The Crystal Stopper | Page 6

trickled from
his mouth.
"Ah," gasped Lupin, after examining him, "he's dead!"
"Do you think so?... Do you think so?" stammered Gilbert, in a
trembling voice.
"He's dead, I tell you."
"It was Vaucheray... it was Vaucheray who did it..."
Pale with anger, Lupin caught hold of him:
"It was Vaucheray, was it?... And you too, you blackguard, since you
were there and didn't stop him! Blood! Blood! You know I won't have
it... Well, it's a bad lookout for you, my fine fellows... You'll have to
pay the damage! And you won't get off cheaply either... Mind the
guillotine!" And, shaking him violently, "What was it? Why did he kill
him?"
"He wanted to go through his pockets and take the key of the cupboard
from him. When he stooped over him, he saw that the man unloosed his
arms. He got frightened... and he stabbed him..."
"But the revolver-shot?"
"It was Leonard... he had his revolver in his hand... he just had strength
to take aim before he died ..."
"And the key of the cupboard?"

"Vaucheray took it ... ."
"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