Arsène Lupin intervenes
such a thing you would—why, you would have to go and look for evidence
at the top of the Old Dungeon!”
“Well,” contested Barnett, “Jean d’Alescar managed to get there, didn’t
he?”
“He didn’t! I tell you he didn’t! I tell you it’s impossible to scale a
ninety-foot tower all in two hours. It’s beyond human power!”
“All the same, Jean d’Alescar accomplished this—impossibility,” pursued
Barnett doggedly.
“But how?” asked Georges Cazévon, on a note of sheer exasperation. “Do
you expect me to believe he went up on a witch’s broomstick?”
“Not that,” said Barnett gently. “He used a rope!”
Cazévon laughed long and loud, but quite unmirthfully.
“A rope? You’re crazy. Of course, I often saw the boy shooting his
arrows in the vain hope that one day his rope would catch hold. Poor
devil! Miracles like that never happen nowadays. And anyway, two hours!
Oh, it’s out of the question. Besides, the rope would have been found
hanging from the tower, or lying on the rocks of the Creuse after the
tragedy. Whereas I am told it is at the Manor.”
With unshakable calm Barnett rejoined:
“Quite. But it wasn’t that rope he used, you see.”
“Then what rope did he use?” asked Cazévon, turning a gulp into a
laugh. “You can’t expect me to take all this seriously, you know. The
Comte Jean d’Alescar, carrying the magic rope, came out on to the
terrace of his garden at daybreak. He muttered the one word
‘Abracadabra,’ and lo! his rope uncoiled and rose to the top of the
tower, so that he might promptly ascend. The good old Indian
rope-trick—retired colonels write to the papers every day and solemnly
aver it’s a miracle!”
“And yet you, too, monsieur,” said Barnett, “are driven to conjure up a
miracle;—just like Jean d’Alescar—and like myself. There is no other
explanation, of course. But the miracle was the opposite of what you
imagine—it did not work from bottom to top, as would seem more usual
and probable, but from top to bottom!”
Cazévon made a feeble attempt to joke.
“A kind Providence, eh, throwing a life-line to help a struggling
mortal?”
“Why call Providence into it?” asked Barnett. “No need for that. This
miracle was merely one of those which Chance may perform at any time
nowadays.”
“Chance?”
“Remember that Chance knows no impossibilities. Chance is the unknown
factor—Chance the disturber, the malicious, capricious visitant,
swooping to make fantastic moves on the chessboard of human existence,
forever proving the old platitude that truth is stranger than fiction!
Chance is to-day the great worker of miracles. And the miracle I have
in mind is not so wonderful, really, in an age when meteors are not the
only bolts from the blue, so to speak.”
“Do the skies rain ropes?” asked Cazévon sardonically.
“Certainly, ropes among other things. The ocean-bed is strewn with
things dropped overboard by the ships that sail the seas!”
“There are no ships in the sky,” observed Cazévon.
“Oh, yes, there are,” Barnett contradicted him, “only we don’t think of
them as that. We call them balloons, and aeroplanes, and—after all,
airships! They ride the air as ships ride the ocean, and any number of
things may fall or be thrown overboard from them! Suppose one of these
things is a coil of rope, which slips over the battlements of the Old
Dungeon, and there you have the solution of the mystery.”
“A nice, convenient explanation!”
“Pardon me, an extremely well-founded explanation. If you glance
through the local papers for the past week, as I did yesterday, you
will see that a balloon flew over this part of the country on the night
preceding Jean d’Alescar’s death. It was travelling from north to
south, and ballast was heaved overboard ten miles north of Guéret. The
obvious inference is that a coil of rope was also thrown out, that one
end got caught in a tree on the terrace, and to free it Jean d’Alescar
had to break off a branch. He then went down to the terrace, tied the
two ends of the rope together, and climbed up to the tower. Not an easy
thing to do, but possible for a lad of his years.”
“And then?” came in a whisper from Cazévon, whose face had grown
suddenly gray.
“Then,” Barnett continued, “someone who was standing here, at this
window, and who was a remarkable shot, observed the boy hanging
suspended in midair, took aim at the rope, and—severed it!”
Cazévon made a choking noise.
“That is your explanation of the—accident?”
Barnett took no notice of the interruption, but went on:
“Afterwards, this person hurried to the bank of the Creuse and searched
the dead body to get the receipt. He took hold of the dangling rope,
and hauled it down—then threw the highly compromising piece of evidence
into a neighboring well—not a very safe hiding-place!”
The accusation had shifted to Georges Cazévon himself—a kind of guilty
legacy from the man’s dead father. The past was being linked up with
the present—the net was closing in.
With a convulsive effort, Cazévon shook himself, as if to rid himself
of Barnett’s odious presence.
“I’ve had enough of your lies!” he shouted. “The whole thing’s
ridiculous invention on your part—you’re simply making this up to
terrorize me. I shall tell Monsieur Béchoux that I have had you thrown
out as a common blackmailer. That’s what you are, a blackmailer! But
you won’t get any change out of me!”
“If I had come here to blackmail you,” said Barnett blithely, “I should
have started off by producing my proofs.”
Blind with rage, Cazévon screamed:
“Your proofs! What proofs have you got? Nothing but a cock-and-bull
story. You haven’t a single proof of any kind—how could you have? Why,
there’s only one proof that would be worth anything—only one. And if
you can’t produce that, then your whole story collapses at once, and
you’re a fool as well as a knave!”
“And what is that proof?” asked Barnett, still smiling.
“The receipt, of course! The receipt signed by my father!”
“Here it is,” said Barnett, holding out a sheet of stamped paper,
frayed and yellow at the edges. “This is your father’s handwriting,
isn’t it? Pretty explicit, this document: ‘I, the undersigned, Auguste
Cazévon, hereby acknowledge the receipt from the Comte d’Alescar of the
sum of two hundred thousand francs previously loaned to him by me, and
I hereby declare that this repayment renders null and void any and
every claim of mine to the Château and lands of Mazurech.’
“The date,” continued Barnett, “corresponds to that mentioned by
Gréaume. The receipt is signed. Therefore it is indisputably genuine,
and you, Cazévon, must have known about it from your father’s own lips
or from the private papers he left when he died. The discovery of this
document meant disgrace for your father and yourself, and the loss of
the Château, for which you felt all your father’s attachment. That’s
why you killed d’Alescar!”
“If I had killed him,” faltered Cazévon, “I should have removed the
receipt from his body.”
“You had a good look for it,” said Barnett grimly, “but it wasn’t on
him. Jean d’Alescar had prudently wrapped it round a stone and thrown
it down from the top of the tower, meaning to pick it up when he got to
the ground again. I found it near the river, some twenty yards away.”
Barnett only just stepped back in time to prevent Cazévon snatching the
receipt from his hand. There was a moment’s pause, and then Barnett,
breathing a trifle quicker, spoke again:
“That is tantamount to admitting your guilt! Looking at you now, I can
well believe Mademoiselle d’Alescar’s statement that you are capable of
almost anything. You are the slave of your own unreasoning impulse!
Carried away by the passions of greed and hatred, you raised your gun
and fired that morning. Steady, man!” as Cazévon seemed about to
collapse, “control yourself. Someone’s ringing! It must be Béchoux.
Perhaps you won’t want him to know all this!”
A full minute passed in silence. At last, Cazévon, his eyes still those
of a maniac, whispered:
“How much? What must I pay you for the receipt?”
“It is not for sale.”
“What do you mean to do with it?”
“It will be handed over to you, on certain conditions, which I will
outline in Inspector Béchoux’s presence.”
“And if I refuse to accept your terms?”
“Then it will be my painful duty to expose you!”
“No one will believe you!”
“Oh, won’t they?”
Cazévon’s head slumped in utter dejection. Barnett’s driving,
implacable will-power had beaten him. At that moment Béchoux was shown
in.
The inspector had not expected to find Barnett on the scene. He was
unpleasantly surprised, and wondered what the two men could have been
talking about; whether the incalculable Barnett had been busy digging
pits for the luckless representative of the law to fall into.
Fearing something of the sort, he was quite aggressively positive in
his assertions from the word “go.”
Shaking Cazévon warmly by the hand he declared:
“Monsieur, I promised to let you know the result of my investigations
before I left, and to tell you what kind of report I should make. So
far, my own views are in complete accord with the construction that has
been put upon the case. There is absolutely nothing in what
Mademoiselle d’Alescar has been saying against you.”
“Hear, hear,” said Barnett. “That’s just what I’ve been telling
Monsieur Cazévon. Béchoux, my guide, philosopher and friend, is
displaying his usual acumen. Nevertheless, the fact is that Monsieur
Cazévon is bent on returning good for evil, and meeting calumny with
generosity. He insists on restoring the domain of her ancestors to
Mademoiselle d’Alescar!”
Béchoux looked thunderstruck.
“Wh—what? You mean to say——”
“Just that,” said Barnett. “The affair has not unnaturally filled
Monsieur Cazévon with distaste for the district, and he has his eye on
a château nearer his factories in Guéret. When I got here this
afternoon Monsieur Cazévon was actually drafting the deed of gift. He
also expressed his wish to add a bearer check for one hundred thousand
francs to be handed to Mademoiselle d’Alescar as compensation. That’s
so, isn’t it, Monsieur Cazévon?”
Without a second’s hesitation, Cazévon acted on Barnett’s promptings as
if they had been the dictates of his heart’s desires. He seated himself
at his desk, wrote out the deed of gift and signed the check.
“There you are,” he said. “For the rest, I will instruct my solicitor.”
Barnett took both check and document, slipped them into an envelope,
and said to Béchoux:
“Here, take this to Mademoiselle d’Alescar. I feel sure she will
appreciate Monsieur Cazévon’s generosity. Monsieur, I am at your
service. I cannot tell you how happy you have made us both by
furnishing such a satisfactory solution to the business.”
He swaggered off, followed by Béchoux. The latter, utterly astounded,
waited till they were out of the park, and then demanded:
“What’s it all mean? Did he fire that shot? Has he made a statement to
you?”
“None of your business, Béchoux,” said Barnett. “Let bygones be
bygones. The case has been settled to everyone’s best advantage. All
you have to do is to speed on your mission to Mademoiselle d’Alescar.
Ask her to forgive and forget, and not to breathe a word to anyone.
Then come and pick me up at the inn.”
In a short while Béchoux was back again. He brought the news that
Mademoiselle d’Alescar had accepted the gift of the Mazurech estate and
her solicitor would take the matter up at once, but the money she
refused to take. In her indignation at being offered it she had torn up
the check.
Barnett and Béchoux took their leave. The return journey was made in
silence. The inspector was lost in unprofitable speculation. His mind
was in a whirl of interrogation, but Barnett looked disinclined for
confidential converse.