Part 10

Varin instinctively put himself on guard, not against the banker, but against the unknown enemy who had drawn him into this trap. A second time his eyes turned toward our side, and quickly he moved toward the door.

M. Andermatt blocked his passage.

"What are you doing, Varin?"

"There are machines down there that do not please me. I am leaving. Good evening."

"One moment!"

"Come now, Monsieur Andermatt, do not insist; we have nothing to say to each other."

"We have a great deal to say to each other, and the opportunity is too good..."

"Let me pass."

"No, no, no, you shall not pass."

Varin drew back, intimidated by the resolute attitude of the banker, and muttered:

"Then make haste, let us talk, and have done with it!"

One thing astonished me, and I did not doubt that my two companions felt the same disappointment. How could it be that Salvator was not there? Was it not part of his plans to intervene? And did the mere confrontation of the banker and Varin seem sufficient to him? I was singularly troubled. By reason of his absence, this duel, devised by him, willed by him, took on the tragic air of events aroused and commanded by the rigid order of destiny, and the force that clashed these two men against each other impressed all the more in that it resided outside of them.

After a moment, M. Andermatt approached Varin and, face to face, eye to eye:

"Now that years have passed, and you have nothing more to fear, answer me frankly, Varin. What have you done with Louis Lacombe?"

"There's a question! As if I could know what became of him!"

"You know! You know! Your brother and you were attached to his steps, you lived almost in his house, in the very house where we are. You were aware of all his work, of all his projects. And on the last evening, Varin, when I saw Louis Lacombe to my door, I saw two silhouettes slipping away into the shadow. That, I am ready to swear."

"And after, when you have sworn it?"

"It was your brother and you, Varin."

"Prove it."

"But the best proof is that, two days later, you yourself showed me the papers and plans that you had gathered from Lacombe's satchel, and that you proposed to sell them to me. How were these papers in your possession?"

"I told you, Monsieur Andermatt, we found them on Louis Lacombe's very table the next morning, after his disappearance."

"That is not true."

"Prove it."

"Justice could have proved it."

"Why did you not go to justice?"

"Why? Ah! why..."

He fell silent, his face dark. And the other resumed:

"You see, Monsieur Andermatt, if you had had the slightest certainty, it is not the little threat we made that would have prevented..."

"What threat? Those letters? Do you imagine I ever believed for an instant?..."

"If you did not believe those letters, why did you offer me thousands and thousands to get them back? And why, since then, have you had my brother and me hunted like beasts?"

"To recover plans I cared about."

"Come now! It was for the letters. Once in possession of the letters, you would have denounced us. I would sooner have parted with them!"

He gave a burst of laughter which he suddenly interrupted.

"But enough of this. We may repeat the same words forever and be no further advanced. Therefore we shall leave it there."

"We shall not leave it there," said the banker, "and since you have spoken of the letters, you shall not leave this place before you have returned them to me."

"I shall leave."

"No, no."

"Listen, Monsieur Andermatt, I advise you..."

"You shall not leave."

"We shall see about that," said Varin with such an accent of rage that Mme Andermatt stifled a faint cry.

He must have heard her, for he tried to force his way through. M. Andermatt pushed him back violently. Then I saw him slip his hand into the pocket of his jacket.

"For the last time!"

"The letters first."

Varin drew a revolver and, aiming at M. Andermatt:

"Yes, or no?"

The banker ducked quickly.

A shot rang out. The weapon fell.

I was stupefied. It was near me that the shot had rung out! And it was Daspry who, with a pistol bullet, had knocked the weapon from Alfred Varin's hand!

And suddenly erect between the two adversaries, facing Varin, he sneered:

"You are in luck, my friend, a rough luck. It was the hand I aimed at, and it is the revolver I hit."

Both contemplated him, motionless and confounded. He said to the banker:

"You will excuse me, sir, for meddling in what does not concern me. But really you play your hand with too much clumsiness. Allow me to hold the cards."

Turning toward the other:

"Just you and me, comrade. And briskly, I beg you. The trump is hearts, and I play the seven."

And, three inches from his nose, he stuck the iron plate on which the seven red points were marked.

Never have I been given to see such upheaval. Livid, eyes wide, features twisted with anguish, the man seemed hypnotized by the image offered to him.

"Who are you?" he stammered.

"I have already said, a gentleman who concerns himself with what does not concern him... but who concerns himself with it thoroughly."

"What do you want?"

"All that you have brought."

"I have brought nothing."

"Yes, otherwise you would not have come. You received a note this morning summoning you here for nine o'clock, and ordering you to bring all the papers you had. Now, here you are. Where are the papers?"

There was in Daspry's voice, there was in his attitude, an authority that disconcerted me, a way of acting quite new in this man rather lazy and gentle by habit. Absolutely subdued, Varin indicated one of his pockets.

"The papers are there."

"Are they all there?"

"Yes."

"All those you found in Louis Lacombe's satchel and sold to Major von Lieben?"

"Yes."

"Is it the copy or the original?"

"The original."

"How much do you want for it?"

"A hundred thousand."

Daspry burst out laughing.

"You are mad. The major gave you only twenty thousand for it. Twenty thousand thrown into the water, since the trials failed."

"They did not know how to use the plans."

"The plans are incomplete."

"Then why do you ask me for them?"

"I have need of them. I offer you five thousand francs. Not a sou more."

"Ten thousand. Not a sou less."

"Agreed."

Daspry returned to M. Andermatt.

"Be so good as to sign a check, sir."

"But... it is that I do not have..."

"Your checkbook? Here it is."

Astonished, M. Andermatt felt the book that Daspry held out to him.

"It is indeed mine... How is this?"

"No idle words, I beg you, dear sir, you have only to sign."

The banker drew his pen and signed. Varin advanced his hand.

"Paws off," said Daspry, "it is not all finished."

And addressing the banker:

"There was also question of letters, which you demand?"

"Yes, a packet of letters."

"Where are they, Varin?"

"I do not have them."

"Where are they, Varin?"

"I do not know. It is my brother who took charge of them."

"They are hidden here, in this room."

"In that case, you know where they are."

"How should I know?"

"Well, is it not you who visited the hiding place? You seem as well informed... as Salvator."

"The letters are not in the hiding place."

"They are there."

"Open it."

Varin gave a glance of distrust. Did Daspry and Salvator make but one person, really, as everything led to suppose? If so, he risked nothing in showing a hiding place already known. If not, it was useless...

"Open it," repeated Daspry.

"I have no seven of hearts."

"Yes, that one," said Daspry, holding out the iron plate.

Varin drew back, terrified:

"No... no... I do not wish to..."

"No matter..."

Daspry walked toward the old monarch with the flowering beard, mounted a chair, and applied the seven of hearts to the base of the glaive, against the guard, and in such a way that the edges of the plate exactly covered the two edges of the sword. Then, with the help of a punch, which he introduced alternately into each of the seven holes made at the end of the seven hearts, he pressed on seven of the little stones of the mosaic. At the seventh little stone depressed, a release occurred, and the whole bust of the king pivoted, uncovering a wide opening arranged like a safe, with iron linings and two shining steel shelves.

"You see well, Varin, the safe is empty."

"Indeed... Then it must be that my brother withdrew the letters."

Daspry came back to the man and said to him:

"Do not play the clever one with me. There is another hiding place. Where is it?"

"There is none."

"Is it money you want? How much?"

"Ten thousand."

"Monsieur Andermatt, are these letters worth ten thousand francs to you?"

"Yes," said the banker in a loud voice.

Varin closed the safe, took the seven of hearts, not without visible repugnance, and applied it to the glaive, against the guard, and just at the same place. Successively he drove the punch into the end of the seven hearts. A second release occurred, but this time, unexpectedly, it was only a part of the safe that pivoted, uncovering a small safe made in the very thickness of the door that closed the larger one.

The packet of letters was there, tied with string and sealed. Varin handed it to Daspry. The latter asked:

"The check is ready, Monsieur Andermatt?"

"Yes."

"And you also have the last document that you hold from Louis Lacombe, and which completes the plans of the submarine?"

"Yes."

The exchange was made. Daspry pocketed the document and the check, and offered the packet to M. Andermatt.

"Here is what you desired, sir."

The banker hesitated a moment, as if he were afraid to touch these accursed pages that he had sought with such keenness. Then, with a nervous gesture, he seized them.

Beside me I heard a moan. I grasped Mme Andermatt's hand: it was icy.

And Daspry said to the banker:

"I believe, sir, that our conversation is ended. Oh! no thanks, I beg you. Chance alone willed that I could be of use to you."

M. Andermatt withdrew. He carried away the letters of his wife to Louis Lacombe.

"Admirable," cried Daspry in a delighted tone, "all arranges for the best. We have only to close our affair, comrade. You have the papers?"

"Here they all are."

Daspry looked them over, examined them attentively, and buried them in his pocket.

"Perfect, you kept your word."

"But..."

"But what?"

"The two checks?... the money?..."

"Well, you have nerve, old fellow. How, you dare to claim!"

"I claim what is due me."

"Something is owed you then for papers you stole?"

But the man seemed beside himself. He trembled with anger, his eyes bloodshot.

"The money... the twenty thousand..." he stammered.

"Impossible... I have use for it."

"The money!..."

"Come, be reasonable, and leave your dagger alone."

He seized his arm so brutally that the other howled with pain, and he added:

"Go away, comrade, the air will do you good. Shall I see you out? We will go by the vacant lot, and I will show you a heap of stones under which..."

"It is not true! It is not true!"

"But yes, it is true. This little iron plate with the seven red points comes from over there. It never left Louis Lacombe, you remember? Your brother and you buried it with the corpse... and with other things that will interest justice enormously."

Varin covered his face with his furious fists. Then he pronounced:

"So be it. I am done. Let us speak of it no more. A word however... a single word... I should like to know..."

"I listen."

"There was in that safe, in the larger of the two, a casket?"

"Yes."

"When you came here, the night of the 22nd to the 23rd of June, it was there?"

"Yes."

"It contained?..."

"All that the Varin brothers had locked in it, a rather pretty collection of jewels, diamonds and pearls, picked up here and there by the said brothers."

"And you took it?"

"Why! Put yourself in my place."

"Then... it was on noting the disappearance of the casket that my brother killed himself?"

"Probably. The disappearance of your correspondence with Major von Lieben would not have sufficed. But the disappearance of the casket... Is that all you had to ask me?"

"This also: your name?"

"You say that as if you had ideas of revenge."

"Of course! Luck turns. Today you are the stronger. Tomorrow..."

"It will be you."

"I count on it. Your name?"

"Arsène Lupin."

"Arsène Lupin!"

The man staggered, felled as by a blow of a club. One would have said that these two words took from him all hope. Daspry began to laugh.

"Ah! did you imagine that a M. Durand or Dupont could have mounted all this fine affair? Come now, it took at least an Arsène Lupin. And now that you are informed, my little one, go prepare your revenge. Arsène Lupin awaits you."

And he pushed him outside, without another word.

* * *

"Daspry, Daspry," I cried, still giving him, and in spite of myself, the name under which I had known him.

I drew aside the velvet curtain.

He ran up.

"What? What is it?"

"Mme Andermatt is unwell."

He hurried, made her smell salts and, while attending her, questioned me:

"Well, what happened?"

"The letters," I said to him, "the letters of Louis Lacombe that you gave to her husband!"

He struck his forehead.

"She believed I had done that!... But yes, after all, she could believe it. Imbecile that I am!"

Mme Andermatt, revived, listened to him avidly. He took from his wallet a small packet in every point similar to that which M. Andermatt had carried away.

"Here are your letters, madame, the true ones."

"But... the others?"

"The others are the same as these, but recopied by me, this night, and carefully arranged. Your husband will be all the happier to read them in that he will not suspect the substitution, since all seemed to pass before his eyes..."

"The writing..."

"There is no writing that cannot be imitated."

She thanked him, with the same words of gratitude she would have addressed to a man of her world, and I saw well that she had not been able to hear the last phrases exchanged between Varin and Arsène Lupin.

As for me, I looked at him not without embarrassment, not knowing quite what to say to this former friend who revealed himself to me under so unforeseen an aspect. Lupin! it was Lupin! my club companion was none other than Lupin! I could not get over it. But, he very much at ease:

"You may bid farewell to Jean Daspry."

"Ah!"

"Yes, Jean Daspry departs on a journey. I send him to Morocco. It is quite possible he will find there an end worthy of him. I even confess that is his intention."

"But Arsène Lupin remains with us?"

"Oh! more than ever. Arsène Lupin is yet only at the beginning of his career, and he counts well..."

An irresistible curiosity moved me upon him, and, drawing him some distance from Mme Andermatt:

"You then finished by discovering the second hiding place, the one where the packet of letters was?"

"I had quite enough trouble! It was only yesterday, in the afternoon, while you were abed. And yet, God knows how easy it was! But the simplest things are those one thinks of last."

And showing me the seven of hearts:

"I had well divined that, to open the large safe, one must press this card against the glaive of the mosaic fellow..."

"How had you divined that?"

"Easily. By my particular information, I knew on coming here, the evening of June 22..."

"After leaving me..."

"Yes, and after putting you, by chosen conversations, in a state of mind such that a nervous and impressionable fellow like you must fatally let me act at my will, without leaving his bed."

"The reasoning was just."

"I knew then, on coming here, that there was a casket hidden in a safe with a secret lock, and that the seven of hearts was the key, the word of that lock. It remained only to stick this seven of hearts at a place visibly reserved for it. One hour of examination sufficed me."

"One hour!"

"Observe the mosaic fellow."

"The old emperor?"

"This old emperor is the exact representation of the king of hearts of all card games, Charlemagne."

"Indeed... But why does the seven of hearts open now the large safe and now the small? And why did you open first only the large safe?"

"Why? but because I always obstinately placed my seven of hearts in the same direction. Only yesterday did I perceive that by turning it, that is to say by putting the seventh point, the middle one, up instead of down, the disposition of the seven points changed."

"Of course!"

"Evidently, of course, but still one had to think of it."

"Another thing: you were ignorant of the story of the letters before Mme Andermatt..."

"Spoke of it before me? Yes. I had discovered in the safe, besides the casket, only the correspondence of the two brothers, correspondence which put me on the track of their treason."

"All in all, it is by chance that you were led, first to reconstruct the history of the two brothers, then to seek the plans and documents of the submarine?"

"By chance."

"But to what end did you seek?..."

Daspry interrupted me, laughing:

"Good Lord! how this affair interests you!"

"It passionates me."

"Well, shortly, when I have seen Mme Andermatt home and had the note I am going to write carried to the _Écho de France_, I shall return and we shall enter into the detail."

He sat down and wrote one of those lapidary little notes where the fancy of the personage diverts itself. Who does not recall the noise this one made in the whole world?

"Arsène Lupin has resolved the problem that Salvator recently posed. Master of all the original documents and plans of the engineer Louis Lacombe, he has caused them to reach the hands of the Minister of the Navy. On this occasion he opens a subscription with the aim of offering to the State the first submarine built according to these plans. And he inscribes himself at the head of this subscription for the sum of twenty thousand francs."

"The twenty thousand francs of M. Andermatt's checks?" I said to him, when he had given me the paper to read.

"Precisely. It was equitable that Varin should in part ransom his treason."

* * *

And that is how I knew Arsène Lupin. That is how I learned that Jean Daspry, club companion, worldly acquaintance, was none other than Arsène Lupin, gentleman-burglar. That is how I knit ties of quite agreeable friendship with our great man, and how, little by little, thanks to the confidence with which he deigns to honor me, I have become his very humble, very faithful, and very grateful historiographer.

------

THE SAFE OF MADAME IMBERT

At three in the morning, there were still a half-dozen carriages before one of the little painters' hotels that compose the sole side of the boulevard Berthier. The door of this hotel opened. A group of guests, men and ladies, came out. Four carriages sped to right and left and there remained on the avenue only two gentlemen who parted at the corner of the rue de Courcelles where one of them lived. The other resolved to return on foot as far as the Porte-Maillot.

He therefore crossed the avenue de Villiers and continued his way on the sidewalk opposite the fortifications. On this fine winter night, pure and cold, there was pleasure in walking. One breathed well. The sound of steps rang out cheerfully.

But at the end of a few minutes he had the unpleasant impression that he was being followed. In fact, having turned around, he caught sight of the shadow of a man slipping between the trees. He was not fearful; however he quickened his pace in order to arrive as quickly as possible at the Ternes tax office. But the man began to run. Rather worried, he judged it more prudent to face him and draw his revolver from his pocket.

He had not the time. The man assailed him violently, and at once a struggle engaged on the deserted boulevard, a hand-to-hand fight where he felt at once that he had the disadvantage. He called for help, struggled, and was thrown against a heap of stones, gripped at the throat, gagged with a handkerchief that his adversary thrust into his mouth. His eyes closed, his ears buzzed, and he was about to lose consciousness, when, suddenly, the grip loosened, and the man who was suffocating him with his weight rose to defend himself in turn against an unforeseen attack.

A blow of cane on the wrist, a blow of boot on the ankle... the man gave two growls of pain, and fled limping and cursing.

Without deigning to pursue him, the new arrival bent down and said:

"Are you hurt, sir?"

He was not hurt, but quite stunned and unable to stand. By good fortune, one of the tax office employees, attracted by the cries, came running. A carriage was commandeered. The gentleman took his place in it accompanied by his savior, and they conducted him to his hotel on the avenue de la Grande-Armée.

Before the door, quite recovered, he overflowed with thanks.

"I owe you my life, sir; please believe I shall not forget it. I do not wish to frighten my wife at this moment, but I am anxious that she express to you herself, this very day, all my gratitude."

He begged him to come to luncheon and told him his name: Ludovic Imbert, adding:

"May I know to whom I have the honor..."

"But certainly," said the other.

And he presented himself:

"Arsène Lupin."

* * *

Arsène Lupin did not then have that celebrity which the Cahorn affair, his escape from La Santé, and so many other resounding exploits have won him. He did not even call himself Arsène Lupin. This name, to which the future reserved such luster, was specially invented to designate the savior of M. Imbert, and one may say that it is in this affair that he received his baptism of fire. Ready for combat it is true, armed to the teeth, but without resources, without the authority that success gives, Arsène Lupin was only an apprentice in a profession where he was soon to pass master.

Also what a shiver of joy at his waking, when he recalled the invitation of the night! At last he touched the goal! At last he undertook a work worthy of his strength and his talent! The millions of the Imberts, what a magnificent prey for an appetite like his!

He made a special toilet, threadbare frock coat, worn trousers, slightly reddish silk hat, frayed cuffs and collars, all very clean, but smelling of misery. As cravat, a black ribbon pinned with a walnut-sized surprise diamond. And, thus attired, he descended the staircase of the lodgings he occupied at Montmartre. On the third floor, without stopping, he struck the pommel of his cane on the panel of a closed door. Outside he gained the outer boulevards. A tram passed. He took his place in it, and someone who walked behind him, the tenant of the third floor, sat at his side.

At the end of an instant, this man said to him:

"Well, boss?"

"Well, it is done."

"How?"

"I lunch there."

"You lunch there!"

"You would not wish, I hope, that I had exposed gratuitously days as precious as mine? I tore M. Ludovic Imbert from the certain death that you reserved for him. M. Ludovic Imbert is a grateful nature. He invites me to luncheon."

A silence, and the other ventured:

"Then, you do not renounce it?"

"My little one," said Arsène, "if I engineered the little aggression of this night, if I took the trouble, at three in the morning, along the fortifications, to give you a blow of cane on the wrist and a kick on the shin, thus risking damaging my only friend, it is not to renounce now the benefit of a rescue so well organized."

“Stories of the world, in your language.”