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

She breathed more easily and opened her eyes.

At once he felt an irresistible urge never to see her again, never even to think of her.

Opening the window, he listened. He fancied that he heard hurrying steps from the direction of the shore. Leonard must have discovered, on reaching the beach, that all the fruits of the expedition had been the capture of a dummy, and doubtless, anxious about Josephine, he was returning to help her.

“Let him find her here; let him carry her away!” he said to himself. “Let her die or let her live! Let her be happy or unhappy! I don’t care a rap. I don’t want to hear anything more about her. Enough of this hell!”

And without a word, without a glance at the woman who held out her hands and implored him not to leave her, he went away.

Next morning he paid a visit to Clarice. In order not to reopen wounds which he knew must be so very painful, he had not yet seen her again. But she had known that he was there; and at once he perceived that time had already done its work. A warmer color mantled her cheeks; her eyes were shining with hope.

“Clarice,” he said to her, “from the very first day you promised to forgive me everything.”

“I have nothing to forgive you, Ralph,” she said, with the remembrance of her father’s crimes in her mind.

“Yes you have, Clarice. I have hurt you cruelly,” he protested. “I have hurt myself very little less; and it is not only your love that I ask but also your care and your protection. I need you to help me to forget horrible memories, to restore my confidence in life, and to combat many ugly qualities in me which urge me to a path I do not wish to tread. With your help I am sure I can be honest; I am certainly going to try hard. And I promise you that you shall be happy. Will you be my wife?”

She held out her hand.

As Ralph had supposed all the vast network of intrigue woven to acquire the legendary treasure was never brought to the light of day. The suicide of Beaumagnan; the crimes of Madam Pellegrini, the mysterious personality of the Countess of Cagliostro, her flight, the shipwreck of the Glowworm, all these diverse facts, Justice could not, or would not, link together. The memorandum of the Cardinal Bishop was destroyed, or disappeared. The associates of Beaumagnan disbanded and did not speak. The world knew nothing.

Necessarily the part that Ralph had played in the affair could not even be suspected; and his marriage passed unnoticed. By what miracle did he succeed in marrying under the name of the Vicomte d’Andresy? Doubtless one must attribute this exploit to the formidable means of action afforded him by the two or three handfuls of precious stones saved from the treasure. With those means one can get many things winked at.

And it was by those means evidently that one day the name of Lupin was found to have vanished. On no register and on no documents was there any longer any trace of Arsène Lupin, or of his father, Theophrastus Lupin. Legally there was only the Vicomte Ralph d’Andresy; and that Vicomte went on his travels through Europe with the Vicomtesse, née Clarice d’Etigues.

In the course of their travels news came to them of the death of the Baron d’Etigues. He perished, along with his cousin Oscar de Bennetot, while they were out rowing. Was it an accident? Was it suicide? During the last days of their lives the two cousins had been reckoned mad; and it was generally agreed that they had committed suicide. But there was also another version which hinted at crime. There were people who declared that a yacht had run down the boat and disappeared. But of this there was no proof.

Whatever the facts might be, Clarice would not touch her father’s fortune. She divided it among charitable institutions.

The years rolled on, delightful and careless years. Ralph kept one of the promises which he had made to Clarice: she was profoundly happy. The other promise he did not keep: he was not honest.

Honesty seemed to be beyond his power. He had in his blood the need to take, to scheme, to mystify, to dupe, to amuse himself at other people’s expense. He was by instinct smuggler, filibuster, marauder, pirate, plotter, and above all chief of a gang. Besides, in the school of Josephine, he had discovered, not without pride, really exceptional qualities in himself which rendered him practically without peer. He believed in his genius. He conferred on himself the right to a fantastic destiny, and one contrary to the destiny of all the men who were his contemporaries. He would be above all of them. He would be the master.

Without the knowledge of Clarice then, without indeed the young woman’s having the least suspicion of it, he carried on enterprises and brought to success affairs in which his authority grew stronger and stronger and his really superhuman gifts developed.4

But before everything he told himself, the repose and happiness of Clarice! He respected his wife. That she should be, and that she should know herself to be the wife of a thief, that he could not allow.

Their happiness lasted five years; at the beginning of the sixth year Clarice died in giving birth to a son called Jean.

The very day after her death that son disappeared, without the slightest clue which allowed Ralph to discover who had entered the little house at Auteuil in which he lived or how they had been able to enter it.

As for the matter of guessing whose hand had struck the blow, there was no need to hesitate about that. Ralph, who had never doubted that the drowning of the two cousins had been brought about by