Arsène Lupin versus Herlock Sholmes (21 page)

Then there was a second whistle, softer than before.

“I don’t understand it; I don’t understand,” said Sholmes, irritably.

“No more do I,” confessed Wilson.

Sholmes turned the key, drew the bolt, and quietly opened the door. A third whistle, louder than before, and modulated to another form. And the noise above their heads became more pronounced. Sholmes said:

“It seems to be on the balcony outside the boudoir window.”

He put his head through the half-opened door, but immediately recoiled, with a stifled oath. Then Wilson looked. Quite close to them there was a ladder, the upper end of which was resting on the balcony.

“The deuce!” said Sholmes, “there is someone in the boudoir. That is what we heard. Quick, let us remove the ladder.”

But at that instant a man slid down the ladder and ran toward the spot where his accomplices were waiting for him outside the fence. He carried the ladder with him. Sholmes and Wilson pursued the man and overtook him just as he was placing the ladder against the fence. From the other side of the fence two shots were fired.

“Wounded?” cried Sholmes.

“No,” replied Wilson.

Wilson seized the man by the body and tried to hold him, but the man turned and plunged a knife into Wilson’s breast. He uttered a groan, staggered and fell.

“Damnation!” muttered Sholmes, “if they have killed him I will kill them.”

He laid Wilson on the grass and rushed toward the ladder. Too late—the man had climbed the fence and, accompanied by his confederates, had fled through the bushes.

“Wilson, Wilson, it is not serious, hein? Merely a scratch.”

The house door opened, and Monsieur d’Imblevalle appeared, followed by the servants, carrying candles.

“What’s the matter?” asked the baron. “Is Monsieur Wilson wounded?”

“Oh! It’s nothing—a mere scratch,” repeated Sholmes, trying to deceive himself.

The blood was flowing profusely, and Wilson’s face was livid. Twenty minutes later the doctor ascertained that the point of the knife had penetrated to within an inch and a half of the heart.

“An inch and a half of the heart! Wilson always was lucky!” said Sholmes, in an envious tone.

“Lucky … lucky … ” muttered the doctor.

“Of course! Why, with his robust constitution he will soon be out again.”

“Six weeks in bed and two months of convalescence.”

“Not more?”

“No, unless complications set in.”

“Oh! The devil! What does he want complications for?”

Fully reassured, Sholmes joined the baron in the boudoir. This time the mysterious visitor had not exercised the same restraint. Ruthlessly, he had laid his vicious hand upon the diamond snuff-box, upon the opal necklace, and, in a general way, upon everything that could find a place in the greedy pockets of an enterprising burglar.

The window was still open; one of the window-panes had been neatly cut; and, in the morning, a summary investigation showed that the ladder belonged to the house then in course of construction.

“Now, you can see,” said Mon. d’Imblevalle, with a touch of irony, “it is an exact repetition of the affair of the Jewish lamp.”

“Yes, if we accept the first theory adopted by the police.”

“Haven’t you adopted it yet? Doesn’t this second theft shatter your theory in regard to the first?”

“It only confirms it, monsieur.”

“That is incredible! You have positive evidence that last night’s theft was committed by an outsider, and yet you adhere to your theory that the Jewish lamp was stolen by someone in the house.”

“Yes, I am sure of it.”

“How do you explain it?”

“I do not explain anything, monsieur; I have established two facts which do not appear to have any relation to each other, and yet I am seeking the missing link that connects them.”

His conviction seemed to be so earnest and positive that the baron submitted to it, and said:

“Very well, we will notify the police—”

“Not at all!” exclaimed the Englishman, quickly, “not at all! I intend to ask for their assistance when I need it—but not before.”

“But the attack on your friend?”

“That’s of no consequence. He is only wounded. Secure the license of the doctor. I shall be responsible for the legal side of the affair.”

The next two days proved uneventful. Yet Sholmes was investigating the case with a minute care, and with a sense of wounded pride resulting from that audacious theft, committed under his nose, in spite of his presence and beyond his power to prevent it. He made a thorough investigation of the house and garden, interviewed the servants, and paid lengthy visits to the kitchen and stables. And, although his efforts were fruitless, he did not despair.

“I will succeed,” he thought, “and the solution must be sought within the walls of this house. This affair is quite different from that of the Blonde Lady, where I had to work in the dark, on unknown ground. This time I am on the battlefield itself. The enemy is not the elusive and invisible Lupin, but the accomplice, in flesh and blood, who lives and moves within the confines of this house. Let me secure the slightest clue and the game is mine!”

That clue was furnished to him by accident.

On the afternoon of the third day, when he entered a room located above the boudoir, which served as a study for the children, he found Henriette, the younger of the two sisters. She was looking for her scissors.

“You know,” she said to Sholmes, “I make papers like that you received the other evening.”

“The other evening?”

“Yes, just as dinner was over, you received a paper with marks on it … you know, a telegram … Well, I make them, too.”

She left the room. To anyone else these words would seem to be nothing more than the insignificant remark of a child, and Sholmes himself listened to them with a distracted air and continued his investigation. But, suddenly, he ran after the child, and overtook her at the head of the stairs. He said to her:

“So you paste stamps and marks on papers?”

Henriette, very proudly, replied:

“Yes, I cut them out and paste them on.”

“Who taught you that little game?”

“Mademoiselle … my governess … I have seen her do it often. She takes words out of the newspapers and pastes them—”

“What does she make out of them?”

“Telegrams and letters that she sends away.”

Herlock Sholmes returned to the study, greatly puzzled by the information and seeking to draw from it a logical deduction. There was a pile of newspapers on the mantel. He opened them and found that many words and, in some places, entire lines had been cut out. But, after reading a few of the word’s which preceded or followed, he decided that the missing words had been cut out at random—probably by the child. It was possible that one of the newspapers had been cut by mademoiselle; but how could he assure himself that such was the case?

Mechanically, Sholmes turned over the school-books on the table; then others which were lying on the shelf of a bookcase. Suddenly he uttered a cry of joy. In a corner of the bookcase, under a pile of old exercise books, he found a child’s alphabet-book, in which the letters were ornamented with pictures, and on one of the pages of that book he discovered a place where a word had been removed. He examined it. It was a list of the days of the week. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc. The word “Saturday” was missing. Now, the theft of the Jewish lamp had occurred on a Saturday night.

Sholmes experienced that slight fluttering of the heart which always announced to him, in the clearest manner, that he had discovered the road which leads to victory. That ray of truth, that feeling of certainty, never deceived him.

With nervous fingers he hastened to examine the balance of the book. Very soon he made another discovery. It was a page composed of capital letters, followed by a line of figures. Nine of those letters and three of those figures had been carefully cut out. Sholmes made a list of the missing letters and figures in his memorandum book, in alphabetical and numerical order, and obtained the following result:

CDEHNOPEZ—237.

“Well! At first sight, it is a rather formidable puzzle,” he murmured, “but, by transposing the letters and using all of them, is it possible to form one, two or three complete words?”

Sholmes tried it, in vain.

Only one solution seemed possible; it constantly appeared before him, no matter which way he tried to juggle the letters, until, at length, he was satisfied it was the true solution, since it harmonized with the logic of the facts and the general circumstances of the case.

As that page of the book did not contain any duplicate letters it was probable, in fact quite certain, that the words he could form from those letters would be incomplete, and that the original words had been completed with letters taken from other pages. Under those conditions he obtained the following solution, errors and omissions excepted:

REPOND Z—CH—237.

The first word was quite clear: répondez [reply], a letter
E
is missing because it occurs twice in the word, and the book furnished only one letter of each kind.

As to the second incomplete word, no doubt it formed, with the aid of the number 237, an address to which the reply was to be sent. They appointed Saturday as the time, and requested a reply to be sent to the address
CH. 237.

Or, perhaps, CH. 237 was an address for a letter to be sent to the “general delivery” of some post office, or, again, they might form a part of some incomplete word. Sholmes searched the book once more, but did not discover that any other letters had been removed. Therefore, until further orders, he decided to adhere to the foregoing interpretation.

Henriette returned and observed what he was doing.

“Amusing, isn’t it?”

“Yes, very amusing,” he replied. “But, have you any other papers? … Or, rather, words already cut out that I can paste?”

“Papers? … No … And Mademoiselle wouldn’t like it.”

“Mademoiselle?”

“Yes, she has scolded me already.”

“Why?”

“Because I have told you some things … and she says that a person should never tell things about those they love.”

“You are quite right.”

Henriette was delighted to receive his approbation, in fact so highly pleased that she took from a little silk bag that was pinned to her dress some scraps of cloth, three buttons, two cubes of sugar and, lastly, a piece of paper which she handed to Sholmes.

“See, I give it to you just the same.”

It was the number of a cab—8,279.

“Where did this number come from?”

“It fell out of her pocketbook.”

“When?”

“Sunday, at mass, when she was taking out some sous for the collection.”

“Exactly! And now I shall tell you how to keep from being scolded again. Do not tell Mademoiselle that you saw me.”

Sholmes then went to Mon. d’Imblevalle and questioned him in regard to Mademoiselle. The baron replied, indignantly:

“Alice Demun! How can you imagine such a thing? It is utterly impossible!”

“How long has she been in your service?”

“Only a year, but there is no one in the house in whom I have greater confidence.”

“Why have I not seen her yet?”

“She has been away for a few days.”

“But she is here now.”

“Yes; since her return she has been watching at the bedside of your friend. She has all the qualities of a nurse … gentle … thoughtful … Monsieur Wilson seems much pleased. … ”

“Ah!” said Sholmes, who had completely neglected to enquire about his friend. After a moment’s reflection he asked:

“Did she go out on Sunday morning?”

“The day after the theft?”

“Yes.”

The baron called his wife and asked her. She replied:

“Mademoiselle went to the eleven o’clock mass with the children, as usual.”

“But before that?”

“Before that? No … Let me see! … I was so upset by the theft … but I remember now that, on the evening before, she asked permission to go out on Sunday morning … to see a cousin who was passing through Paris, I think. But, surely, you don’t suspect her?”

“Of course not … but I would like to see her.”

He went to Wilson’s room. A woman dressed in a gray cloth dress, as in the hospitals, was bending over the invalid, giving him a drink. When she turned her face Sholmes recognized her as the young girl who had accosted him at the railway station.

Alice Demun smiled sweetly; her great serious, innocent eyes showed no sign of embarrassment. The Englishman tried to speak, muttered a few syllables, and stopped. Then she resumed her work, acting quite naturally under Sholmes’ astonished gaze, moved the bottles, unrolled and rolled cotton bandages, and again regarded Sholmes with her charming smile of pure innocence.

He turned on his heels, descended the stairs, noticed Mon. d’Imblevalle’s automobile in the courtyard, jumped into it, and went to Levallois, to the office of the cab company whose address was printed on the paper he had received from Henriette. The man who had driven carriage number 8,279 on Sunday morning not being there, Sholmes dismissed the automobile and waited for the man’s return. He told Sholmes that he had picked up a woman in the vicinity of the Parc Monceau, a young woman dressed in black, wearing a heavy veil, and, apparently, quite nervous.

“Did she have a package?”

“Yes, quite a long package.”

“Where did you take her?”

“Avenue des Ternes, corner of the Place Saint-Ferdinand. She remained there about ten minutes, and then returned to the Parc Monceau.”

“Could you recognize the house in the avenue des Ternes?”

“Parbleu! Shall I take you there?”

“Presently. First take me to 36 quai des Orfèvres.”

At the police office he saw Detective Ganimard.

“Monsieur Ganimard, are you at liberty?”

“If it has anything to do with Lupin—no!”

“It has something to do with Lupin.”

“Then I do not go.”

“What? You surrender—”

“I bow to the inevitable. I am tired of the unequal struggle, in which we are sure to be defeated. Lupin is stronger than I am—stronger than the two of us; therefore, we must surrender.”