Maurice Leblanc - Arsene Lupin Part 29 of 99

CHAPTER VIII THE DUKE ARRIVES

The morning was gloomy, and the police-station with its bare, white-washed walls—their white expanse was only broken by notice-boards to which were pinned portraits of criminals with details of their appearance, their crime, and the reward offered for their apprehension—with its shabby furniture, and its dingy fireplace, presented a dismal and sordid appearance entirely in keeping with the September grey. The inspector sat at his desk, yawning after a night which had passed without an arrest. He was waiting to be relieved. The policeman at the door and the two policemen sitting on a bench by the wall yawned in sympathy.
The silence of the street was broken by the rattle of an uncommonly noisy motor-car. It stopped before the door of the police-station, and the eyes of the inspector and his men turned, idly expectant, to the door of the office.
It opened, and a young man in motor-coat and cap stood on the threshold.
He looked round the office with alert eyes, which took in everything, and said, in a brisk, incisive voice: “I am the Duke of Charmerace. I am here on behalf of M. Gournay-Martin. Last evening he received a letter from Arsène Lupin saying he was going to break into his Paris house this very morning.”
At the name of Arsène Lupin the inspector sprang from his chair, the policemen from their bench. On the instant they were wide awake, attentive, full of zeal.
“The letter, your Grace!” said the inspector briskly.
The Duke pulled off his glove, drew the letter from the breast-pocket of his under-coat, and handed it to the inspector.
The inspector glanced through it, and said. “Yes, I know the handwriting well.” Then he read it carefully, and added, “Yes, yes: it’s his usual letter.”
“There’s no time to be lost,” said the Duke quickly. “I ought to have been here hours ago—hours. I had a break-down. I’m afraid I’m too late as it is.”
“Come along, your Grace—come along, you,” said the inspector briskly.
The four of them hurried out of the office and down the steps of the police-station. In the roadway stood a long grey racing-car, caked with muds—grey mud, brown mud, red mud—from end to end. It looked as if it had brought samples of the soil of France from many districts.
“Come along; I’ll take you in the car. Your men can trot along beside us,” said the Duke to the inspector.
He slipped into the car, the inspector jumped in and took the seat beside him, and they started. They went slowly, to allow the two policemen to keep up with them. Indeed, the car could not have made any great pace, for the tyre of the off hind-wheel was punctured and deflated.
In three minutes they came to the Gournay-Martin house, a wide-fronted mass of undistinguished masonry, in an undistinguished row of exactly the same pattern. There were no signs that any one was living in it. Blinds were drawn, shutters were up over all the windows, upper and lower. No smoke came from any of its chimneys, though indeed it was full early for that.
Pulling a bunch of keys from his pocket, the Duke ran up the steps. The inspector followed him. The Duke looked at the bunch, picked out the latch-key, and fitted it into the lock. It did not open it. He drew it out and tried another key and another. The door remained locked.
“Let me, your Grace,” said the inspector. “I’m more used to it. I shall be quicker.”
The Duke handed the keys to him, and, one after another, the inspector fitted them into the lock. It was useless. None of them opened the door.
“They’ve given me the wrong keys,” said the Duke, with some vexation. “Or no—stay—I see what’s happened. The keys have been changed.”
“Changed?” said the inspector. “When? Where?”
“Last night at Charmerace,” said the Duke. “M. Gournay-Martin declared that he saw a burglar slip out of one of the windows of the hall of the château, and we found the lock of the bureau in which the keys were kept broken.”
The inspector seized the knocker, and hammered on the door.
“Try that door there,” he cried to his men, pointing to a side-door on the right, the tradesmen’s entrance, giving access to the back of the house. It was locked. There came no sound of movement in the house in answer to the inspector’s knocking.
“Where’s the concierge?” he said.
The Duke shrugged his shoulders. “There’s a housekeeper, too—a woman named Victoire,” he said. “Let’s hope we don’t find them with their throats cut.”
“That isn’t Lupin’s way,” said the inspector. “They won’t have come to much harm.”

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Maurice Leblanc - Arsene Lupin Part 17 of 99

“It must be hard to be alone like that,” said the Duke.
“No,” said Sonia, with a faint smile, “I don’t mind having no relations. I grew used to that so young ... so very young. But what is hard—but you’ll laugh at me—”
“Heaven forbid!” said the Duke gravely.
“Well, what is hard is, never to get a letter ... an envelope that one opens ... from some one who thinks about one—”
She paused, and then added gravely: “But I tell myself that it’s nonsense. I have a certain amount of philosophy.”
She smiled at him—an adorable child’s smile.
The Duke smiled too. “A certain amount of philosophy,” he said softly. “You look like a philosopher!”
As they stood looking at one another with serious eyes, almost with eyes that probed one another’s souls, the drawing-room door flung open, and Germaine’s harsh voice broke on their ears.
“You’re getting quite impossible, Sonia!” she cried. “It’s absolutely useless telling you anything. I told you particularly to pack my leather writing-case in my bag with your own hand. I happen to open a drawer, and what do I see? My leather writing-case.”
“I’m sorry,” said Sonia. “I was going—”
“Oh, there’s no need to bother about it. I’ll see after it myself,” said Germaine. “But upon my word, you might be one of our guests, seeing how easily you take things. You’re negligence personified.”
“Come, Germaine ... a mere oversight,” said the Duke, in a coaxing tone.
“Now, excuse me, Jacques; but you’ve got an unfortunate habit of interfering in household matters. You did it only the other day. I can no longer say a word to a servant—”
“Germaine!” said the Duke, in sharp protest.
Germaine turned from him to Sonia, and pointed to a packet of envelopes and some letters, which Bernard Charolais had knocked off the table, and said, “Pick up those envelopes and letters, and bring everything to my room, and be quick about it!”
She flung out of the room, and slammed the door behind her.
Sonia seemed entirely unmoved by the outburst: no flush of mortification stained her cheeks, her lips did not quiver. She stooped to pick up the fallen papers.
“No, no; let me, I beg you,” said the Duke, in a tone of distress. And dropping on one knee, he began to gather together the fallen papers. He set them on the table, and then he said: “You mustn’t mind what Germaine says. She’s—she’s—she’s all right at heart. It’s her manner. She’s always been happy, and had everything she wanted. She’s been spoiled, don’t you know. Those kind of people never have any consideration for any one else. You mustn’t let her outburst hurt you.”
“Oh, but I don’t. I don’t really,” protested Sonia.
“I’m glad of that,” said the Duke. “It isn’t really worth noticing.”
He drew the envelopes and unused cards into a packet, and handed them to her.
“There!” he said, with a smile. “That won’t be too heavy for you.”
“Thank you,” said Sonia, taking it from him.
“Shall I carry them for you?” said the Duke.
“No, thank you, your Grace,” said Sonia.
With a quick, careless, almost irresponsible movement, he caught her hand, bent down, and kissed it. A great wave of rosy colour flowed over her face, flooding its whiteness to her hair and throat. She stood for a moment turned to stone; she put her hand to her heart. Then on hasty, faltering feet she went to the door, opened it, paused on the threshold, turned and looked back at him, and vanished.

Maurice Leblanc - Arsene Lupin Part 12 of 99

“I can never understand why you have left all these ancestors of mine staring from the walls and have taken away the quite admirable and interesting portrait of myself,” he said carelessly.
Germaine turned sharply from the window; Sonia stopped in the middle of addressing an envelope; and both the girls stared at him in astonishment.
“There certainly was a portrait of me where that tapestry hangs. What have you done with it?” said the Duke.
“You’re making fun of us again,” said Germaine.
“Surely your Grace knows what happened,” said Sonia.
“We wrote all the details to you and sent you all the papers three years ago. Didn’t you get them?” said Germaine.
“Not a detail or a newspaper. Three years ago I was in the neighbourhood of the South Pole, and lost at that,” said the Duke.
“But it was most dramatic, my dear Jacques. All Paris was talking of it,” said Germaine. “Your portrait was stolen.”
“Stolen? Who stole it?” said the Duke.
Germaine crossed the hall quickly to the gap in the line of pictures.
“I’ll show you,” she said.
She drew aside the piece of tapestry, and in the middle of the panel over which the portrait of the Duke had hung he saw written in chalk the words:
ARSÈNE LUPIN
“What do you think of that autograph?” said Germaine.
“‘Arsène Lupin?’” said the Duke in a tone of some bewilderment.
“He left his signature. It seems that he always does so,” said Sonia in an explanatory tone.
“But who is he?” said the Duke.
“Arsène Lupin? Surely you know who Arsène Lupin is?” said Germaine impatiently.
“I haven’t the slightest notion,” said the Duke.
“Oh, come! No one is as South-Pole as all that!” cried Germaine. “You don’t know who Lupin is? The most whimsical, the most audacious, and the most genial thief in France. For the last ten years he has kept the police at bay. He has baffled Ganimard, Holmlock Shears, the great English detective, and even Guerchard, whom everybody says is the greatest detective we’ve had in France since Vidocq. In fact, he’s our national robber. Do you mean to say you don’t know him?”
“Not even enough to ask him to lunch at a restaurant,” said the Duke flippantly. “What’s he like?”
“Like? Nobody has the slightest idea. He has a thousand disguises. He has dined two evenings running at the English Embassy.”
“But if nobody knows him, how did they learn that?” said the Duke, with a puzzled air.
“Because the second evening, about ten o’clock, they noticed that one of the guests had disappeared, and with him all the jewels of the ambassadress.”
“All of them?” said the Duke.
“Yes; and Lupin left his card behind him with these words scribbled on it:”
“‘This is not a robbery; it is a restitution. You took the Wallace collection from us.’”
“But it was a hoax, wasn’t it?” said the Duke.
“No, your Grace; and he has done better than that. You remember the affair of the Daray Bank—the savings bank for poor people?” said Sonia, her gentle face glowing with a sudden enthusiastic animation.
“Let’s see,” said the Duke. “Wasn’t that the financier who doubled his fortune at the expense of a heap of poor wretches and ruined two thousand people?”
“Yes; that’s the man,” said Sonia. “And Lupin stripped Daray’s house and took from him everything he had in his strong-box. He didn’t leave him a sou of the money. And then, when he’d taken it from him, he distributed it among all the poor wretches whom Daray had ruined.”
“But this isn’t a thief you’re talking about—it’s a philanthropist,” said the Duke.
“A fine sort of philanthropist!” broke in Germaine in a peevish tone. “There was a lot of philanthropy about his robbing papa, wasn’t there?”
“Well,” said the Duke, with an air of profound reflection, “if you come to think of it, that robbery was not worthy of this national hero. My portrait, if you except the charm and beauty of the face itself, is not worth much.”
“If you think he was satisfied with your portrait, you’re very much mistaken. All my father’s collections were robbed,” said Germaine.
“Your father’s collections?” said the Duke. “But they’re better guarded than the Bank of France. Your father is as careful of them as the apple of his eye.”
“That’s exactly it—he was too careful of them. That’s why Lupin succeeded.”
“This is very interesting,” said the Duke; and he sat down on a couch before the gap in the pictures, to go into the matter more at his ease. “I suppose he had accomplices in the house itself?”
“Yes, one accomplice,” said Germaine.
“Who was that?” asked the Duke.
“Papa!” said Germaine.

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