He passed through the tollgates, skirted the fortifications, went out again through the Porte Champerret and retraced his steps along the Route de la Revolte.
Would he enter the buildings at No. 3? Lupin eagerly hoped that he would, for that would have been a certain proof of his complicity with the Altenheim gang; but the man turned round and made for the Rue Delaizement, which he followed until he passed the Velodrome Buffalo.
On the left, opposite the cycling-track, between the public tennis-court and the booths that line the Rue Delaizement, stood a small detached villa, surrounded by a scanty garden. Leon Massier stopped, took out his keys, opened first the gate of the garden and then the door of the house and disappeared.
Lupin crept forward cautiously. He at once noticed that the block in the Route de la Revolte stretched back as far as the garden-wall. Coming still nearer, he saw that the wall was very high and that a coach-house rested against it at the bottom of the garden. The position of the buildings was such as to give him the certainty that his coach-house stood back to back with the coach-house in the inner yard of No. 3, which served as a lumber-room for the Broker.
Leon Massier, therefore, occupied a house adjoining the place in which the seven members of the Altenheim gang held their meetings. Consequently, Leon Massier was, in point of fact, the supreme leader who commanded that gang; and there was evidently a passage between the two coach-houses through which he communicated with his followers.
“I was right,” said Lupin. “Leon Massier and Louis de Malreich are one and the same man. The situation is much simpler than it was.”
“There is no doubt about that,” said Doudeville, “and everything will be settled in a few days.”
“That is to say, I shall have been stabbed in the throat.”
“What are you saying, governor? There’s an idea!”
“Pooh, who knows? I have always had a presentiment that that monster would bring me ill-luck.”
Thenceforth it became a matter of watching Malreich’s life in such a way that none of his movements went unobserved. This life was of the oddest, if one could believe the people of the neighborhood whom Doudeville questioned. “The bloke from the villa,” as they called him, had been living there for a few months only. He saw and received nobody. He was not known to keep a servant of any kind. And the windows, though they were left wide open, even at night, always remained dark and were never lit with the glow of a lamp or candle.
Moreover, Leon Massier most often went out at the close of day and did not come in again until very late … at dawn, said people who had come upon him at sunrise.
“And does anyone know what he does?” asked Lupin of his companion, when they next met.
“No, he leads an absolutely irregular existence. He sometimes disappears for several days together … or, rather, he remains indoors. When all is said, nobody knows anything.”
“Well, we shall know; and that soon.”
He was wrong. After a week of continuous efforts and investigations, he had learnt no more than before about that strange individual. The extraordinary thing that constantly happened was this, that, suddenly, while Lupin was following him, the man, who was ambling with short steps along the streets, without ever turning round or ever stopping, the man would vanish as if by a miracle. True, he sometimes went through houses with two entrances. But, at other times, he seemed to fade away in the midst of the crowd, like a ghost. And Lupin was left behind, petrified, astounded, filled with rage and confusion.
He at once hurried to the Rue Delaizement and stood on guard outside the villa. Minutes followed upon minutes, half-hour upon half-hour. A part of the night slipped away. Then, suddenly, the mysterious man hove in sight. What could he have been doing?
“An express message for you, governor,” said Doudeville, at eight o’clock one evening, as he joined him in the Rue Delaizement.
Lupin opened the envelope. Mrs. Kesselbach implored him to come to her aid. It appeared that two men had taken up their stand under her windows, at night, and one of them had said:
“What luck, we’ve dazzled them completely this time! So it’s understood; we shall strike the blow tonight.”
Mrs. Kesselbach thereupon went downstairs and discovered that the shutter in the pantry did not fasten, or, at least, that it could be opened from the outside.
“At last,” said Lupin, “it’s the enemy himself who offers to give battle. That’s a good thing! I am tired of marching up and down under Malreich’s windows.”
“Is he there at this moment?”
“No, he played me one of his tricks again in Paris, just as I was about to play him one of mine. But, first of all, listen to me, Doudeville. Go and collect ten of our men and bring them to the Rue des Vignes. Look here, bring Marco and Jérôme, the messenger. I have given them a holiday since the business at the Palace Hotel: let them come this time. Daddy Charolais and his son ought to be mounting guard by now. Make your arrangements with them, and at half-past eleven, come and join me at the corner of the Rue des Vignes and the Rue Raynouard. From there we will watch the house.”
Doudeville went away. Lupin waited for an hour longer, until that quiet thoroughfare, the Rue Delaizement, was quite deserted, and then, seeing that Leon Massier did not return, he made up his mind and went up to the villa.
There was no one in sight. … He took a run and jumped on the stone ledge that supported the railings of the garden. A few minutes later, he was inside.
His plan was to force the
