Apart from him, they had seen no one except an old woman, who ruled over the kitchen and the house, and two men, who kept watch over them by turns and never spoke to them: subordinates, obviously, to judge by their manners and appearance.
"Two accomplices, for all that," said Beautrelet, in conclusion, "or rather three, with the old woman. It is a bag worth having. And, if we lose no time—"
He jumped on his bicycle, rode to Eguzon, woke up the gendarmerie, set them all going, made them sound the boot and saddle and returned to Crozant at eight o'clock, accompanied by the sergeant and eight gendarmes. Two of the men were posted beside the gipsy-van. Two others took up their positions outside the postern-door. The last four, commanded by their chief and accompanied by Beautrelet and Valmeras, marched to the main entrance of the castle.
Too late. The door was wide open. A peasant told them that he had seen a motor car drive out of the castle an hour before.
Indeed, the search led to no result. In all probability, the gang had installed themselves there picnic fashion. A few clothes were found, a little linen, some household implements; and that was all.
What astonished Beautrelet and Valmeras more was the disappearance of the wounded man. They could not see the faintest trace of a struggle, not even a drop of blood on the flagstones of the hall.
All said, there was no material evidence to prove the fleeting presence of Lupin at the Chateau de l'Aiguille; and the authorities would have been entitled to challenge the statements of Beautrelet and his father, of Valmeras and Mlle. de Saint-Veran, had they not ended by discovering, in a room next to that occupied by the young girl, some half-dozen exquisite bouquets with Arsene Lupin's card pinned to them, bouquets scorned by her, faded and forgotten—One of them, in addition to the card, contained a letter which Raymonde had not seen. That afternoon, when opened by the examining magistrate, it was found to contain page upon page of prayers, entreaties, promises, threats, despair, all the madness of a love that has encountered nothing but contempt and repulsion.
And the letter ended:
I shall come on Tuesday evening, Raymonde. Reflect between now and then. As for me, I will wait no longer. I am resolved on all.
Tuesday evening was the evening of the very day on which Beautrelet had released Mlle. de Saint-Veran from her captivity.
The reader will remember the extraordinary explosion of surprise and enthusiasm that resounded throughout the world at the news of that unexpected issue: Mlle. de Saint-Veran free! The pretty girl whom Lupin coveted, to secure whom he had contrived his most Machiavellian schemes, snatched from his claws! Free also Beautrelet's father, whom Lupin had chosen as a hostage in his extravagant longing for the armistice demanded by the needs of his passion! They were both free, the two prisoners! And the secret of the Hollow Needle was known, published, flung to the four corners of the world!
The crowd amused itself with a will. Ballads were sold and sung about the defeated adventurer: Lupin's Little Love-Affairs!— Arsene's Piteous Sobs!—The Lovesick Burglar! The Pickpocket's Lament!—They were cried on the boulevards and hummed in the artists' studios.
Raymonde, pressed with questions and pursued by interviewers, replied with the most extreme reserve. But there was no denying the letter, or the bouquets of flowers, or any part of the pitiful story! Then and there, Lupin, scoffed and jeered at, toppled from his pedestal.
And Beautrelet became the popular idol. He had foretold everything, thrown light on everything. The evidence which Mlle. de Saint-Veran gave before the examining magistrate confirmed, down to the smallest detail, the hypothesis imagined by Isidore. Reality seemed to submit, in every point, to what he had decreed beforehand. Lupin had found his master.—
Beautrelet insisted that his father, before returning to his mountains in Savoy, should take a few months' rest in the sunshine, and himself escorted him and Mlle. de Saint-Veran to the outskirts of Nice, where the Comte de Gesvres and his daughter Suzanne were already settled for the winter. Two days later, Valmeras brought his mother to see his new friends and they thus composed a little colony grouped around the Villa de Gesvres and watched over day and night by half a dozen men engaged by the comte.
Early in October, Beautrelet, once more the sixth-form pupil, returned to Paris to resume the interrupted course of his studies and to prepare for his examinations. And life began again, calmer, this time, and free from incident. What could happen, for that matter. Was the war not over?
Lupin, on his side, must have felt this very clearly, must have felt that there was nothing left for him but to resign himself to the accomplished fact; for, one fine day, his two other victims, Ganimard and Holmlock Shears, made their reappearance. Their return to the life of this planet, however, was devoid of any sort of glamor or fascination. An itinerant rag-man picked them up on the Quai des Orfevres, opposite the headquarters of police. Both of them were gagged, bound and fast asleep.
After a week of complete bewilderment, they succeeded in recovering the control of their thought and told—or rather Ganimard told, for Shears wrapped himself in a fierce and stubborn silence—how they had made a voyage of circumnavigation round the coast of Africa on board the yacht Hirondelle, a voyage combining amusement with instruction, during which they could look upon themselves as free, save for a few hours which they spent at the bottom of the hold, while the crew went on shore at outlandish ports.
As for their landing on the Quai des Orfevres, they remembered nothing about it and had probably been asleep for many days before.
This liberation of the prisoners was the final confession of defeat. By ceasing to fight, Lupin admitted it without reserve.
One incident, moreover, made it still more glaring, which was the engagement of Louis Valmeras and Mlle. de Saint-Veran. In the intimacy created between them by the new conditions under which they lived, the two young people fell in love with each other. Valmeras loved Raymonde's melancholy charm; and she, wounded by life, greedy for protection, yielded before the strength and energy of the man who had contributed so gallantly to her preservation.
The wedding day was awaited with a certain amount of anxiety. Would Lupin not try to resume the offensive? Would he accept with a good grace the irretrievable loss of the woman he loved? Twice or three times, suspicious-looking people were seen prowling round the villa; and Valmeras even had to defend himself one evening against a so- called drunken man, who fired a pistol at him and sent a bullet through his hat. But, in the end, the ceremony was performed at the appointed hour and day and Raymonde de Saint-Veran became Mme. Louis Valmeras.
It was as though Fate herself had taken sides with Beautrelet and countersigned the news of victory. This was so apparent to the crowd that his admirers now conceived the notion of entertaining him at a banquet to celebrate his triumph and Lupin's overthrow. It was a great idea and aroused general enthusiasm. Three hundred tickets were sold in less than a fortnight. Invitations were issued to the public schools of Paris, to send two sixth-form pupils apiece. The press sang paeans. The banquet was what it could not fail to be, an apotheosis.
But it was a charming and simple apotheosis, because Beautrelet was its hero. His presence was enough to bring things back to their due proportion. He showed himself modest, as usual, a little surprised at the excessive cheering, a little embarrassed by the extravagant panegyrics in which he was pronounced greater than the most illustrious detectives—a little embarrassed, but also not a little touched.
He said as much in a few words that pleased all his hearers and with the shyness of a child that blushes when you look at it. He spoke of his delight, of his pride. And really, reasonable and self- controlled as he was, this was for him a moment of never-to-be- forgotten exultation. He smiled to his friends, to his fellow- Jansonians, to Valmeras, who had come specially to give him a cheer, to M. de Gesvres, to his father.
When he had finished speaking; and while he still held his glass in his hand, a sound of voices came from the other end of the room and some one was gesticulating and waving a newspaper. Silence was restored and the importunate person sat down again: but a thrill of curiosity ran round the table, the newspaper was passed