The Essential Maurice Leblanc Collection. Морис Леблан
by the men-servants carrying candles.
"What is it?" cried the baron. "Is Mr. Wilson hurt?"
"Nothing; only a scratch," repeated Shears, endeavouring to delude himself into the belief.
Wilson was bleeding copiously and his face was deathly pale. Twenty minutes later, the doctor declared that the point of the knife had penetrated to within a quarter of an inch of the heart.
"A quarter of an inch! That Wilson was always a lucky dog!" said Shears, summing up the situation, in an envious tone.
"Lucky ... lucky...." grunted the doctor.
"Why, with his strong constitution, he'll be all right...."
"After six weeks in bed and two months' convalescence."
"No longer?"
"No, unless complications ensue."
"Why on earth should there be any complications?"
Fully reassured, Shears returned to M. d'Imblevalle in the boudoir. This time, the mysterious visitor had not shown the same discretion. He had laid hands without shame on the diamond-studded snuff-box, on the opal necklace and, generally, on anything that could find room in the pockets of a self-respecting burglar.
The window was still open, one of the panes had been neatly cut out and a summary inquiry held at daybreak showed that the ladder came from the unfinished house and that the burglars must have come that way.
"In short," said M. d'Imblevalle, with a touch of irony in his voice, "it is an exact repetition of the theft of the Jewish lamp."
"Yes, if we accept the first version favoured by the police."
"Do you still refuse to adopt it? Doesn't this second theft shake your opinion as regards the first?"
"On the contrary, it confirms it."
"It seems incredible! You have the undoubted proof that last night's burglary was committed by somebody from the outside and you still maintain that the Jewish lamp was stolen by one of our people?"
"By some one living in the house."
"Then how do you explain...?"
"I explain nothing, monsieur: I establish two facts, which resemble each other only in appearance, I weigh them separately and I am trying to find the link that connects them."
His conviction seemed so profound, his actions based upon such powerful motives, that the baron gave way:
"Very well. Let us go and inform the commissary of the police."
"On no account!" exclaimed the Englishman, eagerly. "On no account whatever! The police are people whom I apply to only when I want them."
"Still, the shots...?"
"Never mind the shots!"
"Your friend...."
"My friend is only wounded.... Make the doctor hold his tongue.... I will take all the responsibility as regards the police."
* * * * *
Two days elapsed, devoid of all incident, during which Shears pursued his task with a minute care and a conscientiousness that was exasperated by the memory of that daring onslaught, perpetrated under his eyes, despite his presence and without his being able to prevent its success. He searched the house and garden indefatigably, talked to the servants and paid long visits to the kitchen and stables. And, though he gathered no clue that threw any light upon the subject, he did not lose courage.
"I shall find what I am looking for," he thought, "and I shall find it here. It is not a question now, as in the case of the blonde lady, of walking at hap-hazard and of reaching, by roads unknown to me, an equally unknown goal. This time I am on the battlefield itself. The enemy is no longer the invisible, elusive Lupin, but the flesh-and-blood accomplice who moves within the four walls of this house. Give me the least little particular, and I know where I stand."
This little particular, from which he was to derive such remarkable consequences, with a skill so prodigious that the case of the Jewish Lamp may be looked upon as one in which his detective genius bursts forth most triumphantly, this little particular he was to obtain by accident.
* * * * *
On the third day, entering the room above the boudoir, which was used as a schoolroom for the children, he came upon Henriette, the smaller of the two. She was looking for her scissors.
"You know," she said to Shears, "I make papers too, like the one you got the other evening."
"The other evening?"
"Yes, after dinner. You got a paper with strips on it ... you know, a telegram.... Well, I make them too."
She went out. To any one else, these words would have represented only the insignificant observation of a child; and Shears himself listened without paying much attention and continued his inspection. But, suddenly, he started running after the child, whose last phrase had all at once impressed him. He caught her at the top of the staircase and said:
"So you stick strips on to paper also, do you?"
Henriette, very proudly, declared:
"Yes, I cut out the words and stick them on."
"And who taught you that pretty game?"
"Mademoiselle ... my governess.... I saw her do it. She takes words out of newspapers and sticks them on...."
"And what does she do with them?"
"Makes telegrams and letters which she sends off."
Holmlock Shears returned to the schoolroom, singularly puzzled by this confidence and doing his utmost to extract from it the inferences of which it allowed.
There was a bundle of newspapers on the mantel-piece. He opened them and saw, in fact, that there were groups of words or lines missing, regularly and neatly cut out. But he had only to read the words that came before or after to ascertain that the missing words had been removed with the scissors at random, evidently by Henriette. It was possible that, in the pile of papers, there was one which mademoiselle had cut herself. But how was he to make sure?
Mechanically, Shears turned the pages of the lesson-books heaped up on the table and of some others lying on the shelves of a cupboard. And suddenly a cry of joy escaped him. In a corner of the cupboard, under a pile of old exercise-books, he had found a children's album, a sort of picture alphabet, and, in one of the pages of this album, he had seen a gap.
He examined the page. It gave the names of the days of the week: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and so on. The word "Saturday" was missing. Now the Jewish Lamp was stolen on a Saturday night.
* * * * *
Shears felt that little clutch at his heart which always told him, in the plainest manner possible, when he had hit upon the knotty point of a mystery. That grip of truth, that feeling of certainty never deceived him.
He hastened to turn over the pages of the album, feverishly and confidently. A little further on came another surprise.
It was a page consisting of capital letters followed by a row of figures.
Nine of the letters and three of the figures had been carefully removed.
Shears wrote them down in his note-book, in the order which they would have occupied, and obtained the following result:
C D E H N O P R Z--237
"By Jove!" he muttered. "There's not much to be made out of that, at first sight."
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