Suddenly, he started and snatched up the mirror. The monogram consisted of two letters interlaced, an “L” and an “M.”
An “L” and an “M!”
“Louis de Malreich,” he said to himself, with a shudder.
He turned to Dolores:
“Where does this mirror come from? Whose is it? It is important that I should …”
She took it from him and looked at it:
“I don’t know. … I never saw it before … a servant, perhaps. …”
“A servant, no doubt,” he said, “but it is very odd … it is one of those coincidences. …”
At that moment, Geneviève entered by the other door, and without seeing Lupin, who was hidden by a screen, at once exclaimed:
“Why, there’s your glass, Dolores! … So you have found it, after making me hunt for it all this time! … Where was it?” And the girl went away saying, “Oh, well, I’m very glad it’s found! … How upset you were! … I will go and tell them at once to stop looking for it. …”
Lupin had not moved. He was confused, and tried in vain to understand. Why had Dolores not spoken the truth? Why had she not at once said whose the mirror was?
An idea flashed across his mind; and he asked, more or less at random:
“Do you know Louis de Malreich?”
“Yes,” she said, watching him, as though striving to guess the thoughts that beset him.
He rushed toward her, in a state of intense excitement:
“You know him? Who was he? Who is he? Who is he? And why did you not tell me? Where have you known him? Speak … answer. … I implore you. …”
“No,” she said.
“But you must, you must. … Think! Louis de Malreich! The murderer! The monster! … Why did you not tell me?”
She, in turn, placed her hands on Lupin’s shoulders and, in a firm voice, declared:
“Listen, you must never ask me, because I shall never tell. … It is a secret which I shall take with me to the grave. … Come what may, no one will ever know, no one in the wide world, I swear it!”
He stood before her for some minutes, anxiously, with a confused brain.
He remembered Steinweg’s silence and the old man’s terror when Lupin asked him to reveal the terrible secret. Dolores also knew and she also refused to speak.
He went out without a word.
The open air, the sense of space, did him good. He passed out through the park-wall and wandered long over the country. And he soliloquized aloud:
“What does it mean? What is happening? For months and months, fighting hard and acting, I have been pulling the strings of all the characters that are to help me in the execution of my plans; and, during this time, I have completely forgotten to stoop over them and see what is going on in their hearts and brains. I do not know Pierre Leduc, I do not know Geneviève, I do not know Dolores. … And I have treated them as so many jumping-jacks, whereas they are live persons. And today I am stumbling over obstacles.”
He stamped his foot and cried:
“Over obstacles that do not exist! What do I care for the psychological state of Geneviève, of Pierre? … I will study that later, at Veldenz, when I have secured their happiness. But Dolores … she knew Malreich and said nothing! … Why? What relation united them? Was she afraid of him? Is she afraid that he will escape from prison and come to revenge himself for an indiscretion on her part?”
At night, he went to the chalet which he had allotted to his own use at the end of the park and dined in a very bad temper, storming at Octave, who waited on him and who was always either too slow or too fast:
“I’m sick of it, leave me alone. … You’re doing everything wrong today. … And this coffee. … It’s not fit to drink.”
He pushed back his cup half-full and, for two hours, walked about the park, sifting the same ideas over and over again. At last, one suggestion took definite shape within his mind:
“Malreich has escaped from prison. He is terrifying Mrs. Kesselbach. By this time, he already knows the story of the mirror from her. …”
Lupin shrugged his shoulders:
“And tonight he’s coming to pull my leg, I suppose! I’m talking nonsense. The best thing I can do is to go to bed.”
He went to his room, undressed and got into bed. He fell asleep at once, with a heavy sleep disturbed by nightmares. Twice he woke and tried to light his candle and twice fell back, as though stunned by a blow.
Nevertheless, he heard the hours strike on the village clock, or rather he thought that he heard them strike, for he was plunged in a sort of torpor in which he seemed to retain all his wits.
And he was haunted by dreams, dreams of anguish and terror. He plainly heard the sound of his window opening. He plainly, through his closed eyelids, through the thick darkness, saw a form come toward the bed.
And the form bent over him.
He made the incredible effort needed to raise his eyelids and look … or, at least, he imagined that he did. Was he dreaming? Was he awake? He asked himself the question in despair.
A further sound. …
He took up the box of matches by his bedside:
“Let’s have a light on it,” he said, with a great sense of elation.
He struck a match and lit the candle.
Lupin felt the perspiration stream over his skin, from head to foot, while his heart ceased beating, stopped with terror. The man was there.
Was it possible? No, no … and yet he saw. … Oh, the fearsome sight! … The man, the monster, was there. …
“He shall not … he shall not,” stammered Lupin madly.
The man, the monster was there, dressed in black, with a mask on his face and with his felt hat pulled down over his fair hair.
“Oh, I am dreaming. … I am dreaming!” said Lupin, laughing. “It’s a nightmare! …”
Exerting all his strength and all his willpower, he tried to make a movement, one movement, to drive away the vision.
He
