The Misadventure of Shelrock Holmes (7 page)

By the scent he recognized the presence of a woman. Her dress almost touched the curtain that concealed him, and he seemed to hear her heart beating, while she must needs herself perceive the presence of another person behind her in the dark, within reach of her hand. He said to himself:

"She's frightened . . . she'll go back ... she is bound to go back."

She did not go back. The candle shaking in her hand became steadier. She turned round, hesitated for a moment, appeared to be listening to the alarming silence, and then, with a sudden movement, pulled back the curtain.

Their eyes met.

Arsene murmured, in confusion:

"You . . . you . . . Miss Underwood!"

It was Nellie Underwood, the passenger on the Provence, the girl who had mingled her dreams with his during that never-to-be-forgotten crossing, who had witnessed his arrest, and who, rather than betray him, had generously flung into the sea the kodak in

which he had hidden the stolen jewels and banknotes! ... It was Nellie Underwood, whose image had so often saddened or gladdened his long hours spent in prison!

So extraordinary was their chance meeting in this castle and at that hour of the night that they did not stir, did not utter a word, dumfounded and, as it were, hypnotized by the fantastic apparition which each of them presented to the other's eyes.

Nellie, shattered with emotion, staggered to a seat.

He remained standing in front of her. And gradually, as the interminable seconds passed, he became aware of the impression which he must be making at that moment, with his arms loaded widi curiosities, his pockets stuffed, his bag filled to bursting. A great sense of confusion mastered him, and he blushed to find himself there in the mean plight of a robber caught in the act. To her henceforth, come what might, he was the thief, the man who puts his hand into other men's pockets, the man who picks locks and enters doors by stealth.

One of the watches rolled upon the carpet, followed by another. And more things came slipping from under his arms, which were unable to retain them. Then, quickly making up his mind, he dropped a part of his booty into a chair, emptied his pockets, and took off his bag.

He now felt easier in Nellie's presence, and took a step towards her, with the intention of speaking to her. But she made a movement of recoil and rose quickly, as though seized with fright, and ran to the guardroom. The curtain fell behind her. He followed her. She stood there, trembling and speechless, and her eyes gazed in terror upon the great devastated hall.

Without a moment's hesitation, he said:

"At three o'clock tomorrow everything shall be restored to its place. . . . The things shall be brought back."

She did not reply; and he repeated:

"At three o'clock tomorrow, I give you my solemn pledge. . . . No power on earth shall prevent me from keeping my promise. . . . At three o'clock tomorrow."

A long silence weighed upon them both. He dared not break it, and the girl's emotion made him suffer in every nerve. Softly, without a word, he moved away.

And he thought to himself:

"She must go!. . . She must feel that she is free to go! ... She must not be afraid of me! . . ."

But suddenly she started, and stammered:

"Footsteps! ... I hear someone coming . . ."

He looked at her with surprise. She appeared distraught, as though at the approach of danger.

"I hear nothing," he said, "and, even so . . ."

"Why, you must fly! ... Quick, fly! . . ."

"Fly . . . why?"

"You must! . . . You must! . . . Ah, don't stay!"

She rushed to the entrance to the gallery and listened. No, there was no one there. Perhaps the sound had come from the outside. . . . She waited a second, and then, reassured, turned round.

Arsene Lupin had disappeared.

Devanne's first thought, on ascertaining that his castle had been pillaged, found expression in the words which he spoke to himself:

"This is Velmont's work, and Velmont is none odier than Arsene Lupin."

All was explained by this means, and nothing could be explained by any other. And yet the idea only just passed through his mind, for it seemed almost impossible that Velmont should not be Velmont — that is to say, the well-known painter, the club friend of his cousin d'Estavan. And when the sergeant of gendarmes had been sent for and arrived, Devanne did not even think of telling him of this absurd conjecture.

The whole of that morning was spent, at Thibermesnil, in an indescribable hubbub. The gendarmes, the rural police, the commissary of police from Dieppe, the inhabitants of the village thronged the passages, the park, the approaches to the castle. The arrival of the troops taking part in the maneuvers and the crack of the rifles added to the picturesqueness of the scene.

The early investigations furnished no clue. The windows had not been broken nor the doors smashed in. There was no doubt but that the removal had been effected through the secret outlet. And yet there was no trace of footsteps on the carpet, no unusual mark upon the walls.

There was one unexpected thing, however, which clearly pointed to the fanciful methods of Arsene Lupin: the famous sixteenth-century chronicle had been restored to its old place in the bookcase, and beside it stood a similar volume, which was none other than the copy stolen from the Bibliotheque Nationale.

The officers arrived at eleven. Devanne received them gayly; however annoyed he might feel at the loss of his artistic treasures, his fortune was large enough to enable him to bear it without showing ill-humor. His friends the d'Androls and Nellie came down from their rooms, and the officers were introduced.

One of the guests was missing: Horace Velmont. Was he not coming? He walked in upon the stroke of twelve, and Devanne exclaimed:

"Good! There you are at last!"

"Am I late?"

"No, but you might have been . . . after such an exciting night! You have heard the news, I suppose?"

"What news?"

"You robbed the castle last night."

"Nonsense!"

"I tell you, you did. But give your arm to Miss Underwood, and let us go in to lunch . . . Miss Underwood, let me introduce .

He stopped, struck by the confusion on the girl's features. Then, seized with a sudden recollection, he said:

"By the way, of course, you once traveled on the same ship with Arsene Lupin . . . before his arrest. . . . You are surprised by the likeness, are you not?"

She did not reply. Velmont stood before her, smiling. He bowed; she took his arm. He led her to her place, and sat down opposite to her. . . .

During lunch they talked of nothing but Arsene Lupin, the stolen furniture, the underground passage, and Holmlock Shears. Not until the end of the meal, when other subjects were broached, did Velmont join in the conversation. He was amusing and serious, eloquent and witty, by turns. And whatever he said he appeared to say with the sole object of interesting Nellie. She, wholly engrossed in her own thoughts, seemed not to hear him.

Coffee was served on the terrace overlooking the courtyard and

the French garden in front of the castle. The regimental band played on the lawn, and a crowd of peasants and soldiers strolled about the walks in the park.

Nellie was thinking of Arsene Lupin's promise:

"At three o'clock everything will be there. I give you my solemn pledge."

At three o'clock! And the hands of the great clock in the right wing pointed to twenty to three. In spite of herself, she kept on looking at it. And she also looked at Velmont, who was swinging peacefully in a comfortable rocking chair.

Ten minutes to three . . . five minutes to three ... A sort of impatience, mingled with a sense of exquisite pain, racked the young girl's mind. Was it possible for the miracle to be accomplished and to be accomplished at the fixed time, when the castle, the courtyard, and the country around were filled with people, and when, at that very moment, the public prosecutor and the examining magistrate were pursuing their investigations?

And still . . . still, Arsene Lupin had given such a solemn promise!

"It will happen just as he said," she thought, impressed by all the man's energy, authority, and certainty.

And it seemed to her no longer a miracle, but a natural event that was bound to take place in the ordinary course of things.

For a second their eyes met. She blushed, and turned away her head.

Three o'clock. . . . The first stroke rang out, the second, the third. . . . Horace Velmont took out his watch, glanced up at the clock, and put his watch back in his pocket. A few seconds elapsed. And then the crowd opened out around the lawn to make way for two carriages that had just passed through the park gates, each drawn by two horses. They were two of those regimental wagons which carry the cooking utensils of the officers' mess and the soldiers' kits. They stopped in front of the steps. A quartermaster sergeant jumped down from the box of the first wagon and asked for M. Devanne.

Devanne ran down the steps. Under the awnings, carefully packed and wrapped up, were his pictures, his furniture, his works of art of all kinds.

The sergeant replied to the questions put to him by producing

the order which the adjutant on duty had given him, and which the adjutant himself had received that morning in the orderly room. The order stated that No. 2 Company of the Fourth Battalion was to see that the goods and chattels deposited at the Halleux crossroads, in the Forest of Arques, were delivered at three o'clock to M. Georges Devanne, the owner of Thibermesnil Castle. It bore the signature of Colonel Beauvel.

"I found everything ready for us at the crossroads," added the sergeant, "laid out on the grass, under the charge of ... anyone passing. That struck me as queer, but ... well, sir, the order was plain enough!"

One of the officers examined the signature: it was a perfect copy,

but forged.

The band had stopped. The wagons were emptied, and the furniture carried indoors.

In the midst of this excitement Nellie Underwood was left standing alone at one end of the terrace. She was grave and anxious, full of vague thoughts, which she did not seek to formulate. Suddenly she saw Velmont coming up to her. She wished to avoid him, but the corner of the balustrade that borders the terrace hemmed her in on two sides, and a row of great tubs of shrubs — orange trees, laurels, and bamboos — left her no other way of escape than that by which Velmont was approaching. She did not move. A ray of sunlight quivered on her golden hair, shaken by the frail leaves of a bamboo plant. She heard a soft voice say:

"I have kept the promise I made you last night."

Arsene Lupin stood by her side, and there was no one else near

them.

He repeated, in a hesitating attitude and a timid voice:

"I have kept the promise I made you last night."

He expected a word of thanks, a gesture at least, to prove the interest which she took in his action. She was silent.

Her scorn irritated Arsene Lupin, and at the same time he received a profound sense of all that separated him from Nellie, now that she knew the truth. He would have liked to exonerate himself, to seek excuses, to show his life in its bolder and greater aspects. But the words jarred upon him before they were uttered, and he felt the absurdity and the impertinence of any explanation.

He gave a bitter smile:

"You are right," he said. "What has been will always be. Arsene Lupin is and can be no one but Arsene Lupin; and not even a memory can exist between you and him . . . Forgive me ... I ought to have understood that my very presence near you must seem an outrage. . . ."

He made way for her, hat in hand, and Nellie passed before him along the balustrade. He felt tempted to hold her back, to beseech her. His courage failed him, and he followed her with his eyes, as he had done on the day long past when she crossed the gangplank on their arrival at New York. She went up the stairs that led to the door. For another instant her dainty figure was outlined against the marble of the entrance hall. Then he saw her no more.

"Come," he said to himself, "I have nothing more to do here. Let us see to our retreat. The more so as, if Holmlock Shears takes up the matter, it may become too hot for me."

The park was deserted, save for a group of gendarmes standing near the lodge at the entrance. Lupin plunged into the shrubbery, scaled the wall, and took the nearest way to the station — a path winding through the fields. He had been walking for eight or nine minutes when the road narrowed, boxed in between two slopes; and, as he reached this pass, he saw someone enter it at the opposite end.

It was a man of perhaps middle age, powerfully built and cleanshaven, whose dress accentuated his foreign appearance. He carried a heavy walking-stick in his hand and a traveling bag slung round his neck.

The two men crossed each other. The foreigner asked, in a hardly perceptible English accent:

"Excuse me, sir ... can you tell me the way to the castle?"

"Straight on and turn to the left when you come to the foot of the wall. They are waiting for you impatiently."

"Ah!"

"Yes, my friend Devanne was announcing your visit to us last night."

"He made a great mistake if he said too much."

"And I am happy to be the first to pay you my compliments. Holmlock Shears has no greater admirer than myself."

There was the slightest shade of irony in his voice, which he regretted forthwith, for Holmlock Shears took a view of him from head to foot with an eye at once so all-embracing and so piercing that Arsene Lupin felt himself seized, caught, and registered by that glance more exactly and more essentially than he had ever been by any photographic apparatus.

"The snapshot's taken," he thought. "It will never be worth my while to disguise myself when this joker is about. Only ... did he recognize me or not?"

They exchanged bows. But a noise of hoofs rang out, the clinking sound of horses trotting along the road. It was the gendarmes. The two men had to fall back against the slope, in the tall grass, to save themselves from being knocked over. The gendarmes passed, and as they were riding in single file, at quite a distance each from the other, this took some time. Lupin thought: