"I RECEIVED your telegram and
here I am," said a gentleman with a grey moustache, who
entered my study, dressed in a dark-brown frock-coat
and a wide-brimmed hat, with a red ribbon in his
buttonhole. "What's the matter?"
Had I not been expecting Arsène
Lupin, I should certainly never have recognized him in
the person of this old half-pay officer:
"What's the matter?" I echoed. "Oh,
nothing much: a rather curious coincidence, that's all.
And, as I know that you would just as soon clear up a
mystery as plan one . . ."
"Well?"
"You seem in a great hurry!"
"I am . . . unless the mystery in
question is worth putting myself out for. So let us get
to the point."
"Very well. Just begin by casting your
eye on this little picture, which I picked up, a week
or two ago, in a grimy old shop on the other side of
the river. I bought it for the sake of its Empire
frame, with the palm-leaf ornaments on the mouldings .
. . for the painting is execrable."
"Execrable, as you say," said Lupin,
after he had examined it, "but the subject itself is
rather nice. That corner of an old courtyard, with its
rotunda of Greek columns, its sun-dial and its
fish-pond and that ruined well with the
Renascence roof and those stone steps and
stone benches: all very picturesque."
"And genuine," I added. "The picture,
good or bad, has never been taken out of its Empire
frame. Besides, it is dated . . . . There, in the
left-hand bottom corner : those red figures, 15. 4. 2,
which obviously stand for 15 April, 1802."
"I dare say. . . I dare say. . . But
you were speaking of a coincidence and, so far, I
fail to see. . . ."
I went to a corner of my study, took a
telescope, fixed it on its stand and pointed it,
through the open window, at the open window of a little
room facing my flat, on the other side of the street.
And I asked Lupin to look through it.
He stooped forward. The slanting rays
of the morning sun lit up the room opposite, revealing
a set of mahogany furniture, all very simple, a large
bed and a child's bed hung with cretonne curtains.
"Ah!" cried Lupin, suddenly. "The same
picture!"
"Exactly the same!" I said. "And the
date do you see the date, in red? 15. 4. 2"
"Yes, I see. . . . And who lives in that
room?"
"A lady . . . or, rather, a workwoman,
for she has to work for her living . . . needlework,
hardly enough to keep herself and her child."
"What is her name?"
"Louise d'Ernemont. . . . From what I
hear, she is the great-granddaughter of a farmer-general
who was guillotined during the Terror."
"Yes, on the same day as Andre Chenier,"
said Lupin. "According to the memoirs of the time, this
d'Ernemont was supposed to be a very rich man." He
raised his head and said, "It's an interesting story . .
. . Why did you wait before telling me?"
"Because this is the 15th Of April."
"Well?"
Well, I discovered yesterday I
heard them talking about it in the porter's box
that the 15th of April plays an important part in the
life of Louise d'Ernemont."
"Nonsense!"
"Contrary to her usual habits, this
woman who works every day of her life, who keeps her two
rooms tidy, who cooks the lunch which her little
girl eats when she comes home from the parish school . .
. this woman, on the 15th of April, goes out with the
child at ten o'clock in the morning and does not return
until nightfall. And this has happened for years and in
all weathers. You must admit that there is something
queer about this date which I find on an old picture,
which is inscribed on another, similar picture and which
controls the annual movements of the descendant of
d'Ernemont the farmer-general."
"Yes, it's curious . . . you're quite
right," said Lupin, slowly. "And don't you know where
she goes to?"
"Nobody knows. She does not confide in a
soul. As a matter of fact, she talks very little."
"Are you sure of your information?"
"Absolutely. And the best proof of its
accuracy is that here she comes."
A door had opened at the back of the
room opposite, admitting a little girl of seven or
eight, who came and looked out of the window. A lady
appeared behind her, tall, good-looking still and
wearing a sad and gentle air. Both of them were ready
and dressed, in clothes which were simple in themselves,
but which pointed to a love of neatness and a certain
elegance on the part of the mother.
"You see," I whispered, "they are going
out."
And presently the mother took the child
by the hand and they left the room together.
Lupin caught up his hat:
"Are you coming?"
My curiosity was too great for me to
raise the least objection. I went downstairs with
Lupin.
As we stepped into the street, we saw
my neighbour enter a baker's shop. She bought two rolls
and placed them in a little basket which her daughter
was carrying and which seemed already to contain some
other provisions. Then they went in the direction of
the outer boulevards and followed them as far as the
Place de l'Étoile, where they turned down the
Avenue Kléber to walk toward Passy.
Lupin strolled silently along,
evidently obsessed by a train of thought which I was
glad to have provoked. From time to time, he uttered a
sentence which showed me the thread of his reflections;
and I was able to see that the riddle remained as much
a mystery to him as to myself.
Louise d'Ernemont, meanwhile, had
branched off to the left, along the Rue Raynouard, a
quiet old street in which Franklin and Balzac once
lived, one of those streets which, lined with
old-fashioned houses and walled gardens, give you the
impression of being in a country-town. The Seine flows
at the foot of the slope which the street
crowns; and a number of lanes run down to the river.
My neighbour took one of these narrow,
winding, deserted lanes. The first building, on the
right, was a house the front of which faced the Rue
Raynuoard. Next came a moss-grown wall, of a height
above the ordinary, supported by buttresses and
bristling with broken glass.
Half-way along the wall was a low,
arched door. Louise d'Ernemont stopped in front of this
door and opened it with a key which seemed to us
enormous. Mother and child entered and closed the door.
"In any case," said Lupin, "she has
nothing to conceal, for she has not looked round once.
. . ."
He had hardly finished his sentence
when we heard the sound of footsteps behind us. It was
two old beggars, a man and a woman, tattered, dirty,
squalid, covered in rags. They passed us without paying
the least attention to our presence. The man took from
his wallet a key similar to my neighbour's and put it
into the lock. The door closed behind them.
And, suddenly, at the top of the lane,
came the noise of a motor-car stopping. . . . Lupin
dragged me fifty yards lower down, to a corner in which
we were able to hide. And we saw coming down the lane,
carrying a little dog under her arm, a young
and very much over-dressed woman, wearing quantity of
jewellery, a young woman whose eyes were too dark, her
lips too red, her hair too fair. In front of the door,
the same performance, with the same key. . . . The lady
and the dog disappeared from view.
"This promises to be most amusing,"
Lupin, chuckling. "What earthly connection can there be
between those different people?"
There hove in sight successively two
elderly ladies, lean and rather poverty-stricken in
appearance, very much alike, evidently sisters; a
footman in livery; an infantry corporal; a fat
gentleman in a soiled and patched jacket-suit; and,
lastly, a workman's family, father, mother, and four
children, all six of them pale and sickly, looking like
people who never eat their fill. And each of the
newcomers carried a basket or string-bag filled with
provisions.
"It's a picnic!" I cried.
"It grows more and more surprising,"
said Lupin, "and I sha'n't be satisfied till I know
what is happening behind that wall."
To climb it was out of the question. We
also saw that it finished, at the lower as well as at
the upper end, at a house none of whose windows
overlooked the enclosure which the wall contained.
During the next hour, no one else came
along.
We vainly cast about for a stratagem; and Lupin, whose
fertile brain had exhausted every possible expedient,
was about to go in search of a ladder, when, suddenly,
the little door opened and one of the workman's
children came out.
The boy ran up the lane to the Rue
Raynouard. A few minutes later he returned, carrying
two bottles of water, which he set down on the pavement
to take the big key from his pocket.
By that time Lupin had left me and was
strolling slowly along the wall. When the child, after
entering the enclosure, pushed back the door Lupin
sprang forward and stuck the point of his knife into
the staple of the lock. The bolt failed to catch; and
it became an easy matter to push the door ajar.
"That's done the trick!" said Lupin.
He cautiously put his hand through the
doorway and then, to my great surprise, entered boldly.
But, on following his example, I saw that, ten yards
behind the wall, a clump of laurels formed a sort of
curtain which allowed us to come up unobserved.
Lupin took his stand right in the
middle of the clump. I joined him and, like him, pushed
aside the branches of one of the shrubs. And the sight
which presented itself to my eyes was so unexpected
that I was unable to suppress an
exclamation, while Lupin, on his side, mutter between
his teeth:
"By Jupiter! This is a funny job!"
We saw before us, within the confined
space that lay between the two windowless houses, the
identical scene represented in the old picture which I
had bought at a second-hand dealer's!
The identical scene! At the back,
against opposite wall, the same Greek rotunda displayed
its slender columns. In the middle, the same stone
benches topped a circle of four steps that ran down to
a fish-pond with moss-grown flags. On the left, the
same well raised its wrought-iron roof; and, close at
hand, the same sun-dial showed its slanting gnomon and
its marble face.
The identical scene! And what added to
strangeness of the sight was the memory, obsessing
Lupin and myself, of that date of the 15th of April,
inscribed in a comer of the picture, and the thought
that this very day was the 15th of April and that
sixteen or seventeen people, so different in age,
condition and manners, had chosen the 15th of April to
come together in this forgotten corner of Paris!
All of them, at the moment when we
caught sight of them, were sitting in separate groups
on the benches and steps; and all were eating. Not very
far from my neighbour and her daughter, the
workman's family and the beggar couple were sharing
their provisions; while the footman, the gentleman in
the soiled suit, the infantry corporal and the two lean
sisters were making a common stock of their sliced ham,
their tins of sardines and their gruyère cheese.
The lady with the little dog alone, who
had brought no food with her, sat apart from the
others, who made a show of turning their backs upon
her. But Louise d'Ernemont offered her a sandwich,
whereupon her example was followed by the two sisters;
and the corporal at once began to make himself as
agreeable to the young person as he could.
It was now half-past one. The
beggar-man took out his pipe, as did the fat gentleman;
and, when they found that one had no tobacco and the
other no matches, their needs soon brought them,
together. The men went and smoked by the rotunda and
the women joined them. For that matter, all these
people seemed to know one another quite well.
They were at some distance from where
we were standing, so that we could not hear what they
said. However, we gradually perceived that the
conversation was becoming animated. The young person
with the dog, in particular, who by this time appeared
to be in great request, indulged in
much voluble talk, accompanying her words with many
gestures, which set the little dog barking furiously.
But, suddenly, there was an outcry,
promptly followed by shouts of rage: and one and all,
men and women alike, rushed in disorder toward the
well. One of the workman's brats was at that moment
coming out of it, fastened by his belt to the
hook at the end of the rope; and the three other
urchins were drawing him up by turning the handle. More
active than the rest, the corporal flung himself upon
him; and forthwith the footman and the fat gentleman
seized hold of him also, while the beggars and the lean
sisters came to blows with the workman and his family.
In a few seconds the little boy had not
a stitch left on him beyond his shirt. The footman, who
had taken possession of the rest of the clothes, ran
away, pursued by the corporal, who snatched away the
boy's breeches, which were next torn from the corporal
by one of the lean sisters.
"They are mad!" I muttered, feeling
absolutely at sea.
"Not at all, not at all," said Lupin.
"What! Do you mean to say that you can
make head or tail of what is going on?"
He did not reply. The young lady with
the little dog, tucking her pet under her arm, had
started running after the child in the shirt, who
uttered loud yells. The two of them raced round the
laurel-clump in which we stood hidden; and the brat
flung himself into his mother's arms.
At long last, Louise d'Ernemont, who
had played a conciliatory part from the beginning,
succeeded in allaying the tumult. Everybody sat down
again; but there was a reaction in all those
exasperated people and they remained motionless and
silent, as though worn out with their exertions.
And time went by. Losing patience and
beginning to feel the pangs of hunger, I went to the
Rue Raynouard to fetch something to eat, which we
divided while watching the actors in the
incomprehensible comedy that was being performed before
our eyes. They hardly stirred. Each minute that passed
seemed to load them with increasing melancholy; and
they sank into attitudes of discouragement, bent their
backs more and more and sat absorbed in their
meditations.
The afternoon wore on in this way,
under a grey sky that shed a dreary light over the
enclosure.
"Are they going to spend the night
here?" I asked, in a bored voice.
But, at five o'clock or so, the fat
gentleman in the soiled jacket-suit took out his watch.
The others did the same and all, watch in hand, seemed
to be anxiously awaiting an event of no little
importance to themselves. The event did not take
place, for, in fifteen or twenty minutes, the fat
gentleman gave a gesture of despair, stood up and put
on his hat.
Then lamentations broke forth. The two
lean sisters and the workman's wife fell upon their
knees and made the sign of the cross. The lady with
the little dog and the beggar-woman kissed each other
and sobbed; and we saw Louise d'Ernemont pressing her
daughter sadly to her.
"Let's go," said Lupin.
"You think it's over?"
"Yes; and we have only just time to
make ourselves scarce."
We went out unmolested. At the top of
the lane, Lupin turned to the left and, leaving me
outside, entered the first house in the Rue Raynouard,
the one that backed on to the enclosure.
After talking for a few seconds to the
porter, he joined me and we stopped a passing taxi-cab:
"No. 34 Rue de Turin," he said to the
driver.
The ground-floor of No. 34 was occupied
by a notary's office; and we were shown in, almost
without waiting, to Maître Valandier, a smiling,
pleasant-spoken man of a certain age.
Lupin introduced himself by the name of
Captain Jeanniot, retired from the army. He said that
he wanted to build a house to his own liking and
that some one had suggested to him a plot of ground
situated near the Rue Raynouard.
"But that plot is not for sale," said
Maître Valandier.
"Oh, I was told . . ."
"You have been misinformed, I fear."
The lawyer rose, went to a cupboard
and returned with a picture which he showed us. I was
petrified.
It was the same picture which I had
bought, the same picture that hung in Louise
d'Ernemont's room.
"This is a painting," he said "of the
plot of ground to which you refer. It is known as the
Clos d'Ernemont."
"Precisely."
"Well, this close," continued the
notary, "once formed part of a large garden belonging
to d'Ernemont, the farmer-general, who was executed
during the Terror. All that could be sold has been
sold, piecemeal, by the heirs. But this last plot has
remained and will remain in their joint possession . .
. unless . . ."
The notary began to laugh.
"Unless what?" asked Lupin.
"Well, it's quite a romance, a rather
curious romance, in fact. I often amuse myself by
looking through the voluminous documents of the
case."
"Would it be indiscreet, if I asked. .
. ?"
"Not at all, not at all," declared
Maître Valandier, who seemed delighted, on the
contrary, to have found a listener for his story. And,
without waiting to be pressed, he began: "At the
outbreak of the Revolution, Louis Agrippa
d'Ernemont, on the pretence of joining his wife, who
was staying at Geneva with their daughter Pauline,
shut up his mansion in the Faubourg Saint-Germain,
dismissed his servants and, with his son Charles, came
and took up his abode in his pleasure-house at Passy,
where he was known to nobody except an old and devoted
serving-woman. He remained there in hiding for three
years and he had every reason to hope that his retreat
would not be discovered, when, one day, after
luncheon, as he was having a nap, the old servant
burst into his room. She had seen, at the end of the
street, a patrol of armed men who seemed to be making
for the house. Louis d'Ernemont got ready quickly and,
at the moment when the men were knocking at the front
door, disappeared through the door that led to the
garden, shouting to his son, in a scared voice, to
keep them talking, if only for five minutes. He may
have intended to escape and found the outlets through
the garden watched. In any case, he returned in six or
seven minutes, replied very calmly to the questions
put to him and raised no difficulty about accompanying
the men. His son
Charles, although only eighteen years of age, was
arrested also."
"When did this happen?" asked Lupin.
"It happened on the 26th day of Germinal, Year II, that
is to say, on the . . ."
Maître Valandier stopped, with
his eyes fixed on a calendar that hung on the wall,
and exclaimed:
"Why, it was on this very day! This is
the 15th of April, the anniversary of the
farmer-general's arrest."
"What a coincidence!" said Lupin. "And
considering the period at which it took place, the
arrest, no doubt, had serious consequences?"
"Oh, most serious!" said the notary,
laughing. "Three months later, at the beginning of
Thermidor, the farmer-general mounted the scaffold.
His son Charles was forgotten in prison and their
property was confiscated."
"The property was immense, I suppose?"
said Lupin.
"Well, there you are! That's just where
the thing becomes complicated. The property, which
was, in fact, immense, could never be traced. It was
discovered that the Faubourg Saint-Germain mansion had
been sold, before the Revolution, to an Englishman,
together with all the jewels, securities and
collections belonging to the farmer-general. The
Convention
instituted minute inquiries, as did the Directory
afterward. But the inquiries led to no result."
"There remained, at any rate, the
Passy house," said Lupin.
"The house at Passy was bought, for a
mere song, by a delegate of the Commune, the very man
who had arrested d'Ernemont, one Citizen Broquet.
Citizen Broquet shut himself up in the house,
barricaded the doors, fortified the walls and, when
Charles d'Ernemont was at last set free and appeared
outside, received him by firing a musket at him.
Charles instituted one law-suit after another, lost
them all and then proceeded to offer large sums of
money. But Citizen Broquet proved intractable. He had
bought the house and he stuck to the house; and he
would have stuck to it until his death, if Charles had
not obtained the support of Bonaparte. Citizen Broquet
cleared out on the 12th of February, 1803; but Charles
d'Ernemont's joy was so great and his brain, no doubt,
had been so violently unhinged by all that he had gone
through, that, on reaching the threshold of the house
of which he had at last recovered the ownership, even
before opening the door he began to dance and sing in
the street. He had gone clean off his head."
"By Jove!" said Lupin. "And what became
of him?"
"His mother and his sister Pauline,
who had ended by marrying a cousin of the same name
at
Geneva, were both dead. The old servant-woman took care
of him and they lived together in the Passy house.
Years passed without any notable vent; but, suddenly,
in 1812, an unexpected incident happened. The old
servant made a series of strange revelations on her
death-bed, in the presence of two witnesses whom she
sent for. She declared that the farmer-general had
carried to his house at Passy a number of bags filled
with gold and silver and that those bags had
disappeared a few days before the arrest. According
to earlier confidences made by Charles d'Ernemont,
who had them from his father, the treasures were
hidden in the garden, between the rotunda, the
sundial and the well. In proof of her statement, she
produced three pictures, or rather, for they were not
yet framed, three canvases, which the farmer-general
had painted during his captivity and which he had
succeeded in conveying to her, with instructions to
hand them to his wife, his son and his daughter.
Tempted by the lure of wealth, Charles and the old
servant had kept silence. Then came the law-suits,
the recovery of the house, Charles's madness, the
servant's own useless searches; and the treasures
were still there."
"And they are there now," chuckled
Lupin.
"And they will be there always,"
exlaimed Maître Valandier. "Unless . . . unless
Citizen Broquet, who no doubt smelt a rat, succeeded in
ferreting them out. But this is an unlikely
supposition, for Citizen Broquet died in extreme
poverty."
"So then . . . ?"
"So then everybody began to hunt. The
children of Pauline, the sister, hastened from Geneva.
It was discovered that Charles had been secretly
married and that he had sons. All these heirs set to
work."
"But Charles himself?"
"Charles lived in the most absolute
retirement. He did not leave his room."
"Never?"
"Well, that is the most extraordinary,
the most astounding part of the story. Once a year,
Charles d'Ernemont, impelled by a sort of subconscious
will-power, came downstairs, took the exact road which
his father had taken, walked across the garden and sat
down either on the steps of the rotunda, which you see
here, in the picture, or on the curb of the well. At
twenty-seven minutes past five, he rose and went
indoors again; and until his death, which occurred in
1820, he never once failed to perform this
incomprehensible pilgrimage. Well, the day on which
this happened
was invariably the 15th of April, the anniversary of
the arrest."
Maître Valandier was no longer
smiling and himself seemed impressed by the amazing
story which he was telling us.
"And, since Charles's death?" asked
Lupin, after a moment's reflection.
"Since that time," replied the lawyer,
with a certain solemnity of manner, "for nearly a
hundred years, the heirs of Charles and Pauline
d'Ernemont have kept up the pilgrimage of the 15th of
April. During the first few years they made the most
thorough excavations. Every inch of the garden was
searched, every clod of ground dug up. All this is now
over. They take hardly any pains. All they do is, from
time to time, for no particular reason, to turn over a
stone or explore the well. For the most part, they are
content to sit down on the steps of the rotunda, like
the poor madman; and, like him, they wait. And that,
you see, is the sad part of their destiny. In those
hundred years, all these people who have succeeded one
another, from father to son, have lost what
shall I say? the energy of life. They have no
courage left, no initiative. They wait. They wait for
the 15th of April; and, when the 15th of April comes,
they wait for a miracle to take place. Poverty has
ended by overtaking every one of
them. My predecessors and I have sold first the house,
in order to build another which yields a better rent,
followed by bits of the garden and further bits. But,
as to that corner over there," pointing to the picture,
"they would rather die than sell it. On this they are
all agreed: Louise d'Ernemont, who is the direct
heiress of Pauline, as well as the beggars, the
workman, the footman, the circus-rider and so on, who
represent the unfortunate Charles."
There was a fresh pause; and Lupin
asked:
"What is your own opinion, Maître
Valandier?"
"My private opinion is that there's
nothing in it. What credit can we give to the
statements of an old servant enfeebled by age? What
importance can we attach to the crotchets of a madman?
Besides, if the farmer-general had realized his
fortune, don't you think that that fortune would have
been found? One could manage to hide a paper, a
document, in a confined space like that, but not
treasures."
"Still, the pictures? . . ."
"Yes, of course. But, after all, are
they a sufficient proof?"
Lupin bent over the copy which the
solicitor had taken from the cupboard and, after
examining it at length, said:
"You spoke of three pictures."
"Yes, the one which you see was handed
to my predecessor by the heirs of Charles. Louise
d'Ernemont possesses another. As for the third, no one
knows what became of it."
Lupin looked at me and continued:
"And do they all bear the same date?"
"Yes, the date inscribed by Charles
d'Ernemont when he had them framed, not long before his
death. . . . The same date, that is to say the 15th of
April, Year II, according to the revolutionary
calendar, as the arrest took place in April, 1794."
"Oh, yes, of course," said Lupin. "The
figure 2 means . . . "
He thought for a few moments and
resumed:
"One more question, if I may. Did no
one ever come forward to solve the problem?"
"Goodness gracious me!" he cried. "Why
it was the plague of the office! One of predecessors,
Maître Turbon, was summoned to Passy no fewer
than eighteen times, between 1820 and 1843, by the
groups of heirs, whom fortune-tellers, clairvoyants,
visionaries, impostors of all sort had promised that
they world discover the farmer-general's treasures. At
last, we laid down a rule: any outsider applying to
institute a search was to begin by depositing a certain
sum."
"What sum?"
"A thousand francs."
"And did this have the effect of
frightening them off?"
"No. Four years ago, an Hungarian
hypnotist tried the experiment and made me waste a
whole day. After that, we fixed the deposit at five
thousand francs. In case of success, a third of the
treasure goes to the finder. In case of failure, the
deposit is forfeited to the heirs. Since then, I have
been left in peace."
"Here are your five thousand francs."
The lawyer gave a start:
"Eh? What do you say?"
"I say," repeated Lupin, taking five
bank-notes from his pocket and calmly spreading them on
the table, "I say that here is the deposit of five
thousand francs. Please give me a receipt and invite
all the d'Ernemont heirs to meet me at Passy on the
15th of April next year."
The notary could not believe his
senses. I myself, although Lupin had accustomed me to
these surprises, was utterly taken back.
"Are you serious?" asked Maître
Valandier.
"Perfectly serious."
"But, you know, I told you my opinion.
All these improbable stories rest upon no evidence of
any kind."
"I don't agree with you," said Lupin.
The notary gave him the look which we
give to a person who is not quite right in his head.
Then, accepting the situation, he took his pen and drew
up a contract on stamped paper, acknowledging the
payment of the deposit by Captain Jeanniot and
promising him a third of such moneys as he should
discover:
"If you change your mind," he added,
"you might let me know a week before the time comes. I
shall not inform the d'Ernemont family until the last
moment, so as not to give those poor people too long a
spell of hope."
"You can inform them this very day,
Maître Valandier. It will make them spend a
happier year."
We said good-bye. Outside, in the
street, I cried:
"So you have hit upon something?"
"I?" replied Lupin. "Not a bit of it!
And that's just what amuses me."
"But they have been searching for a
hundred years!"
"It is not so much a matter of
searching as of thinking. Now I have three hundred and
sixty-five days to think in. It is a great deal more
than I want; and I am afraid that I shall forget all
about the business, interesting though it may be.
Oblige me by reminding me, will you?"
. . . . . . . .
I reminded him of it several times
during the
following months, though he never seemed to attach much
importance to the matter. Then came a long period
during which I had no opportunity of seeing him. It was
the period, as I afterward learnt, of his visit to
Armenia and of the terrible struggle on which he
embarked against Abdul the Damned, a struggle which
ended in the tyrant's downfall.
I used to write to him, however, at the
address which he gave me and I was thus able to send
him certain particulars which I had succeeded in
gathering, here and there, about my neighbour Louise
d'Ernemont, such as the love which she had conceived, a
few years earlier, for a very rich young man, who still
loved her, but who had been compelled by his family to
throw her over; the young widow's despair, and the
plucky life which she led with her little daughter.
Lupin replied to none of my letters. I
did not know whether they reached him; and, meantime,
the date was drawing near and I could not help
wondering whether his numerous undertakings would not
prevent him from keeping the appointment which he
himself had fixed.
As a matter of fact, the morning of the
15th of April arrived and Lupin was not with me by the
time I had finished my lunch. It was a quarter-past
twelve. I left my flat and took a cab to Passy.
I had no sooner entered the lane than I
saw the workman's four brats standing outside the door
in the wall. Maître Valandier, informed by them
of my arrival, hastened in my direction:
"Well?" he cried. "Where's Captain
Jeanniot?"
"Hasn't he come?"
"No; and I can assure you that
everybody is very impatient to see him."
The different groups began to crowd
round the lawyer; and I noticed that all those faces
which I recognized had thrown off the gloomy and
despondent expression which they word a year ago.
"They are full of hope," said
Maître Valandier, "and it is my fault. But what
could I do? Your friend made such an impression upon me
that
I spoke to these good people with a confidence . . .
which I cannot say I feel. However, he seems a queer
sort of fellow, this Captain Jeanniot of yours. . . ."
He asked me many questions and I gave
him a number of more or less fanciful details about the
captain, to which the heirs listened, nodding their
heads in appreciation of my remarks.
"Of course, the truth was bound to be
discovered sooner or later," said the fat gentleman, in
a tone of conviction. The infantry corporal, dazzled by
the captain's rank, did not entertain a doubt in his
mind.
The lady with the little dog wanted to
know if Captain Jeanniot was young.
But Louise d'Ernemont said:
"And suppose he does not come?"
"We shall still have the five thousand
francs to divide," said the beggar-man.
For all that, Louise d'Ernemont's words
had damped their enthusiasm. Their faces began look
sullen and I felt an atmosphere as of anguish weighing
upon us.
At half-past one, the two lean sisters
felt faint and sat down. Then the fat gentleman in the
soiled suit suddenly rounded on the notary:
"It's you, Maître Valandier, who
are to blame. . . . You ought to have brought the
captain here by main force. . . . He's a humbug that's
quite clear."
He gave me a savage look, and the
footman, his turn, flung muttered curses at me.
I confess that their reproaches seemed
to me well-founded and that Lupin's absence annoyed me
greatly:
"He won't come now," I whispered to the
lawyer.
And I was thinking of beating a
retreat, when eldest of the brats appeared at the door,
yelling:
"There's some one coming! . . . A
motor-cycle! . . ."
A motor was throbbing on the other side
of the wall. A man on a motor-bicycle came tearing down
the lane at the risk of breaking his neck. Suddenly, he
put on his brakes, outside the door, and sprang from
his machine.
Under the layer of dust which covered
him from head to foot, we could see that his navy-blue
reefer-suit, his carefully creased trousers, his black
felt hat and patent-leather boots were not the clothes
in which a man usually goes cycling.
"But that's not Captain Jeanniot!"
shouted the notary, who failed to recognize him.
"Yes, it is," said Lupin, shaking hands
with us. "I'm Captain Jeanniot right enough . . . only
I've shaved off my moustache. . . . Besides,
Maître Valandier, here's your receipt."
He caught one of the workman's children
by the arm and said:
"Run to the cab-rank and fetch a taxi
to the corner of the Rue Raynouard. Look sharp! I have
an urgent appointment to keep at two o'clock, or a
quarter-past at the latest."
There was a murmur of protest. Captain
Jeanniot took out his watch:
"Well! It's only twelve minutes to two!
I have a good quarter of an hour before me. But, by
Jingo, how tired I feel! And how hungry into the
bargain!"
The corporal thrust his
ammunition-bread into Lupin's hand; and he munched away
at it as he sat down and said:
"You must forgive me. I was in the
Marseilles express, which left the rails between Dijon
and Laroche. There were twelve people killed and any
number injured, whom I had to help. Then I found this
motor-cycle in the luggage-van. . . . Maître
Valandier, you must be good enough to restore it to the
owner. You will find the label fastened to the handle-
bar. Ah, you're back, my boy! Is the taxi there? At the
corner of the Rue Raynouard? Capital!"
He looked at his watch again:
"Hullo! No time to lose!"
I stared at him with eager curiosity.
But how great must the excitement of the d'Ernemont
heirs have been! True, they had not the same faith in
Captain Jeanniot that I had in Lupin. Nevertheless,
their faces were pale and drawn. Captain Jeanniot
turned slowly to the left and walked up to the
sun-dial. The pedestal represented the figure of a man
with a powerful torso, who bore on his shoulders a
marble slab the surface of which had been so much worn
by time that we could hardly distinguish the engraved
lines that marked the hours. Above the slab, a Cupid,
with outspread wings, held an arrow that served as a
gnomon.
The captain stood leaning forward for a
minute, with attentive eyes.
Then he said:
"Somebody lend me a knife, please."
A clock in the neighbourhood struck
two. At that exact moment, the shadow of the arrow was
thrown upon the sunlit dial along the line of a crack
in the marble which divided the slab very nearly in
half.
The captain took the knife handed to
him. And with the point, very gently, he began to
scratch the mixture of earth and moss that filled the
narrow cleft.
Almost immediately, at a couple of
inches from the edge, he stopped, as though his knife
had encountered an obstacle, inserted his thumb and
forefinger and withdrew a small object which he rubbed
between the palms of his hands and gave to the lawyer:
"Here, Maître Valandier.
Something to go on with."
It was an enormous diamond, the size of
a hazelnut and beautifully cut.
The captain resumed his work. The next
moment, a fresh stop. A second diamond, magnificent and
brilliant as the first, appeared in sight.
And then came a third and a fourth.
In a minute's time, following the crack
from
one edge to the other and certainly without digging
deeper than half an inch, the captain had
taken out eighteen diamonds of the same size.
During this minute, there was not a
cry, not a movement around the sun-dial. The heirs
seemed paralyzed with a sort of stupor. Then the fat
gentleman muttered:
"Geminy!"
And the corporal moaned:
"Oh, captain! . . . Oh, captain! . . ."
The two sisters fell in a dead faint.
The lady with the little dog dropped on her knees and
prayed, while the footman, staggering like a drunken
man, held his head in his two hands, and Louise
d'Ernemont wept.
When calm was restored and all became
eager to thank Captain Jeanniot, they saw that he was
gone.
. . . . . . . .
Some years passed before I had an
opportunity of talking to Lupin about this business. He
was in a confidential vein and answered:
"The business of the eighteen diamonds?
By Jove, when I think that three or four generations of
my fellow-men had been hunting for the solution! And
the eighteen diamonds were there all the time, under a
little mud and dust!"
"But how did you guess? . . ."
"I did not guess. I reflected. I doubt
if I need
even have reflected. I was struck, from the beginning,
by the fact that the whole circumstance was governed by
one primary question: the question of time. When
Charles d'Ernemont was still in possession of his wits,
he wrote a date upon the three pictures. Later, in the
gloom in which he was struggling, a faint glimmer of
intelligence led him every year to the centre of the
old garden; and the same faint glimmer led him away
from it every year at the same moment, that is to say,
at twenty-seven minutes past five. Something must have
acted on the disordered machinery of his brain in this
way. What was the superior force that controlled the
poor madman's movements? Obviously, the instinctive
notion of time represented by the sun-dial in the
farmer-general's pictures. It was the annual revolution
of the earth around the sun that brought Charles
d'Ernemont back to the garden at a fixed date. And it
was the earth's daily revolution upon its own axis that
took him from it at a fixed hour, that is to say, at
the hour, most likely, when the sun, concealed by
objects different from those of to-day, ceased to light
the Passy garden. Now of all this the sun-dial was the
symbol. And that is why I at once knew where to look."
"But how did you settle the hour at
which to begin looking?"
"Simply by the pictures. A man living
at that time, such as Charles d'Ernemont, would have
written either 26 Germinal, Year II, or else 15 April,
1794, but not 15 April, Year II. I was astounded that
no one had thought of that."
"Then the figure 2 stood for two
o'clock?"
"Evidently. And what must have happened
was this: the farmer-general began by turning his
fortune into solid gold and silver money. Then, by way
of additional precaution, with this gold and silver he
bought eighteen wonderful diamonds. When he was
surprised by the arrival of the patrol, he fled into
his garden. Which was the best place to hide the
diamonds? Chance caused his eyes to light upon the
sun-dial. It was two o'clock. The shadow of the arrow
was then falling along the crack in the marble. He
obeyed this sign of the shadow, rammed his eighteen
diamonds into the dust and calmly went back and
surrendered to the soldiers."
"But the shadow of the arrow coincides
with the crack in the marble every day of the year and
not only on the 15th of April."
"You forget, my dear chap, that we are
dealing with a lunatic and that he remembered only this
date of the 15th of April."
"Very well; but you, once you had
solved the riddle, could easily have made your way into
the enclosure and taken the diamonds."
"Quite true; and I should not have
hesitated, if I had had to do with people of another
description. But I really felt sorry for those poor
wretches. And then you know the sort of idiot that
Lupin is. The idea of appearing suddenly as a
benevolent genius and amazing his kind would make him
commit any sort of folly."
"Tah!" I cried. "The folly was not so
great as all that. Six magnificent diamonds! How
delighted the d'Ernemont heirs must have been to fulfil
their part of the contract!"
Lupin looked at me and burst into
uncontrollable laughter:
"So you haven't heard? Oh, what a joke!
The delight of the d'Ernemont heirs! . . . . Why, my dear fellow, on the next day,
that worthy Captain Jeanniot had so many mortal
enemies! On the very next day, the two lean sisters and
the fat gentleman organized an opposition. A contract?
Not worth the paper it was written on, because, as
could easily be proved, there was no such person as
Captain Jeanniot. Where did that adventurer spring
from? Just let him sue them and they'd soon show him
what was what!"
"Louise d'Ernemont too?"
"No, Louise d'Ernemont protested
against that piece of rascality. But what could she do
against so many? Besides, now that she was rich, she
got
back her young man. I haven't heard of her since.
"So . . . ?"
"So, my dear fellow, I was caught in a
trap, with not a leg to stand on, and I had to
compromise and accept one modest diamond as my share,
the smallest and the least handsome of the lot. That
comes of doing one's best to help people!"
And Lupin grumbled between his teeth:
"Oh, gratitude! . . . All humbug! . . .
Where should we honest men be if we had not our
conscience and the satisfaction of duty performed to
reward us?"
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