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

That evening, a Paris paper, which did not yet know of the capture, printed the following paragraphs:

“Enquiries are being made after a M. and Mme. Bragoff, who landed at Marseilles six weeks ago and there hired a motorcar. They had been living in Australia for many years, during which time they had not visited Europe; and they wrote to the director of the Jardin d’Acclimatation, with whom they were in the habit of corresponding, that they were bringing with them a curious creature, of an entirely unknown species, of which it was difficult to say whether it was a man or a monkey.

“According to M. Bragoff, who is an eminent archæologist, the specimen in question is the anthropoid ape, or rather the ape-man, the existence of which had not hitherto been definitely proved. The structure is said to be exactly similar to that of Pithecanthropus erectus, discovered by Dr. Dubois in Java in 1891.

“This curious, intelligent and observant animal acted as its owner’s servant on their property in Australia and used to clean their motorcar and even attempt to drive it.

“The question that is being asked is where are M. and Mme. Bragoff? Where is the strange primate that landed with them at Marseilles?”

The answer to this question was now made easy. Thanks to the hints supplied by Arsène Lupin, all the elements of the tragedy were known. Thanks to him, the culprit was in the hands of the law.

You can see him at the Jardin d’Acclimatation, where he is locked up under the name of “Three Stars.” He is, in point of fact, a monkey; but he is also a man. He has the gentleness and the wisdom of the domestic animals and the sadness which they feel when their master dies. But he has many other qualities that bring him much closer to humanity: he is treacherous, cruel, idle, greedy and quarrelsome; and, above all, he is immoderately fond of brandy.

Apart from that, he is a monkey. Unless indeed⁠ ⁠… !

A few days after Three Stars’ arrest, I saw Arsène Lupin standing in front of his cage. Lupin was manifestly trying to solve this interesting problem for himself. I at once said, for I had set my heart upon having the matter out with him:

“You know, Lupin, that intervention of yours, your argument, your letter, in short, did not surprise me so much as you might think!”

“Oh, really?” he said, calmly. “And why?”

“Why? Because the incident has occurred before, seventy or eighty years ago. Edgar Allan Poe made it the subject of one of his finest tales. In those circumstances, the key to the riddle was easy enough to find.”

Arsène Lupin took my arm, and walking away with me, said:

“When did you guess it, yourself?”

“On reading your letter,” I confessed.

“And at what part of my letter?”

“At the end.”

“At the end, eh? After I had dotted all the i’s. So here is a crime which accident causes to be repeated, under quite different conditions, it is true, but still with the same sort of hero; and your eyes had to be opened, as well as other people’s. It needed the assistance of my letter, the letter in which I amused myself⁠—apart from the exigencies of the facts⁠—by employing the argument and sometimes the identical words used by the American poet in a story which everybody has read. So you see that my letter was not absolutely useless and that one may safely venture to repeat to people things which they have learnt only to forget them.”

Wherewith Lupin turned on his heel and burst out laughing in the face of an old monkey, who sat with the air of a philosopher, gravely meditating.

“Monsieur Arsène Lupin has the honour to inform you of his approaching marriage with Mademoiselle Angélique de Sarzeau-Vendôme, Princesse de Bourbon-Condé, and to request the pleasure of your company at the wedding, which will take place at the church of Sainte-Clotilde.⁠ ⁠…”

“The Duc de Sarzeau-Vendôme has the honour to inform you of the approaching marriage of his daughter Angélique, Princesse de Bourbon-Condé, with Monsieur Arsène Lupin, and to request.⁠ ⁠…”

Jean Duc de Sarzeau-Vendôme could not finish reading the invitations which he held in his trembling hand. Pale with anger, his long, lean body shaking with tremors:

“There!” he gasped, handing the two communications to his daughter. “This is what our friends have received! This has been the talk of Paris since yesterday! What do you say to that dastardly insult, Angélique? What would your poor mother say to it, if she were alive?”

Angélique was tall and thin like her father, skinny and angular like him. She was thirty-three years of age, always dressed in black stuff, shy and retiring in manner, with a head too small in proportion to her height and narrowed on either side until the nose seemed to jut forth in protest against such parsimony. And yet it would be impossible to say that she was ugly, for her eyes were extremely beautiful, soft and grave, proud and a little sad: pathetic eyes which to see once was to remember.

She flushed with shame at hearing her father’s words, which told her the scandal of which she was the victim. But, as she loved him, notwithstanding his harshness to her, his injustice and despotism, she said:

“Oh, I think it must be meant for a joke, father, to which we need pay no attention!”

“A joke? Why, everyone is gossiping about it! A dozen papers have printed the confounded notice this morning, with satirical comments. They quote our pedigree, our ancestors, our illustrious dead. They pretend to take the thing seriously.⁠ ⁠…”

“Still, no one could believe.⁠ ⁠…”

“Of course not. But that doesn’t prevent us from being the byword of Paris.”

“It will all be forgotten by tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, my girl, people will remember that the name of Angélique de Sarzeau-Vendôme has been bandied about as it should not be. Oh, if I could find out the name of the scoundrel who has dared.⁠ ⁠…”

At that moment, Hyacinthe, the