The Essential Maurice Leblanc Collection. Морис Леблан
"Whom? Why, my dressmaker, Mlle. Langeais! Do you mean to imply that my dressmaker and my friend M. Bresson are one and the same person?"
Shears began to doubt, in spite of all. It is possible to counterfeit almost any feeling in such a way as to put another person off: terror, joy, anxiety; but not indifference, not happy and careless laughter.
However, he said:
"One last word. Why did you accost me at the Gare du Nord the other evening? And why did you beg me to go back at once without busying myself about the robbery?"
"Oh, you're much too curious, Mr. Shears," she replied, still laughing in the most natural way. "To punish you, I will tell you nothing and, in addition, you shall watch the patient while I go to the chemist.... There's an urgent prescription to be made up.... I must hurry!"
She left the room.
"I have been tricked," muttered Shears. "I've not only got nothing out of her, but I have given myself away."
And he remembered the case of the blue diamond and the cross-examination to which he had subjected Clotilde Destange. Mademoiselle had encountered him with the same serenity as the blonde lady and he felt that he was again face to face with one of those creatures who, protected by Arsne Lupin and under the direct action of his influence, preserved the most inscrutable calmness amid the very agony of danger.
"Shears.... Shears...."
It was Wilson calling him. He went to the bed and bent over him:
"What is it, old chap? Feeling bad?"
Wilson moved his lips, but was unable to speak. At last, after many efforts, he stammered out:
"No ... Shears ... it wasn't she ... it can't have been...."
"What nonsense are you talking now? I tell you that it was she! It's only when I'm in the presence of a creature of Lupin's, trained and drilled by him, that I lose my head and behave so foolishly.... She now knows the whole story of the album.... I bet you that Lupin will be told in less than an hour. Less than an hour? What am I talking about? This moment, most likely! The chemist, the urgent prescription: humbug!"
Without a further thought of Wilson, he rushed from the room, went down the Avenue de Messine and saw Mademoiselle enter a chemist's shop. She came out, ten minutes later, carrying two or three medicine-bottles wrapped up in white paper. But, when she returned up the avenue, she was accosted by a man who followed her, cap in hand and with an obsequious air, as though he were begging.
She stopped, gave him an alms and then continued on her way.
"She spoke to him," said the Englishman to himself.
It was an intuition rather than a certainty, but strong enough to induce him to alter his tactics. Leaving the girl, he set off on the track of the sham beggar.
They arrived in this way, one behind the other, on the Place Saint-Ferdinand; and the man hovered long round Bresson's house, sometimes raising his eyes to the second-floor windows and watching the people who entered the house.
At the end of an hour's time, he climbed to the top of a tram-car that was starting for Neuilly. Shears climbed up also and sat down behind the fellow, at some little distance, beside a gentleman whose features were concealed by the newspaper which he was reading. When they reached the fortifications, the newspaper was lowered, Shears recognized Ganimard and Ganimard, pointing to the fellow, said in his ear:
"It's our man of last night, the one who followed Bresson. He's been hanging round the square for an hour."
"Nothing new about Bresson?"
"Yes, a letter arrived this morning addressed to him."
"This morning? Then it must have been posted yesterday, before the writer knew of Bresson's death."
"Just so. It is with the examining magistrate, but I can tell you the exact words: 'He accepts no compromise. He wants everything, the first thing as well as those of the second business. If not, he will take steps.' And no signature," added Ganimard. "As you can see, those few lines won't be of much use to us."
"I don't agree with you at all, M. Ganimard: on the contrary, I consider them very interesting."
"And why, bless my soul?"
"For reasons personal to myself," said Shears, with the absence of ceremony with which he was accustomed to treat his colleague.
The tram stopped at the terminus in the Rue du Chteau. The man climbed down and walked away quietly. Shears followed so closely on his heels that Ganimard took alarm:
"If he turns round, we are done."
"He won't turn round now."
"What do you know about it?"
"He is an accomplice of Arsne Lupin's and the fact that an accomplice of Lupin's walks away like that, with his hands in his pockets, proves, in the first place, that he knows he's followed, and in the second, that he's not afraid."
"Still, we're running him pretty hard!"
"No matter, he can slip through our fingers in a minute, if he wants. He's too sure of himself."
"Come, come; you're getting at me! There are two cyclist police at the door of that caf over there. If I decide to call on them and to tackle our friend, I should like to know how he's going to slip through our fingers."
"Our friend does not seem much put out by that contingency. And he's calling on them himself!"
"By Jupiter!" said Ganimard. "The cheek of the fellow!"
The man, in fact, had walked up to the two policemen just as these were preparing to mount their bicycles. He spoke a few words to them and then, suddenly, sprang upon a third bicycle, which was leaning against the wall of the caf, and rode away quickly with the two policemen.
The Englishman burst with laughter:
"There, what did I tell you? Off before we knew where we were; and with two of your colleagues, M. Ganimard! Ah, he looks after himself, does Arsne Lupin! With cyclist policemen in his pay! Didn't I tell you our friend was a great deal too calm!"
"What then?" cried Ganimard, angrily. "What could I do? It's very easy to laugh!"
"Come, come, don't be cross. We'll have our revenge. For the moment, what we want is reinforcements."
"Folenfant is waiting for me at the end of the Avenue de Neuilly."
"All right, pick him up and join me, both of you."
Ganimard went away, while Shears followed the tracks of the bicycles, which were easily visible on the dust of the road because two of the machines were fitted with grooved tires. And he soon saw that these tracks were leading him to the bank of the Seine and that the three men had turned in the same direction as Bresson on the previous evening. He thus came to the gate against which he himself had hidden with Ganimard and, a little farther on, he saw a tangle of grooved lines which showed that they had stopped there. Just opposite, a little neck of land jutted into the river and, at the end of it, an old boat lay fastened.
This was where Bresson must have flung his parcel, or, rather, dropped it. Shears went down the incline and saw that, as the bank sloped very gently, and the water was low, he would easily find the parcel ... unless the three men had been there first.
"No, no," he said to himself, "they have not had time ... a quarter of an hour at most..... And, yet, why did they come this way?"
A man was sitting in the boat, fishing. Shears asked him:
"Have you seen three men on bicycles?"
The