Memoirs of Arsène Lupin, Maurice Leblanc [librera reader txt] 📗

He went back to the carriage and drove off.

Josine was delirious most of the night, but Ralph could make no sense of her incoherent utterances. Next morning she had nearly recovered. Next evening Ralph went to the nearest village to buy a newspaper. He read among the local news:

Yesterday afternoon, the police of Caudebec, on receiving information that a woodcutter had heard the screams of a woman appealing for help from an old limekiln on the outskirts of Maulevrier Forest, sent a sergeant and a constable to enquire into the matter. As these two representatives of the law approached the clearing in which the limekiln stands, they perceived over the fence two men who were dragging a woman towards a closed carriage beside which another woman was standing. Compelled to make the circuit of the fence, the police only reached the scene of action after the departure of the carriage. They at once started in pursuit of it, a pursuit which should have ended in the success of the police. But the horses drawing the carriage were so swift and the driver’s knowledge of the lanes and byways of so extensive, that he succeeded in throwing them off his track in the network of roads to the north between Caudebec and Motteville. Moreover the night was coming on; and they have not yet succeeded in ascertaining in which direction this nice little gang escaped.

“And they will not succeed,” said Ralph to himself. “Nobody but me can reconstitute the facts since nobody but me knows the points of departure and arrival.”

He formulated the following conclusions:

“One fact is certain: Mother Rousselin was in that old limekiln in charge of a confederate.

“Secondly, Josine and Leonard, who lured her away from Lillebonne and shut her up, go to see her every day and try to extract some definite information from her. Yesterday the questioning was doubtless rather violent. Mother Rousselin yells; the police arrive. A desperate flight. They get away. Somewhere on their route they deposit their captive in another prison, already prepared for her; and once more they are safe. All these emotions brought about Josine’s attack of nerves.”

He studied an ordnance map of the route from Maulevrier Forest to the Nonchalante. The direct route was thirty kilometers; somewhere off that route, at some distance to the left or to the right Madam Rousselin was imprisoned. “Come,” he said to himself, “the terrain of the conflict is marked out. It’s about time that I made my entry on to the stage.”

Next day he got to work, wandering along the Normandy roads, questioning the dwellers on them and trying to discover the points of the passage and the halting-places of “an old barouche drawn by two little horses.” Logically and inevitably his quest must come to a successful end.

During those days the love of Ralph and Josephine Balsamo was at its keenest and most passionate. The young woman, knowing that the police were on her track, and remembering what she had heard at the Vasseur Inn, at Doudeville, did not dare to leave the Nonchalante and traverse the Caux country. So after every expedition Ralph found her on the barge, and they threw themselves into one another’s arms with an exasperated desire to enjoy to the full the delights which, they foresaw, must soon come to an end.

Only such dolorous delights as two lovers on the verge of separation can have. Suspect delights that doubt poisoned. Either of them divined the secret designs of the other, and even as their lips met either knew that the other, for all their love, was acting as if they were at daggers drawn.

“I love you! I love you!” Ralph reiterated desperately while his inmost thought was how to find means of snatching Bridget’s mother from the talons of his mistress.

Sometimes they gripped one another with the violence of two creatures veritably battling with one another. There was a brutality in their caresses, a threat in their eyes, hate in their hearts, and despair in their tenderness. One would have said that they were watching one another to discover the weak point at which to strike with the deadliest effect.

One night Ralph awoke with a sensation of extreme discomfort to find Josephine at his bedside, with a lamp in her hand, looking down on him. He shivered. Not that her charming face wore other than its usual smiling expression. But why did that smile seem to him so wicked and so cruel?

“What’s the matter? What do you want?” he said sharply.

“Nothing⁠—nothing,” she said in careless accents, and she left him.

But she came back presently to show him a photograph.

“I found this in your pocketbook,” she said. “I could hardly believe that you carried about with you another woman’s photograph. Who is it?”

It was the photograph of Clarice d’Etigues. He hesitated, then said: “I don’t know. It’s a photo I picked up.”

“Come: don’t lie!” she said brusquely. “It’s Clarice d’Etigues. Do you suppose I’ve never seen her? You were in love with her.”

“No! Never!” he said firmly.

“You were in love with her, and she with you. I’m certain of it. And it is still going on.”

He shrugged his shoulders, but as he was about to defend the young girl, Josephine broke in:

“I don’t want to hear anything more about it. You’re warned, and it’s just as well. I’m not going out of my way to look for her, but if she ever crosses my path⁠—all the worse for her.”

“And all the worse for you, if you touch a hair of her head!” he exclaimed imprudently.

She paled. Her lips quivered, and laying her hand on his neck, she stammered: “You dare to take her part against me⁠ ⁠… against me!”

Her hand, very cold, contracted. He had the impression that she was going to strangle him and sprang out of bed. In her turn she was alarmed, thinking that he was going to strike her, and snatched from her