Part 6

As one may well imagine, the commotion caused by my passage through the Gare Saint-Lazare had not escaped me. Invited to the home of friends whom I visited under the name of Guillaume Berlat, and for whom my resemblance to Arsène Lupin was a subject of affectionate jests, I had not been able to disguise myself as I wished, and my presence had been noticed. Moreover, a man had been seen, Arsène Lupin no doubt, hurling himself from the express into the fast train. Therefore, inevitably, fatally, the police commissioner of Rouen, warned by telegram and assisted by a respectable number of agents, would be at the train's arrival, would question suspicious travelers, and would proceed with a minute inspection of the cars.

All this I foresaw, and I was not overly troubled by it, certain that the police of Rouen would be no more perspicacious than that of Paris, and that I would know well how to pass unnoticed—would it not suffice, on exiting, to show my deputy's card negligently, thanks to which I had already inspired complete confidence in the Saint-Lazare ticket inspector?—But how greatly things had changed! I was no longer free. Impossible to attempt one of my usual tricks. In one of the cars, the commissioner would discover the said Arsène Lupin, whom a favorable chance sent him bound hand and foot, docile as a lamb, packaged, all prepared. He would have only to take delivery, as one receives a postal parcel addressed to one at the station, a crate of game or a basket of fruits and vegetables.

And to avoid this unfortunate ending, what could I do, wound round in my bandages?

And the fast train sped toward Rouen, the sole and near station, burned through Vernon, Saint-Pierre.

Another problem intrigued me, in which I was less directly interested, but whose solution awakened my professional curiosity. What were my companion's intentions?

Had I been alone he would have had time, at Rouen, to alight in complete tranquility. But the lady? Scarcely would the door be opened, the lady, so wise and so humble at this moment, would cry out, struggle, call for help!

And thence my astonishment! Why did he not reduce her to the same helplessness as myself, which would have given him leisure to disappear before his double misdeed was noticed?

He still smoked, his eyes fixed on the space that a hesitant rain began to streak with great oblique lines. Once, however, he turned away, seized my timetable, and consulted it.

The lady, she, strove to remain faint, to reassure her enemy. But fits of coughing, provoked by the smoke, belied this fainting.

As for me, I was most ill at ease, and very stiff. And I reflected... I schemed...

Pont-de-l'Arche, Oissel... The fast train hurried, joyous, drunk with speed.

Saint-Étienne... At this instant, the man rose, and took two steps toward us, to which the lady hastened to respond with a new cry and a fainting fit that was not feigned.

But what was his aim, his? He lowered the window on our side. The rain now fell with fury, and his gesture marked the annoyance he felt at having neither umbrella nor overcoat. He cast his eyes on the luggage rack: the lady's traveling case was there. He took it. He also took my overcoat and put it on.

They were crossing the Seine. He rolled up the bottom of his trousers, then leaning, he lifted the outside latch.

Was he going to throw himself on the track? At that speed it would have been certain death. They plunged into the tunnel bored under the Sainte-Catherine hill. The man opened the door a crack and, with his foot, felt for the first step. What madness! The darkness, the smoke, the clamor, all gave to such an attempt a fantastic appearance. But suddenly, the train slowed, the Westinghouse brakes opposed the effort of the wheels. In a minute the pace became normal, diminished still further. No doubt consolidation works were underway in this part of the tunnel, which required the slowed passage of trains, perhaps for some days, and the man knew it.

He then had only to set his other foot on the step, descend to the second, and go off peacefully, not without having first dropped the latch and closed the door.

Scarcely had he disappeared than daylight illuminated the whiter smoke. They emerged into a valley. Another tunnel and we were at Rouen.

At once the lady recovered her senses and her first care was to lament the loss of her jewels. I implored her with my eyes. She understood and freed me from the gag that was suffocating me. She also wished to untie my bonds; I prevented her.

—No, no, the police must see things as they are. I wish them enlightened as to that scoundrel.

—But if I pulled the alarm cord?

—Too late, one should have thought of it while he attacked me.

—But he would have killed me! Ah! Monsieur, had I not told you he was traveling on this train! I recognized him at once, from his portrait. And there he goes with my jewels.

—He will be found, do not fear.

—Find Arsène Lupin! Never.

—That depends on you, Madame. Listen. On arrival, be at the door, and call out, make noise. Agents and employees will come. Then tell what you saw, in a few words, the assault of which I was the victim and the flight of Arsène Lupin. Give his description, a soft hat, an umbrella—yours—a gray fitted overcoat.

—Yours, she said.

—What, mine? But no, his. I, I had none.

—It had seemed to me he had none either when he got on.

—Yes, yes... unless it be a garment forgotten in the rack. In any case, he had it when he got down, and that is the essential... a gray fitted overcoat, remember... Ah! I forgot... say your name, at the outset. Your husband's functions will stimulate the zeal of all those people.

We were arriving. She was already leaning from the door. I resumed in a somewhat loud voice, almost imperious, so that my words would be graven in her brain.

—Say also my name, Guillaume Berlat. If need be, say you know me... that will save time... the preliminary inquiry must be expedited... the important thing is the pursuit of Arsène Lupin... your jewels... There is no mistake, is there? Guillaume Berlat, a friend of your husband.

—Understood... Guillaume Berlat.

She was already calling and gesticulating. The train had not stopped when a gentleman climbed aboard, followed by several men. The critical hour struck.

Breathless, the lady cried:

—Arsène Lupin... he attacked us... he stole my jewels... I am Madame Renaud... my husband is under-director of penitentiary services... Ah! see, here is precisely my brother, Georges Ardelle, director of the Crédit Rouennais... you must know...

She embraced a young man who had just joined us, and whom the commissioner saluted, and she resumed, in tears:

—Yes, Arsène Lupin... while Monsieur slept, he threw himself at his throat... M. Berlat, a friend of my husband.

The commissioner asked:

—But where is he, Arsène Lupin?

—He jumped from the train under the tunnel, after the Seine.

—Are you sure it is he?

—If I am sure! I recognized him perfectly. Besides, he was seen at the Gare Saint-Lazare. He had a soft hat...

—No... a hard felt hat, like this one, corrected the commissioner, designating my hat.

—A soft hat, I affirm, repeated Madame Renaud, and a gray fitted overcoat.

—Indeed, murmured the commissioner, the telegram notes this gray overcoat, fitted and with a black velvet collar.

—With a black velvet collar, exactly, cried Madame Renaud triumphantly.

I breathed. Ah! the good, the excellent friend I had there!

The agents meanwhile had freed me of my bonds. I bit my lips violently, blood flowed. Bent double, handkerchief to my mouth, as befits an individual who has remained long in an uncomfortable position, and who bears on his face the bloody mark of the gag, I said to the commissioner, in a weakened voice:

—Monsieur, it was Arsène Lupin, there is no doubt... By making haste one will catch him... I believe I can be of a certain use to you...

The car that was to serve for the justice's observations was detached. The train continued toward Le Havre. We were conducted toward the stationmaster's office, through the crowd of curious onlookers that encumbered the platform.

At this moment, I hesitated. Under some pretext, I could draw away, find my automobile and slip off. To wait was dangerous. Should an incident occur, should a dispatch arrive from Paris, and I was lost.

Yes, but my thief? Abandoned to my own resources, in a region not too familiar to me, I should not hope to overtake him.

—Bah! let us try the stroke, said I to myself, and stay. The game is hard to win, but so amusing to play! And the stake is worth the trouble.

And, as we were asked to renew our depositions provisionally, I cried:

—Monsieur the commissioner, at this moment Arsène Lupin is gaining advance. My automobile awaits me in the yard. If you will do me the pleasure of mounting it, we would try...

The commissioner smiled in a shrewd way:

—The idea is not bad... so little bad, indeed, that it is in course of execution.

—Ah!

—Yes, monsieur, two of my agents have left by bicycle... for some time already.

—But where?

—At the very exit of the tunnel. There, they will gather clues, testimonies, and follow the trail of Arsène Lupin.

I could not help but shrug my shoulders.

—Your two agents will gather neither clue nor testimony.

—Indeed!

—Arsène Lupin will have arranged so that no one sees him leave the tunnel. He will have reached the first road and, from there...

—And from there, Rouen, where we will nab him.

—He will not go to Rouen.

—Then he will remain in the surroundings where we are even more sure...

—He will not remain in the surroundings.

—Oh! oh! And where then will he hide?

I drew my watch.

—At the present hour, Arsène Lupin prowls around the Darnétal station. At ten fifty, that is to say in twenty-two minutes, he will take the train that goes from Rouen, North station, to Amiens.

—You believe so? And how do you know it?

—Oh! it is quite simple. In the compartment, Arsène Lupin consulted my timetable. For what reason? Was there, not far from where he disappeared, another line, a station on that line, and a train stopping at that station? In my turn I have just consulted the timetable. It informed me.

—In truth, monsieur, said the commissioner, that is marvelously deduced. What competence!

Carried away by my conviction, I had committed an awkwardness in showing so much skill. He looked at me with astonishment, and I thought I felt a suspicion graze him.—Oh! barely, for the photographs sent everywhere by the prosecutor's office were too imperfect, represented an Arsène Lupin too different from the one he had before him, for it to be possible for him to recognize me. But, all the same, he was troubled, confusedly uneasy.

There was a moment of silence. Something equivocal and uncertain checked our words. Myself, a shiver of constraint shook me. Was luck about to turn against me? Mastering myself, I began to laugh.

—My God, nothing opens comprehension like the loss of a wallet and the desire to find it again. And it seems to me that if you would kindly give me two of your agents, they and I, we might perhaps...

—Oh! I beg you, monsieur the commissioner, cried Madame Renaud, listen to M. Berlat.

The intervention of my excellent friend was decisive. Pronounced by her, the wife of an influential personage, that name of Berlat became really mine and conferred on me an identity that no suspicion could reach. The commissioner rose:

—I would be too happy, Monsieur Berlat, believe it, to see you succeed. As much as you I am intent on the arrest of Arsène Lupin.

He conducted me to the automobile. Two of his agents, whom he presented to me, Honoré Massol and Gaston Delivet, took place in it. I installed myself at the wheel. My mechanic gave the crank turn. A few seconds later we left the station. I was saved.

Ah! I confess that, rolling on the boulevards that gird the old Norman city, at the powerful pace of my thirty-five horsepower Moreau-Lepton, I was not without conceiving some pride. The motor hummed harmoniously. To right and left, the trees fled behind us. And free, out of danger, I had now only to settle my little personal affairs, with the help of the two honest representatives of public force. Arsène Lupin set off in search of Arsène Lupin!

Modest supports of the social order, Delivet Gaston and Massol Honoré, how precious your assistance was to me! What would I have done without you? Without you, how many times, at crossroads, I would have chosen the wrong road! Without you, Arsène Lupin was mistaken, and the other escaped!

But all was not finished. Far from it. I had first to catch the individual, and then to seize myself the papers he had stolen from me. At no price must my two accomplices put their nose in those documents, still less seize them. To use them and act outside them, that is what I wanted and which was not easy.

At Darnétal, we arrived three minutes after the passage of the train. It is true that I had the consolation of learning that an individual in a gray fitted overcoat, with black velvet collar, had mounted in a second-class compartment, provided with a ticket for Amiens. Decidedly my debut as policeman promised.

Delivet said to me:

—The train is express and stops no more except at Montérolier-Buchy, in nineteen minutes. If we are not there before Arsène Lupin, he can continue on Amiens, as well as branch toward Clères, and from there reach Dieppe or Paris.

—Montérolier, what distance?

—Twenty-three kilometers.

—Twenty-three kilometers in nineteen minutes... We will be there before him.

The thrilling stage! Never did my faithful Moreau-Lepton respond to my impatience with more ardor and regularity. It seemed to me that I communicated my will to it directly, without the intermediary of levers and handles. She shared my desires. She approved my obstinacy. She understood my animosity against that scoundrel Arsène Lupin. The rogue! the traitor! should I have reason of him? Would he once more make sport of authority, of that authority of which I was the incarnation?

—To the right, cried Delivet!... To the left!... Straight ahead!...

We glided above the ground. The milestones looked like little fearful beasts that vanished at our approach.

And suddenly, at the turn of a road, a whirlwind of smoke, the Nord express.

For a kilometer, it was the struggle, side by side, unequal struggle whose outcome was certain. At arrival, we beat it by twenty lengths.

In three seconds we were on the platform, before the second classes. The doors opened. A few persons descended. My thief nowhere. We inspected the compartments. No Arsène Lupin.

—Zounds, I cried, he will have recognized me in the automobile while we marched side by side, and he will have jumped.

The train chief confirmed this supposition. He had seen a man who tumbled down along the embankment, two hundred meters from the station.

—See, over there... the one crossing the level crossing.

I sprang forward, followed by my two accomplices, or rather followed by one of them, for the other, Massol, turned out to be an exceptional runner, having as much stamina as speed. In little time, the interval separating him from the fugitive diminished singularly. The man saw him, cleared a hedge and darted rapidly toward a slope that he climbed. We saw him still further: he entered a small wood.

When we reached this wood, Massol awaited us there. He had judged it useless to venture further, for fear of losing us.

—And I congratulate you for it, my dear friend, said I to him. After such a run, our individual must be out of breath. We have him.

I examined the surroundings, while reflecting on the means to proceed alone to the arrest of the fugitive, in order to make myself the recoveries that justice would doubtless have tolerated only after many disagreeable inquiries. Then I returned to my companions.

—Here, it is easy. You, Massol, post yourself to the left. You, Delivet, to the right. From there, you watch the whole rear line of the thicket, and he cannot come out, without being seen by you, except by this hollow, where I take position. If he does not come out, I enter, and, necessarily, I drive him back onto one or the other. You have then only to wait. Ah! I forgot: in case of alarm, a shot.

Massol and Delivet moved off each his side. As soon as they had disappeared, I penetrated into the wood, with the greatest precautions, so as to be neither seen nor heard. They were thick coppices, arranged for the hunt, and cut by very narrow paths where it was possible to walk only bent like in green undergrounds.

One of them led to a clearing where the wet grass presented footprints. I followed them, taking care to slip through the brush. They conducted me to the foot of a small hillock crowned by a plaster hovel, half demolished.

—He must be there, I thought. The observatory is well chosen.

I crawled to near the building. A light noise warned me of his presence, and, in fact, through an opening, I perceived him turning his back to me.

In two bounds I was upon him. He tried to aim the revolver he held in his hand. I gave him no time, and dragged him to the ground, in such a way that his two arms were caught under him, twisted, and that I pressed my knee on his chest.

—Listen, my little one, I said to his ear, I am Arsène Lupin. You are going to return to me, at once and of good grace, my wallet and the lady's pouch... in return for which I pull you from the claws of the police, and enroll you among my friends. One word only: yes or no?

—Yes, he murmured.

—So much the better. Your affair, this morning, was neatly combined. We will understand each other.

I rose. He rummaged in his pocket, drew out a large knife and wished to strike me with it.

—Imbecile! I cried.

With one hand, I had parried the attack. With the other, I dealt him a violent blow on the carotid artery, what is called the "hook to the carotid"... He fell, knocked out.

In my wallet, I found again my papers and banknotes. Out of curiosity, I took his. On an envelope addressed to him, I read his name: Pierre Onfrey.

I started. Pierre Onfrey, the assassin of the rue Lafontaine, at Auteuil! Pierre Onfrey, he who had slit the throats of Mme Delbois and her two daughters. I bent over him. Yes, it was that face which, in the compartment, had awakened in me the memory of features already contemplated.

But time passed. I put in an envelope two hundred-franc bills, with a card and these words: "Arsène Lupin to his good colleagues Honoré Massol and Gaston Delivet, in testimony of recognition." I placed that in evidence in the middle of the room. Beside it, the pouch of Mme Renaud. Could I not return it to the excellent friend who had succored me? I confess however that I withdrew from it all that presented any interest whatever, leaving there only a tortoiseshell comb, a stick of Dorin red for the lips and an empty purse. What the devil! Business is business. And then, truly her husband exercised so little honorable a trade!...

There remained the man. He was beginning to stir. What should I do? I had neither quality to save him nor to condemn him.

I removed his weapons and fired a shot in the air with the revolver.

—The two others will come, I thought, let him sort it out! Things will accomplish in the sense of his destiny.

And I moved away at a running pace by the hollow path.

Twenty minutes later, a crossroad that I had noticed during our pursuit brought me back near my automobile.

At four o'clock I telegraphed my friends at Rouen that an unforeseen incident constrained me to postpone my visit. Between us, I strongly fear, given what they must know now, to be obliged to postpone it indefinitely. Cruel disappointment for them!

At six o'clock, I returned to Paris by Isle-Adam, Enghien and the Porte Bineau.

The evening papers taught me that one had finally succeeded in seizing Pierre Onfrey.

The next day—let us not disdain the advantages of an intelligent publicity—the _Écho de France_ published this sensational paragraph:

"Yesterday, in the environs of Buchy, after numerous incidents, Arsène Lupin effected the arrest of Pierre Onfrey. The assassin of the rue Lafontaine had just robbed on the Paris-to-Havre line Mme Renaud, the wife of the under-director of penitentiary services. Arsène Lupin restored to Mme Renaud the pouch that contained her jewels, and generously rewarded the two Sûreté agents who had aided him in the course of this dramatic arrest."

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THE QUEEN'S NECKLACE

Two or three times a year, on the occasion of important solemnities, such as the balls of the Austrian embassy or the soirées of lady Billingstone, the countess of Dreux-Soubise placed on her white shoulders "the Queen's Necklace".

It was indeed the famous necklace, the legendary necklace that Böhmer and Bassenge, jewelers of the crown, destined for the Du Barry, that the cardinal of Rohan-Soubise believed he offered to Marie-Antoinette, queen of France, and that the adventuress Jeanne de Valois, countess of La Motte, broke up one evening of February 1785, with the help of her husband and their accomplice Rétaux de Villette.

To tell the truth, the mounting alone was authentic. Rétaux de Villette had kept it, while the sieur de La Motte and his wife dispersed to the four winds the brutally unset stones, the admirable stones so carefully chosen by Böhmer. Later, in Italy, he sold it to Gaston de Dreux-Soubise, nephew and heir of the cardinal, saved by him from ruin at the resounding bankruptcy of Rohan-Guéménée, and who, in memory of his uncle, bought back the few diamonds that remained in the possession of the English jeweler Jefferys, completed them with others of much lesser value but of same dimension, and managed to reconstitute the marvelous "slave necklace", such as it had come from the hands of Böhmer and Bassenge.

Of this historic jewel, for nearly a century, the Dreux-Soubise were proud. Although various circumstances had notably diminished their fortune, they preferred to reduce their household than to alienate the royal and precious relic. In particular the present count held to it as one holds to the dwelling of one's fathers. By prudence, he had rented a safe at the Crédit Lyonnais to deposit it there. He went himself to fetch it the afternoon of the day his wife wished to adorn herself with it, and carried it back himself the next day.

That evening, at the reception of the Palais de Castille, the countess had a veritable success, and king Christian, in whose honor the feast was given, remarked her magnificent beauty. The jewels streamed around her gracious neck. The thousand facets of the diamonds shone and scintillated like flames in the clarity of the lights. None other than she, it seemed, could have borne with so much ease and nobility the burden of such ornament.

It was a double triumph, which the count of Dreux savored deeply, and of which he applauded himself when they were returned to the chamber of their old hotel of the faubourg Saint-Germain. He was proud of his wife, and quite as much perhaps of the jewel that illustrated his house for four generations. And his wife drew from it a somewhat childish vanity, but which was well the mark of her haughty character.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”