“All she said was that it was about the Enghien business… So I thought that…”
“What! The Enghien business! Then she knows that I am mixed up in that business… She knows that, by applying here…”
“I could not get anything out of her, but I thought, all the same, that I had better let her in.”
“Quite right. Where is she?”
“In the drawing-room. I’ve put on the lights.”
Lupin walked briskly across the hall and opened the door of the drawing-room:
“What are you talking about?” he said, to his man. “There’s no one here.”
“No one here?” said Achille, running up.
And the room, in fact, was empty.
“Well, on my word, this takes the cake!” cried the servant. “It wasn’t twenty minutes ago that I came and had a look, to make sure. She was sitting over there. And there’s nothing wrong with my eyesight, you know.”
“Look here, look here,” said Lupin, irritably. “Where were you while the woman was waiting?”
“In the hall, governor! I never left the hall for a second! I should have seen her go out, blow it!”
“Still, she’s not here now…”
“So I see,” moaned the man, quite flabbergasted.
“She must have got tired of waiting and gone away. But, dash it all, I should like to know how she got out!”
“How she got out?” said Lupin. “It doesn’t take a wizard to tell that.”
“What do you mean?”
“She got out through the window. Look, it’s still ajar. We are on the ground-floor… The street is almost always deserted, in the evenings. There’s no doubt about it.”
He had looked around him and satisfied himself that nothing had been taken away or moved. The room, for that matter, contained no knick-knack of any value, no important paper that might have explained the woman’s visit, followed by her sudden disappearance. And yet why that inexplicable flight?
“Has any one telephoned?” he asked.
“No.”
“Any letters?”
“Yes, one letter by the last post.”
“Where is it?”
“I put it on your mantel-piece, governor, as usual.”
Lupin’s bedroom was next to the drawing-room, but Lupin had permanently bolted the door between the two. He, therefore, had to go through the hall again.
Lupin switched on the electric light and, the next moment, said:
“I don’t see it…”
“Yes… I put it next to the flower-bowl.”
“There’s nothing here at all.”
“You must be looking in the wrong place, governor.”
But Achille moved the bowl, lifted the clock, bent down to the grate, in vain: the letter was not there.
“Oh blast it, blast it!” he muttered. “She’s done it… she’s taken it… And then, when she had the letter, she cleared out… Oh, the slut!…”
Lupin said:
“You’re mad! There’s no way through between the two rooms.”
“Then who did take it, governor?”
They were both of them silent. Lupin strove to control his anger and collect his ideas. He asked:
“Did you look at the envelope?”
“Yes.”
“Anything particular about it?”
“Yes, it looked as if it had been written in a hurry, or scribbled, rather.”
“How was the address worded?… Do you remember?” asked Lupin, in a voice strained with anxiety.
“Yes, I remembered it, because it struck me as funny…”
“But speak, will you? Speak!”
“It said, ‘Monsieur de Beaumont, Michel.’”
Lupin took his servant by the shoulders and shook him:
“It said ‘de’ Beaumont? Are you sure? And ‘Michel’ after ‘Beaumont’?”
“Quite certain.”
“Ah!” muttered Lupin, with a choking throat. “It was a letter from Gilbert!”
He stood motionless, a little pale, with drawn features. There was no doubt about it: the letter was from Gilbert. It was the form of address which, by Lupin’s orders, Gilbert had used for years in corresponding with him. Gilbert had at last—after long waiting and by dint of endless artifices—found a means of getting a letter posted from his prison and had hastily written to him. And now the letter was intercepted! What did it say? What instructions had the unhappy prisoner given? What help was he praying for? What stratagem did he suggest?
Lupin looked round the room, which, contrary to the drawing-room, contained important papers. But none of the locks had been forced; and he was compelled to admit that the woman had no other object than to get hold of Gilbert’s letter.
Constraining himself to keep his temper, he asked:
“Did the letter come while the woman was here?”
“At the same time. The porter rang at the same moment.”
“Could she see the envelope?”
“Yes.”
The conclusion was evident. It remained to discover how the visitor had been able to effect her theft. By slipping from one window to the other, outside the flat? Impossible: Lupin found the window of his room shut. By opening the communicating door? Impossible: Lupin found it locked and barred with its two inner bolts.
Nevertheless, a person cannot pass through a wall by a mere operation of will. To go in or out of a room requires a passage; and, as the act was accomplished in the space of a few minutes, it was necessary, in the circumstances, that the passage should be previously in existence, that it should already have been contrived in the wall and, of course, known to the woman. This hypothesis simplified the search by concentrating it upon the door; for the wall was quite bare, without a cupboard, chimney-piece or hangings of any kind, and unable to conceal the least outlet.
Lupin went back to the drawing-room and prepared to make a study of the door. But he at once gave a start. He perceived, at the first glance, that the left lower panel of the six small panels contained within the cross-bars of the door no longer occupied its normal position and that the light did not fall straight upon it. On leaning forward, he saw two little tin tacks sticking out on either side and holding the panel in place, similar to a wooden board behind a picture-frame. He had only to shift these. The panel at once came out.
Achille gave a cry of amazement. But Lupin objected:
“Well? And what then? We are no better off than before. Here is an empty oblong, eight or nine inches wide by sixteen inches high. You’re not going to pretend that a woman can slip through an opening which would not admit the thinnest child of ten years old!”
“No, but she can have put her arm through and drawn the bolts.”
“The bottom bolt, yes,” said Lupin. “But the top bolt, no: the distance is far too great. Try for yourself and see.”
Achille tried and had to give up the attempt.
Lupin did not reply. He stood thinking for a long time. Then, suddenly, he said:
“Give me my hat… my coat…”
He hurried off, urged by an imperative idea. And,