Arsène Lupin intervenes
during the interview, continued silent, partly in protest against
Barnett’s interference in the case, and partly because he was totally
bewildered by the turn events were taking. His taciturnity only
encouraged the loquacious Barnett.
“Yes, yes, Béchoux,” he said reflectively, “I can easily understand
your being puzzled. It’s a matter for deep thought. The lady’s
statement had a good deal in it, but it was compounded of such a
mixture of the possible with the impossible, the rational with the
fantastic, that it needs careful sifting if we are to make use of it.
For instance, on the face of it, young d’Alescar’s actions seem pure
fantasy. If the unlucky youth got to the top of the tower—and, contrary
to your own private belief, I rather think he did get there—then it was
due to that unimaginable miracle he had hoped and prayed for—a miracle
whose nature we are as yet unable to conceive.
“The problem we are up against is—how could the boy, within the space
of two hours, invent a means of climbing the tower, put his scheme into
execution, and climb down again, only to be hurled into the abyss by a
bullet ... which did not hit him! That’s the culminating impossibility,
that he went to his death through a shot which never touched him—that
seems to me to have been a miracle from hell!”
Barnett and Béchoux met again that evening at the inn, but dined apart.
During the next two days they only saw each other at mealtimes. Béchoux
was busy making investigations and inquiries throughout the
neighborhood. Barnett, like one of the lilies of the field, took root
on a grassy slope some way beyond the terrace, from which spot he had a
good view of the Old Dungeon and the river Creuse. He confined his
activities to fishing, smoking, and reflection. The heart of a mystery
is to be plucked out by sheer divination rather than by fevered
probing. So Barnett sat there, angling with his rod for the fish in the
river, and with his mind for the nature of the miracle with which Fate
had favored Jean d’Alescar.
On the third day, however, he bestirred himself and went off to Guéret
in the manner of a man with a definite object. And the day after that
he ran into Béchoux, who told him that he had now finished his
investigation.
“So have I,” said Barnett. “If you’re going back to Paris, I’ll give
you a lift in my car.”
“Thanks,” said Béchoux. “In about half an hour I am going up to see
Monsieur Cazévon.”
“Right, I’ll meet you at the Château,” said Barnett. “I’m fed to the
teeth with this place, aren’t you?”
He paid his bill at the inn, and drove to the gates of the Château.
Leaving his car in the road, he strolled through the park, and when he
got to the house presented his card. Underneath his own name he had
written the words: “Working in collaboration with Inspector Béchoux.”
He was shown into a vast hall, which spread over the ground floor of an
entire wing. Stags’ heads looked down from the walls, which were hung
with weapons and trophies of every description. Here he was joined by
Georges Cazévon.
“My colleague, Inspector Béchoux,” said Barnett, “is to meet me here.
We have been working together on the case, and we are to-day returning
to Paris.”
“And what opinion has Inspector Béchoux formed as a result of his
investigation?” asked Georges Cazévon, a shade eagerly.
“Oh, he has definitely made up his mind that there is nothing,
absolutely nothing to justify any fresh theory of the case. He is
satisfied that the rumors set afloat are quite groundless.”
“And Mademoiselle d’Alescar?”
Barnett shrugged his shoulders.
“According to Inspector Béchoux her mind is almost unhinged by her
bereavement, so that no reliance can be placed on anything she says at
present.”
“And you agree with Inspector Béchoux?”
“I?” Barnett raised his eyes and lowered them, his whole attitude one
of abject humility. “I am nothing but a humble assistant. I have no
views of my own at all!”
He began wandering aimlessly about the hall, looking at the glass cases
full of rifles and shotguns. These exhibits seemed to interest him
considerably.
“A fine collection, aren’t they?” said Georges Cazévon at his elbow.
“Magnificent!”
“Are you an enthusiast?”
“I have a great admiration for good marksmanship. I see by these cups
and certificates that you must be a remarkable shot. Let’s
see—Disciples de Saint Hubert, Creuse Sporting Club—oh, yes, that’s
what they were telling me about you yesterday when I was in Guéret.”
“Is the case much talked about at Guéret?”
“Oh, very little. But the accuracy of your shooting is proverbial among
the townsfolk!”
Barnett took up a gun, balancing it casually in his hands.
“Careful!” said Cazévon sharply. “That’s a service rifle. It’s loaded.”
“Really?” observed Barnett with polite interest. “Is that in case of
burglars?”
Cazévon smiled. “I really keep it handy for poachers. I should never
shoot to kill, though. A broken leg would be all I should aim for!”
“And would you shoot from one of these windows?”
“Oh, poachers don’t come so close to the Château!”
“That almost seems a pity,” said Barnett thoughtfully, and opened a
very narrow window—almost a loophole—which shed a ray of light into one
corner of the hall.
“Fancy that now!” he exclaimed. “Looking through the trees, one can see
a section of the Old Dungeon—right across the park. Isn’t that the
portion of the ruin which overlooks the river, Monsieur Cazévon?”
“Just about, I should say.”
“Why, yes, it is!” cried Barnett excitedly. “I recognize that tuft of
flowers growing between two stones. Isn’t the air wonderfully clear?
Can you see that yellow flower, looking along the bore?”
He had raised the gun to his shoulder as he spoke, and without
hesitating a moment, he fired. The yellow flower disappeared, while a
puff of smoke hung in the still air.
Georges Cazévon made a gesture of annoyance. His displeasure was
manifest. This “humble assistant” was an incredibly skilled marksman,
and, anyway, it was cool cheek his letting off a gun like that in the
house!
“I believe your servants are at the other end of the Château?” said
Barnett. “Then they won’t have heard the noise I made. But I’m sorry I
did that—it must have startled Mademoiselle d’Alescar, the sound being
so painfully associated for her with the memory——” He broke off.
Georges Cazévon smiled sardonically.
“Then does Mademoiselle d’Alescar still believe there is some
connection between the shot that was heard that morning and her
brother’s death?”
Barnett nodded.
“I wonder where she got the idea?”
“Where I got it myself a minute ago. It’s a curiously vivid picture—the
unknown watcher in ambush at this window, while Jean d’Alescar was
hanging on half-way down the Dungeon wall!”
“But d’Alescar died of a fall!” protested Cazévon.
“Quite so,” said Barnett, with deadly calm, “of a fall. And the reason
for his fall was, of course, the sudden crumbling of some projection or
shelf to which he was clinging with both hands at the time!”
Cazévon scowled at the urbane Barnett.
“I didn’t know,” he said, “that Mademoiselle d’Alescar had been so—so
definite in her statements to people. Why, this constitutes a direct
accusation!”
“Yes, a—direct—accusation,” repeated Barnett slowly, so that the words
seemed to hang in the air as the smoke from the gun had done a few
moments before.
Cazévon stared at him. The calm self-assurance and decisive manner of
this “humble assistant” rather astonished him. He even began to wonder
if this detective might not have come to the Château in the rôle of
aggressor. For the conversation, begun so casually and conventionally,
was now rapidly turning into an attack on Cazévon himself!
He sat down rather heavily, and asked:
“Why, according to Mademoiselle d’Alescar, was her brother climbing
that wall?”
“To recover the two hundred thousand francs which the old Comte
d’Alescar hid in the place which is marked with a cross on the map you
have been shown.”
“But I never for a moment believed in that yarn,” exclaimed Cazévon.
“Even presuming that the Comte d’Alescar had managed to raise such a
sum, why should he have concealed it instead of immediately handing it
over to my father?”
“Quite a valid objection,” admitted Barnett. “Unless the hidden
treasure happened not to be a sum of money at all!”
“But what else could it be?”
“That I don’t know. We shall have to use our imaginations a bit.”
Georges Cazévon made a movement of impatience.
“You can be quite sure that Elizabeth d’Alescar and her brother long
ago exhausted the possible alternatives!”
“How do you know? They are not professionals like myself.”
“Even a hypersensitized intelligence,” sneered Cazévon, “cannot evolve
something from nothing!”
“Yes, it can—sometimes! For example, do you know a man called Gréaume,
who is the Guéret newsagent, and was at one time an accountant in your
factory?”
“Certainly I know him. A very worthy fellow.”
“Well, Gréaume is prepared to swear that Jean d’Alescar’s father called
on your own father the very next day after he had drawn his two hundred
thousand francs from the bank.”
“Well?” snapped Cazévon.
“Isn’t it only logical to suppose that the money was handed over to
your father on that occasion, and that it was the receipt which was
temporarily concealed in some cranny of the Dungeon?”
Georges Cazévon gave a sudden start, then controlled himself.
“Mr.—uh—Barnett, do you realize what you are insinuating? It’s an
insult to my father’s memory!”
“An insult! I don’t follow you!” said Barnett innocently.
“If my father had received that money he would most certainly have
acknowledged the fact.”
“Why should he? He was under no obligation to tell his neighbors that
some one had paid him back a private loan!”
Georges Cazévon’s fist came down with a bang on his desk.
“But if that money had been paid him, how do you explain that a
fortnight later, just a few days after his former debtor’s death, he
was taking possession of the Mazurech estate?”
“Yet that is exactly what he did!”
“You must be crazy! There’s absolutely no ground for suggesting such a
thing. Even granting that my father was capable of demanding to be paid
what he had already received, he would never have done it, because he
would have known that the receipt could be produced!”
“Perhaps he knew,” suggested Barnett diffidently, “that its existence
was a secret and that the heirs were in ignorance of both loan and
repayment. And since he had set his heart on owning this place and had,
so they tell me, sworn he would get it, he was tempted and fell.”
“But no one would hide a receipt away where it could never be found.”
“Remember that the old Comte died of cerebral congestion. During his
last days he was very queer. His mind reasoned imperfectly. He was
ashamed of having borrowed that money. He was ashamed of the receipt,
yet dared not destroy it. So he evolved a tortuous manner of
concealment, with an equally tortuous clew.”
Gradually Barnett was putting a completely different complexion on the
whole case. Georges Cazévon’s father was now appearing in the light of
a rogue and blackguard. Cazévon himself, pale and shaking, stood with
clenched fists, impotent with fear and rage, glaring at the immovable
Barnett. The audacity of this “underling” completely unnerved him.
“I protest!” he stammered. “You have no right to jump to these—these
abominable conclusions!”
“Believe me,” said Barnett, “I never leap before I look. All my
allegations are founded on fact.”
Georges Cazévon darted a hunted look over his shoulder. He felt as if
some unseen enemy were closing in on him. In a high, unnatural voice he
cried:
“Lies! all lies! You have no proof. To prove that my father ever did