"Keep your powder dry and your sword sharpened, as my chum the Kaiser says. Octave!"
Octave appeared.
"Go and have your dinner at the castle, with the servants. Tell them you are going to Paris to-night, in the motor."
"With you, governor?"
"No, alone. And, as soon as dinner is over, make a start, ostensibly."
"But I am not to go to Paris...."
"No, remain outside the park, half a mile down the road, until I come. You will have a long wait."
He smoked another cigarette, went for a stroll, passed in front of the castle, saw a light in Dolores' rooms and then returned to the chalet.
There he took up a book. It was The Lives of Illustrious Men.
"There is one missing: the most illustrious of all. But the future will put that right; and I shall have my Plutarch some day or other."
He read the life of Cæsar and jotted down a few reflections in the margin.
At half-past eleven, he went to his bedroom.
Through the open window, he gazed into the immense, cool night, all astir with indistinct sounds. Memories rose to his lips, memories of fond phrases which he had read or uttered; and he repeatedly whispered Dolores's name, with the fervor of a stripling who hardly dares confide to the silence the name of his beloved.
He left the window half open, pushed aside a table that blocked the way, and put his revolvers under his pillow. Then, peacefully, without evincing the least excitement, he got into bed, fully dressed as he was, and blew out the candle.
And his fear began.
It was immediate. No sooner did he feel the darkness around him than his fear began!
"Damn it all!" he cried.
He jumped out of bed, took his weapons and threw them into the passage:
"My hands, my hands alone! Nothing comes up to the grip of my hands!"
He went to bed again. Darkness and silence, once more. And, once more, his fear....
THE VILLAGE clock struck twelve....
Lupin thought of the foul monster who, outside, at a hundred yards, at fifty yards from where he lay, was trying the sharp point of his dagger:
"Let him come, let him come?" whispered Lupin, shuddering. "Then the ghosts will vanish...."
ONE O'CLOCK, in the village....
And minutes passed, endless minutes, minutes of fever and anguish.... Beads of perspiration stood at the roots of his hair and trickled down his forehead; and he felt as though his whole frame were bathed in a sweat of blood....
Two o'clock....
And now, somewhere, quite close, a hardly perceptible sound stirred, a sound of leaves moving.... but different from the sound of leaves moving in the night breeze....
As Lupin had foreseen, he was at once pervaded by an immense calm. All his adventurous being quivered with delight. The struggle was at hand, at last!
Another sound grated under the window, more plainly this time, but still so faint that it needed Lupin's trained ear to distinguish it.
Minutes, terrifying minutes.... The darkness was impenetrable. No light of star or moon relieved it.
And, suddenly, without hearing anything, he knew that the man was in the room.
And the man walked toward the bed. He walked as a ghost walks, without displacing the air of the room, without shaking the objects which he touched.
But, with all his instinct, with all his nervous force, Lupin saw the movements of the enemy and guessed the very sequence of his ideas.
He himself did not budge, but remained propped against the wall, almost on his knees, ready to spring.
He felt that the figure was touching, feeling the bed-clothes, to find the spot at which it must strike. Lupin heard its breath. He even thought that he heard the beating of its heart. And he noticed with pride that his own heart beat no louder than before.... whereas the heart of the other.... oh, yes, he could hear it now, that disordered, mad heart, knocking, like a clapper of a bell, against the cavity of the chest!
The hand of the other rose....
A second, two seconds....
Was he hesitating? Was he once more going to spare his adversary?
And Lupin, in the great silence, said:
"But strike! Why don't you strike?"
A yell of rage.... The arm fell as though moved by a spring.
Then came a moan.
Lupin had caught the arm in mid-air at the level of the wrist.... And, leaping out of bed, tremendous, irresistible, he clutched the man by the throat and threw him.
THAT WAS ALL. There was no struggle. There was no possibility even of a struggle. The man lay on the floor, nailed, pinned by two steel rivets, which were Lupin's hands. And there was not a man in the world strong enough to release himself from that grip.
And not a word. Lupin uttered none of those phrases in which his mocking humor usually delighted. He had no inclination to speak. The moment was too solemn.
He felt no vain glee, no victorious exaltation. In reality, he had but one longing, to know who was there: Louis de Malreich, the man sentenced to death, or another? Which was it?
At the risk of strangling the man, he squeezed the throat a little more.... and a little more.... and a little more still....
And he felt that all the enemy's strength, all the strength that remained to him, was leaving him. The muscles of the arm relaxed and became lifeless. The hand opened and dropped the dagger.
Then, free to move as he pleased, with his adversary's life hanging in the terrible clutch of his fingers, he took his pocket-lantern with one hand, laid his finger on the spring, without pressing, and brought it close to the man's face.
He had only to press the spring to wish to know and he would know.
For a second, he enjoyed his power. A flood of emotion upheaved him. The vision, of his triumph dazzled him. Once again, superbly, heroically, he was the master.
He switched on the light. The face of the monster came into view.
Lupin gave a shriek of terror.
Dolores Kesselbach!
16: Arsène Lupin's Three Murders
A CYCLONE passed through Lupin's brain, a hurricane in which roars of thunder, gusts of wind, squalls of all the distraught elements were tumultuously unchained in the chaotic night.
And great flashes of lightning shot through the darkness. And, by the dazzling gleam of those lightning-flashes, Lupin, scared, shaken with thrills, convulsed with horror, saw and tried to understand.
He did not move, clinging to the enemy's throat, as if his stiffened fingers were no longer able to release their grip. Besides, although he now knew, he had not, so to speak, the exact feeling that it was Dolores. It was still the man in black, Louis de Malreich, the foul brute of the darkness; and that brute he held and did not mean to let go.
But the truth rushed upon the attack of his mind and of his consciousness; and, conquered, tortured with anguish, he muttered:
"Oh, Dolores!.... Dolores!...."
He at once saw the excuse: it was madness. She was mad. The sister of Altenheim and Isilda, the daughter of the last of the Malreichs, of the demented mother, of the drunken father, was herself mad. A strange madwoman, mad with every appearance of sanity, but mad nevertheless, unbalanced, brain-sick, unnatural, truly monstrous.
That he most certainly understood! It was homicidal madness. Under the obsession of an object toward which she was drawn automatically, she killed, thirsting for blood, unconsciously, infernally.
She killed because she wanted something, she killed in self-defence, she killed because she had killed before. But she killed also and especially for the sake of killing. Murder satisfied sudden and irresistible appetites that arose in her. At certain seconds in her life, in certain circumstances, face to face with this or that being who had suddenly become the foe, her arm had to strike.
And she struck, drunk with rage, ferociously, frenziedly.
A strange madwoman, not answerable for her murders, and yet so lucid in her blindness, so logical in her mental derangement, so intelligent in her absurdity! What skill, what perseverance, what cunning contrivances, at once abominable and admirable!
And Lupin, in a rapid view, with prodigious keenness of outlook, saw the long array of bloodthirsty adventures and guessed the mysterious paths which Dolores had pursued.
He saw her obsessed and possessed by her husband's scheme, a scheme which she evidently understood only in part. He saw her, on her side, looking for that same Pierre Leduc whom her husband was seeking, looking for him in order to marry him and to return, as queen, to that little realm of Veldenz from which her parents had been ignominiously driven.
And he saw her at the Palace Hotel, in the room of her brother, Altenheim, at the time when she was supposed to be at Monte Carlo. He saw her, for days together, spying upon her husband, creeping along the walls, one with the darkness, undistinguishable and unseen in her shadowy disguise.
And, one night, she found Mr. Kesselbach fastened up.... and she stabbed him.
And, in the morning, when on the point of being denounced by the floor-waiter.... she stabbed him.
And, an hour later, when on the point of being denounced by Chapman, she dragged him to her brother's room.... and stabbed him.
All this pitilessly, savagely, with diabolical skill.
And, with the same skill, she communicated by telephone with her two maids, Gertrude and Suzanne, both of whom had arrived from Monte Carlo, where one of them had enacted the part of her mistress. And Dolores, resuming her feminine attire, discarding the fair wig that altered her appearance beyond recognition, went down to the ground-floor, joined Gertrude at the moment when the maid entered the hotel and pretended herself to have just arrived, all ignorant of the tragedy that awaited her.
An incomparable actress, she played the part of the wife whose life is shattered. Every one pitied her. Every one wept for her. Who could have suspected her?
And then came the war with him, Lupin, that barbarous contest, that unparalleled contest which she waged, by turns, against M. Lenormand and Prince Sernine, spending her days stretched on her sofa, ill and fainting, but her nights on foot, scouring the roads indefatigable and terrible.
And the diabolical contrivances: Gertrude and Suzanne, frightened and subdued accomplices, both of them serving her as emissaries, disguising themselves to represent her, perhaps, as on the day when old Steinweg was carried off by Baron Altenheim, in the middle of the Palais de Justice.
And the series of murders: Gourel drowned; Altenheim, her brother, stabbed. Oh, the implacable struggle in the underground passages of the Villa des Glycines, the invisible work performed by the monster in the dark: how clear it all appeared to-day!
And it was she who tore off his mask as Prince Sernine, she who betrayed him to the police, she who sent him to prison, she who thwarted all his plans, spending her millions to win the battle.
And then events followed faster: Suzanne and Gertrude disappeared, dead, no doubt! Steinweg, assassinated! Isilda, the sister, assassinated!
"Oh, the ignominy, the horror of it!" stammered Lupin, with a start of revulsion and hatred.
He execrated her, the abominable creature. He would have liked to crush her, to destroy her. And it was a stupefying sight, those two beings, clinging to each other, lying motionless in the pale dawn that began to mingle with the shades of the night.
"Dolores.... Dolores...." he muttered, in despair.
He leapt back, terror-stricken, wild-eyed. What was it? What was that? What was that hideous feeling of cold which froze his hands?
"Octave! Octave?" he shouted, forgetting that the chauffeur was not there.
Help, he needed help, some one to reassure him and assist him. He shivered with fright. Oh, that coldness, that coldness of death which he had felt! Was it possible?.... Then, during those few tragic minutes, with his clenched fingers, he had....
Violently, he forced himself to look. Dolores did not stir.
He flung himself on his knees and drew her to him.
She was dead.
HE REMAINED for some seconds a prey to a sort of numbness in which his grief seemed to be swallowed up. He no longer suffered. He no longer felt rage nor hatred nor emotion of any kind.... nothing but a stupid prostration, the sensation of a man who has received a blow with a club and who does not know if he is still alive, if he is thinking, or if he is the sport of a nightmare.
Nevertheless, it seemed to him that an act of justice had taken place, and it did not for a second occur to him that it was he who had taken life. No, it was not he. It was outside him and his will. It was destiny, inexorable destiny that had accomplished the work of equity by slaying the noxious beast.
Outside, the birds were singing. Life was recommencing under the old trees, which the spring was preparing to bring into bud. And Lupin, waking from his torpor, felt gradually welling up within him an indefinable and ridiculous compassion for the wretched woman, odious, certainly, abject and twenty times criminal, but so young still and now.... dead.
And he thought of the tortures which she must have undergone in her lucid moments, when reason returned to the unspeakable madwoman and brought the sinister vision of her deeds.
"Protect me.... I am so unhappy!" she used to beg.
It was against herself that she asked to be protected, against her wild-beast instincts, against the monster that dwelt within her and forced her to kill, always to kill.
"Always?" Lupin asked himself.
And he remembered the night, two days since, when, standing over him, with her dagger raised against the enemy who had been harassing her for months, against the indefatigable enemy who had run her to earth after each of her crimes, he remembered that, on that night, she had not killed. And yet it would have been easy: the enemy lay lifeless and powerless. One blow and the implacable struggle was over. No, she had not killed, she too had given way to feelings stronger than her own cruelty, to mysterious feelings of pity, of sympathy, of admiration for the man who had so often mastered her.
No, she had not killed, that time. And now, by a really terrifying vicissitude of fate, it was he who had killed her.
"I have taken life!" he thought, shuddering from head to foot. "These hands have killed a living being; and that creature is Dolores!.... Dolores!.... Dolores!...."
He never ceased repeating her name, her name of sorrow, and he never ceased staring at her, a sad, lifeless thing, harmless now, a poor hunk of flesh, with no more consciousness than a little heap of withered leaves or a little dead bird by the roadside.
Oh! how could he do other than quiver with compassion, seeing that of those two, face to face, he was the murderer, and she, who was no more, the victim?
