The Hollow Needle, Maurice Leblanc [fiction novels to read .TXT] 📗

about on his bed, nor give way to despair, as he has been doing for the last two hours and more. He wants to think, to think and understand.

And he does not remove his eyes from those same eyes reflected in the glass, as though he hoped to double his powers of thought by contemplating his pensive image, as though he hoped to find at the back of that mirrored Beautrelet the unsolvable solution of what he does not find within himself.

He stands thus until six o’clock, and, little by little, the question presents itself to his mind with the strictness of an equation, bare and dry and cleared of all the details that complicate and obscure it.

Yes, he has made a mistake. Yes, his reading of the document is all wrong. The word aiguille does not point to the castle on the Creuse. Also, the word demoiselles cannot be applied to Raymonde de Saint-Véran and her cousin, because the text of the document dates back for centuries.

Therefore, all must be done over again, from the beginning.

How?

One piece of evidence alone would be incontestible: the book published under Louis XIV. Now of those hundred copies printed by the person who was presumed to be the Man with the Iron Mask only two escaped the flames. One was purloined by the captain of the guards and lost. The other was kept by Louis XIV, handed down to Louis XV, and burnt by Louis XVI. But a copy of the essential page, the page containing the solution of the problem, or at least a cryptographic solution, was conveyed to Marie Antoinette, who slipped it into the binding of her book of hours. What has become of this paper? Is it the one which Beautrelet has held in his hands and which Lupin recovered from him through Brédoux, the magistrate’s clerk? Or is it still in Marie Antoinette’s book of hours? And the question resolves itself into this: what has become of the Queen’s book of hours?

After taking a short rest, Beautrelet consulted his friend’s father, an old and experienced collector, who was often called upon officially to give an expert opinion and who had quite lately been invited to advise the director of one of our museums on the drawing up of the catalogue.

“Marie Antoinette’s book of hours?” he exclaimed. “Why, the Queen left it to her waiting-woman, with secret instructions to forward it to Count Fersen. After being piously preserved in the count’s family, it has been, for the last five years, in a glass case⁠—”

“A glass case?”

“In the Musée Carnavalet, quite simply.”

“When will the museum be open?”

“At twenty minutes from now, as it is every morning.”

Isidore and his friend jumped out of a cab at the moment when the doors of Madame de Sévigné’s old mansion were opening.

“Hullo! M. Beautrelet!”

A dozen voices greeted his arrival. To his great surprise, he recognized the whole crowd of reporters who were following up “the mystery of the Hollow Needle.” And one of them exclaimed:

“Funny, isn’t it, that we should all have had the same idea? Take care, Arsène Lupin may be among us!”

They entered the museum together. The director was at once informed, placed himself entirely at their disposal, took them to the glass case and showed them a poor little volume, devoid of all ornament, which certainly had nothing royal about it. Nevertheless, they were overcome by a certain emotion at the sight of this object which the Queen had touched in those tragic days, which her eyes, red with tears, had looked upon⁠—And they dared not take it and hunt through it: it was as though they feared lest they should be guilty of a sacrilege⁠—

“Come, M. Beautrelet, it’s your business!”

He took the book with an anxious gesture. The description corresponded with that given by the author of the pamphlet. Outside was a parchment cover, dirty, stained and worn in places, and under it, the real binding, in stiff leather. With what a thrill Beautrelet felt for the hidden pocket! Was it a fairy tale? Or would he find the document written by Louis XVI and bequeathed by the queen to her fervent admirer?

At the first page, on the upper side of the book, there was no receptacle.

“Nothing,” he muttered.

“Nothing,” they echoed, palpitating with excitement.

But, at the last page, forcing back the book a little, he at once saw that the parchment was not stuck to the binding. He slipped his fingers in between⁠—there was something⁠—yes, he felt something⁠—a paper⁠—

“Oh!” he gasped, in an accent almost of pain. “Here⁠—is it possible?”

“Quick, quick!” they cried. “What are you waiting for?”

He drew out a sheet folded in two.

“Well, read it!⁠—There are words in red ink⁠—Look!⁠—it might be blood⁠—pale, faded blood⁠—Read it!⁠—”

He read:

To you, Fersen. For my son.

16 October, 1793.

Marie Antoinette.

And suddenly Beautrelet gave a cry of stupefaction. Under the queen’s signature there were⁠—there were two words, in black ink, underlined with a flourish⁠—two words:

Arsène Lupin.

All, in turns, took the sheet of paper and the same cry escaped from the lips of all of them:

“Marie Antoinette!⁠—Arsène Lupin!”

A great silence followed. That double signature: those two names coupled together, discovered hidden in the book of hours; that relic in which the poor queen’s desperate appeal had slumbered for more than a century: that horrible date of the 16th of October, 1793, the day on which the Royal head fell: all of this was most dismally and disconcertingly tragic.

“Arsène Lupin!” stammered one of the voices, thus emphasizing the scare that underlay the sight of that demoniacal name at the foot of the hallowed page.

“Yes, Arsène Lupin,” repeated Beautrelet. “The Queen’s friend was unable to understand her desperate dying appeal. He lived with the keepsake in his possession which the woman whom he loved had sent him and he never guessed the reason of that keepsake. Lupin discovered everything, on the other hand⁠—and took it.”

“Took what?”

“The document, of