The Crystal Stopper | Page 6

... ."
"Did he open it?"
"And did he find what he was after?"
"Yes."
"And you wanted to take the thing from him. What sort of thing was it? The reliquary? No, it was too small for that.... Then what was it? Answer me, will you?..."
Lupin gathered from Gilbert's silence and the determined expression on his face that he would not obtain a reply. With a threatening gesture, "I'll make you talk, my man. Sure as my name's Lupin, you shall come out with it. But, for the moment, we must see about decamping. Here, help me. We must get Vaucheray into the boat..."
They had returned to the dining-room and Gilbert was bending over the wounded man, when Lupin stopped him:
"Listen."
They exchanged one look of alarm... Some one was speaking in the pantry ... a very low, strange, very distant voice... Nevertheless, as they at once made certain, there was no one in the room, no one except the dead man, whose dark outline lay stretched upon the floor.
And the voice spake anew, by turns shrill, stifled, bleating, stammering, yelling, fearsome. It uttered indistinct words, broken syllables.
Lupin felt the top of his head covering with perspiration. What was this incoherent voice, mysterious as a voice from beyond the grave?
He had knelt down by the man-servant's side. The voice was silent and then began again:
"Give us a better light," he said to Gilbert.
He was trembling a little, shaken with a nervous dread which he was unable to master, for there was no doubt possible: when Gilbert had removed the shade from the lamp, Lupin realized that the voice issued from the corpse itself, without a movement of the lifeless mass, without a quiver of the bleeding mouth.
"Governor, I've got the shivers," stammered Gilbert.
Again the same voice, the same snuffling whisper.
Suddenly, Lupin burst out laughing, seized the corpse and pulled it aside:
"Exactly!" he said, catching sight of an object made of polished metal. "Exactly! That's it!... Well, upon my word, it took me long enough!"
On the spot on the floor which he had uncovered lay the receiver of a telephone, the cord of which ran up to the apparatus fixed on the wall, at the usual height.
Lupin put the receiver to his ear. The noise began again at once, but it was a mixed noise, made up of different calls, exclamations, confused cries, the noise produced by a number of persons questioning one another at the same time.
"Are you there?... He won't answer. It's awful... They must have killed him. What is it?... Keep up your courage. There's help on the way... police... soldiers..."
"Dash it!" said Lupin, dropping the receiver.
The truth appeared to him in a terrifying vision. Quite at the beginning, while the things upstairs were being moved, Leonard, whose bonds were not securely fastened, had contrived to scramble to his feet, to unhook the receiver, probably with his teeth, to drop it and to appeal for assistance to the Enghien telephone-exchange.
And those were the words which Lupin had overheard, after the first boat started:
"Help!... Murder!... I shall be killed!"
And this was the reply of the exchange. The police were hurrying to the spot. And Lupin remembered the sounds which he had heard from the garden, four or five minutes earlier, at most:
"The police! Take to your heels!" he shouted, darting across the dining room.
"What about Vaucheray?" asked Gilbert.
"Sorry, can't be helped!"
But Vaucheray, waking from his torpor, entreated him as he passed:
"Governor, you wouldn't leave me like this!"
Lupin stopped, in spite of the danger, and was lifting the wounded man, with Gilbert's assistance, when a loud din arose outside:
"Too late!" he said.
At that moment, blows shook the hall-door at the back of the house. He ran to the front steps: a number of men had already turned the corner of the house at a rush. He might have managed to keep ahead of them, with Gilbert, and reach the waterside. But what chance was there of embarking and escaping under the enemy's fire?
He locked and bolted the door.
"We are surrounded... and done for," spluttered Gilbert.
"Hold your tongue," said Lupin.
"But they've seen us, governor. There, they're knocking."
"Hold your tongue," Lupin repeated. "Not a word. Not a movement."
He himself remained unperturbed, with an utterly calm face and the pensive attitude of one who has all the time that he needs to examine a delicate situation from every point of view. He had reached one of those minutes which he called the "superior moments of existence," those which alone give a value and a price to life. On such occasions, however threatening the danger, he always began by counting to himself, slowly --"One... Two... Three... Four.... Five... Six"--until the beating of his heart became normal and regular. Then and not till then, he reflected, but with what intensity, with what perspicacity, with what a profound intuition of