The Crystal Stopper, Maurice Leblanc [i can read books TXT] 📗

me to say. And I was also to say that the gentleman was in the same train and that they were going to Monte Carlo.”

“Damn it!” muttered Lupin. “We ought to have taken the express just now! There’s nothing left but the evening trains, and they crawl! We’ve lost over three hours.”

The wait seemed interminable. They booked their seats. They telephoned to the proprietor of the Hôtel Franklin to send on their letters to Monte Carlo. They dined. They read the papers. At last, at half-past nine, the train started.

And so, by a really tragic series of circumstances, at the most critical moment of the contest, Lupin was turning his back on the battlefield and going away, at haphazard, to seek, he knew not where, and beat, he knew not how, the most formidable and elusive enemy that he had ever fought.

And this was happening four days, five days at most, before the inevitable execution of Gilbert and Vaucheray.

It was a bad and painful night for Lupin. The more he studied the situation the more terrible it appeared to him. On every side he was faced with uncertainty, darkness, confusion, helplessness.

True, he knew the secret of the crystal stopper. But how was he to know that Daubrecq would not change or had not already changed his tactics? How was he to know that the list of the Twenty-Seven was still inside that crystal stopper or that the crystal stopper was still inside the object where Daubrecq had first hidden it?

And there was a further serious reason for alarm in the fact that Clarisse Mergy thought that she was shadowing and watching Daubrecq at a time when, on the contrary, Daubrecq was watching her, having her shadowed and dragging her, with diabolical cleverness, toward the places selected by himself, far from all help or hope of help.

Oh, Daubrecq’s game was clear as daylight! Did not Lupin know the unhappy woman’s hesitations? Did he not know⁠—and the Growler and the Masher confirmed it most positively⁠—that Clarisse looked upon the infamous bargain planned by Daubrecq in the light of a possible, an acceptable thing? In that case, how could he, Lupin, succeed? The logic of events, so powerfully moulded by Daubrecq, led to a fatal result: the mother must sacrifice herself and, to save her son, throw her scruples, her repugnance, her very honour, to the winds!

“Oh, you scoundrel!” snarled Lupin, in a fit of rage. “If I get hold of you, I’ll make you dance to a pretty tune! I wouldn’t be in your shoes for a great deal, when that happens.”

They reached Monte Carlo at three o’clock in the afternoon. Lupin was at once disappointed not to see Clarisse on the platform at the station.

He waited. No messenger came up to him.

He asked the porters and ticket-collectors if they had noticed, among the crowd, two travellers answering to the description of Daubrecq and Clarisse. They had not.

He had, therefore, to set to work and hunt through all the hotels and lodging-houses in the principality. Oh, the time wasted!

By the following evening, Lupin knew, beyond a doubt, that Daubrecq and Clarisse were not at Monte Carlo, nor at Monaco, nor at the Cap d’Ail, nor at La Turbie, nor at Cap Martin.

“Where can they be then?” he wondered, trembling with rage.

At last, on the Saturday, he received, at the poste restante, a telegram which had been readdressed from the Hôtel Franklin and which said:

“He got out at Cannes and is going on to San Remo, Hôtel Palace des Ambassadeurs.

“Clarisse.”

The telegram was dated the day before.

“Hang it!” exclaimed Lupin. “They passed through Monte Carlo. One of us ought to have remained at the station. I did think of it; but, in the midst of all that bustle⁠ ⁠…”

Lupin and his friends took the first train for Italy.

They crossed the frontier at twelve o’clock. The train entered the station at San Remo at twelve-forty.

They at once saw an hotel-porter, with “Ambassadeurs-Palace” on his braided cap, who seemed to be looking for someone among the arrivals.

Lupin went up to him:

“Are you looking for M. Nicole?”

“Yes, M. Nicole and two gentlemen.”

“From a lady?”

“Yes, Mme. Mergy.”

“Is she staying at your hotel?”

“No. She did not get out. She beckoned to me, described you three gentlemen and told me to say that she was going on to Genoa, to the Hôtel Continental.”

“Was she by herself?”

“Yes.”

Lupin tipped the man, dismissed him and turned to his friends:

“This is Saturday. If the execution takes place on Monday, there’s nothing to be done. But Monday is not a likely day⁠ ⁠… What I have to do is to lay hands on Daubrecq tonight and to be in Paris on Monday, with the document. It’s our last chance. Let’s take it.”

The Growler went to the booking-office and returned with three tickets for Genoa.

The engine whistled.

Lupin had a last hesitation:

“No, really, it’s too childish! What are we doing? We ought to be in Paris, not here!⁠ ⁠… Just think!⁠ ⁠…”

He was on the point of opening the door and jumping out on the permanent way. But his companions held him back. The train started. He sat down again.

And they continued their mad pursuit, travelling at random, toward the unknown⁠ ⁠…

And this happened two days before the inevitable execution of Gilbert and Vaucheray.

X Extra-Dry?

On one of the hills that girdle Nice with the finest scenery in the world, between the Vallon de Saint-Silvestre and the Vallon de La Mantéga, stands a huge hotel which overlooks the town and the wonderful Baie des Anges. A crowd flocks to it from all parts, forming a medley of every class and nation.

On the evening of the same Saturday when Lupin, the Growler and the Masher were plunging into Italy, Clarisse Mergy entered this hotel, asked for a bedroom facing south and selected No. 130, on the second floor, a room which had been vacant since that morning.

The room was separated from No. 129 by two partition-doors. As soon as she was alone,