The Misadventure of Shelrock Holmes (6 page)

And as they were lighting their cigars, Devanne added:

"But you will have to hurry, Velmont, for this is the last night on which you will have a chance."

"And why the last night?" said die painter, who certainly took the jest in very good part.

Devanne was about to reply when his mother made signs to him. But die excitement of the dinner and the wish to interest his guests were too much for him:

"Pooh!" he muttered. "Why shouldn't I tell them? There's no indiscretion to be feared now."

They sat round him, filled with a lively curiosity, and he declared, with the self-satisfied air of a man announcing a great piece of news:

"Tomorrow, at four o'clock in the afternoon, I shall have here, as my guest, Holmlock Shears, the great English detective, for whom no mystery exists, the most extraordinary solver of riddles that has ever been known, the wonderful individual who might have been the creation of a novelist's brain."

There was a general exclamation. Holmlock Shears at Thiber-mesnil! The thing was serious, then? Was Arsene Lupin really in the district?

"Arsene Lupin and his gang are not very far away. Without counting Baron Cahorn's mishap, to whom are we to ascribe the daring burglaries at Montigny and Gruchet and Crasville if not to our national thief? Today it's my turn."

"And have you had a warning, like Baron Cahorn?"

"The same trick does not succeed twice."

"Then . . ."

"Look here."

He rose, and, pointing to a little empty space between two tall folios on one of the shelves of the bookcase, said:

"There was a book here — a sixteenth-century book, entitled The Chronicles of Thibermesnil — which was the history of the castle since the time of its construction by Duke Rollo, on the site of a feudal fortress. It contained three engraved plates. One of them presented a general view of the domain as a whole; the second a plan of the building; and the third — I call your special attention to this — the sketch of an underground passage, one of whose outlets opens outside the first line of the ramparts, while the other ends here — yes, in this very hall where we are sitting. Now this book disappeared last month."

"By Jove!" said Velmont. "That's a bad sign. Only it's not enough to justify the intervention of Holmlock Shears."

"Certainly it would not have been enough if another fact had not come to give its full significance to that which I have just told you. There was a second copy of the chronicle in the Bibliotheque

Nationale, and the two copies differed in certain details concerning the underground passage, such as the addition of a sectional drawing, and a scale and a number of notes, not printed, but written in ink and more or less obliterated. I knew of these particulars, and I knew that the definite sketch could not be reconstructed except by carefully collating the two plans. Well, on the day after that on which my copy disappeared the one in the Bibliotheque Nation-ale was applied for by a reader who carried it off without leaving any clue as to the manner in which the theft had been effected."

These words were greeted with many exclamations.

"This time the affair grows serious."

"Yes; and this time," said Devanne, "the police were roused, and there was a double inquiry which, however, led to no result."

"Like all those aimed at Arsene Lupin."

"Exactly. It then occurred to me to write and ask for the help of Holmlock Shears, who replied that he had the keenest wish to come into contact with Arsene Lupin."

"What an honor for Arsene Lupin!" said Velmont. "But if our national thief, as you call him, should not be contemplating a project upon Thibermesnil, then there will be nothing for Holmlock Shears to do but twiddle his thumbs."

"There is another matter which is sure to interest him: the discovery of the underground passage."

"Why, you told us that one end opened in the fields and the other here, m the guardroom!"

"Yes, but in what part of it? The line that represents the tunnel on the plans finishes, at one end, at a little circle accompanied by the initials T.G., which, of course, stand for Tour Guillaume. But it's a round tower, and who can decide at which point in the circle the line in the drawing touches?"

Devanne lit a second cigar, and poured himself out a glass of Benedictine. The others pressed him with questions. He smiled with pleasure at the interest which he had aroused. At last, he said:

"The secret is lost. Not a person in the world knows it. The story says that the high and mighty lords handed it down to one another, on their death-beds, from father to son, until the day when Geoffrey, the last of the name, lost his head on the scaffold, on the seventh of Thermidor, Year Second, in the nineteenth year of his age."

"Yes, but more than a century has passed since then; and it must have been looked for."

"It has been looked for, but in vain. I myself, after I bought the castle from the great-grandnephew of Leribourg of the National Convention, had excavations made. What was the good ? Remember that this tower is surrounded by water on every side, and only joined to the castle by a bridge, and that, consequently, the tunnel must pass under the old' moats. The plan in the Bibliotheque Nationale shows a series of four staircases, comprising forty-eight steps, which allows for a depth of over ten yards, and the scale annexed to the other plan fixes the length at two hundred yards. As a matter of fact, the whole problem lies here, between this floor, that ceiling, and these walls; and, upon my word, I do not feel inclined to have them pulled down."

"And is there no clue?"

"Not one."

The Abbe Gelis objected.

"Monsieur Devanne, we have to reckon with two quotations . . ."

"Oh," cried Devanne, laughing, "the rector is a great rummager of family papers, a great reader of memoirs, and he fondly loves everything that has to do with Thibermesnil. But the explanation to which he refers only serves to confuse matters."

"But tell us what it is."

"Do you really care to hear?"

"Immensely."

"Well, you must know that, as the result of his reading, he has discovered that two kings of France held the key to the riddle."

"Two kings of France?"

"Henry IV and Louis XVI."

"Two famous men. And how did the rector find out?"

"Oh, it's very simple," continued Devanne. "Two days before the Battle of Arques, King Henry IV came to sup and sleep in the castle, and on this occasion Duke Edgar confided the family secret to him. This secret Henry IV revealed later to Sully, his minister, who tells the story in his Royales Oeconomies d'Etat, without adding any comment besides this incomprehensible phrase: 'La hache tournoie dans I'air qui fremit, mats I'aile s'ouvre et I'on va jusqu'a Dieu.' '

A silence followed, and Velmont remarked:

"It's not as clear as daylight, is it?"

"That's what I say. The rector maintains that Sully set down the key to the puzzle by means of those words, without betraying the secret to the scribes to whom he dictated his memoirs."

"It's an ingenious supposition."

"True. But what is the ax that turns? What bird is it whose wing opens?"

"And who goes to God?"

"Goodness knows!"

"And what about our good King Louis XVI?" asked Velmont.

"Louis XVI stayed at Thibermesnil in 1784, and the famous Iron Cupboard discovered at the Louvre on the information of Gamain, the locksmith, contained a paper with these words written in the king's hand: Thibermesnil, 2-6-12"

Horace Velmont laughed aloud.

"Victory! The darkness is dispelled. Twice six are twelve!"

"Laugh as you please, sir," said the rector. "Those two quotations contain the solution for all that, and one of these days someone will come along who knows how to interpret them."

"Holmlock Shears, first of all," said Devanne, "unless Arsene Lupin forestalls him. What do you think, Velmont?"

Velmont rose, laid his hand on Devanne's shoulder, and declared:

"I think that the data supplied by your book and the copy in the Bibliotheque Nationale lacked just one link of the highest importance, and that you have been kind enough to supply it. I am much obliged to you."

"Well . . ."

"Well, now that the ax has turned and the bird flown, and that twice six are twelve, all I have to do is to set to work."

"Without losing a minute?"

"Without losing a second! You see, I must rob your castle tonight, that is to say, before Holmlock Shears arrives."

"You're quite right; you have only just got time. Would you like me to drive you?"

"To Dieppe?"

"Yes, I may as well fetch Monsieur and Madame d'Androl and a girl friend of theirs, who are arriving by the midnight train."

Then, turning to the officers:

"We shall all meet here at lunch tomorrow, shan't we, gentlemen ? I rely upon you, for the castle is to be invested by your regiments and taken by assault at eleven in the morning."

The invitation was accepted, the officers took their leave, and a minute later a powerful motorcar was carrying Devanne and Vel-mont along the Dieppe road. Devanne dropped the painter at the Casino, and went on to the station.

His friends arrived at midnight, and at half-past twelve the motor passed through the gates of Thibermesnil. At one o'clock, after a light supper served in the drawing room, everyone went to bed. The lights were extinguished one by one. The deep silence of the night enshrouded the castle.

But the moon pierced the clouds that veiled it, and, through two of the windows, filled the hall with the light of its white beams. This lasted for but a moment. Soon the moon was hidden behind the curtain of the hills, and all was darkness. The silence increased as the shadows thickened. At most it was disturbed, from time to time, by the creaking of the furniture or the rustling of the reeds in the pond which bathes the old walls with its green waters.

The clock told the endless beads of its seconds. It struck two. Then once more the seconds fell hastily and monotonously in the heavy stillness of the night. Then three struck.

And suddenly something gave a clash, like the arm of a railway signal that drops as a train passes, and a thin streak of light crossed the hall from one end to the other, like an arrow, leaving a glittering track behind it. It issued from the central groove of a pilaster against which the pediment of the bookcase rests upon the right. It first lingered upon the opposite panel in a dazzling circle, next wandered on every side like a restless glance searching the darkness, and then faded away, only to appear once more, while the whole of one section of the bookcase turned upon its axis, and revealed a wide opening shaped like a vault.

A man entered, holding an electric lantern in his hand. Another man and a third emerged, carrying a coil of rope and different implements. The first man looked round the room, listened, and said:

"Call the pals."

Eight of these pals came out of the underground passage—eight

strapping fellows, with determined faces. And the removal began.

It did not take long. Arsene Lupin passed from one piece of furniture to another, examined it, and, according to its size or its artistic value, spared it or gave an order:

"Take it away."

And the piece in question was removed, swallowed by the yawning mouth of the tunnel, and sent down into the bowels of the earth.

And thus were juggled away six Louis XV armchairs and as many occasional chairs, a number of Aubusson tapestries, some candelabra signed by Gouthiere, two Fragonards and a Nattier, a bust by Hou-don, and some statuettes. At times Arsene Lupin would stop before a magnificent oak chest or a splendid picture and sigh:

"That's too heavy . . . Too big ... What a pity!"

And he would continue his expert survey.

In forty minutes the hall was "cleared," to use Arsene's expression. And all this was accomplished in an admirably orderly manner, without the least noise, as though all the objects which the men were handling had been wrapped in thick wadding.

To the last man who was leaving, carrying a clock signed by Boule, he said:

"You need not come back. You understand, don't you, that as soon as the motor van is loaded you're to make for the barn at Roquefort?"

"What about yourself, governor?"

"Leave me the motorcycle."

When the man had gone he pushed the movable section of the bookcase back into its place, and, after clearing away the traces of the removal and the footmarks, he raised a curtain and entered a gallery which served as a communication between the tower and the castle. Halfway down the gallery stood a glass case, and it was because of this case that Arsene Lupin had continued his investigations.

It contained marvels: a unique collection of watches, snuffboxes, rings, chatelaines, miniatures of the most exquisite workmanship. He forced the lock with a jimmy, and it was an unspeakable pleasure to him to finger those gems of gold and silver, those precious and dainty little works of art.

Hanging round his neck was a large canvas bag specially contrived

to hold these windfalls. He filled it. He also filled the pockets of his jacket, waistcoat, and trousers. And he was stuffing under his left arm a heap of those pearl reticules beloved of our ancestors and so eagerly sought after by our present fashion . . . when a slight sound fell upon his ear.

He listened; he was not mistaken; the noise became clearer.

And suddenly he remembered. At the end of the gallery an inner staircase led to a room which had been hitherto unoccupied, but which had been allotted that evening to the young girl whom De-vanne had gone to meet at Dieppe with his friends the d'Androls.

With a quick movement he pressed the spring of his lantern and extinguished it. He had just time to hide in the recess of a window when the door at the top of the staircase opened and the gallery was lit by a faint gleam.

He had a feeling —for, half-hidden behind a curtain, he could not see — that a figure was cautiously descending the top stairs. He hoped that it would come no farther. It continued, however, and took several steps into the gallery. But it gave a cry. It must have caught sight of the broken case, three quarters emptied of its contents.