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“But the sound of the clock! Those twelve strokes in the night!”

“It was mere child’s play, Sire, mere child’s play, to him, to prevent the clock from striking!”

“All this seems very impossible to my mind.”

“It all seems monstrous clear to mine, Sire! If it were possible to feel in every one of your soldiers’ pockets here and now, or to know how much money they will each of them spend during the next twelve months, we should be sure to find two or three who are, at this moment, in possession of a few bank-notes: French bank-notes, of course.”

“Oh!” protested Waldemar.

“But yes, my dear count, it is a question of price; and that makes no difference to ‘him.’ If ‘he’ wished, I am sure that you yourself …”

The Emperor, wrapped up in his own thoughts, was not listening. He walked across the room from left to right and right to left, then beckoned to one of the officers standing in the gallery:

“My car … And tell them to get ready … We’re starting.”

He stopped, watched Lupin for a moment and, going up to the count:

“You too, Waldemar, be off … Straight to Paris, without a break …”

Lupin pricked up his ears. He heard Waldemar reply:

“I should like to have a dozen additional guards … With that devil of a man …”

“Take them. And look sharp. You must get there to-night.”

Lupin stamped his foot violently on the floor:

“Well, no, Sire! No, no, no! It shan’t be, I swear it shan’t! No, no never!”

“What do you mean?”

“And the letters, Sire? The stolen letters?”

“Upon my word! …”

“So!” cried Lupin, indignantly folding his arms. “So your Imperial Majesty gives up the struggle? You look upon the defeat as irretrievable? You declare yourself beaten? Well, I do not, Sire. I have begun and I mean to finish.”

The Emperor smiled at this display of mettle:

“I do not give up, but my police will set to work.”

Lupin burst out laughing:

“Excuse me, Sire! It is so funny! Your police! Your Imperial Majesty’s police! Why, they’re worth just about as much as any other police, that is to say, nothing, nothing at all! No, Sire, I will not return to the Santé! Prison I can afford to laugh at. But time enough has been wasted as it is. I need my freedom against that man and I mean to keep it.”

The Emperor shrugged his shoulders:

“You don’t even know who the man is.”

“I shall know, Sire. And I alone can know. And he knows that I am the only one who can know. I am his only enemy. I am the only one whom he attacks. It was I whom he meant to hit, the other day, when he fired his revolver. He considered it enough to put me and me only to sleep, last night, to be free to do as he pleased. The fight lies between him and me. The outside world has nothing to say to it. No one can help me and no one can help him. There are two of us; and that is all. So far, chance has favored him. But, in the long run, it is inevitable, it is doomed that I should gain the day.”

“Why?”

“Because I am the better man.”

“Suppose he kills you?”

“He will not kill me. I shall draw his claws, I shall make him perfectly harmless. And you shall have the letters, Sire. They are yours. There is no power on earth than can prevent me from restoring them to you.”

He spoke with a violent conviction and a tone of certainty that gave to the things which he foretold the real appearance of things already accomplished.

The Emperor could not help undergoing a vague, inexplicable feeling in which there was a sort of admiration combined with a good deal of that confidence which Lupin was demanding in so masterful a manner. In reality, he was hesitating only because of his scruples against employing this man and making him, so to speak, his ally. And, anxiously, not knowing what decision to take, he walked from the gallery to the windows without saying a word.

At last, he asked:

“And who says that the letters were stolen last night?”

“The theft is dated, Sire.”

“What do you say?”

“Look at the inner side of the pediment which concealed the hiding-place. The date is written in white chalk: ‘Midnight, 24 August.’ …”

“So it is,” muttered the Emperor, nonplussed. “How was it that I did not see?” And he added, betraying his curiosity, “Just as with those two ‘N’s’
painted on the wall … I can’t understand. This is the Minerva Room.”

“This is the room in which Napoleon, the Emperor of the French slept,” said Lupin.

“How do you know?”

“Ask Waldemar, Sire. As for myself, when I was turning over the old servants’ diary, it came upon me as a flash of light. I understood that Shears and I had been on the wrong scent. APOON, the imperfect word written by the Grand-duke Hermann on his death-bed, is a contraction not of Apollon, but of Napoleon.”

“That’s true … you are right,” said the Emperor. “The same letters occur in both words and in the same order. The grand-duke evidently meant to write ‘Napoleon.’ But that figure 813? …”

“Ah, that was the point that gave me most trouble. I always had an idea that we must add up the three figures 8, 1 and 3; and the number 12, thus obtained, seemed to me at once to apply to this room, which is the twelfth leading out of the gallery. But that was not enough for me. There must be something else, something which my enfeebled brain could not succeed in translating into words. The sight of that clock, situated precisely in the Napoleon Room, was a revelation to me. The number 12 evidently meant twelve o’clock. The hour of noon! The hour of midnight! Is this not the solemn moment which a man most readily selects? But why those three figures 8, 1 and 3, rather than any others which would have given the same total? … It was then that I thought of making the clock strike for the first time, by way of experiment. And it was while making it strike that I saw the dots of the first, third and eighth hour were movable and that they alone were movable. I therefore obtained three figures, 1, 3 and 8, which, placed in a more prophetic order, gave the number 813. Waldemar pushed the three dots, the spring was released and Your Imperial Majesty knows the result … This, Sire, is the explanation of that mysterious word and of those three figures 8, 1, 3 which the grand-duke wrote with his dying hand and by the aid of which he hoped that his son would one day recover the secret of Veldenz and become the possessor of the famous letters which he had hidden there.”

The Emperor listened with eager attention, more and more surprised at the ingenuity, perspicacity, shrewdness and intelligent will which he observed in the man.

“Waldemar,” he said, when Lupin had finished.

“Sire?”

But, just as he was about to speak, shouts were heard in the gallery outside.

Waldemar left the room and returned:

“It’s the mad girl, Sire. They won’t let her pass.”

“Let her come in.” cried Lupin, eagerly. “She must come in, Sire.”

At a sign from the Emperor, Waldemar went out to fetch Isilda.

Her entrance caused a general stupefaction. Her pale face was covered with dark blotches. Her distorted features bore signs of the keenest suffering. She panted for breath, with her two hands clutched against her breast.

“Oh!” cried Lupin, struck with horror.

“What is it?” asked the Emperor.

“Your doctor, Sire. There is not a moment to lose.”

He went up to her:

“Speak, Isilda … Have you seen anything? Have you anything to say?”

The girl had stopped; her eyes were less vacant, as though lighted up by the pain. She uttered sounds … but not a word.

“Listen,” said Lupin. “Answer yes or no … make a movement of the head … Have you seen him? Do you know where he is? … You know who he is … Listen! if you don’t answer …”

He suppressed a gesture of anger. But, suddenly, remembering the experiment of the day before and that she seemed rather to have retained a certain optical memory of the time when she enjoyed her full reason, he wrote on the white wall a capital “L” and “M.”

She stretched out her arm toward the letters and nodded her head as though in assent.

“And then?” said Lupin. “What then? … Write something yourself.”

But she gave a fearful scream and flung herself to the ground, yelling.

Then, suddenly, came silence, immobility. One last convulsive spasm. And she moved no more.

“Dead?” asked the Emperor.

“Poisoned, Sire.”

“Oh, the poor thing! … And by whom?”

“By ‘him,’ Sire. She knew him, no doubt. He must have been afraid of what she might tell.”

The doctor arrived. The Emperor pointed to the girl. Then, addressing Waldemar:

“All your men to turn out … Make them go through the houses … telegraph to the stations on the frontier …”

He went up to Lupin:

“How long do you want to recover the letters?”

“A month, Sire … two months at most.”

“Very well. Waldemar will wait for you here. He shall have my orders and full powers to grant you anything you wish.”

“What I should like, Sire, is my freedom.”

“You are free.”

Lupin watched him walk away and said, between his teeth:

“My freedom first … And afterward, when I have given you back the letters, O Majesty, one little shake of the hand! Then we shall be quits! …”

CHAPTER XIII

THE SEVEN SCOUNDRELS

“WILL YOU SEE THIS
gentleman, ma’am?”

Dolores Kesselbach took the card from the footman and read:

“André Beauny … No,” she said, “I don’t know him.”

“The gentleman seems very anxious to see you, ma’am. He says that you are expecting him.”

“Oh … possibly … Yes, bring him here.”

Since the events which had upset her life and pursued her with relentless animosity, Dolores, after staying at the Hôtel Bristol had taken up her abode in a quiet house in the Rue des Vignes, down at Passy. A pretty garden lay at the back of the house and was surrounded by other leafy gardens. On days when attacks more painful than usual did not keep her from morning till night behind the closed shutters of her bedroom, she made her servants carry her under the trees, where she lay stretched at full length, a victim to melancholy, incapable of fighting against her hard fate.

Footsteps sounded on the gravel-path and the footman returned, followed by a young man, smart in appearance and very simply dressed, in the rather out-of-date fashion adopted by some of our painters, with a turn-down collar and a flowing necktie of white spots on a blue ground.

The footman withdrew.

“Your name is André Beauny, I believe?” said Dolores.

“Yes, madame.”

“I have not the honor …”

“I beg your pardon, madame. Knowing that I was a friend of Mme. Ernemont, Geneviève’s grandmother, you wrote to her, at Garches, saying that you wished to speak to me. I have come.”

Dolores rose in her seat, very excitedly:

“Oh, you are …”

“Yes.”

She stammered:

“Really? … Is it you? … I do not recognize you.”

“You don’t recognize Prince Paul Sernine?”

“No … everything is different … the forehead … the eyes … And that is not how the …”

“How the newspapers represented the prisoner at the Santé?” he said, with a smile. “And yet it is I, really.”

A long silence followed, during which they remained embarrassed and ill at ease.

At last, he asked:

“May I know the reason …?”

“Did not Geneviève tell you? …”

“I have not seen her … but her grandmother seemed to think that you required my services …”

“That’s right … that’s right …”

“And in what way …? I am so pleased …”

She hesitated a second and then whispered:

“I am afraid.”

“Afraid?” he cried.

“Yes,” she said, speaking in a low voice, “I am afraid, afraid of everything, afraid of to-day and of to-morrow … and of the day after … afraid of life. I have suffered so much … I can bear no more.”

He looked at her with great pity in his eyes. The vague feeling that had always drawn him to this woman took a more precise character now that she was asking for his protection. He felt an eager need to devote himself to her, wholly, without hope of reward.

She continued:

“I am alone now, quite alone, with servants whom I have picked up on chance, and I am afraid … I feel that people are moving about me.”

“But with what object?”

“I do not know. But the enemy is hovering around and coming closer.”

“Have you seen him? Have you noticed anything?”

“Yes, the other day two men passed several times in the street and stopped in front of the house.”

“Can you describe them?”

“I saw one of them better than the other. He was tall and powerful, clean-shaven and wore a little black cloth jacket, cut quite short.”

“A waiter at a café, perhaps?”

“Yes, a head-waiter. I had him followed by one of my servants. He went down the Rue de la Pompe and entered a common-looking house. The ground-floor is occupied by a wine-shop: it is the first house in the street, on the left. Then, a night or two ago, I saw a shadow in the garden from my bedroom window.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes.”

He thought and then made a suggestion:

“Would you allow two of my men to sleep downstairs, in one of the ground-floor rooms?”

“Two of your men? …”

“Oh, you need not be afraid! They are decent men, old Charolais and his son,
and they don’t look in the least like what they are … You will be quite safe with them … As for me …”

He hesitated. He was waiting for her to ask him to come again. As she was silent, he said:

“As for me, it is better that I should not be seen here … Yes, it is better … for your sake. My men will let me know how things go on …”

He would have liked to say more and to remain and to sit down beside her and comfort her. But he had a feeling that they had said all that they had to say and that a single word more, on his side, would be an insult.

Then he made her a very low bow and went away.

He went up the garden, walking quickly, in his haste to be outside and master his emotion. The footman was waiting for him at the hall-door. As he passed out into the street, somebody rang, a young woman.