The Blonde Lady Part 54

As a matter of fact, her features underwent no change whatever; nothing revealed the effort of a lie.

"You have been told," he said, irritably. "If not, you would at least have started.... Ah, you are cleverer than I thought! But why pretend?"

He took the picture-book, which he had placed on a table close at hand, and, opening it at the cut page:

"Can you tell me," he asked, "in what order I am to arrange the letters missing here, so that I may understand the exact purport of the note which you sent to Bresson four days before the theft of the Jewish Lamp?"

"In what order?... Bresson?... The theft of the Jewish Lamp?"

She repeated the words, slowly, as though to make out their meaning.

He insisted:

"Yes, here are the letters you used ... on this sc.r.a.p of paper. What were you saying to Bresson?"

"The letters I used...? What was I saying to...?"

Suddenly she burst out laughing:

"I see! I understand! I am an accomplice in the theft! There is a M. Bresson who stole the Jewish Lamp and killed himself. And I am the gentleman's friend! Oh, how amusing!"

"Then whom did you go to see yesterday evening, on the second floor of a house in the Avenue des Ternes?"

"Whom? Why, my dressmaker, Mlle. Langeais! Do you mean to imply that my dressmaker and my friend M. Bresson are one and the same person?"

Shears began to doubt, in spite of all. It is possible to counterfeit almost any feeling in such a way as to put another person off: terror, joy, anxiety; but not indifference, not happy and careless laughter.

However, he said:

"One last word. Why did you accost me at the Gare du Nord the other evening? And why did you beg me to go back at once without busying myself about the robbery?"

"Oh, you're much too curious, Mr. Shears," she replied, still laughing in the most natural way. "To punish you, I will tell you nothing and, in addition, you shall watch the patient while I go to the chemist....

There's an urgent prescription to be made up.... I must hurry!"

She left the room.

"I have been tricked," muttered Shears. "I've not only got nothing out of her, but I have given myself away."

And he remembered the case of the blue diamond and the cross-examination to which he had subjected Clotilde Destange. Mademoiselle had encountered him with the same serenity as the blonde lady and he felt that he was again face to face with one of those creatures who, protected by a.r.s.ene Lupin and under the direct action of his influence, preserved the most inscrutable calmness amid the very agony of danger.

"Shears.... Shears...."

It was Wilson calling him. He went to the bed and bent over him:

"What is it, old chap? Feeling bad?"

Wilson moved his lips, but was unable to speak. At last, after many efforts, he stammered out:

"No ... Shears ... it wasn't she ... it can't have been...."

"What nonsense are you talking now? I tell you that it was she! It's only when I'm in the presence of a creature of Lupin's, trained and drilled by him, that I lose my head and behave so foolishly.... She now knows the whole story of the alb.u.m.... I bet you that Lupin will be told in less than an hour. Less than an hour? What am I talking about? This moment, most likely! The chemist, the urgent prescription: humbug!"

Without a further thought of Wilson, he rushed from the room, went down the Avenue de Messine and saw Mademoiselle enter a chemist's shop. She came out, ten minutes later, carrying two or three medicine-bottles wrapped up in white paper. But, when she returned up the avenue, she was accosted by a man who followed her, cap in hand and with an obsequious air, as though he were begging.

She stopped, gave him an alms and then continued on her way.

"She spoke to him," said the Englishman to himself.

It was an intuition rather than a certainty, but strong enough to induce him to alter his tactics. Leaving the girl, he set off on the track of the sham beggar.

They arrived in this way, one behind the other, on the Place Saint-Ferdinand; and the man hovered long round Bresson's house, sometimes raising his eyes to the second-floor windows and watching the people who entered the house.

At the end of an hour's time, he climbed to the top of a tram-car that was starting for Neuilly. Shears climbed up also and sat down behind the fellow, at some little distance, beside a gentleman whose features were concealed by the newspaper which he was reading. When they reached the fortifications, the newspaper was lowered, Shears recognized Ganimard and Ganimard, pointing to the fellow, said in his ear:

"It's our man of last night, the one who followed Bresson. He's been hanging round the square for an hour."

"Nothing new about Bresson?"

"Yes, a letter arrived this morning addressed to him."

"This morning? Then it must have been posted yesterday, before the writer knew of Bresson's death."

"Just so. It is with the examining magistrate, but I can tell you the exact words: 'He accepts no compromise. He wants everything, the first thing as well as those of the second business. If not, he will take steps.' And no signature," added Ganimard. "As you can see, those few lines won't be of much use to us."

"I don't agree with you at all, M. Ganimard: on the contrary, I consider them very interesting."

"And why, bless my soul?"

"For reasons personal to myself," said Shears, with the absence of ceremony with which he was accustomed to treat his colleague.

The tram stopped at the terminus in the Rue du Chateau. The man climbed down and walked away quietly. Shears followed so closely on his heels that Ganimard took alarm:

"If he turns round, we are done."

"He won't turn round now."

"What do you know about it?"

"He is an accomplice of a.r.s.ene Lupin's and the fact that an accomplice of Lupin's walks away like that, with his hands in his pockets, proves, in the first place, that he knows he's followed, and in the second, that he's not afraid."

"Still, we're running him pretty hard!"

"No matter, he can slip through our fingers in a minute, if he wants.

He's too sure of himself."

"Come, come; you're getting at me! There are two cyclist police at the door of that cafe over there. If I decide to call on them and to tackle our friend, I should like to know how he's going to slip through our fingers."

"Our friend does not seem much put out by that contingency. And he's calling on them himself!"