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

authority and deference, that she had not the strength to resist. Their eyes met. He whispered:

“The exquisite purity of your eyes! It would be heavenly to live with those eyes upon one. Now close them.⁠ ⁠…”

He withdrew. His accomplices followed suit. The car drove off, and the house in the Rue de Varennes remained still and silent until the moment when Angélique, regaining complete consciousness, called out for the servants.

They found the duke, Hyacinthe, the lady’s maid and the porter and his wife all tightly bound. A few priceless ornaments had disappeared, as well as the duke’s pocketbook and all his jewellery; tie pins, pearl studs, watch and so on.

The police were advised without delay. In the morning it appeared that, on the evening before, d’Emboise, when leaving his house in the motorcar, was stabbed by his own chauffeur and thrown, half-dead, into a deserted street. Mussy and Caorches had each received a telephone-message, purporting to come from the duke, countermanding their attendance.

Next week, without troubling further about the police investigation, without obeying the summons of the examining-magistrate, without even reading Arsène Lupin’s letters to the papers on “the Varennes Flight,” the duke, his daughter and his valet stealthily took a slow train for Vannes and arrived one evening, at the old feudal castle that towers over the headland of Sarzeau. The duke at once organized a defence with the aid of the Breton peasants, true medieval vassals to a man. On the fourth day, Mussy arrived; on the fifth, Caorches; and, on the seventh, d’Emboise, whose wound was not as severe as had been feared.

The duke waited two days longer before communicating to those about him what, now that his escape had succeeded in spite of Lupin, he called the second part of his plan. He did so, in the presence of the three cousins, by a dictatorial order to Angélique, expressed in these peremptory terms:

“All this bother is upsetting me terribly. I have entered on a struggle with this man whose daring you have seen for yourself; and the struggle is killing me. I want to end it at all costs. There is only one way of doing so, Angélique, and that is for you to release me from all responsibility by accepting the hand of one of your cousins. Before a month is out, you must be the wife of Mussy, Caorches or d’Emboise. You have a free choice. Make your decision.”

For four whole days Angélique wept and entreated her father, but in vain. She felt that he would be inflexible and that she must end by submitting to his wishes. She accepted:

“Whichever you please, father. I love none of them. So I may as well be unhappy with one as with the other.”

Thereupon a fresh discussion ensued, as the duke wanted to compel her to make her own choice. She stood firm. Reluctantly and for financial considerations, he named d’Emboise.

The banns were published without delay.

From that moment, the watch in and around the castle was increased twofold, all the more inasmuch as Lupin’s silence and the sudden cessation of the campaign which he had been conducting in the press could not but alarm the Duc de Sarzeau-Vendôme. It was obvious that the enemy was getting ready to strike and would endeavour to oppose the marriage by one of his characteristic moves.

Nevertheless, nothing happened: nothing two days before the ceremony, nothing on the day before, nothing on the morning itself. The marriage took place in the mayor’s office, followed by the religious celebration in church; and the thing was done.

Then and not till then, the duke breathed freely. Notwithstanding his daughter’s sadness, notwithstanding the embarrassed silence of his son-in-law, who found the situation a little trying, he rubbed his hands with an air of pleasure, as though he had achieved a brilliant victory:

“Tell them to lower the drawbridge,” he said to Hyacinthe, “and to admit everybody. We have nothing more to fear from that scoundrel.”

After the wedding-breakfast, he had wine served out to the peasants and clinked glasses with them. They danced and sang.

At three o’clock, he returned to the ground-floor rooms. It was the hour for his afternoon nap. He walked to the guardroom at the end of the suite. But he had no sooner placed his foot on the threshold than he stopped suddenly and exclaimed:

“What are you doing here, d’Emboise? Is this a joke?”

D’Emboise was standing before him, dressed as a Breton fisherman, in a dirty jacket and breeches, torn, patched and many sizes too large for him.

The duke seemed dumbfounded. He stared with eyes of amazement at that face which he knew and which, at the same time, roused memories of a very distant past within his brain. Then he strode abruptly to one of the windows overlooking the castle-terrace and called:

“Angélique!”

“What is it, father?” she asked, coming forward.

“Where’s your husband?”

“Over there, father,” said Angélique, pointing to d’Emboise, who was smoking a cigarette and reading, some way off.

The duke stumbled and fell into a chair, with a great shudder of fright:

“Oh, I shall go mad!”

But the man in the fisherman’s garb knelt down before him and said:

“Look at me, uncle. You know me, don’t you? I’m your nephew, the one who used to play here in the old days, the one whom you called Jacquot.⁠ ⁠… Just think a minute.⁠ ⁠… Here, look at this scar.⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, yes,” stammered the duke, “I recognize you. It’s Jacques. But the other one.⁠ ⁠…”

He put his hands to his head:

“And yet, no, it can’t be⁠ ⁠… Explain yourself.⁠ ⁠… I don’t understand.⁠ ⁠… I don’t want to understand.⁠ ⁠…”

There was a pause, during which the newcomer shut the window and closed the door leading to the next room. Then he came up to the old duke, touched him gently on the shoulder, to wake him from his torpor, and without further preface, as though to cut short any explanation that was not absolutely necessary, spoke as follows:

“Four years ago, that is to say, in the eleventh year of my voluntary exile, when I settled in