The Crystal Stopper Part 45

"That's why you and I are going to take the train. It's safer..."

He put her into a cab and gave his parting instructions to the two men:

"Thirty miles an hour, on the average, do you understand? You're to drive and rest, turn and turn about. At that rate, you ought to be in Paris between six and seven to-morrow evening. But don't force the pace.

I'm keeping Daubrecq, not because I want him for my plans, but as a hostage... and then by way of precaution... I like to feel that I can lay my hands on him during the next few days. So look after the dear fellow... Give him a few drops of chloroform every three or four hours: it's his one weakness... Off with you, Masher... And you, Daubrecq, don't get excited up there. The roof'll bear you all right... If you feel at all sick, don't mind... Off you go, Masher!"

He watched the car move into the distance and then told the cabman to drive to a post-office, where he dispatched a telegram in these words:

"M. Prasville, Prefecture de Police, Paris:

"Person found. Will bring you doc.u.ment eleven o'clock to-morrow morning. Urgent communication.

"CLARISSE."

Clarisse and Lupin reached the station by half-past two.

"If only there's room!" said Clarisse, who was alarmed at the least thing.

"Room? Why, our berths are booked!"

"By whom?"

"By Jacob... by Daubrecq."

"How?"

"Why, at the office of the hotel they gave me a letter which had come for Daubrecq by express. It was the two berths which Jacob had sent him.

Also, I have his deputy's pa.s.s. So we shall travel under the name of M.

and Mme. Daubrecq and we shall receive all the attention due to our rank and station. You see, my dear madam, that everything's arranged."

The journey, this time, seemed short to Lupin. Clarisse told him what she had done during the past few days. He himself explained the miracle of his sudden appearance in Daubrecq's bedroom at the moment when his adversary believed him in Italy:

"A miracle, no," he said. "But still a remarkable phenomenon took place in me when I left San Remo, a sort of mysterious intuition which prompted me first to try and jump out of the train--and the Masher prevented me--and next to rush to the window, let down the gla.s.s and follow the porter of the Amba.s.sadeurs-Palace, who had given me your message, with my eyes. Well, at that very minute, the porter aforesaid was rubbing his hands with an air of such satisfaction that, for no other reason, suddenly, I understood everything: I had been diddled, taken in by Daubrecq, as you yourself were. Heaps of llttle details flashed across my mind. My adversary's scheme became clear to me from start to finish. Another minute... and the disaster would have been beyond remedy. I had, I confess, a few moments of real despair, at the thought that I should not be able to repair all the mistakes that had been made. It depended simply on the time-table of the trains, which would either allow me or would not allow me to find Daubrecq's emissary on the railway-platform at San Remo. This time, at last, chance favoured me. We had hardly alighted at the first station when a train pa.s.sed, for France. When we arrived at San Remo, the man was there. I had guessed right. He no longer wore his hotel-porter's cap and frock-coat, but a jacket and bowler. He stepped into a second-cla.s.s compartment. From that moment, victory was a.s.sured."

"But... how...?" asked Clarisse, who, in spite of the thoughts that obsessed her, was interested in Lupin's story.

"How did I find you? Lord, simply by not losing sight of Master Jacob, while leaving him free to move about as he pleased, knowing that he was bound to account for his actions to Daubrecq. In point of fact, this morning, after spending the night in a small hotel at Nice, he met Daubrecq on the Promenade des Anglais. They talked for some time. I followed them. Daubrecq went back to the hotel, planted Jacob in one of the pa.s.sages on the ground-floor, opposite the telephone-office, and went up in the lift. Ten minutes later I knew the number of his room and knew that a lady had been occupying the next room, No. 130, since the day before. 'I believe we've done it,' I said to the Growler and the Masher. I tapped lightly at your door. No answer. And the door was locked."

"Well?" asked Clarisse.

"Well, we opened it. Do you think there's only one key in the world that will work a lock? So I walked in. n.o.body in your room. But the part.i.tion-door was ajar. I slipped through it. Thenceforth, a mere hanging separated me from you, from Daubrecq and from the packet of tobacco which I saw on the chimney-slab."

"Then you knew the hiding-place?"

"A look round Daubrecq's study in Paris showed me that that packet of tobacco had disappeared. Besides..."

"What?"

"I knew, from certain confessions wrung from Daubrecq in the Lovers'

Tower, that the word Marie held the key to the riddle. Since then I had certainly thought of this word, but with the preconceived notion that it was spelt M A R I E. Well, it was really the first two syllables of another word, which I guessed, so to speak, only at the moment when I was struck by the absence of the packet of tobacco."

"What word do you mean?"

"Maryland, Maryland tobacco, the only tobacco that Daubrecq smokes."

And Lupin began to laugh:

"Wasn't it silly? And, at the same time, wasn't it clever of Daubrecq?

We looked everywhere, we ransacked everything. Didn't I unscrew the bra.s.s sockets of the electric lights to see if they contained a crystal stopper? But how could I have thought, how could any one, however great his perspicacity, have thought of tearing off the paper band of a packet of Maryland, a band put on, gummed, sealed, stamped and dated by the State, under the control of the Inland Revenue Office? Only think! The State the accomplice of such an act of infamy! The Inland R-r-r-revenue Awfice lending itself to such a trick! No, a thousand times no!

The Regie [*] is not perfect. It makes matches that won't light and cigarettes filled with hay. But there's all the difference in the world between recognizing that fact and believing the Inland Revenue to be in league with Daubrecq with the object of hiding the list of the Twenty-seven from the legitimate curiosity of the government and the enterprising efforts of a.r.s.ene Lupin! Observe that all Daubrecq had to do, in order to introduce the crystal stopper, was to bear upon the band a little, loosen it, draw it back, unfold the yellow paper, remove the tobacco and fasten it up again. Observe also that all we had to do, in Paris, was to take the packet in our hands and examine it, in order to discover the hiding-place. No matter! The packet itself, the plug of Maryland made up and pa.s.sed by the State and by the Inland Revenue Office, was a sacred, intangible thing, a thing above suspicion! And n.o.body opened it. That was how that demon of a Daubrecq allowed that untouched packet of tobacco to lie about for months on his table, among his pipes and among other unopened packets of tobacco. And no power on earth could have given any one even the vaguest notion of looking into that harmless little cube. I would have you observe, besides..." Lupin went on pursuing his remarks relative to the packet of Maryland and the crystal stopper. His adversary's ingenuity and shrewdness interested him all the more inasmuch as Lupin had ended by getting the better of him.

But to Clarisse these topics mattered much less than did her anxiety as to the acts which must be performed to save her son; and she sat wrapped in her own thoughts and hardly listened to him.

* The department of the French excise which holds the monopoly for the manufacture and sale of tobacco, cigars, cigarettes and matches--Translator's Note.

"Are you sure," she kept on repeating, "that you will succeed?"

"Absolutely sure."

"But Prasville is not in Paris."

"If he's not there, he's at the Havre. I saw it in the paper yesterday.

In any case, a telegram will bring him to Paris at once."

"And do you think that he has enough influence?"

"To obtain the pardon of Vaucheray and Gilbert personally. No. If he had, we should have set him to work before now. But he is intelligent enough to understand the value of what we are bringing him and to act without a moment's delay."

"But, to be accurate, are you not deceived as to that value?"

"Was Daubrecq deceived? Was Daubrecq not in a better position than any of us to know the full power of that paper? Did he not have twenty proofs of it, each more convincing than the last? Think of all that he was able to do, for the sole reason that people knew him to possess the list. They knew it; and that was all. He did not use the list, but he had it. And, having it, he killed your husband. He built up his fortune on the ruin and the disgrace of the Twenty-seven. Only last week, one of the gamest of the lot, d'Albufex, cut his throat in a prison. No, take it from me, as the price of handing over that list, we could ask for anything we pleased. And we are asking for what? Almost nothing ... less than nothing... the pardon of a child of twenty. In other words, they will take us for idiots. What! We have in our hands..."

He stopped. Clarisse, exhausted by so much excitement, sat fast asleep in front of him.

They reached Paris at eight o'clock in the morning.

Lupin found two telegrams awaiting him at his flat in the Place de Clichy.

One was from the Masher, dispatched from Avignon on the previous day and stating that all was going well and that they hoped to keep their appointment punctually that evening. The other was from Prasville, dated from the Havre and addressed to Clarisse:

"Impossible return to-morrow Monday morning. Come to my office five o'clock. Reckon on you absolutely."

"Five o'clock!" said Clarisse. "How late!"

"It's a first-rate hour," declared Lupin.

"Still, if..."

"If the execution is to take place to-morrow morning: is that what you mean to say?... Don't be afraid to speak out, for the execution will not take place."