The Crystal Stopper Part 30

But, on the seventh day, learning that there was to be a meet and that a carriage had been sent to Aumale Station in the morning, Lupin took up his post in a cl.u.s.ter of box and laurels which surrounded the little esplanade in front of the gate.

At two o'clock he heard the pack give tongue. They approached, accompanied by hunting-cries, and then drew farther away. He heard them again, about the middle of the afternoon, not quite so distinctly; and that was all. But suddenly, amid the silence, the sound of galloping horses reached his ears; and, a few minutes later, he saw two riders climbing the river-path.

He recognized the Marquis d'Albufex and Sebastiani. On reaching the esplanade, they both alighted; and a woman--the huntsman's wife, no doubt--opened the gate. Sebastiani fastened the horses' bridles to rings fixed on a post at a few yards from Lupin and ran to join the marquis.

The gate closed behind them.

Lupin did not hesitate; and, though it was still broad daylight, relying upon the solitude of the place, he hoisted himself to the hollow of the breach. Pa.s.sing his head through cautiously, he saw the two men and Sebastiani's wife hurrying toward the ruins of the keep.

The huntsman drew aside a hanging screen of ivy and revealed the entrance to a stairway, which he went down, as did d'Albufex, leaving his wife on guard on the terrace.

There was no question of going in after them; and Lupin returned to his hiding-place. He did not wait long before the gate opened again.

The Marquis d'Albufex seemed in a great rage. He was striking the leg of his boot with his whip and mumbling angry words which Lupin was able to distinguish when the distance became less great:

"Ah, the hound!... I'll make him speak... I'll come back to-night...

to-night, at ten o'clock, do you hear, Sebastiani?... And we shall do what's necessary... Oh, the brute!"

Sebastiani unfastened the horses. D'Albufex turned to the woman:

"See that your sons keep a good watch... If any one attempts to deliver him, so much the worse for him. The trapdoor is there. Can I rely upon them?"

"As thoroughly as on myself, monsieur le marquis," declared the huntsman. "They know what monsieur le marquis has done for me and what he means to do for them. They will shrink at nothing."

"Let us mount and get back to the hounds," said d'Albufex.

So things were going as Lupin had supposed. During these runs, d'Albufex, taking a line of his own, would push off to Mortepierre, without anybody's suspecting his trick. Sebastiani, who was devoted to him body and soul, for reasons connected with the past into which it was not worth while to inquire, accompanied him; and together they went to see the captive, who was closely watched by the huntsman's wife and his three sons.

"That's where we stand," said Lupin to Clarisse Mergy, when he joined her at a neighbouring inn. "This evening the marquis will put Daubrecq to the question--a little brutally, but indispensably--as I intended to do myself."

"And Daubrecq will give up his secret," said Clarisse, already quite upset.

"I'm afraid so."

"Then..."

"I am hesitating between two plans," said Lupin, who seemed very calm.

"Either to prevent the interview..."

"How?"

"By forestalling d'Albufex. At nine o'clock, the Growler, the Masher and I climb the ramparts, burst into the fortress, attack the keep, disarm the garrison... and the thing's done: Daubrecq is ours."

"Unless Sebastiani's sons fling him through the trapdoor to which the marquis alluded..."

"For that reason," said Lupin, "I intend to risk that violent measure only as a last resort and in case my other plan should not be practicable."

"What is the other plan?"

"To witness the interview. If Daubrecq does not speak, it will give us the time to prepare to carry him off under more favourable conditions.

If he speaks, if they compel him to reveal the place where the list of the Twenty-seven is hidden, I shall know the truth at the same time as d'Albufex, and I swear to G.o.d that I shall turn it to account before he does."

"Yes, yes," said Clarisse. "But how do you propose to be present?"

"I don't know yet," Lupin confessed. "It depends on certain particulars which the Masher is to bring me and on some which I shall find out for myself."

He left the inn and did not return until an hour later as night was falling. The Masher joined him.

"Have you the little book?" asked Lupin.

"Yes, governor. It was what I saw at the Aumale newspaper-shop. I got it for ten sous."

"Give it me."

The Masher handed him an old, soiled, torn pamphlet, ent.i.tled, on the cover, A Visit to Mortepierre, 1824, with plans and ill.u.s.trations.

Lupin at once looked for the plan of the donjon-keep.

"That's it," he said. "Above the ground were three stories, which have been razed, and below the ground, dug out of the rock, two stories, one of which was blocked up by the rubbish, while the other... There, that's where our friend Daubrecq lies. The name is significant: the torture-chamber... Poor, dear friend!... Between the staircase and the torture-chamber, two doors. Between those two doors, a recess in which the three brothers obviously sit, gun in hand."

"So it is impossible for you to get in that way without being seen."

"Impossible... unless I come from above, by the story that has fallen in, and look for a means of entrance through the ceiling... But that is very risky..."

He continued to turn the pages of the book. Clarisse asked:

"Is there no window to the room?"

"Yes," he said. "From below, from the river--I have just been there--you can see a little opening, which is also marked on the plan. But it is fifty yards up, sheer; and even then the rock overhangs the water. So that again is out of the question."

He glanced through a few pages of the book. The t.i.tle of one chapter struck him: The Lovers' Towers. He read the opening lines:

"In the old days, the donjon was known to the people of the neighbourhood as the Lovers' Tower, in memory of a fatal tragedy that marked it in the Middle Ages. The Comte de Mortepierre, having received proofs of his wife's faithlessness, imprisoned her in the torture-chamber, where she spent twenty years. One night, her lover, the Sire de Tancarville, with reckless courage, set up a ladder in the river and then clambered up the face of the cliff till he came to the window of the room. After filing the bars, he succeeded in releasing the woman he loved and bringing her down with him by means of a rope. They both reached the top of the ladder, which was watched by his friends, when a shot was fired from the patrol-path and hit the man in the shoulder. The two lovers were hurled into s.p.a.ce...."

There was a pause, after he had read this, a long pause during which each of them drew a mental picture of the tragic escape. So, three or four centuries earlier, a man, risking his life, had attempted that surprising feat and would have succeeded but for the vigilance of some sentry who heard the noise. A man had ventured! A man had dared! A man done it!

Lupin raised his eyes to Clarisse. She was looking at him... with such a desperate, such a beseeching look! The look of a mother who demanded the impossible and who would have sacrificed anything to save her son.

"Masher," he said, "get a strong rope, but very slender, so that I can roll it round my waist, and very long: fifty or sixty yards. You, Growler, go and look for three or four ladders and fasten them end to end."

"Why, what are you thinking of, governor?" cried the two accomplices.

"What, you mean to... But it's madness!"

"Madness? Why? What another has done I can do."

"But it's a hundred chances to one that you break your neck."

"Well, you see, Masher, there's one chance that I don't."

"But, governor..."