The Crystal Stopper by Maurice Leblanc (the best e book reader .txt) 📕

It took them over forty minutes to reach the platform of the ledge formed by the cliff; and Lupin had several times to help his companion, whose wrists, still bruised from the torture, had lost all their strength and suppleness.

Over and over again, he groaned:

“Oh, the swine, they’ve done for me!⁠ ⁠… The swine!⁠ ⁠… Ah, d’Albufex, I’ll make you pay dear for this!⁠ ⁠…”

“Ssh!” said Lupin.

“What’s the matter?”

“A noise⁠ ⁠… up above⁠ ⁠…”

Standing motionless on the platform, they listened. Lupin thought of the Sire de Tancarville and the sentry who had killed him with a shot from his harquebus. He shivered, feeling all the anguish of the silence and the darkness.

“No,” he said, “I was mistaken⁠ ⁠… Besides, it’s absurd⁠ ⁠… They can’t hit us here.”

“Who would hit us?”

“No one⁠ ⁠… no one⁠ ⁠… it was a silly notion⁠ ⁠…”

He groped about till he found the uprights of the ladder; then he said:

“There, here’s the ladder. It is fixed in the bed of the river. A friend of mine is looking after it, as well as your cousins.”

He whistled:

“Here I am,” he said, in a low voice. “Hold the ladder fast.” And, to Daubrecq, “I’ll go first.”

Daubrecq objected:

“Perhaps it would be better for me to go down first.”

“Why?”

“I am very tired. You can tie your rope round my waist and hold me⁠ ⁠… Otherwise, there is a danger that I might⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, you are right,” said Lupin. “Come nearer.”

Daubrecq came nearer and knelt down on the rock. Lupin fastened the rope to him and then, stooping over, grasped one of the uprights in both hands to keep the ladder from shaking:

“Off you go,” he said.

At the same moment, he felt a violent pain in the shoulder:

“Blast it!” he said, sinking to the ground.

Daubrecq had stabbed him with a knife below the nape of the neck, a little to the right.

“You blackguard! You blackguard!”

He half-saw Daubrecq, in the dark, ridding himself of his rope, and heard him whisper:

“You’re a bit of a fool, you know!⁠ ⁠… You bring me a letter from my Rousselot cousins, in which I recognize the writing of the elder, Adelaide, but which that sly puss of an Adelaide, suspecting something and meaning to put me on my guard, if necessary, took care to sign with the name of the younger sister, Euphrasie Rousselot. You see, I tumbled to it! So, with a little reflection⁠ ⁠… you are Master Arsène Lupin, are you not? Clarisse’s protector, Gilbert’s saviour⁠ ⁠… Poor Lupin, I fear you’re in a bad way⁠ ⁠… I don’t use the knife often; but, when I do, I use it with a vengeance.”

He bent over the wounded man and felt in his pockets:

“Give me your revolver, can’t you? You see, your friends will know at once that it is not their governor; and they will try to secure me⁠ ⁠… And, as I have not much strength left, a bullet or two⁠ ⁠… Goodbye, Lupin. We shall meet in the next world, eh? Book me a nice flat, with all the latest conveniences.

“Goodbye, Lupin. And my best thanks. For really I don’t know what I should have done without you. By Jove, d’Albufex was hitting me hard! It’ll be a joke to meet the beggar again!”

Daubrecq had completed his preparations. He whistled once more. A reply came from the boat.

“Here I am,” he said.

With a last effort, Lupin put out his arm to stop him. But his hand touched nothing but space. He tried to call out, to warn his accomplices: his voice choked in his throat.

He felt a terrible numbness creep over his whole being. His temples buzzed.

Suddenly, shouts below. Then a shot. Then another, followed by a triumphant chuckle. And a woman’s wail and moans. And, soon after, two more shots.

Lupin thought of Clarisse, wounded, dead perhaps; of Daubrecq, fleeing victoriously; of d’Albufex; of the crystal stopper, which one or other of the two adversaries would recover unresisted. Then a sudden vision showed him the Sire de Tancarville falling with the woman he loved. Then he murmured, time after time:

“Clarisse⁠ ⁠… Clarisse⁠ ⁠… Gilbert⁠ ⁠…” A great silence overcame him; an infinite peace entered into him; and, without the least revolt, he received the impression that his exhausted body, with nothing now to hold it back, was rolling to the very edge of the rock, toward the abyss.

An hotel bedroom at Amiens.

Lupin was recovering a little consciousness for the first time. Clarisse and the Masher were seated by his bedside.

Both were talking; and Lupin listened to them, without opening his eyes. He learned that they had feared for his life, but that all danger was now removed. Next, in the course of the conversation, he caught certain words that revealed to him what had happened in the tragic night at Mortepierre: Daubrecq’s descent; the dismay of the accomplices, when they saw that it was not the governor; then the short struggle: Clarisse flinging herself on Daubrecq and receiving a wound in the shoulder; Daubrecq leaping to the bank; the Growler firing two revolver-shots and darting off in pursuit of him; the Masher clambering up the ladder and finding the governor in a swoon:

“True as I live,” said the Masher, “I can’t make out even now how he did not roll over. There was a sort of hollow at that place, but it was a sloping hollow; and, half dead as he was, he must have hung on with his ten fingers. Crikey, it was time I came!”

Lupin listened, listened in despair. He collected his strength to grasp and understand the words. But suddenly a terrible sentence was uttered: Clarisse, weeping, spoke of the eighteen days that had elapsed, eighteen more days lost to Gilbert’s safety.

Eighteen days! The figure terrified Lupin. He felt that all was over, that he would never be able to recover his strength and resume the struggle and that Gilbert and Vaucheray were doomed⁠ ⁠… His brain slipped away from him. The fever returned and the delirium.

And more days came and went. It was perhaps the time of his life