Arsene Lupin. Морис Леблан
book? And then, when you were questioning the Dame de Villemon about the Hollow Needle! Would she speak? Yes, she would—no, she wouldn't—yes—no. It gave me gooseflesh, I assure you.—If she spoke, I should have to build up my life anew, the whole scaffolding was destroyed.—Would the footman come in time? Yes—no—there he is.—But Beautrelet will unmask me! Never! He's too much of a flat! Yes, though—no—there, he's done it—no, he hasn't—yes—he's eyeing me—that's it—he's feeling for his revolver!—Oh, the delight of it!—Isidore, you're talking too much, you'll hurt yourself!—Let's have a snooze, shall we?—I'm dying of sleep.—Good night."
Beautrelet looked at him. He seemed almost asleep already. He slept.
The motor-car, darting through space, rushed toward a horizon that was constantly reached and as constantly retreated. There was no impression of towns, villages, fields or forests; simply space, space devoured, swallowed up.
Beautrelet looked at his traveling companion, for a long time, with eager curiosity and also with a keen wish to fathom his real character through the mask that covered it. And he thought of the circumstances that confined them, like that, together, in the close contact of that motor car. But, after the excitement and disappointment of the morning, tired in his turn, he too fell asleep.
When he woke, Lupin was reading. Beautrelet leant over to see the title of the book. It was the Epistolae ad Lucilium of Seneca the philosopher.
Chapter 8 From Caesar to Lupin
Dash it all, it took me ten days! Me! Lupin!
You will want ten years, at least!—
These words, uttered by Lupin after leaving the Chateau de Velines, had no little influence on Beautrelet's conduct.
Though very calm in the main and invariably master of himself, Lupin, nevertheless, was subject to moments of exaltation, of a more or less romantic expansiveness, at once theatrical and good-humored, when he allowed certain admissions to escape him, certain imprudent speeches which a boy like Beautrelet could easily turn to profit.
Rightly or wrongly. Beautrelet read one of these involuntary admissions into that phrase. He was entitled to conclude that, if Lupin drew a comparison between his own efforts and Beautrelet's in pursuit of the truth about the Hollow Needle, it was because the two of them possessed identical means of attaining their object, because Lupin had no elements of success different from those possessed by his adversary. The chances were alike. Now, with the same chances, the same elements of success, the same means, ten days had been enough for Lupin.
What were those elements, those means, those chances? They were reduced, when all was said, to a knowledge of the pamphlet published in 1815, a pamphlet which Lupin, no doubt, like Massiban, had found by accident and thanks to which he had succeeded in discovering the indispensable document in Marie Antoinette's book of hours.
Therefore, the pamphlet and the document were the only two fundamental facts upon which Lupin had relied. With these he had built up the whole edifice. He had had no extraneous aid. The study of the pamphlet and the study of the document—full stop—that was all.
Well, could not Beautrelet confine himself to the same ground? What was the use of an impossible struggle? What was the use of those vain investigations, in which, even supposing that he avoided the pitfalls that were multiplied under his feet, he was sure, in the end, to achieve the poorest of results?
His decision was clear and immediate; and, in adopting it, he had the happy instinct that he was on the right path. He began by leaving his Janson-de-Sailly schoolfellow, without indulging in useless recriminations, and, taking his portmanteau with him, went and installed himself, after much hunting about, in a small hotel situated in the very heart of Paris. This hotel he did not leave for days. At most, he took his meals at the table d'hote. The rest of the time, locked in his room, with the window-curtains close-drawn, he spent in thinking.
"Ten days," Arsene Lupin had said.
Beautrelet, striving to forget all that he had done and to remember only the elements of the pamphlet and the document, aspired eagerly to keep within the limit of those ten days. However the tenth day passed and the eleventh and the twelfth; but, on the thirteenth day, a gleam lit up his brain and, very soon, with the bewildering rapidity of those ideas which develop in us like miraculous plants, the truth emerged, blossomed, gathered strength. On the evening of the thirteenth day, he certainly did not know the answer to the problem, but he knew, to a certainty, one of the methods which Lupin had, beyond a doubt, employed.
It was a very simple method, hinging on this one question: Is there a link of any sort uniting all the more or less important historic events with which the pamphlet connects the mystery of the Hollow Needle?
The great diversity of these events made the question difficult to answer. Still, the profound examination to which Beautrelet applied himself ended by pointing to one essential characteristic which was common to them all. Each one of them, without exception, had happened within the boundaries of the old kingdom of Neustria, which correspond very nearly with those of our present-day Normandy. All the heroes of the fantastic adventure are Norman, or become Norman, or play their part in the Norman country.
What a fascinating procession through the ages! What a rousing spectacle was that of all those barons, dukes and kings, starting from such widely opposite points to meet in this particular corner of the world! Beautrelet turned the pages of history at haphazard: it was Rolf, or Rou, or Rollo, first Duke of Normandy, who was master of the secret of the Needle, according to the treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte!
It was William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy and King of England, whose bannerstaff was pierced like a needle!
It was at Rouen that the English burnt Joan of Arc, mistress of the secret!
And right at the beginning of the adventure, who is that chief of the Caleti who pays his ransom to Caesar with the secret of the Needle but the chief of the men of the Caux country, which lies in the very heart of Normandy?
The supposition becomes more definite. The field narrows. Rouen, the banks of the Seine, the Caux country: it really seems as though all roads lead in that direction. Two kings of France are mentioned more particularly, after the secret is lost by the Dukes of Normandy and their heirs, the kings of England, and becomes the royal secret of France; and these two are King Henry IV., who laid siege to Rouen and won the battle of Arques, near Dieppe, and Francis I., who founded the Havre and uttered that suggestive phrase:
"The kings of France carry secrets that often decide the fate of towns!"
Rouen, Dieppe, the Havre: the three angles of the triangle, the three large towns that occupy the three points. In the centre, the Caux country.
The seventeenth century arrives. Louis XIV. burns the book in which a person unknown reveals the truth. Captain de Larbeyrie masters a copy, profits by the secret thus obtained, steals a certain number of jewels and dies by the hand of highway murderers. Now at which spot is the ambush laid? At Gaillon! At Gaillon, a little town on the road leading from Havre, Rouen or Dieppe to Paris!
A year later, Louis XIV. buys a domain and builds the Chateau de l'Aiguille. Where does he select his site? In the Midlands of France, with the result that the curious are thrown off the scent and do not hunt about in Normandy.
Rouen, Dieppe, the Havre—the Cauchois triangle—everything lies there. On one side, the sea; on another, the Seine: on the third, the two valleys that lead from Rouen to Dieppe.
A light flashed across Beautrelet's mind. That extent of ground, that country of the high tablelands which run from the cliffs of the Seine to the cliffs of the Channel almost invariably constituted the field of operations of Arsene Lupin. For ten years, it was just this district which he parcelled out for his purposes, as though he had his haunt in the very centre of the region with which, the legend of the Hollow Needle was most closely connected.
The affair of Baron Cahorn?The Seven of Hearts, by Maurice Leblanc. II; Arsene Lupin in Prison. Or the banks of the Seine, between Rouen and the Havre.