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

appearance of a live one for a time; but this is much better: there’s no corpse here, Lupin; just a mess of flesh and bone!

“The whole scaffolding of rocks has come down on top of her! You can picture it, eh? What a sight! Come, quick, it’s your turn to kick the bucket. Would you like a length of rope? Ha, ha, ha! It’s enough to make one die with laughing. Didn’t I say that you’d meet at the gates of hell? Quick, your sweetheart’s waiting for you. Do you hesitate? Where’s your old French politeness? You can’t keep a lady waiting, you know. Hurry up, Lupin! Florence is dead!”

He said this with real enjoyment, as though the mere word of death appeared to him delicious.

Don Luis had not moved a muscle. He simply nodded his head and said:

“What a pity!”

The cripple seemed petrified. All his joyous contortions, all his triumphal pantomime, stopped short. He blurted out:

“Eh? What did you say?”

“I say,” declared Don Luis, preserving his calm and courteous demeanour and refraining from echoing the cripple’s familiarity, “I say, my dear sir, that you have done very wrong. I never met a finer nature nor one more worthy of esteem than that of Mlle. Levasseur. The incomparable beauty of her face and figure, her youth, her charm, all these deserved a better treatment. It would indeed be a matter for regret if such a masterpiece of womankind had ceased to be.”

The cripple remained astounded. Don Luis’s serene manner dismayed him. He said, in a blank voice:

“I tell you, she has ceased to be. Haven’t you seen the grotto? Florence no longer exists!”

“I refuse to believe it,” said Don Luis quietly. “If that were so, everything would look different. The sky would be clouded; the birds would not be singing; and nature would wear her mourning garb. But the birds are singing, the sky is blue, everything is as it should be: the honest man is alive; and the rascal is crawling at his feet. How could Florence be dead?”

A long silence followed upon these words. The two enemies, at three paces distance, looked into each other’s eyes: Don Luis still as cool as ever, the cripple a prey to the maddest anguish. The monster understood. Obscure as the truth was, it shone forth before him with all the light of a blinding certainty: Florence also was alive! Humanly and physically speaking, the thing was not possible; but the resurrection of Don Luis was likewise an impossibility; and yet Don Luis was alive, with not a scratch on his face, with not a speck of dust on his clothes.

The monster felt himself lost. The man who held him in the hollow of his implacable hand was one of those men whose power knows no bounds. He was one of those men who escape from the jaws of death and who triumphantly snatch from death those of whom they have taken charge.

The monster retreated, dragging himself slowly backward on his knees along the little brick path.

He retreated. He passed by the confused heap of stones that covered the place where the grotto had been, and did not turn his eyes in that direction, as if he were definitely convinced that Florence had come forth safe and sound from the appalling sepulchre.

He retreated. Don Luis, who no longer had his eyes fixed on him, was busy unwinding a coil of rope which he had picked up, and seemed to pay no further attention to him.

He retreated.

And suddenly, after a glance at his enemy, he spun round, drew himself up on his slack legs with an effort, and started running toward the well.

He was twenty paces from it. He covered one half, three quarters of the distance. Already the mouth opened before him. He put out his arms, with the movement of a man about to dive, and shot forward.

His rush was stopped. He rolled over on the ground, dragged back violently, with his arms fixed so firmly to his body that he was unable to stir.

It was Don Luis, who had never wholly lost sight of him, who had made a slipknot to his rope and who had lassoed the cripple at the moment when he was going to fling himself down the abyss. The cripple struggled for a few moments. But the slipknot bit into his flesh. He ceased moving. Everything was over.

Then Don Luis Perenna, holding the other end of the lasso, came up to him and bound him hand and foot with what remained of the rope. The operation was carefully performed. Don Luis repeated it time after time, using the coils of rope which the cripple had brought to the well and gagging him with a handkerchief. And, while applying himself to his work, he explained, with affected politeness:

“You see, sir, people always come to grief through excessive self-confidence. They never imagine that their adversaries can have resources which they themselves do not possess. For instance, when you got me to fall into your trap, how could you have supposed, my dear sir, that a man like myself, a man like Arsène Lupin, hanging on the brim of a well, with his arms resting on the brim and his feet against the inner wall, would allow himself to drop down it like the first silly fool that comes along?

“Look here: you were fifteen or twenty yards away; and do you think that I had not the strength to leap out nor the courage to face the bullets of your revolver, when it was a question of saving Florence Levasseur’s life and my own? Why, my poor sir, the tiniest effort would have been enough, believe me!

“My reason for not making the effort was that I had something better to do, something infinitely better. I will tell you why, that is, if you care to know. Do you?

“Well, then, at the very first moment, my knees and feet, propped against the inner wall, had smashed in a thick layer of