The Crystal Stopper

Anguish wrung the hearts of all the beholders. Their eyes were dimmed with tears:

“Poor little chap!” stammered some one.

Prasville, touched like the rest and thinking of Clarisse, repeated, in a whisper:

“Poor little chap!”

But the hour struck, the preparations were finished. They set out.

The two processions met in the passage. Vaurheray, on seeing Gilbert, snapped out:

“I say, kiddie, the governor’s chucked us!”

And he added a sentence which nobody, save Prasville, was able to understand:

“Expect he prefers to pocket the proceeds of the crystal stopper.”

They went down the staircases. They crossed the prison-yards. An endless, horrible distance.

And, suddenly, in the frame of the great doorway, the wan light of day, the rain, the street, the outlines of houses, while far-off sounds came through the awful silence.

They walked along the wall, to the corner of the boulevard.

A few steps farther Vaucheray started back: he had seen!

Gilbert crept along, with lowered head, supported by an executioner’s assistant and by the chaplain, who made him kiss the crucifix as he went.

There stood the guillotine.

“No, no,” shouted Gilbert, “I won’t… I won’t… Help! Help!”

A last appeal, lost in space.

The executioner gave a signal. Vaucheray was laid hold of, lifted, dragged along, almost at a run.

And then came this staggering thing: a shot, a shot fired from the other side, from one of the houses opposite.

The assistants stopped short.

The burden which they were dragging had collapsed in their arms.

“What is it? What’s happened?” asked everybody.

“He’s wounded…”

Blood spurted from Vaucheray’s forehead and covered his face.

He spluttered:

“That’s done it… one in a thousand! Thank you, governor, thank you.”

“Finish him off! Carry him there!” said a voice, amid the general confusion.

“But he’s dead!”

“Get on with it… finish him off!”

Tumult was at its height, in the little group of magistrates, officials and policemen. Every one was giving orders:

“Execute him!… The law must take its course!… We have no right to delay! It would be cowardice!… Execute him!”

“But the man’s dead!”

“That makes no difference!… The law must be obeyed!… Execute him!”

The chaplain protested, while two warders and Prasville kept their eyes on Gilbert. In the meantime, the assistants had taken up the corpse again and were carrying it to the guillotine.

“Hurry up!” cried the executioner, scared and hoarse-voiced. “Hurry up! … And the other one to follow… Waste no time…”

He had not finished speaking, when a second report rang out. He spun round on his heels and fell, groaning:

“It’s nothing… a wound in the shoulder… Go on… The next one’s turn!”

But his assistants were running away, yelling with terror. The space around the guillotine was cleared. And the prefect of police, rallying his men, drove everybody back to the prison, helter-skelter, like a disordered rabble: the magistrates, the officials, the condemned man, the chaplain, all who had passed through the archway two or three minutes before.

In the meanwhile, a squad of policemen, detectives and soldiers were rushing upon the house, a little old-fashioned, three-storied house, with a ground-floor occupied by two shops which happened to be empty. Immediately after the first shot, they had seen, vaguely, at one of the windows on the second floor, a man holding a rifle in his hand and surrounded with a cloud of smoke.

Revolver-shots were fired at him, but missed him. He, standing calmly on a table, took aim a second time, fired from the shoulder; and the crack of the second report was heard. Then he withdrew into the room.

Down below, as nobody answered the peal at the bell, the assailants demolished the door, which gave way almost immediately. They made for the staircase, but their onrush was at once stopped, on the first floor, by an accumulation of beds, chairs and other furniture, forming a regular barricade and so close-entangled that it took the aggressors four or five minutes to clear themselves a passage.

Those four or five minutes lost were enough to render all pursuit hopeless. When they reached the second floor they heard a voice shouting from above:

“This way, friends! Eighteen stairs more. A thousand apologies for giving you so much trouble!”

They ran up those eighteen stairs and nimbly at that! But, at the top, above the third story, was the garret, which was reached by a ladder and a trapdoor. And the fugitive had taken away the ladder and bolted the trapdoor.

The reader will not have forgotten the sensation created by this amazing action, the editions of the papers issued in quick succession, the newsboys tearing and shouting through the streets, the whole metropolis on edge with indignation and, we may say, with anxious curiosity.

But it was at the headquarters of police that the excitement developed into a paroxysm. Men flung themselves about on every side. Messages, telegrams, telephone calls followed one upon the other.

At last, at eleven o’clock in the morning, there was a meeting in the office of the prefect of police, and Prasville was there. The chief-detective read a report of his inquiry, the results of which amounted to this: shortly before midnight yesterday some one had rung at the house on the Boulevard Arago. The portress, who slept in a small room on the ground-floor, behind one of the shops pulled the rope. A man came and tapped at her door. He said that he had come from the police on an urgent matter concerning to-morrow’s execution. The portress opened the door and was at once attacked, gagged and bound.

Ten minutes later a lady and gentleman who lived on the first floor and who had just come home were also reduced to helplessness by the same individual and locked up, each in one of the two empty shops. The third-floor tenant underwent a similar fate, but in his own flat and his own bedroom, which the man was able to enter without being heard. The second floor was unoccupied, and the man took up his quarters there. He was now master of the house.

“And there we are!” said the prefect of police, beginning to laugh, with a certain bitterness. “There we are! It’s as simple as shelling peas. Only, what surprises me is that he was able to get away so easily.”

“I will ask you to observe, monsieur le prefet, that, being absolute master of the house from one o’clock in the morning, he had until five o’clock to prepare his flight.”

“And that flight took place…?”

“Over the roofs. At that spot the houses in the next street, the Rue de la Glaciere, are quite near and there is only one break in the roofs, about three yards wide, with a drop of one yard in height.”

“Well?”

“Well, our man had taken away the ladder leading to the garret and used it as a foot-bridge. After crossing to the next block of buildings, all he had to do was to look through the windows until he found an empty attic, enter one of the houses in the Rue de la Glaciere and walk out quietly with his hands in his pockets. In this way his flight, duly prepared beforehand, was effected very simply and without the least obstacle.”

“But you had taken the necessary measures.”

“Those which you ordered, monsieur le prefet. My men spent three hours last evening visiting all the houses, so as to make sure that there was no stranger hiding there. At the moment when they were leaving the last house I had the street barred. Our man must have slipped through during that few minutes’ interval.”

“Capital! Capital! And there is no doubt in your minds, of course: it’s Arsene Lupin?”

“Not a doubt. In the first place, it was all a question of his accomplices. And then… and then… no one but Arsene Lupin was capable of contriving such a master-stroke and carrying it out with that inconceivable boldness.”

“But, in that case,” muttered the prefect of police—and, turning to Prasville, he continued—“but, in that case, my dear Prasville, the fellow of whom you spoke to me, the fellow whom you and the chief-detective have had watched since yesterday evening, in his flat in the Place de Clichy, that fellow is not Arsene Lupin?”

“Yes, he is, monsieur le prefet. There is no doubt about that either.”

“Then why wasn’t he arrested when he went out last night?”

“He did not go out.”

“I say, this is getting complicated!”

“It’s quite simple, monsieur le prefet. Like all the houses in which traces of Arsene Lupin are to be found, the house in the Place de Cichy has two outlets.”

“And you didn’t know it?”

“I didn’t know it. I only discovered it this morning, on inspecting the flat.”

“Was there no one in the flat?”

“No. The servant, a man called Achille, went away this morning, taking with him a lady who was staying with Lupin.”

“What was the lady’s name?”

“I don’t know,” replied Prasville, after an imperceptible hesitation.

“But you know the name under which Arsene Lupin passed?”

“Yes. M. Nicole, a private tutor, master of arts and so on. Here is his card.”

As Prasville finished speaking, an office-messenger came to tell the prefect of police that he was wanted immediately at the Elysee. The prime minister was there already.

“I’m coming,” he said. And he added, between his teeth, “It’s to decide upon Gilbert’s fate.”

Prasville ventured:

“Do you think they will pardon him, monsieur le prefet?”

“Never! After last night’s affair, it would make a most deplorable impression. Gilbert must pay his debt to-morrow morning.”

The messenger had, at the same time, handed Prasville a visiting-card. Prasville now looked at it, gave a start and muttered:

“Well, I’m hanged! What a nerve!”

“What’s the matter?” asked the prefect of police.

“Nothing, nothing, monsieur le prefet,” declared Prasville, who did not wish to share with another the honour of seeing this business through. “Nothing… an unexpected visit… I hope soon to have the pleasure of telling you the result.”

And he walked away, mumbling, with an air of amazement:

“Well, upon my word! What a nerve the beggar has! What a nerve!”

The visiting-card which he held in his hand bore these words:

M. Nicole,

Master of Arts, Private Tutor.

CHAPTER XIII. THE LAST BATTLE

When Prasville returned to his office he saw M. Nicole sitting on a bench in the waiting-room, with his bent back, his ailing air, his gingham umbrella, his rusty hat and his single glove:

“It’s he all right,” said Prasville, who had feared for a moment that Lupin might have sent another M. Nicole to see him. “And the fact that he has come in person proves that he does not suspect that I have seen through him.” And, for the third time, he said, “All the same, what a nerve!”

He shut the door of his office and called his secretary:

“M. Lartigue, I am having a rather dangerous person shown in here. The chances are that he will have to leave my office with the bracelets on. As soon as he is in my room, make all the necessary arrangements: send for a dozen inspectors and have them posted in the waiting-room and in your office. And take this as a definite instruction: the moment I ring, you are all to come in, revolvers in hand, and surround the fellow. Do you quite understand?”

“Yes, monsieur le secretaire-general.”

“Above all, no hesitation. A sudden entrance, in a body, revolvers in hand. Send M. Nicole in, please.”

As soon as he was alone, Prasville covered the push of an electric bell on his desk with some papers and placed two revolvers of respectable dimensions behind a rampart of books.

“And now,” he said to himself, “to sit tight. If he has the list, let’s collar it. If he hasn’t, let’s collar him. And, if possible, let’s collar both. Lupin and the list of the Twenty-seven, on the same day, especially after the scandal of this morning, would be a scoop in a thousand.”

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in!” said Prasville.

And, rising from his seat:

“Come in, M. Nicole, come in.”

M. Nicole crept timidly into the room, sat down on the extreme edge of the chair to which Prasville pointed and said:

“I have come…to resume… our conversation of yesterday… Please excuse the delay, monsieur.”

“One second,” said Prasville. “Will you allow me?”

He stepped briskly to the outer room and, seeing his secretary:

“I was forgetting, M. Lartigue. Have the staircases and passages searched… in case of accomplices.”

He returned, settled himself comfortably, as though for a long and interesting conversation, and began:

“You were saying, M. Nicole?”

“I was saying, monsieur le secretaire-general, that I must apologize for keeping you waiting yesterday evening. I was detained by different matters. First of all, Mme. Mergy....”

“Yes, you had to see Mme. Mergy home.”

“Just so, and to look after her. You can understand the poor thing’s despair… Her son Gilbert so near death… And such a death!… At that time we could only hope for a miracle… an impossible miracle. I myself was resigned to the inevitable… You know as well as I do, when fate shows itself implacable, one ends by despairing.”

“But I thought,” observed Prasville, “that your intention, on leaving me, was to drag Daubrecq’s secret from him at all costs.”

“Certainly. But Daubrecq was not in Paris.”

“Oh?”

“No. He was on his way to Paris in a motor-car.”

“Have you a motor-car, M. Nicole?”

“Yes, when I need it: an out-of-date concern, an old tin kettle of sorts. Well, he was on his way to Paris in a motor-car, or rather on the roof of a motor-car, inside a trunk in which I packed him. But, unfortunately, the motor was unable to reach Paris until after the execution. Thereupon…”

Prasville stared at M. Nicole with an air of stupefaction. If he had retained the least doubt of the individual’s real identity, this manner of dealing with Daubrecq would have removed it. By Jingo! To pack a man in a trunk and pitch him on the top of a motorcar!… No one but Lupin would indulge in such a freak, no one but Lupin would confess it with that ingenuous coolness!

“Thereupon,” echoed Prasville, “you decided what?”

“I cast about for another method.”

“What method?”

“Why, surely, monsieur le secretaire-general, you know as well as I do!”

“How do you mean?”

“Why, weren’t you at the execution?”

“I was.”

“In that case, you saw both Vaucheray and the executioner hit, one mortally, the other with a slight wound. And you can’t fail to see…”

“Oh,” exclaimed Prasville, dumbfounded, “you confess it? It was you who fired the shots, this morning?”

“Come, monsieur le secretaire-general, think! What choice had I? The list of the Twenty-seven which you examined was a forgery. Daubrecq, who possessed the genuine one, would not arrive until a few hours after the execution. There was therefore but one way for me to save Gilbert and obtain his pardon; and that was to delay the execution by a few hours.”

“Obviously.”

“Well, of course. By killing that infamous brute, that hardened criminal, Vaucheray, and wounding the executioner, I spread disorder and panic; I made Gilbert’s execution physically and morally impossible; and I thus gained the few hours which were indispensable for my purpose.”

“Obviously,” repeated Prasville.

“Well, of course,” repeated Lupin, “it gives us all—the government, the president and myself—time to reflect and to see the question in a clearer light. What do you think of it, monsieur le secretaire-general?”

Prasville thought a number of things, especially that this Nicole was giving proof, to use a vulgar phrase, of the most infernal cheek, of a cheek so great that Prasville felt inclined to ask himself if he was really right in identifying Nicole with Lupin and Lupin with Nicole.

“I think, M. Nicole, that a man has to be a jolly good shot to kill a person whom he wants to kill, at a distance of a hundred yards, and to wound another person whom he only wants to wound.”

“I have had some little practice,” said M. Nicole, with modest air.

“And I also think that your plan can only be the fruit of a long preparation.”

“Not at all! That’s where you’re wrong! It was absolutely spontaneous! If my servant, or rather the servant of the friend who lent me his flat in the Place de Clichy, had not shaken me out of my sleep, to tell me that he had once served as a shopman in that little house on the Boulevard Arago, that it did not hold many tenants and that there might be something to be done there, our poor Gilbert would have had his head cut off by now… and Mme. Mergy would most likely be dead.”

“Oh, you think so?”

“I am sure of it. And that was why I jumped at that faithful retainer’s suggestion. Only, you interfered with my plans, monsieur le secretaire-general.”

“I did?”

“Yes. You must needs go and take the three-cornered precaution of posting twelve men at the door of my house. I had to climb five flights of back stairs and go out through the servants’ corridor and the next house. Such useless fatigue!”

“I am very sorry, M. Nicole. Another time…”

“It was the same thing at eight o’clock this morning, when I was waiting for the motor which was bringing Daubrecq to me in his trunk: I had to march up and down the Place de Clichy, so as to prevent the car from stopping outside the door of my place and your men from interfering in my private affairs. Otherwise, once again, Gilbert and Clarisse Mergy would have been lost.”

“But,” said Prasville, “those painful events, it seems to me, are only delayed for a day, two days, three days at most. To avert them for good and all we should want…”

“The real list, I suppose?”

“Exactly. And I daresay you haven’t got it.”

“Yes, I have.”

“The genuine list?”

“The genuine, the undoubtedly genuine list.”

“With the cross of Lorraine?”

“With the cross of Lorraine.”

Prasville was silent. He was labouring under violent emotion, now that the duel was commencing with that adversary of whose terrifying superiority he was well aware; and he shuddered at the idea that Arsene Lupin, the formidable Arsene Lupin, was there, in front of him, calm and placid, pursuing his aims with as much coolness as though he had all the weapons in his hands and were face to face with a disarmed enemy.

Not yet daring to deliver a frontal attack, feeling almost intimidated, Prasville said:

“So Daubrecq gave it up to you?”

“Daubrecq gives nothing up. I took it.”

“By main force, therefore?”

“Oh, dear, no!” said M. Nicole, laughing. “Of course, I was ready to go to all lengths; and, when that worthy Daubrecq was dug out of the basket in which he had been travelling express, with an occasional dose of chloroform to keep his strength up, I had prepared things so that the fun might begin at once. Oh, no useless tortures… no vain sufferings! No… Death, simply… You press the point of a long needle on the chest, where the heart is, and insert it gradually, softly and gently. That’s all but the point would have been driven by Mme. Mergy. You understand: a mother is pitiless, a mother whose son is about to die!… ‘Speak, Daubrecq, or I’ll go deeper.... You won’t speak?… Then I’ll push another quarter of an inch… and another still.’ And the patient’s heart stops beating, the heart that feels the needle coming… And another quarter of an inch… and one more… I swear before Heaven that the villain would have spoken!… We leant over him and waited for him to wake, trembling with impatience, so urgent was our hurry… Can’t you picture the scene, monsieur le secretaire-general? The scoundrel lying on a sofa, well bound, bare-chested, making efforts to throw off the fumes of chloroform that dazed him. He breathes quicker… He gasps… He recovers consciousness…his lips move.... Already, Clarisse Mergy whispers, ‘It’s I… it’s I, Clarisse… Will you answer, you wretch?’ She has put her finger on Daubrecq’s chest, at the spot where the heart stirs like a little animal hidden under the skin. But she says to me, ‘His eyes… his eyes… I can’t see them under the spectacles… I want to see them… ‘And I also want to see those eyes which I do not know, I want to see their anguish and I want to read in them, before I hear a word, the secret which is about to burst from the inmost recesses of the terrified body. I want to see. I long to see. The action which I am about to accomplish excites me beyond measure. It seems to me that, when I have seen the eyes, the veil will be rent asunder. I shall know things. It is a presentiment. It is the profound intuition of the truth that keeps me on tenterhooks. The eye-glasses are gone. But the thick opaque spectacles are there still. And I snatch them off, suddenly. And, suddenly, startled by a disconcerting vision, dazzled by the quick light that breaks in upon me and laughing, oh, but laughing fit to break my jaws, with my thumb—do you understand? with my thumb—hop, I force out the left eye!”

M. Nicole was really laughing, as he said, fit to break his jaws. And he was no longer the timid little unctuous and obsequious provincial usher, but a well-set-up fellow, who, after reciting and mimicking the whole scene with impressive ardour, was now laughing with a shrill laughter the sound of which made Prasville’s flesh creep:

“Hop! Jump, Marquis! Out of your kennel, Towzer! What’s the use of two eyes? It’s one more than you want. Hop! I say, Clarisse, look at it rolling over the carpet! Mind Daubrecq’s eye! Be careful with the grate!”

M. Nicole, who had risen and pretended to be hunting after something across the room, now sat down again, took from his pocket a thing shaped like a marble, rolled it in the hollow of his hand, chucked it in the air, like a ball, put it back in his fob and said, coolly:

“Daubrecq’s left eye.”

Prasville was utterly bewildered. What was his strange visitor driving at? What did all this story mean? Pale with excitement, he said:

“Explain yourself.”

“But it’s all explained, it seems to me. And it fits in so well with things as they were, fits in with all the conjectures which I had been making in spite of myself and which would inevitably have led to my solving the mystery, if that damned Daubrecq had not so cleverly sent me astray! Yes, think, follow the trend of my suppositions: ‘As the list is not to be discovered away from Daubrecq,’ I said to myself, ‘it cannot exist away from Daubrecq. And, as it is not to be discovered in the clothes he wears, it must be hidden deeper still, in himself, to speak plainly, in his flesh, under his skin…”

“In his eye, perhaps?” suggested Prasville, by way of a joke…

“In his eye? Monsieur le secretaire-general, you have said the word.”

“What?”

“I repeat, in his eye. And it is a truth that ought to have occurred to my mind logically, instead of being revealed to me by accident. And I will tell you why. Daubrecq knew that Clarisse had seen a letter from him instructing an English manufacturer to ‘empty the crystal within, so as to leave a void which it was unpossible to suspect.’ Daubrecq was bound, in prudence, to divert any attempt at search. And it was for this reason that he had a crystal stopper made, ‘emptied within,’ after a model supplied by himself. And it is this crystal stopper which you and I have been after for months; and it is this crystal stopper which I dug out of a packet of tobacco. Whereas all I had to do…”

“Was what?” asked Prasville, greatly puzzled.

M. Nicole burst into a fresh fit of laughter:

“Was simply to go for Daubrecq’s eye, that eye ‘emptied within so as to leave a void which it is impossible to suspect,’ the eye which you see before you.”

And M. Nicole once more took the thing from his pocket and rapped the table with it, producing the sound of a hard body with each rap.

Prasville whispered, in astonishment:

“A glass eye!”

“Why, of course!” cried M. Nicole, laughing gaily. “A glass eye! A common or garden decanter-stopper, which the rascal stuck into his eyesocket in the place of an eye which he had lost—a decanter-stopper, or, if you prefer, a crystal stopper, but the real one, this time, which he faked, which he hid behind the double bulwark of his spectacles and eye-glasses, which contained and still contains the talisman that enabled Daubrecq to work as he pleased in safety.”

Prasville lowered his head and put his hand to his forehead to hide his flushed face: he was almost possessing the list of the Twenty-seven. It lay before him, on the table.