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American Sunday Monthly Magazine Section
STOPPER
in front of him,
with as much
Chapter XX
[RASVILLE was silent. He was
laboring under a violent emotion,
now that the duel was commen
cing with that adversary of whose
terrifying superiority he was well
aware; and he shuddered at the
idea that Arsene Lupin, the for
midable Arsene Lupin, was there,
, calm and placid, pursuing his aim's
coolness as though he had all the
weapons in his hands and were face to face with
a disarmed enemy.
Not yet daring to deliver a frontal attack, feeling
almost intimidated, Prasville said:
“So Daubrecq gave it up to you?”
“Daubrecq gives nothing up. I took it.”
“ By main force, therefore?”
“Oh dear, no!” said M. Nicole, laughing.
“Of course, I was ready to go to all lengths;
and, when that worthy Daubrecq was [dug out
of the basket in which he had been traveling
express, with an occasional dose of chloroform
to keep his strength up, I had prepared things
so that the fun might begin at once. Oh, no
useless tortures . . no vain sufferings! ... -v
No . . . Death, simply. . . . You press the
point of a long needle on the chest, where the
heart is, and insert it gradually, softly and gently.
That’s all; but the point would have been driven by
Mme. Mergy. You understand: a mother is pitiless,
a mother whose son is about to die! . . . ‘Speak,
Daubrecq, or I’ll go deeper. . . . You won’t speak?
. . . Then I’ll push another quarter of an inch . . .
and another still.’ And the patient’s heart stops
beating, the heart that feels the needle coming. . . .
And another quarter of an inch . . . and one more
.... I swear before Heaven that the villain would
have spoken. . . . We leant over him and waited
for him to w ake, trembling with impatience, so urgent
was our hurry. . . . Can’t you picture the scene,
monsieur le secretaire-general? The scoundrel lying
on a sofa, well bound, bare-chested, making efforts to
throw off the fumes of chloroform that dazed him.
He breathes quicker. . . . He gasps. . . . He re
covers consciousness. . . . His lips move. . . . Al
ready, Clarisse Mergy whispers ‘It’s I it’s I,
Clarisse.’ . . . Will you answer, you wretch?’ She
has put her finger on Daubrecq’s chest, at the spot
where the heart stirs like a little animal hidden under
the skin. But she says to me, ‘His eyes ... his
eyes. ... I can’t see them under the spectacles.
... I want to see them.’ And I also want to see
those eyes which I do not know, I want to see their
anguish and 1 want to read in them, before I hear a
word, the secret which is about to burst from the
inmost recesses of the terrified body. I want to see.
I long to see. The action which I am about to ac
complish excites me beyond measure. It seems to
me that, when I have seen the eyes, the veil will be
rent asunder. I shall know things. It is a presenti
ment. It is the profound intuition of the truth that
keeps me on tenterhooks. The eye-glasses are gone.
But the thick opaque spectacles are there still. And
I snatch them off, suddenly. And, suddenly, startled
by a disconcerting vision, dazzled by the quick light
that breaks in upon me and laughing, oh, but laugh
ing fit to break my jaws, with my thumb, do you
understand, with my thumb, hop, I force out the left
eye! ”
M. Nicole was really laughing, as he said, fit to
break his jaws. And he was no longer the timid little
unctuous and obsequious provincial usher, but a well
set-up fellow, who had recited and mimicked the
scene with impressive ardor and who was now laugh
ing with a shrill laughter the sound of which made
Prasville’s flesh creep:
“Hop! Jump, Marquis! Out of your kennel,
Towzer! What’s the use of two eyes? It’s one more
than you want. Hop! I say, Clarisse, look at it
rolling over the carpet! Mind Daubrecq’s eye!
Careful with the grate!”
M. Nicole, who had risen and pretended to be hunt
ing after something across the room
sat down again, took a thing shaped
marble from his pocket, rolled it in the
hollow of his hand, chucked it in the air, like a ball
put it back in his fob and said, coolly:
“Daubrecq’s left eye.”
Prasville
was utterly
bewildered.
What was
his strange
visitor driv-
i n g at?
What did
all this story
, 'flu 74a uj\ice Leblanc
like a J
Copyright in th» United Btktee of
America, IMS, by Mkurioe Leblanc.
All right* referred.
Translated by Alexander
Teixeira de Mattos
/
“You fool! You fool! You’ve been trapped!
hatred of me, I expect.”
For
mean? Pale with excitement, he said:
“Explain yourself.”
“But it’s all explained, it seems to me. And it
fits in so well with things as they were, fits in with
all the conjectures which I had been making in spite
of myself and which would inevitably have led to
my solving the mystery, if that damned Daubrecq
had not so cleverly sent me astray. Yes, think, fol
low the trend of my suppositions: ‘As the list is
not to be discovered away from Daubrecq,’ I said
to myself, ‘it cannot exist away from Daubrecq.
And, as it is not to be discovered in the clothes he
wears it must be hidden deeper still, in himself, to
speak plainly, in his flesh, under his skin. . . .”
“In his eye, perhaps?” suggested Prasville, by
way of a joke.
“In his eye? Monsieur le secretaire-general, you
have said the word.”
“What?”
“I repeat, in his eye. And it is a truth which ought
to have occurred to my mind logically, instead of be
ing revealed to me by accident. And I will tell you
why. Daubrecq knew that Clarisse had seen a letter
from him instructing an English manufacturer to
‘empty the crystal within, so as to leave a void which
it was impossible to suspect.’ Daubrecq was bound,
in prudence, to divert any attempt at search. And it
was for this reason that he had a crystal stopper
made ‘emptied within,’ after a model supplied by
himself. And it is this crystal stopper which you and
1 have been after for months; and it is this crystal
stopper which I have dug out of a packet of tobacco.
Whereas all I had to do . . .”
“Was what?” asked Prasville, greatly puzzled.
M. Nicole burst into a fresh fit of laughter:
“Was simply to go for Daubrecq’s eye, that eye
‘ emptied within so as to leave a void which it is im
possible to suspect,’ the eye which you see before
you.”
And M. Nicole once more took the thing from his
pocket and rapped the table with it, producing the
sound of a hard body at each rap.
Prasville whispered, in astonishment:
“A glass eye!”
“ W’hy of course!” cried M. Nicole, laughing gaily.
‘ ‘ A glass eye! A common or garden decanter-stopper
which the rascal stuck into his eye-socket in the place
of an eye which he had lost, a decanter-stopper, or,
if you prefer, a crystal stopper, but the real one, this
time, which he faked, which he hid behind the double
bulwark of his spectacles and eye-glasses, which con
tained and which stiil contains the talisqian that en
abled Daubrecq to work as he pleased in safety.”
Prasville lowered his head and put his hand to his
forehead to hide his flushed face: he was almost pos
sessing the list of the Twenty-seven. It lay before
him, on the table.
Mastering his emotion, he said, in a casual tone:
“So it is there still?”
“At least, I suppose so,” declared M. Nicole.
“What! You suppose so?”
“ I have not opened the hiding-place. I thought I
would reserve that honor for you, monsieur le secre
taire-general.”
Prasville put out his hand, took the thing up and
inspected it. It was a block of crystal, imitating
nature to perfection, with all the details of the eye
ball, the iris, the pupil, the cornea.
He at once saw a movable part at the back, which
slid in a groove. He pushed it. The eye was hollow.
There was a tiny ball of paper inside. He unfolded
it, smoothed it out and, quickly, without delaying to
make a preliminary examination of the names, the
handwriting or the signatures, he raised his arms
and turned the paper to the light from the windows.
“ Is the Cross of Lorraine there? ” asked M. Nicole.
“Yes, it is there,” replied Prasville. “This is the
genuine list.”
He hesitated a few seconds and remained with his
arms raised, while reflecting what he would do. Then
he folded up the paper again, replaced it in its little
crystal sheath and put the whole thing in his pocket.
M. Nicole, who was looking at him, asked:
“ Are you convinced? ”
“Absolutely.”
“ Then we are agreed? ”
“We are agreed.”
There was a pause, during which the two men
watched each other without appearing to. M.
Nicole seemed to be waiting for the conversation to
be resumed. Prasville, sheltered behind the piles of
books on the table, sat with one hand grasping his
revolver and the other touching the push of the elec
tric bell. He felt the whole strength of his position
with a keen zest. He held the list. He held Lupin:
“If he moves,” he thought, “I cover him with my
revolver and I ring. If he attacks me, I shoot.”
And the situation appeared to him so pleasant
that he prolonged it, with the exquisite relish of an
epicure.
In the end, M. Nicole took up the threads:
“As we are agreed, monsieur le secretaire-general,
I think there is nothing left for you to do but to
hurry. Is the execution to take place to-morrow?”
“Yes, to-morrow.”
“In that case, I shall wait here.”
“Wait for what?”
(Continued on next page)