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

the train for France and get out at Nice, to await fresh orders.”

Jacob closed his notebook and concluded:

“That’s all. Today’s doings will be entered this evening.”

“You can enter them now, M. Jacob. ‘12 noon. M. Daubrecq sends me to the Wagon-Lits Co. I book two berths in the Paris sleeping-car, by the 2:48 train, and send them to M. Daubrecq by express messenger. Then I take the 12:58 train for Vintimille, the frontier-station, where I spend the day on the platform watching all the travellers who come to France. Should Messrs. Nicole, Growler and Masher take it into their heads to leave Italy and return to Paris by way of Nice, my instructions are to telegraph to the headquarters of police that Master Arsène Lupin and two of his accomplices are in train number so-and-so.’ ”

While speaking, Daubrecq led Jacob to the door. He closed it after him, turned the key, pushed the bolt and, going up to Clarisse, said:

“And now, darling, listen to me.”

This time, she uttered no protest. What could she do against such an enemy, so powerful, so resourceful, who provided for everything, down to the minutest details, and who toyed with his adversaries in such an airy fashion? Even if she had hoped till then for Lupin’s interference, how could she do so now, when he was wandering through Italy in pursuit of a shadow?

She understood at last why three telegrams which she had sent to the Hôtel Franklin had remained unanswered. Daubrecq was there, lurking in the dark, watching, establishing a void around her, separating her from her comrades in the fight, bringing her gradually, a beaten prisoner, within the four walls of that room.

She felt her weakness. She was at the monster’s mercy. She must be silent and resigned.

He repeated, with an evil delight:

“Listen to me, darling. Listen to the irrevocable words which I am about to speak. Listen to them well. It is now 12 o’clock. The last train starts at 2:48: you understand, the last train that can bring me to Paris tomorrow, Monday, in time to save your son. The evening-trains would arrive too late. The trains-de-luxe are full up. Therefore I shall have to start at 2:48. Am I to start?”

“Yes.”

“Our berths are booked. Will you come with me?”

“Yes.”

“You know my conditions for interfering?”

“Yes.”

“Do you accept them?”

“Yes.”

“You will marry me?”

“Yes.”

Oh, those horrible answers! The unhappy woman gave them in a sort of awful torpor, refusing even to understand what she was promising. Let him start first, let him snatch Gilbert from the engine of death whose vision haunted her day and night⁠ ⁠… And then⁠ ⁠… and then⁠ ⁠… let what must come come⁠ ⁠…

He burst out laughing:

“Oh, you rogue, it’s easily said!⁠ ⁠… You’re ready to pledge yourself to anything, eh? The great thing is to save Gilbert, isn’t it? Afterward, when that noodle of a Daubrecq comes with his engagement-ring, not a bit of it! Nothing doing! We’ll laugh in his face!⁠ ⁠… No, no, enough of empty words. I don’t want promises that won’t be kept: I want facts, immediate facts.”

He came and sat close beside her and stated, plainly:

“This is what I propose⁠ ⁠… what must be⁠ ⁠… what shall be⁠ ⁠… I will ask, or rather I will demand, not Gilbert’s pardon, to begin with, but a reprieve, a postponement of the execution, a postponement of three or four weeks. They will invent a pretext of some sort: that’s not my affair. And, when Mme. Mergy has become Mme. Daubrecq, then and not till then will I ask for his pardon, that is to say, the commutation of his sentence. And make yourself quite easy: they’ll grant it.”

“I accept⁠ ⁠… I accept,” she stammered.

He laughed once more:

“Yes, you accept, because that will happen in a month’s time⁠ ⁠… and meanwhile you reckon on finding some trick, an assistance of some kind or another⁠ ⁠… M. Arsène Lupin⁠ ⁠…”

“I swear it on the head of my son.”

“The head of your son!⁠ ⁠… Why, my poor pet, you would sell yourself to the devil to save it from falling!⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh, yes,” she whispered, shuddering. “I would gladly sell my soul!”

He sidled up against her and, in a low voice:

“Clarisse, it’s not your soul I ask for⁠ ⁠… It’s something else⁠ ⁠… For more than twenty years my life has spun around that longing. You are the only woman I have ever loved⁠ ⁠… Loathe me, hate me⁠—I don’t care⁠—but do not spurn me⁠ ⁠… Am I to wait? To wait another month?⁠ ⁠… No, Clarisse, I have waited too many years already⁠ ⁠…”

He ventured to touch her hand. Clarisse shrank back with such disgust that he was seized with fury and cried:

“Oh, I swear to heaven, my beauty, the executioner won’t stand on such ceremony when he catches hold of your son!⁠ ⁠… And you give yourself airs! Why, think, it’ll happen in forty hours! Forty hours, no more, and you hesitate⁠ ⁠… and you have scruples, when your son’s life is at stake! Come, come, no whimpering, no silly sentimentality⁠ ⁠… Look things in the face. By your own oath, you are my wife, you are my bride from this moment⁠ ⁠… Clarisse, Clarisse, give me your lips⁠ ⁠…”

Half-fainting, she had hardly the strength to put out her arm and push him away; and, with a cynicism in which all his abominable nature stood revealed, Daubrecq, mingling words of cruelty and words of passion, continued:

“Save your son!⁠ ⁠… Think of the last morning: the preparations for the scaffold, when they snip away his shirt and cut his hair⁠ ⁠… Clarisse, Clarisse, I will save him⁠ ⁠… Be sure of it⁠ ⁠… All my life shall be yours⁠ ⁠… Clarisse⁠ ⁠…”

She no longer resisted. It was over. The loathsome brute’s lips were about to touch hers; and it had to be, and nothing could prevent it. It was her duty to obey the decree of fate. She had long known it. She understood it; and, closing her eyes, so as not to see the foul face that was slowly raised to hers, she repeated to herself:

“My son⁠ ⁠… my poor son.”

A few seconds passed: ten, twenty perhaps. Daubrecq did not