The Confessions of Arsène Lupin, Maurice Leblanc [top 10 novels of all time txt] 📗

already saved him three times by inexplicable means and which would find other means to protect him against the wiles of death.

She said to him, in a hoarse voice:

“How you must be laughing at me!”

“Not at all, upon my word. I should feel frightened myself, in your place.”

“Nonsense, you scum of the earth! You imagine that you will be rescued⁠ ⁠… that your friends are waiting outside? It’s out of the question, my fine fellow.”

“I know. It’s not they defending me⁠ ⁠… nobody’s defending me.⁠ ⁠…”

“Well, then?⁠ ⁠…”

“Well, all the same, there’s something strange at the bottom of it, something fantastic and miraculous that makes your flesh creep, my fine lady.”

“You villain!⁠ ⁠… You’ll be laughing on the other side of your mouth before long.”

“I doubt it.”

“You wait and see.”

She reflected once more and said to her nephew:

“What would you do?”

“Fasten his arm again and let’s be off,” he replied.

A hideous suggestion! It meant condemning Lupin to the most horrible of all deaths, death by starvation.

“No,” said the widow. “He might still find a means of escape. I know something better than that.”

She took down the receiver of the telephone, waited and asked:

“Number 82248, please.”

And, after a second or two:

“Hullo!⁠ ⁠… Is that the Criminal Investigation Department?⁠ ⁠… Is Chief-inspector Ganimard there?⁠ ⁠… In twenty minutes, you say?⁠ ⁠… I’m sorry!⁠ ⁠… However!⁠ ⁠… When he comes, give him this message from Mme. Dugrival.⁠ ⁠… Yes, Mme. Nicolas Dugrival.⁠ ⁠… Ask him to come to my flat. Tell him to open the looking-glass door of my wardrobe; and, when he has done so, he will see that the wardrobe hides an outlet which makes my bedroom communicate with two other rooms. In one of these, he will find a man bound hand and foot. It is the thief, Dugrival’s murderer.⁠ ⁠… You don’t believe me?⁠ ⁠… Tell M. Ganimard; he’ll believe me right enough.⁠ ⁠… Oh, I was almost forgetting to give you the man’s name: Arsène Lupin!”

And, without another word, she replaced the receiver.

“There, Lupin, that’s done. After all, I would just as soon have my revenge this way. How I shall hold my sides when I read the reports of the Lupin trial!⁠ ⁠… Are you coming, Gabriel?”

“Yes, aunt.”

“Goodbye, Lupin. You and I shan’t see each other again, I expect, for we are going abroad. But I promise to send you some sweets while you’re in prison.”

“Chocolates, mother! We’ll eat them together!”

“Goodbye.”

“Au revoir.”

The widow went out with her nephew, leaving Lupin fastened down to the bed.

He at once moved his free arm and tried to release himself; but he realized, at the first attempt, that he would never have the strength to break the wire strands that bound him. Exhausted with fever and pain, what could he do in the twenty minutes or so that were left to him before Ganimard’s arrival?

Nor did he count upon his friends. True, he had been thrice saved from death; but this was evidently due to an astounding series of accidents and not to any interference on the part of his allies. Otherwise they would not have contented themselves with these extraordinary manifestations, but would have rescued him for good and all.

No, he must abandon all hope. Ganimard was coming. Ganimard would find him there. It was inevitable. There was no getting away from the fact.

And the prospect of what was coming irritated him singularly. He already heard his old enemy’s gibes ringing in his ears. He foresaw the roars of laughter with which the incredible news would be greeted on the morrow. To be arrested in action, so to speak, on the battlefield, by an imposing detachment of adversaries, was one thing: but to be arrested, or rather picked up, scraped up, gathered up, in such condition, was really too silly. And Lupin, who had so often scoffed at others, felt all the ridicule that was falling to his share in this ending of the Dugrival business, all the bathos of allowing himself to be caught in the widow’s infernal trap and finally of being “served up” to the police like a dish of game, roasted to a turn and nicely seasoned.

“Blow the widow!” he growled. “I had rather she had cut my throat and done with it.”

He pricked up his ears. Someone was moving in the next room. Ganimard! No. Great as his eagerness would be, he could not be there yet. Besides, Ganimard would not have acted like that, would not have opened the door as gently as that other person was doing. What other person? Lupin remembered the three miraculous interventions to which he owed his life. Was it possible that there was really somebody who had protected him against the widow, and that that somebody was now attempting to rescue him? But, if so, who?

Unseen by Lupin, the stranger stooped behind the bed. Lupin heard the sound of the pliers attacking the wire strands and releasing him little by little. First his chest was freed, then his arms, then his legs.

And a voice said to him:

“You must get up and dress.”

Feeling very weak, he half-raised himself in bed at the moment when the stranger rose from her stooping posture.

“Who are you?” he whispered. “Who are you?”

And a great surprise over came him.

By his side stood a woman, a woman dressed in black, with a lace shawl over her head, covering part of her face. And the woman, as far as he could judge, was young and of a graceful and slender stature.

“Who are you?” he repeated.

“You must come now,” said the woman. “There’s no time to lose.”

“Can I?” asked Lupin, making a desperate effort. “I doubt if I have the strength.”

“Drink this.”

She poured some milk into a cup; and, as she handed it to him, her lace opened, leaving the face uncovered.

“You!” he stammered. “It’s you!⁠ ⁠… It’s you who⁠ ⁠… it was you who were.⁠ ⁠…”

He stared in amazement at this woman whose features presented so striking a resemblance to Gabriel’s, whose delicate, regular face had the same pallor, whose mouth wore the same hard and forbidding expression. No sister could have borne so great a likeness to