“I knew that, Monsieur le Président.”
“Impossible!”
“But for that, should I have put myself out? You now see my plan of campaign. On the one side, I am setting traps in which the murderer will be caught sooner or later. Pierre Leduc or Steinweg will deliver him into my hands. On the other side, I am on Arsène Lupin’s heels. Two of his agents are in my pay and he believes them to be his most devoted helpers. In addition to this, he is working for me, because he is pursuing the perpetrator of the threefold crime as I am. Only, he imagines that he is dishing me, whereas it is I who am dishing him. So I shall succeed, but on one condition. …”
“What is that?”
“That I am given free scope and allowed to act according to the needs of the moment, without troubling about the public, who are growing impatient, or my superiors, who are intriguing against me.”
“I agree.”
“In that case, Monsieur le Président, in a few days from this I shall be the victor … or I shall be dead.”
At Saint-Cloud. A little villa situated on one of the highest points of the upland, in an unfrequented road.
It was eleven o’clock at night. M. Lenormand left his car at Saint-Cloud and walked cautiously along the road. A shadow appeared.
“Is that you, Gourel?”
“Yes, chief.”
“Did you tell the brothers Doudeville that I was coming?”
“Yes, your room is ready, you can go to bed and sleep … unless they try to carry off Pierre Leduc tonight, which would not surprise me, considering the behavior of the fellow whom the Doudevilles saw.”
They walked across the garden, softly entered the house and went up to the first floor. The two brothers, Jean and Jacques Doudeville, were there.
“No news of Prince Sernine?” asked Lenormand.
“No, chief.”
“What about Pierre Leduc?”
“He spends the whole day lying flat on his back in his room on the ground-floor, or else in the garden. He never comes up to see us.”
“Is he better?”
“Much better. The rest has made a great change in his appearance.”
“Is he wholly devoted to Lupin?”
“To Prince Sernine, rather, for he does not suspect that the two are one and the same man. At least, I suppose so. One never knows, with him. He does not speak at all. Oh, he’s a queer fish! There’s only one person who has the gift of cheering him up, of making him talk and even laugh. That’s a young girl from Garches, to whom Prince Sernine introduced him. Geneviève Ernemont her name is. She has been here three times already … she was here today.” He added, jestingly, “I believe there’s a little flirting going on. … It’s like his highness Prince Sernine and Mrs. Kesselbach. … It seems he’s making eyes at her! … That devil of a Lupin!”
M. Lenormand did not reply. But it was obvious that all these details, to which he seemed to attach no importance, were noted in the recesses of his memory, to be used whenever he might need to draw the logical inferences from them. He lit a cigar, chewed it without smoking it, lit it again and dropped it.
He asked two or three more questions and then, dressed as he was, threw himself on his bed:
“If the least thing happens, let me be awakened. … If not, I shall sleep through the night. … Go to your posts, all of you.”
The others left the room.
An hour passed, two hours.
Suddenly, M. Lenormand felt someone touch him and Gourel said to him:
“Get up, chief; they have opened the gate.”
“One man or two?”
“I only saw one … the moon appeared just then … he crouched down against a hedge.”
“And the brothers Doudeville?”
“I sent them out by the back. They will cut off his retreat when the time comes.”
Gourel took M. Lenormand’s hand, led him downstairs and then into a little dark room:
“Don’t stir, chief; we are in Pierre Leduc’s dressing-room. I am opening the door of the recess in which his bed stands. … Don’t be afraid … he has taken his veronal as he does every evening … nothing can wake him. Come this way. … It’s a good hiding-place, isn’t it? … These are the curtains of his bed. … From here you can see the window and the whole side of the room between the window and the bed.”
The casement stood open and admitted a vague light, which became very precise at times, when the moon burst through her veil of clouds. The two men did not take their eyes from the empty window-frame, feeling certain that the event which they were awaiting would come from that side.
A slight, creaking noise …
“He is climbing the trellis,” whispered Gourel.
“Is it high?”
“Six feet or so.”
The creaking became more distinct.
“Go, Gourel,” muttered M. Lenormand, “find the Doudevilles, bring them back to the foot of the wall and bar the road to anyone who tries to get down this way.”
Gourel went. At the same moment, a head appeared at the level of the window. Then a leg was flung over the balcony. M. Lenormand distinguished a slenderly-built man, below the middle height, dressed in dark colours and without a hat.
The man turned and, leaning over the balcony, looked for a few seconds into space, as though to make sure that no danger threatened him. Then he stooped down and lay at full length on the floor. He appeared motionless. But soon M. Lenormand realized that the still blacker shadow which he formed against the surrounding darkness was coming forward, nearer.
It reached the bed.
M. Lenormand had an impression that he could hear the man’s breathing and, at the same time, that he could just see his eyes, keen, glittering eyes, which pierced the darkness like shafts of fire and which themselves could see through that same darkness.
Pierre Leduc gave a deep sigh and turned over.
A
