by this list of Homeric heroes.

“And there was Arsène Lupin,” repeated Don Luis.

He nodded his head, smiled, and continued, in a very quiet voice:

“I will not speak of him, Monsieur le Président. I will not speak of him, for the simple reason that you would not believe my story. What they tell about him when he was with the Foreign Legion is mere child’s play beside what was to come later. Lupin was only a private soldier. In South Morocco he was a general. Not till then did Arsène Lupin really show what he could do. And, I say it without pride, not even I foresaw what that was. The Achilles of the legend performed no greater feats. Hannibal and Caesar achieved no more striking results.

“All I need tell you is that, in fifteen months, Arsène Lupin conquered a kingdom twice the size of France. From the Berbers of Morocco, from the indomitable Tuaregs, from the Arabs of the extreme south of Algeria, from the negroes who overrun Senegal, from the Moors along the Atlantic coast, under the blazing sun, in the flames of hell, he