For four years, the public peace and the defence of property had been entrusted to Arsène Lupin. He saw that the law was carried out. He protected the innocent and pursued the guilty.
And what services he had rendered! Never was order less disturbed, never was crime discovered with greater certainty and rapidity. The reader need but take back his mind to the Denizou case, the robbery at the Crédit Lyonnais, the attack on the Orléans express, the murder of Baron Dorf, forming a series of unforeseen and overwhelming triumphs, of magnificent feats of prowess fit to compare with the most famous victories of the most renowned detectives.6
Not so very long before, in a speech delivered at the time of the fire at the Louvre and the capture of the incendiaries, Valenglay, the prime minister, had said, speaking in defence of the somewhat arbitrary manner in which M. Lenormand had acted on that occasion:
“With his great powers of discernment, his energy, his qualities of decision and execution, his unexpected methods, his inexhaustible resources, M. Lenormand reminds us of the only man who, if he were still alive, could hope to hold his own against him: I mean Arsène Lupin. M. Lenormand is an Arsène Lupin in the service of society.”
And, lo and behold, M. Lenormand was none other than Arsène Lupin!
That he was a Russian prince, who cared! Lupin was an old hand at such changes of personality as that. But chief detective! What a delicious irony! What a whimsical humor in the conduct of that extraordinary life!
M. Lenormand! … Arsène Lupin! …
People were now able to explain to themselves the apparently miraculous feats of intelligence which had quite recently bewildered the crowd and baffled the police. They understood how his accomplice had been juggled away in the middle of the Palais de Justice itself, in broad daylight and on the appointed day. Had he himself not said:
“My process is so ingenious and so simple. … How surprised people will be on the day when I am free to speak! ‘Is that all?’ I shall be asked. That is all; but it had to be thought of.”
It was, indeed, childishly simple: all you had to do was to be chief of the detective-service.
Well, Lupin was chief of the detective-service; and every police-officer obeying his orders had made himself the involuntary and unconscious accomplice of Arsène Lupin.
What a comedy! What admirable bluff! It was the monumental and consoling farce of these drab times of ours. Lupin in prison, Lupin irretrievably conquered was, in spite of himself, the great conqueror. From his cell he shone over Paris. He was more than ever the idol, more than ever the master.
When Arsène Lupin awoke next morning, in his room at the “Santé Palace,” as he at once nicknamed it, he had a very clear vision of the enormous sensation which would be produced by his arrest under the double name of Sernine and Lenormand and the double title of prince and chief of the detective-service.
He rubbed his hands and gave vent to his thoughts:
“A man can have no better companion in his loneliness than the approval of his contemporaries. O fame! The sun of all living men! …”
Seen by daylight, his cell pleased him even better than at night. The window, placed high up in the wall, afforded a glimpse of the branches of a tree, through which peeped the blue of the sky above. The walls were white. There was only one table and one chair, both fastened to the floor. But everything was quite nice and clean.
“Come,” he said, “a little rest-cure here will be rather charming. … But let us see to our toilet. … Have I all I want? … No. … In that case, ring twice for the chambermaid.”
He pressed the button of an apparatus beside the door, which released a signaling-disc in the corridor.
After a moment, bolts and bars were drawn outside, a key turned in the lock and a warder appeared.
“Hot water, please,” said Lupin.
The other looked at him with an air of mingled amazement and rage.
“Oh,” said Lupin, “and a bath-towel! By Jove, there’s no bath-towel!”
The man growled:
“You’re getting at me, aren’t you? You’d better be careful!”
He was going away, when Lupin caught him roughly by the arm:
“Here! A hundred francs if you’ll post a letter for me.”
He took out a hundred-franc note, which he had concealed during the search, and offered it to him.
“Where’s the letter?” said the warder, taking the money.
“Just give me a moment to write it.”
He sat down at the table, scribbled a few words in pencil on a sheet of paper, put it in an envelope and addressed the letter:
“To Monsieur S. B. 42,
“Poste Restante,
“Paris.”
The warder took the letter and walked away.
“That letter,” said Lupin to himself, “will reach destination as safely as if I delivered it myself. I shall have the reply in an hour at latest: just the time I want to take a good look into my position.”
He sat down on his chair and, in an undertone, summed up the situation as follows:
“When all is said and done, I have two adversaries to fight at the present moment. There is, first, society, which holds me and which I can afford to laugh at. Secondly, there is a person unknown, who does not hold me, but whom I am not inclined to laugh at in the very least. It is he who told the police that I was Sernine. It was he who guessed that I was M. Lenormand. It was he who locked the door of the underground passage and it was he who had me clapped into prison.”
Arsène Lupin reflected for a second and then continued:
“So, at long last, the struggle lies between him and me. And, to keep up that struggle, that is to say, to discover and get to the bottom of the Kesselbach case, here
