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

simple to think that the blowing up of the Glowworm, the Pellegrini-Cagliostro shipwreck, and the rubbish related by Prince Lavosneff took me in for an instant. How on earth did you fail to guess that a fellow who is not an imbecile to begin with, and has had the advantage of a course at your school⁠—and what a school!⁠—would read your game as easily as he would an open Bible? That shipwreck was really much too convenient. One is accused of dozens of crimes, one’s hands are red with blood, the police are hunting one hard. Then one blows up an old vessel; and all the past, the crimes, the stolen treasure, the wealth of the monks, all sink in a lump along with it. One passes for dead. One grows a new skin. And then one begins again, a little further off, under another name, to murder, to torture, and to bathe one’s hands in blood. That may take in other people, old girl, but not me. When I read about your shipwreck, I said ‘It’s time to keep one’s eyes open wide,’ and I came here.”

He paused, smiling at her, a chilling smile; then went on: “But hang it all, Josephine, your visit was inevitable! And it was inevitable that you must clear the way for it by the help of some confederate. It was inevitable that the yacht of Prince Lavosneff should come cruising off this coast one night. It was inevitable that you must climb the staircase in the cliff which you had once descended on a stretcher. Well, I took my precautions; and my first care was to look about to see if there wasn’t somebody I knew in the neighborhood. A confederate, it’s the very first step in the art. And at once I recognized our young friend Dominique, since I had happened to see him, a detail of which you were ignorant, on the box of your carriage waiting at the door of Bridget Rousselin. Dominique is a faithful servant; but the fear of the police and a sound thrashing softened him to such a degree that he transferred all his faithfulness to me; and he gave proof of it by sending you false reports and by digging for your feet, in concert with me, the pitfall into which you have stumbled. As for his reward: why, there are the ten banknotes, out of your pocket, which you will never see again, for your faithful servant has gone back to the château and is under my protection. That’s how we stand, my dear Josephine. I might indeed have spared you this little comedy and welcomed you here openly, for the mere pleasure of shaking you by the hand. But I wished to see how you would direct the operation, remaining myself in the background, and above all I wished to see how you would receive the news of the supposed murder of Clarice d’Etigues.”

Josephine shrank away from him. He was no longer joking; bending over her he said quietly: “Just a trace of feeling⁠—just a slightest trace⁠—that was all you showed. You believed that the child was dead, dead by your order; and it did not move you at all. With you the death of others does not count. One is twenty, with all one’s life before one⁠ ⁠… with charm and beauty.⁠ ⁠… You crush all that, as if you were cracking a nut. Your conscience does not make one protest. It is true that you do not laugh; but none the more do you weep. In reality you do not give it a thought. I remember that Beaumagnan called you a daughter of Hell⁠—a designation that revolted me. Now I see that he was right. Hell is in you. You are a kind of monster about whom I can never think again without horror. But what about you, Josephine? Aren’t there times when you feel that horror yourself?”

Still sitting at the toilet table, her head resting on her hands, in the attitude of which she was so fond, she did not stir. Ralph’s pitiless words did not provoke that access of indignation and fury for which he was looking. He felt that she was at one of those moments in life at which one sees into the deepest depths of one’s soul and cannot turn one’s eyes from the sight.

He was not greatly surprised. Without being frequent, such moments could not be very uncommon in the life of this unbalanced creature, whose nature, impassible on the surface, was now and again ravaged by nervous convulsions in its depths. Matters were turning out so different from what she had expected, and the apparition of Ralph was so disconcerting that she was unable to rise to struggle with the enemy who was so cruelly outraging her.

He took advantage of her weakness, and went on in a voice that demanded an answer: “Isn’t it a fact, Josine, that at times you terrify yourself? Aren’t there times when you are full of horror at yourself?”

The distress of Josephine was so profound that she murmured: “Yes⁠—yes sometimes. But you’re not to speak to me about it. I don’t want to know. Be quiet⁠—be quiet!”

“But on the contrary, it is necessary that you should know,” said Ralph. “If such acts fill you with horror, why do you commit them?”

“I can’t help it,” she said faintly in an extreme lassitude.

“You do try then?”

“Yes. I try⁠—I struggle⁠—but it is never any use. I was taught evil. I do evil as other people do good. I do evil just as I breathe. That was what they willed.”

“Who?”

“My mother,” she muttered in a low voice.

“Your mother? The spy? The woman who made up all this Cagliostro story?”

“Yes. But you’re not to blame her. She was very fond of me. Only she had not succeeded.⁠ ⁠… She had become poor and wretched and she wished me to succeed⁠ ⁠… and grow rich.”

“Yet you were beautiful. And for a woman beauty is riches. Beauty is enough.”

“My