Arsène Lupin intervenes
else—something ghastly!... Yes, look, look! She’s running towards the
stream ... towards the bridge where her father was killed.”
“What next?” came from Barnett with terrible calm.
He stood aside. The doctor and the gendarme were out of the window like
lightning, and he closed it behind them. Then, turning to the
magistrate, he said:
“Do you understand the whole business now, monsieur? Is it quite clear
to you? It was Thérèse Saint-Prix who, after trying vainly to rouse the
passion of Louis Lenormand beyond the passing fancy of a
flirtation—Thérèse Saint-Prix who, starved for years of all enjoyment
and luxury, was suddenly blinded by hatred of Cécile Lenormand. She was
too proud to believe that Louis Lenormand genuinely did not want her
love and was devoted to his wife. She thought that if once Cécile
Lenormand were out of the way, she would come into her own. So she
planned the appalling, cold-blooded murder of her rival, and—compassed
the death of her own father! In the night she sawed through the
bridge—there was no one to see her. So blinded was she by her passions
that next day, just before the tragedy would occur, she telephoned to
Louis Lenormand to tell him what she had done.
“Confronted by the utterly unexpected result of her strategy, she
immediately planned to throw the guilt on to Cécile Lenormand and so at
one stroke save herself and get her rival out of the way. It was with
this in view that she stole one of Cécile’s earrings and dropped it on
Sunday night into the ditch, and then told her tale of Cécile having
been jealous of the old professor. Then, here in this room, she was
struck with a more plausible idea altogether—she tried to get us all to
believe that the bridge had been sawed through with the object of
killing her and not her father at all!”
“How do you account for the boots and the saw?” asked the magistrate.
“The Lenormands and the Saint-Prix shared a tool-shed, their garden
implements were used in common.”
“How do you know all about Thérèse Saint-Prix?” asked Lenormand,
speaking for the first time.
“I helped him to find out,” said Cécile swiftly. “My dear, I realized
all along how you were placed in the matter, but my pride kept me from
speaking to you. I was afraid you would think I was being jealous, and
trying to find something to throw in your face because my parents tried
to prevent our marriage.”
“Then you forgive me?”
For answer she ran across the room to her husband, and her arms went
round his neck.
“But,” objected the magistrate, “that entry in the note-book of ‘the
last payment’—what did that mean?”
“Merely,” said Barnett, “that Professor Saint-Prix had told Louis
Lenormand that this was the last loan he would need, as his discovery
was on the verge of completion.”
“And that discovery——”
“Was something which would have revolutionized the dye industry.
Doubtless he was going eagerly up to the Villa Eméraude to show it to
his friend, and the stream washed it out of his dying grasp. What a
loss!”
“And where did Monsieur Lenormand drive that night?”
“He shall tell us himself.”
“I drove,” said the erstwhile prisoner, “into the country a little way.
I honestly could not say exactly where. I did so because it was very
hot and I couldn’t sleep. But no one could prove the truth of what I
say.”
At this point the gendarme came back, rather pale.
Barnett signed to him to speak.
“She is dead!” he faltered. “She threw herself down—there, where the
professor was killed! The doctor sent me to tell you.”
The magistrate looked grave.
“Perhaps, after all, it is for the best,” he said. “But for you,
monsieur,” he turned to Barnett, “there might have been a grave
miscarriage of justice.”
Béchoux stood awkwardly silent.
“Come, Béchoux,” said Barnett, clapping him on the shoulder, “let’s be
off and pack our things. I want to be back in the rue Laborde
to-night.”
“Well,” said Béchoux when they were alone together again, “I admit that
I do not see how you reconstructed the case so quickly.”
“Quite simple, my dear Béchoux—like all my little coups. What faith
that woman had in her husband!”
For a moment he was silent in admiration of his client.
“Still,” said Béchoux, “brilliant as you were, I fail to see where you
get anything out of this for yourself!”
Barnett’s gaze grew dreamy.
“That was a beautiful laboratory of the professor’s,” he said. “By the
way, Béchoux, do you happen to know the address of the biggest dye
concern in the country? I may be paying them a call in the near
future!”
Béchoux gave a curious gasp, rather like a slowly expiring balloon.
“Done me again!” he breathed. “Stolen the paper—the formula of the
secret process....”
Jim Barnett was moved to injured protest.
“Dear old chap,” he observed, “when it’s a question of rendering a
service to one’s fellow-men and to one’s country, what you designate as
theft becomes the sheerest heroism. It is the highest manifestation of
duty’s sacred fire, blazing within the breast of mere man.” He thumped
himself significantly on the chest. “And personally, when duty calls,
you will always find me ready, aye ready. Got that, Béchoux?”
But Béchoux was sunk in gloom.
“I wonder,” Barnett mused, “what they will call the new process? I
think a suitable name might be—but there, I won’t bore you with my
reflections, Béchoux. Only I can’t help feeling it would be rather
touching to take out a patent in the name of—Lupin!”
VIII
THE FATAL MIRACLE
Shortly after the suicide of Thérèse Saint-Prix, Inspector Béchoux,
primed with official information, was hastily despatched from police
headquarters on the mission of solving the Old Dungeon mystery. He left
Paris on an evening train and spent the night at Guéret in central
France. Next day he took a car on to the village of Mazurech, where his
first move was to visit the château—a vast, rambling structure, of
great age, built on a promontory in a loop of the river Creuse. He
found the owner, Monsieur Georges Cazévon, in residence.
Georges Cazévon was a rich manufacturer of about forty—handsome in a
florid style, and not without a certain animal attraction. He had a
bluff, hearty manner which commanded the respect of the neighborhood.
Thanks to influence, he was chairman of the County Council and a person
of considerable importance. Since the Old Dungeon was on his estate, he
was eager to take Béchoux there himself immediately.
They walked across the great park with its fine chestnuts, and came to
a ruined tower, all that was left of the ancient feudal castle of
Mazurech. This tower soared skywards right from the bottom of the
canyon where the Creuse crawled like a wounded snake along its
rock-strewn bed.
The opposite bank of the river was the property of the d’Alescar
family, and on it, about forty yards away from where Béchoux stood with
Cazévon, rose a rubble wall, glistening with moisture and forming a
kind of dam. Higher up it was surmounted by a shady terrace with a
balustrade along it, forming the end of a garden alley. It was a wild,
forlorn spot. Here it was that, on a morning ten days before, the young
Comte Jean d’Alescar had been found lying dead on a great rock. The
body apparently had no injuries other than those due to the ghastly
fall. There was a broken branch hanging down the trunk of one of the
trees on the terrace. It was easy to reconstruct the tragedy—the young
Comte had climbed out along the branch, it had snapped beneath his
weight, and he had fallen into the river. A clear case of death by
misadventure. There had been no hesitation in bringing in the verdict.
“But what on earth was the young Comte doing climbing that tree?”
Béchoux wanted to know.
Georges Cazévon was ready with the answer.
“He wanted to get a really close view from above of this dungeon. The
old castle is the cradle of the d’Alescar family, who lorded it here in
feudal times.” He added immediately: “I shan’t say anything more,
inspector. You know that you have been sent here at my urgent request.
The trouble is that ugly rumors have got about and I am being attacked
on all sides. That’s got to stop. So please make the fullest
investigations and question everyone. It is especially important that
you should call on Mademoiselle d’Alescar, the young Comte’s sister,
and the last surviving member of the family. Look me up again before
you leave Mazurech.”
Béchoux went about his work quickly. He explored round the foot of the
tower and then entered the inner court which was now a mass of fallen
masonry caused by the collapse of stairs and flooring. He then made his
way back into Mazurech, picking up stray bits of information from the
inhabitants. He called on the priest and on the mayor, and lunched at
the inn.
At two o’clock that afternoon, Béchoux stood in the narrow garden which
ran down to the terrace and was bisected by a small building of
farmhouse type, called the Manor—a nondescript structure in bad repair.
An old servant took his card into Mademoiselle d’Alescar and he was at
once shown into a low, plainly furnished room where he found the object
of his call in conversation with a man.
Both rose at his entrance, and, as the man turned towards him, Béchoux
recognized—Jim Barnett!
“Ah, you’ve come at last!” exclaimed Barnett joyously and held out his
hand. “When I read in my morning paper that you were cruising
Creuse-ward I leapt into my car and hastened to the scene of action so
that I might be ready at your service. In fact, I was here waiting for
you! Mademoiselle, may I introduce Inspector Béchoux, who has been put
in charge of the case by headquarters. With Béchoux at the helm you
need fear nothing. Probably by now he has the whole thing cut and
dried. Béchoux puts the sleuth in sleuthing—burglars frighten their
young with tales of Bogey Béchoux. Let him speak for himself!”
But Béchoux uttered not a word. He was flabbergasted. Barnett’s
presence—the last thing he had either expected or desired—floored him
completely. It was a case of Barnett morning, noon, and night. Barnett
popping up like a jack-in-the-box on every possible—and
impossible—occasion. Every time that fate brought the two together,
Béchoux found himself perforce submitting to Barnett’s accursed
coöperation. And where Jim Barnett helped others, he was always careful
to help himself. His hand went out to his fellow-men, but never drew
back empty!
In truth, there was little enough Béchoux could say anyway, for he was
still quite at sea and had found no clue in the Old Dungeon mystery—if
mystery it should prove.
As he remained silent, Barnett spoke again:
“The position, mademoiselle, is this: Inspector Béchoux, having by this
time, doubtless, examined the evidence and made up his own mind, is
here to ask if you will be so kind as to confirm the results of the
inquiries he has already made. Since we ourselves have only had the
briefest of conversation so far, would you be good enough to tell us
all you know about the terrible tragedy which resulted in the death of
your brother, Comte d’Alescar?”
Elizabeth d’Alescar was a tall girl, classically beautiful, her pallor
accentuated by her mourning. She kept her face turned away into the
shadow so that the two men saw only her delicate profile. It was with a
visible effort that she restrained her grief. She answered without
hesitation:
“I would rather have said nothing, have accused no one. But since it is
my painful duty to reveal all I know to you, I am ready to speak.”
It was Barnett who authoritatively usurped the law’s prerogative.
“My friend, Inspector Béchoux, would like to know the exact time at
which you last saw your brother alive.”
“At ten o’clock at night. We had dined together—our usual light-hearted