little by little; and Lupin saw the woman’s desperate and furious eyes fixed upon the spot in the neck where she intended to plant the knife:
“You’re doing a very silly thing, fair lady,” thought Lupin.
And he already began to turn over in his mind the best means of escaping and of taking Victoire with him.
She hesitated, however, with uplifted arm. But it was only a momentary weakness. She clenched her teeth. Her whole face, contracted with hatred, became yet further convulsed. And she made the dread movement.
At the same instant Daubrecq crouched and, springing from his seat, turned and seized the woman’s frail wrist in mid-air.
Oddly enough, he addressed no reproach to her, as though the deed which she had attempted surprised him no more than any ordinary, very natural and simple act. He shrugged his shoulders, like a man accustomed to that sort of danger, and strode up and down in silence.
She had dropped the weapon and was now crying, holding her head between her hands, with sobs that shook her whole frame.
He next came up to her and said a few words, once more tapping the table as he spoke.
She made a sign in the negative and, when he insisted, she, in her turn, stamped her foot on the floor and exclaimed, loud enough for Lupin to hear:
“Never!… Never!…”
Thereupon, without another word, Daubrecq fetched the fur cloak which she had brought with her and hung it over the woman’s shoulders, while she shrouded her face in a lace wrap.
And he showed her out.
Two minutes later, the garden-gate was locked again. “Pity I can’t run after that strange person,” thought Lupin, “and have a chat with her about the Daubrecq bird. Seems to me that we two could do a good stroke of business together.”
In any case, there was one point to be cleared up: Daubrecq the deputy, whose life was so orderly, so apparently respectable, was in the habit of receiving visits at night, when his house was no longer watched by the police.
He sent Victoire to arrange with two members of his gang to keep watch for several days. And he himself remained awake next night.
As on the previous morning, he heard a noise at four o’clock. As on the previous morning, the deputy let some one in.
Lupin ran down his ladder and, when he came to the free space above the shutters, saw a man crawling at Daubrecq’s feet, flinging his arms round Daubrecq’s knees in frenzied despair and weeping, weeping convulsively.
Daubrecq, laughing, pushed him away repeatedly, but the man clung to him. He behaved almost like one out of his mind and, at last, in a genuine fit of madness, half rose to his feet, took the deputy by the throat and flung him back in a chair. Daubrecq struggled, powerless at first, while his veins swelled in his temples. But soon, with a strength far beyond the ordinary, he regained the mastery and deprived his adversary of all power of movement. Then, holding him with one hand, with the other he gave him two great smacks in the face.
The man got up, slowly. He was livid and could hardly stand on his legs. He waited for a moment, as though to recover his self-possession. Then, with a terrifying calmness, he drew a revolver from his pocket and levelled it at Daubrecq.
Daubrecq did not flinch. He even smiled, with a defiant air and without displaying more excitement than if he had been aimed at with a toy pistol.
The man stood for perhaps fifteen or twenty seconds, facing his enemy, with outstretched arm. Then, with the same deliberate slowness, revealing a self-control which was all the more impressive because it followed upon a fit of extreme excitement, he put up his revolver and, from another pocket, produced his note-case.
Daubrecq took a step forward.
The man opened the pocketbook. A sheaf of banknotes appeared in sight.
Daubrecq seized and counted them. They were thousand-franc notes, and there were thirty of them.
The man looked on, without a movement of revolt, without a protest. He obviously understood the futility of words. Daubrecq was one of those who do not relent. Why should his visitor waste time in beseeching him or even in revenging himself upon him by uttering vain threats and insults? He had no hope of striking that unassailable enemy. Even Daubrecq’s death would not deliver him from Daubrecq.
He took his hat and went away.
At eleven o’clock in the morning Victoire, on returning from her shopping, handed Lupin a note from his accomplices.
He opened it and read:
“The man who came to see Daubrecq last night is Langeroux the deputy, leader of the independent left. A poor man, with a large family.”
“Come,” said Lupin, “Daubrecq is nothing more nor less than a blackmailer; but, by Jupiter, he has jolly effective ways of going to work!”
Events tended to confirm Lupin’s supposition. Three days later he saw another visitor hand Daubrecq an important sum of money. And, two days after that, one came and left a pearl necklace behind him.
The first was called Dachaumont, a senator and ex-cabinet-minister. The second was the Marquis d’Albufex, a Bonapartist deputy, formerly chief political agent in France of Prince Napoleon.
The scene, in each of these cases, was very similar to Langeroux the deputy’s interview, a violent tragic scene, ending in Daubrecq’s victory.
“And so on and so forth,” thought Lupin, when he received these particulars. “I have been present at four visits. I shall know no more if there are ten, or twenty, or thirty… It is enough for me to learn the names of the visitors from my friends on sentry-go outside. Shall I go and call on them?… What for? They have no reason to confide in me… On the other hand, am I to stay on here, delayed by investigations which lead to nothing and which Victoire can continue just as well without me?”
He was very much perplexed. The news of the inquiry into the case of Gilbert and Vaucheray was becoming worse and worse, the days were slipping by, and not an hour passed without his asking himself, in anguish, whether all his efforts—granting that he succeeded—would not end in farcical results, absolutely foreign to the aim which he was pursuing.
For, after all, supposing that he did fathom Daubrecq’s underhand dealings, would that give him the means of rescuing Gilbert and Vaucheray?
That day an incident occurred which put an end to his indecision. After lunch Victoire heard snatches of a conversation which Daubrecq held with some one on the telephone. Lupin gathered, from what Victoire reported, that the deputy had an appointment with a lady for half-past eight and that he was going to take her to a theatre:
“I shall get a pit-tier box, like the one we had six weeks ago,” Daubrecq had said. And he added, with a laugh, “I hope that I shall not have the burglars in during that time.”
There was not a doubt in Lupin’s mind. Daubrecq was about to spend his evening in the same manner in which he had spent the evening six weeks ago, while they were breaking into his villa at Enghien. To know the person whom he was to meet and perhaps thus to discover how Gilbert and Vaucheray had learnt that Daubrecq would be away from eight o’clock in the evening until one o’clock in the morning: these were matters of the utmost importance.
Lupin left the house in the
