Arsène Lupin by Maurice Leblanc (literature books to read .txt) 📕
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- Author: Maurice Leblanc
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“I must take a careful look at that house they’re building. I shall find a good many traces there, to a dead certainty,” said M. Formery.
The inspector entered the measurements of the footprint in his note-book. There came the sound of a knocking at the front door.
“I shall find footprints of exactly the same dimensions as this one at the foot of some heap of plaster beside that house,” said M. Formery; with an air of profound conviction, pointing through the window to the house building beyond the garden.
A policeman opened the door of the drawing-room and saluted.
“If you please, sir, the servants have arrived from Charmerace,” he said.
“Let them wait in the kitchen and the servants’ offices,” said M. Formery. He stood silent, buried in profound meditation, for a couple of minutes. Then he turned to the Duke and said, “What was that you said about a theft of motor-cars at Charmerace?”
“When he received the letter from Arsène Lupin, M. Gournay-Martin decided to start for Paris at once,” said the Duke. “But when we sent for the cars we found that they had just been stolen. M. Gournay-Martin’s chauffeur and another servant were in the garage gagged and bound. Only an old car, a hundred horse-power Mercrac, was left. I drove it to Paris, leaving M. Gournay-Martin and his family to come on by train.”
“Very important—very important indeed,” said M. Formery. He thought for a moment, and then added. “Were the motor-cars the only things stolen? Were there no other thefts?”
“Well, as a matter of fact, there was another theft, or rather an attempt at theft,” said the Duke with some hesitation. “The rogues who stole the motor-cars presented themselves at the chateau under the name of Charolais—a father and three sons—on the pretext of buying the hundred-horse-power Mercrac. M. Gournay-Martin had advertised it for sale in the Rennes Advertiser. They were waiting in the big hall of the chateau, which the family uses as the chief living-room, for the return of M. Gournay-Martin. He came; and as they left the hall one of them attempted to steal a pendant set with pearls which I had given to Mademoiselle Gournay-Martin half an hour before. I caught him in the act and saved the pendant.”
“Good! good! Wait—we have one of the gang—wait till I question him,” said M. Formery, rubbing his hands; and his eyes sparkled with joy.
“Well, no; I’m afraid we haven’t,” said the Duke in an apologetic tone.
“What! We haven’t? Has he escaped from the police? Oh, those country police!” cried M. Formery.
“No; I didn’t charge him with the theft,” said the Duke.
“You didn’t charge him with the theft?” cried M. Formery, astounded.
“No; he was very young and he begged so hard. I had the pendant. I let him go,” said the Duke.
“Oh, your Grace, your Grace! Your duty to society!” cried M. Formery.
“Yes, it does seem to have been rather weak,” said the Duke; “but there you are. It’s no good crying over spilt milk.”
M. Formery folded his arms and walked, frowning, backwards and forwards across the room.
He stopped, raised his hand with a gesture commanding attention, and said, “I have no hesitation in saying that there is a connection—an intimate connection—between the thefts at Charmerace and this burglary!”
The Duke and the inspector gazed at him with respectful eyes—at least, the eyes of the inspector were respectful; the Duke’s eyes twinkled.
“I am gathering up the threads,” said M. Formery. “Inspector, bring up the concierge and his wife. I will question them on the scene of the crime. Their dossier should be here. If it is, bring it up with them; if not, no matter; bring them up without it.”
The inspector left the drawing-room. M. Formery plunged at once into frowning meditation.
“I find all this extremely interesting,” said the Duke.
“Charmed! Charmed!” said M. Formery, waving his hand with an absent-minded air.
The inspector entered the drawing-room followed by the concierge and his wife. He handed a paper to M. Formery. The concierge, a bearded man of about sixty, and his wife, a somewhat bearded woman of about fifty-five, stared at M. Formery with fascinated, terrified eyes. He sat down in a chair, crossed his legs, read the paper through, and then scrutinized them keenly.
“Well, have you recovered from your adventure?” he said.
“Oh, yes, sir,” said the concierge. “They hustled us a bit, but they did not really hurt us.”
“Nothing to speak of, that is,” said his wife. “But all the same, it’s a disgraceful thing that an honest woman can’t sleep in peace in her bed of a night without being disturbed by rascals like that. And if the police did their duty things like this wouldn’t happen. And I don’t care who hears me say it.”
“You say that you were taken by surprise in your sleep?” said M. Formery. “You say you saw nothing, and heard nothing?”
“There was no time to see anything or hear anything. They trussed us up like greased lightning,” said the concierge.
“But the gag was the worst,” said the wife. “To lie there and not be able to tell the rascals what I thought about them!”
“Didn’t you hear the noise of footsteps in the garden?” said M. Formery.
“One can’t hear anything that happens in the garden from our bedroom,” said the concierge.
“Even the night when Mlle. Germaine’s great Dane barked from twelve o’clock till seven in the morning, all the household was kept awake except us; but bless you, sir, we slept like tops,” said his wife proudly.
“If they sleep like that it seems rather a waste of time to have gagged them,” whispered the Duke to the inspector.
The inspector grinned, and whispered scornfully, “Oh, them common folks; they do sleep like that, your Grace.”
“Didn’t you hear any noise at the front door?” said M. Formery.
“No, we heard no noise at the door,” said the concierge.
“Then you heard no noise at all the whole night?” said M. Formery.
“Oh, yes, sir, we heard noise enough after we’d been gagged,” said the concierge.
“Now, this is important,” said M. Formery. “What kind of a noise was it?”
“Well, it was a bumping kind of noise,” said the concierge. “And there was a noise of footsteps, walking about the room.”
“What room? Where did these noises come from?” said M. Formery.
“From the room over our heads—the big drawing-room,” said the concierge.
“Didn’t you hear any noise of a struggle, as if somebody was being dragged about—no screaming or crying?” said M. Formery.
The concierge and his wife looked at one another with inquiring eyes.
“No, I didn’t,” said the concierge.
“Neither did I,” said his wife.
M. Formery paused. Then he said, “How long have you been in the service of M. Gournay-Martin?”
“A little more than a year,” said the concierge.
M. Formery looked at the paper in his hand, frowned, and said severely, “I see you’ve been convicted twice, my man.”
“Yes, sir, but—”
“My husband’s an honest man, sir—perfectly honest,” broke in his wife. “You’ve only to ask M. Gournay-Martin; he’ll—”
“Be so good as to keep quiet, my good woman,” said M. Formery; and, turning to her husband, he went on: “At your first conviction you were sentenced to a day’s imprisonment with costs; at your second conviction you got three days’ imprisonment.”
“I’m not going to deny it, sir,” said the concierge; “but it was an honourable imprisonment.”
“Honourable?” said M. Formery.
“The first time, I was a gentleman’s servant, and I got a day’s imprisonment for crying, ‘Hurrah for the General Strike!’—on the first of May.”
“You were a valet? In whose service?” said M. Formery.
“In the service of M. Genlis, the Socialist leader.”
“And your second conviction?” said M. Formery.
“It was for having cried in the porch of Ste. Clotilde, ‘Down with the cows!’—meaning the police, sir,” said the concierge.
“And were you in the service of M. Genlis then?” said M. Formery.
“No, sir; I was in the service of M. Bussy-Rabutin, the Royalist deputy.”
“You don’t seem to have very well-defined political convictions,” said M. Formery.
“Oh, yes, sir, I have,” the concierge protested. “I’m always devoted to my masters; and I have the same opinions that they have—always.”
“Very good; you can go,” said M. Formery.
The concierge and his wife left the room, looking as if they did not quite know whether to feel relieved or not.
“Those two fools are telling the exact truth, unless I’m very much mistaken,” said M. Formery.
“They look honest enough people,” said the Duke.
“Well, now to examine the rest of the house,” said M. Formery.
“I’ll come with you, if I may,” said the Duke.
“By all means, by all means,” said M. Formery.
“I find it all so interesting,” said the Duke,
GUERCHARD ASSISTS
Leaving a policeman on guard at the door of the drawing-room M. Formery, the Duke, and the inspector set out on their tour of inspection. It was a long business, for M. Formery examined every room with the most scrupulous care—with more care, indeed, than he had displayed in his examination of the drawing-rooms. In particular he lingered long in the bedroom of Victoire, discussing the possibilities of her having been murdered and carried away by the burglars along with their booty. He seemed, if anything, disappointed at finding no blood-stains, but to find real consolation in the thought that she might have been strangled. He found the inspector in entire agreement with every theory he enunciated, and he grew more and more disposed to regard him as a zealous and trustworthy officer. Also he was not at all displeased at enjoying this opportunity of impressing the Duke with his powers of analysis and synthesis. He was unaware that, as a rule, the Duke’s eyes did not usually twinkle as they twinkled during this solemn and deliberate progress through the house of M. Gournay-Martin. M. Formery had so exactly the air of a sleuthhound; and he was even noisier.
Having made this thorough examination of the house, M. Formery went out into the garden and set about examining that. There were footprints on the turf about the foot of the ladder, for the grass was close-clipped, and the rain had penetrated and softened the soil; but there were hardly as many footprints as might have been expected, seeing that the burglars must have made many journeys in the course of robbing the drawing-rooms of so many objects of art, some of them of considerable weight. The footprints led to a path of hard gravel; and M. Formery led the way down it, out of the door in the wall at the bottom of the garden, and into the space round the house which was being built.
As M. Formery had divined, there was a heap, or, to be exact, there were several heaps of plaster about the bottom of the scaffolding. Unfortunately, there were also hundreds of footprints. M. Formery looked at them with longing eyes; but he did not suggest that the inspector should hunt about for a set of footprints of the size of the one he had so carefully measured on the drawing-room carpet.
While they were examining the ground round the half-built house a man came briskly down the stairs from the second floor of the house of M. Gournay-Martin. He was an ordinary-looking man, almost insignificant, of between forty and fifty, and of rather more than middle height. He had an ordinary, rather shapeless mouth, an ordinary nose, an ordinary chin, an ordinary forehead, rather low, and ordinary ears. He was wearing an ordinary top-hat, by no means new. His clothes were the ordinary clothes of a fairly well-to-do citizen; and his boots had been chosen less to set off any slenderness his feet might possess than for their comfortable roominess. Only his eyes relieved his face from insignificance. They were extraordinarily alert eyes, producing in those on whom they rested the somewhat uncomfortable impression that the depths of their souls were being penetrated. He was the famous Chief-Inspector Guerchard, head of the Detective Department of the Prefecture of Police, and sworn foe of Arsène Lupin.
The policeman at the door of the drawing-room saluted him briskly. He was a fine, upstanding, red-faced young fellow, adorned by a rich black moustache of extraordinary fierceness.
“Shall I go and inform M. Formery that you have come, M. Guerchard?” he said.
“No, no; there’s no need to take the trouble,” said Guerchard in a gentle, rather husky voice. “Don’t bother any one about me—I’m of no importance.”
“Oh, come, M. Guerchard,” protested the policeman.
“Of no importance,” said M. Guerchard decisively. “For the present, M. Formery is everything. I’m only an assistant.”
He stepped into the drawing-room and stood looking about it, curiously still. It was almost as if the whole of his being was concentrated in the act of seeing—as if all the other functions of his mind and body were in suspension.
“M. Formery and the inspector have just been up to examine the housekeeper’s room. It’s right at the
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