The Crystal Stopper by Maurice Leblanc (most important books of all time .TXT) 📖

was embarking against you and against Daubrecq, at whose house he did the same thing. He had under his orders a sort of acrobat, an extraordinarily thin dwarf, who was able to wriggle through those apertures and who thus detected all your correspondence and all your secrets. That is what his two friends revealed to me. I at once conceived the idea of saving my elder son by making use of his brother, my little Jacques, who is himself so slight and so intelligent, so plucky, as you have seen. We set out that night. Acting on the information of my companions, I went to Gilbert’s rooms and found the keys of your flat in the Rue Matignon, where it appeared that you were to sleep. Unfortunately, I changed my mind on the way and thought much less of asking for your help than of recovering the crystal stopper, which, if it had been discovered at Enghien, must obviously be at your flat. I was right in my calculations. In a few minutes, my little Jacques, who had slipped into your bedroom, brought it to me. I went away quivering with hope. Mistress in my turn of the talisman, keeping it to myself, without telling Prasville, I had absolute power over Daubrecq. I could make him do all that I wanted; he would become the slave of my will and, instructed by me, would take every step in Gilbert’s favour and obtain that he should be given the means of escape or else that he should not be sentenced. It meant my boy’s safety.”

“Well?”

Clarisse rose from her seat, with a passionate movement of her whole being, leant over Lupin and said, in a hollow voice:

“There was nothing in that piece of crystal, nothing, do you understand? No paper, no hiding-place! The whole expedition to Enghien was futile! The murder of Leonard was useless! The arrest of my son was useless! All my efforts were useless!”

“But why? Why?”

“Why? Because what you stole from Daubrecq was not the stopper made by his instructions, but the stopper which was sent to John Howard, the Stourbridge glassworker, to serve as a model.”

If Lupin had not been in the presence of so deep a grief, he could not have refrained from one of those satirical outbursts with which the mischievous tricks of fate are wont to inspire him. As it was, he muttered between his teeth:

“How stupid! And still more stupid as Daubrecq had been given the warning.”

“No,” she said. “I went to Enghien on the same day. In all that business Daubrecq saw and sees nothing but an ordinary burglary, an annexation of his treasures. The fact that you took part in it put him off the scent.”

“Still, the disappearance of the stopper...”

“To begin with, the thing can have had but a secondary importance for him, as it is only the model.”

“How do you know?”

“There is a scratch at the bottom of the stem; and I have made inquiries in England since.”

“Very well; but why did the key of the cupboard from which it was stolen never leave the man-servant’s possession? And why, in the second place, was it found afterward in the drawer of a table in Daubrecq’s house in Paris?”

“Of course, Daubrecq takes care of it and clings to it in the way in which one clings to the model of any valuable thing. And that is why I replaced the stopper in the cupboard before its absence was noticed. And that also is why, on the second occasion, I made my little Jacques take the stopper from your overcoat-pocket and told the portress to put it back in the drawer.”

“Then he suspects nothing?”

“Nothing. He knows that the list is being looked for, but he does not know that Prasville and I are aware of the thing in which he hides it.”

Lupin had risen from his seat and was walking up and down the room, thinking. Then he stood still beside Clarisse and asked:

“When all is said, since the Enghien incident, you have not advanced a single step?”

“Not one. I have acted from day to day, led by those two men or leading them, without any definite plan.”

“Or, at least,” he said, “without any other plan than that of getting the list of the Twenty-seven from Daubrecq.”

“Yes, but how? Besides, your tactics made things more difficult for me. It did not take us long to recognize your old servant Victoire in Daubrecq’s new cook and to discover, from what the portress told us, that Victoire was putting you up in her room; and I was afraid of your schemes.”

“It was you, was it not, who wrote to me to retire from the contest?”

“Yes.”

“You also asked me not to go to the theatre on the Vaudeville night?”

“Yes, the portress caught Victoire listening to Daubrecq’s conversation with me on the telephone; and the Masher, who was watching the house, saw you go out. I suspected, therefore, that you would follow Daubrecq that evening.”

“And the woman who came here, late one afternoon...”

“Was myself. I felt disheartened and wanted to see you.”

“And you intercepted Gilbert’s letter?”

“Yes, I recognized his writing on the envelope.”

“But your little Jacques was not with you?”

“No, he was outside, in a motor-car, with the Masher, who lifted him up to me through the drawing-room window; and he slipped into your bedroom through the opening in the panel.”

“What was in the letter?”

“As ill-luck would have it, reproaches. Gilbert accused you of forsaking him, of taking over the business on your own account. In short, it confirmed me in my distrust; and I ran away.”

Lupin shrugged his shoulders with irritation:

“What a shocking waste of time! And what a fatality that we were not able to come to an understanding earlier! You and I have been playing at hide-and-seek, laying absurd traps for each other, while the days were passing, precious days beyond repair.”

“You see, you see,” she said, shivering, “you too are afraid of the future!”

“No, I am not afraid,” cried Lupin. “But I am thinking of all the useful work that we could have done by this time, if we had united our efforts. I am thinking of all the mistakes and all the acts of imprudence which we should have been saved, if we had been working together. I am thinking that your attempt to-night to search the clothes which Daubrecq was wearing was as vain as the others and that, at this moment, thanks to our foolish duel, thanks to the din which we raised in his house, Daubrecq is warned and will be more on his guard than ever.”