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

one of those yellow wrappers in which the subscribers’ copies are sent out. These copies are always delivered by the nine o’clock post. Therefore, it was after nine o’clock. I said, a well-dressed man. Please observe that this tiny piece of glass has the round hole of a single eyeglass at one of the edges and that the single eyeglass is an essentially aristocratic article of wear. This well-dressed man walked into a pastry-cook’s shop. Here is the very thin cardboard, shaped like a box, and still showing a little of the cream of the meringues and éclairs box. He also puts in certain things that would have betrayed him, such as the knife, which must have slipped into the Seine. He wraps everything in the newspaper, ties it with the cord and fastens this cut-glass inkstand to it, as a makeweight. Then he makes himself scarce. A little later, the parcel falls into the waterman’s barge. And there you are. Oof, it’s hot work!⁠ ⁠… What do you say to the story?”

He looked at Ganimard to see what impression his speech had produced on the inspector. Ganimard did not depart from his attitude of silence.

Lupin began to laugh:

“As a matter of fact, you’re annoyed and surprised. But you’re suspicious as well: ‘Why should that confounded Lupin hand the business over to me,’ say you, ‘instead of keeping it for himself, hunting down the murderer and rifling his pockets, if there was a robbery?’ The question is quite logical, of course. But⁠—there is a ‘but’⁠—I have no time, you see. I am full up with work at the present moment: a burglary in London, another at Lausanne, an exchange of children at Marseilles, to say nothing of having to save a young girl who is at this moment shadowed by death. That’s always the way: it never rains but it pours. So I said to myself, ‘Suppose I handed the business over to my dear old Ganimard? Now that it is half-solved for him, he is quite capable of succeeding. And what a service I shall be doing him! How magnificently he will be able to distinguish himself!’ No sooner said than done. At eight o’clock in the morning, I sent the joker with the orange-peel to meet you. You swallowed the bait; and you were here by nine, all on edge and eager for the fray.”

Lupin rose from his chair. He went over to the inspector and, with his eyes in Ganimard’s, said:

“That’s all. You now know the whole story. Presently, you will know the victim: some ballet-dancer, probably, some singer at a music-hall. On the other hand, the chances are that the criminal lives near the Pont-Neuf, most likely on the left bank. Lastly, here are all the exhibits. I make you a present of them. Set to work. I shall only keep this end of the scarf. If ever you want to piece the scarf together, bring me the other end, the one which the police will find round the victim’s neck. Bring it me in four weeks from now to the day, that is to say, on the 29th of December, at ten o’clock in the morning. You can be sure of finding me here. And don’t be afraid: this is all perfectly serious, friend of my youth; I swear it is. No humbug, honour bright. You can go straight ahead. Oh, by the way, when you arrest the fellow with the eyeglass, be a bit careful: he is left-handed! Goodbye, old dear, and good luck to you!”

Lupin spun round on his heel, went to the door, opened it and disappeared before Ganimard had even thought of taking a decision. The inspector rushed after him, but at once found that the handle of the door, by some trick of mechanism which he did not know, refused to turn. It took him ten minutes to unscrew the lock and ten minutes more to unscrew the lock of the hall-door. By the time that he had scrambled down the three flights of stairs, Ganimard had given up all hope of catching Arsène Lupin.

Besides, he was not thinking of it. Lupin inspired him with a queer, complex feeling, made up of fear, hatred, involuntary admiration and also the vague instinct that he, Ganimard, in spite of all his efforts, in spite of the persistency of his endeavours, would never get the better of this particular adversary. He pursued him from a sense of duty and pride, but with the continual dread of being taken in by that formidable hoaxer and scouted and fooled in the face of a public that was always only too willing to laugh at the chief-inspector’s mishaps.

This business of the red scarf, in particular, struck him as most suspicious. It was interesting, certainly, in more ways than one, but so very improbable! And Lupin’s explanation, apparently so logical, would never stand the test of a severe examination!

“No,” said Ganimard, “this is all swank: a parcel of suppositions and guesswork based upon nothing at all. I’m not to be caught with chaff.”

When he reached the headquarters of police, at 36 Quai des Orfèvres, he had quite made up his mind to treat the incident as though it had never happened.

He went up to the Criminal Investigation Department. Here, one of his fellow-inspectors said:

“Seen the chief?”

“No.”

“He was asking for you just now.”

“Oh, was he?”

“Yes, you had better go after him.”

“Where?”

“To the Rue de Berne⁠ ⁠… there was a murder there last night.”

“Oh! Who’s the victim?”

“I don’t know exactly⁠ ⁠… a music-hall singer, I believe.”

Ganimard simply muttered:

“By Jove!”

Twenty minutes later he stepped out of the underground railway-station and made for the Rue de Berne.

The victim, who was known in the theatrical world by her stage-name of Jenny Saphir, occupied a small flat on the second floor of one of the houses. A policeman took the chief-inspector upstairs and showed him the way, through two sitting-rooms, to a bedroom, where he found the magistrates in charge of the inquiry, together with the