7 best short stories by Maurice Leblanc. Морис Леблан
money ... on the nail...."
"What money?"
"The bank-notes."
"The bank-notes?"
"Oh, I'm getting sick of you! Here, lads...."
They laid the old fellow flat, tore off the rags that composed his clothes, felt and searched him all over.
There was nothing on him.
"You thief and you robber!" yelled old Goussot. "What have you done with it?"
The old beggar seemed more dazed than ever. Too cunning to confess, he kept on whining:
"What do you want of me?... Money? I haven't three sous to call my own...."
But his eyes, wide with wonder, remained fixed upon his clothes; and he himself seemed not to understand.
The Goussots' rage could no longer be restrained. They rained blows upon him, which did not improve matters. But the farmer was convinced that Trainard had hidden the money before turning himself into the scarecrow:
"Where have you put it, you scum? Out with it! In what part of the orchard have you hidden it?"
"The money?" repeated the tramp with a stupid look.
"Yes, the money! The money which you've buried somewhere.... Oh, if we don't find it, your goose is cooked!... We have witnesses, haven't we?... All of you, friends, eh? And then the gentleman...."
He turned, with the intention of addressing the stranger, in the direction of the spring, which was thirty or forty steps to the left. And he was quite surprised not to see him washing his hands there:
"Has he gone?" he asked.
Some one answered:
"No, he lit a cigarette and went for a stroll in the orchard."
"Oh, that's all right!" said the farmer. "He's the sort to find the notes for us, just as he found the man."
"Unless ..." said a voice.
"Unless what?" echoed the farmer. "What do you mean? Have you something in your head? Out with it, then! What is it?"
But he interrupted himself suddenly, seized with a doubt; and there was a moment's silence. The same idea dawned on all the country-folk. The stranger's arrival at Héberville, the breakdown of his motor, his manner of questioning the people at the inn and of gaining admission to the farm: were not all these part and parcel of a put-up job, the trick of a cracksman who had learnt the story from the papers and who had come to try his luck on the spot?...
"Jolly smart of him!" said the inn-keeper. "He must have taken the money from old Trainard's pocket, before our eyes, while he was searching him."
"Impossible!" spluttered Farmer Goussot. "He would have been seen going out that way ... by the house ... whereas he's strolling in the orchard."
Mother Goussot, all of a heap, suggested:
"The little door at the end, down there?..."
"The key never leaves me."
"But you showed it to him."
"Yes; and I took it back again.... Look, here it is."
He clapped his hand to his pocket and uttered a cry:
"Oh, dash it all, it's gone!... He's sneaked it!..."
He at once rushed away, followed and escorted by his sons and a number of the villagers.
When they were halfway down the orchard, they heard the throb of a motor-car, obviously the one belonging to the stranger, who had given orders to his chauffeur to wait for him at that lower entrance.
When the Goussots reached the door, they saw scrawled with a brick, on the worm-eaten panel, the two words:
"ARSÈNE LUPIN."
Stick to it as the angry Goussots might, they found it impossible to prove that old Trainard had stolen any money. Twenty persons had to bear witness that, when all was said, nothing was discovered on his person. He escaped with a few months' imprisonment for the assault.
He did not regret them. As soon as he was released, he was secretly informed that, every quarter, on a given date, at a given hour, under a given milestone on a given road, he would find three gold louis.
To a man like old Trainard that means wealth.
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