The Blonde Lady Part 57

"For the last time, Lupin, I call on you to surrender!"

"Sergeant Folenfant, you have not the smallest intention of killing me; at the most you mean to wound me, you're so afraid of my escaping! And supposing that, by accident, the wound should be mortal? Oh, think of your remorse, wretched man, of your blighted old age ..."

The shot went off.

Lupin staggered, clung for a moment to the overturned boat, then let go and disappeared.

It was just three o'clock when these events happened. At six o'clock precisely, as he had declared, Holmlock Shears, clad in a pair of trousers too short and a jacket too tight for him, which he had borrowed from an inn-keeper at Neuilly, and wearing a cap and a flannel s.h.i.+rt with a silk cord and ta.s.sels, entered the boudoir in the Rue Murillo, after sending word to M. and Mme. d'Imblevalle to ask for an interview.

They found him walking up and down. And he looked to them so comical in his queer costume that they had a difficulty in suppressing their inclination to laugh. With a pensive air and a bent back, he walked, like an automaton, from the window to the door and the door to the window, taking each time the same number of steps and turning each time in the same direction.

He stopped, took up a knick-knack, examined it mechanically and then resumed his walk.

At last, planting himself in front of them, he asked:

"Is mademoiselle here?"

"Yes, in the garden, with the children."

"Monsieur le baron, as this will be our final conversation, I should like Mlle. Demun to be present at it."

"So you decidedly...?"

"Have a little patience, monsieur. The truth will emerge plainly from the facts which I propose to lay before you with the greatest possible precision."

"Very well. Suzanne, do you mind...?"

Mme. d'Imblevalle rose and returned almost at once, accompanied by Alice Demun. Mademoiselle, looking a little paler than usual, remained standing, leaning against a table and without even asking to know why she had been sent for.

Shears appeared not to see her and, turning abruptly toward M. d'Imblevalle, made his statement in a tone that admitted of no reply:

"After an inquiry extending over several days, and although certain events for a moment altered my view, I will repeat what I said from the first, that the Jewish lamp was stolen by some one living in this house."

"The name?"

"I know it."

"Your evidence?"

"The evidence which I have is enough to confound the culprit."

"It is not enough that the culprit should be confounded. He must restore...."

"The Jewish lamp? It is in my possession!"

"The opal necklace? The snuff-box?..."

"The opal necklace, the snuff-box, in short everything that was stolen on the second occasion is in my possession."

Shears loved this dry, claptrap way of announcing his triumphs.

As a matter of fact, the baron and his wife seemed stupefied and looked at him with a silent curiosity which was, in itself, the highest praise.

He next summed up in detail all that he had done during those three days. He told how he had discovered the picture-book, wrote down on a sheet of paper the sentence formed by the letters which had been cut out, then described Bresson's expedition to the bank of the Seine and his suicide and, lastly, the struggle in which he, Shears, had just been engaged with Lupin, the wreck of the boat and Lupin's disappearance.

When he had finished, the baron said, in a low voice:

"Nothing remains but that you should reveal the name of the thief. Whom do you accuse?"

"I accuse the person who cut out the letters from this alphabet and communicated, by means of those letters, with a.r.s.ene Lupin."

"How do you know that this person's correspondent was a.r.s.ene Lupin?"

"From Lupin himself."

He held out a sc.r.a.p of moist and crumpled paper. It was the page which Lupin had torn from his note-book in the boat, and on which he had written the sentence.

"And observe," said Shears, in a gratified voice, "that there was nothing to compel him to give me this paper and thus make himself known.

It was a mere schoolboy prank on his part, which gave me the information I wanted."

"What information?" asked the baron. "I don't see...."

Shears copied out the letters and figures in pencil:

C D E H N O P R Z E O--237

"Well?" said M. d'Imblevalle. "That's the formula which you have just shown us yourself."

"No. If you had turned this formula over and over, as I have done, you would have seen at once that it contains two more letters than the first, an E and an O."

"As a matter of fact, I did not notice...."

"Place these two letters beside the C and H which remained over from the word _Repondez_, and you will see that the only possible word is 'eCHO.'"

"Which means...?"

"Which means the _echo de France_, Lupin's newspaper, his own organ, the one for which he reserves his official communications. 'Send reply to the _echo de France_, agony column, No. 237.' That was the key for which I had hunted so long and with which Lupin was kind enough to supply me.

I have just come from the office of the _echo de France_."

"And what have you found?"

"I have found the whole detailed story of the relations between a.r.s.ene Lupin and ... his accomplice."

And Shears spread out seven newspapers, opened at the fourth page, and picked out the following lines:

1. ARS. LUP. Lady impl. protect. 540.

2. 540. Awaiting explanations. A. L.