The Essential Maurice Leblanc Collection. Морис Леблан
She hung her head, defeated.
* * * * *
The silence was frightful. Mme. d'Imblevalle waited, her features livid and drawn with anguish and fear. The baron seemed to be still struggling, as though refusing to believe in the downfall of his happiness.
At last he stammered:
"Speak! Explain yourself!"
"I have nothing to say, my poor friend," she said, in a very low voice her features wrung with despair.
"Then ... mademoiselle...?"
"Mademoiselle saved me ... through devotion ... through affection ... and accused herself...."
"Saved you from what? From whom?"
"From that man."
"Bresson?"
"Yes, he held me by his threats.... I met him at a friend's house ... and I had the madness to listen to him. Oh, there was nothing that you cannot forgive!... But I wrote him two letters ... you shall see them.... I bought them back ... you know how.... Oh, have pity on me.... I have been so unhappy!"
"You! You! Suzanne!"
He raised his clenched fists to her, ready to beat her, ready to kill her. But his arms fell to his sides and he murmured again:
"You, Suzanne!... You!... Is it possible?"
In short, abrupt sentences, she told the heartbreaking and commonplace story: her terrified awakening in the face of the man's infamy, her remorse, her madness; and she also described Alice's admirable conduct: the girl suspecting her mistress's despair, forcing a confession from her, writing to Lupin and contriving this story of a robbery to save her from Bresson's clutches.
"You, Suzanne, you!" repeated M. d'Imblevalle, bent double, overwhelmed. "How could you...?"
* * * * *
On the evening of the same day, the steamer _Ville de Londres_, from Calais to Dover, was gliding slowly over the motionless water. The night was dark and calm. Peaceful clouds were suggested rather than seen above the boat and, all around, light veils of mist separated her from the infinite space in which the moon and stars were shedding their cold, but invisible radiance.
Most of the passengers had gone to the cabins and saloons. A few of them, however, bolder than the rest, were walking up and down the deck or else dozing under thick rugs in the big rocking-chairs. Here and there the gleam showed of a cigar; and, mingling with the gentle breath of the wind, came the murmur of voices that dared not rise high in the great solemn silence.
One of the passengers, who was walking to and fro with even strides, stopped beside a person stretched out on a bench, looked at her and, when she moved slightly, said:
"I thought you were asleep, Mlle. Alice."
"No, Mr. Shears, I do not feel sleepy. I was thinking."
"What of? Is it indiscreet to ask?"
"I was thinking of Mme. d'Imblevalle. How sad she must be! Her life is ruined."
"Not at all, not at all," he said, eagerly. "Her fault is not one of those which can never be forgiven. M. d'Imblevalle will forget that lapse. Already, when we left, he was looking at her less harshly."
"Perhaps ... but it will take long to forget ... and she is suffering."
"Are you very fond of her?"
"Very. That gave me such strength to smile when I was trembling with fear, to look you in the face when I wanted to avoid your glance."
"And are you unhappy at leaving her?"
"Most unhappy. I have no relations or friends.... I had only her...."
"You shall have friends," said the Englishman, whom this grief was upsetting, "I promise you that.... I have connections.... I have much influence.... I assure you that you will not regret your position...."
"Perhaps, but Mme. d'Imblevalle will not be there...."
They exchanged no more words. Holmlock Shears took two or three more turns along the deck and then came back and settled down near his travelling-companion.
The misty curtain lifted and the clouds seemed to part in the sky. Stars twinkled up above.
Shears took his pipe from the pocket of his Inverness cape, filled it and struck four matches, one after the other, without succeeding in lighting it. As he had none left, he rose and said to a gentleman seated a few steps off:
"Could you oblige me with a light, please?"
The gentleman opened a box of fusees and struck one. A flame blazed up. By its light, Shears saw Arsne Lupin.
* * * * *
If the Englishman had not given a tiny movement, an almost imperceptible movement of recoil, Lupin might have thought that his presence on board was known to him, so great was the mastery which Shears retained over himself and so natural the ease with which he held out his hand to his adversary:
"Keeping well, M. Lupin?"
"Bravo!" exclaimed Lupin, from whom this self-command drew a cry of admiration.
"Bravo?... What for?"
"What for? You see me reappear before you like a ghost, after witnessing my dive into the Seine, and, from pride, from a miraculous pride which I will call essentially British, you give not a movement of astonishment, you utter not a word of surprise! Upon my word, I repeat, bravo! It's admirable!"
"There's nothing admirable about it. From the way you fell off the boat, I could see that you fell of your own accord and that you had not been struck by the sergeant's shot."
"And you went away without knowing what became of me?"
"What became of you? I knew. Five hundred people were commanding the two banks over a distance of three-quarters of a mile. Once you escaped death, your capture was certain."
"And yet I'm here!"
"M. Lupin, there are two men in the world of whom nothing can astonish me: myself first and you next."
* * * * *
Peace was concluded.
If Shears had failed in his undertakings against Arsne Lupin, if Lupin remained the exceptional enemy whom he must definitely renounce all attempts to capture, if, in the course of the engagements, Lupin always preserved his superiority, the Englishman had, nevertheless, thanks to his formidable tenacity, recovered the Jewish lamp, just as he had recovered the blue diamond. Perhaps, this time, the result was less brilliant, especially from the point of view of the public, since Shears was obliged to suppress the circumstances in which the Jewish lamp had been discovered and to proclaim that he did not know the culprit's name. But, as between man and man, between Lupin and Shears, between burglar and detective, there was, in all fairness, neither victor nor vanquished. Each of them could lay claim to equal triumphs.
They talked, therefore, like courteous adversaries who have laid down their arms and who esteem each other at their true worth.
At Shears's request, Lupin described his escape.
"If, indeed," he said, "you can call it an escape. It was so simple! My friends were on the watch, since we had arranged to meet in order to fish up the Jewish lamp. And so, after remaining a good half-hour under the overturned keel of the boat, I took advantage of a moment when Folenfant and his men were looking for my corpse along the banks and I climbed on to the wreck again. My friends had only to pick me up in their motor-boat and to dash off before the astounded eyes of the five hundred sightseers, Ganimard and Folenfant."