LITMIR.BIZ

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      The baron did not laugh. He was anxiously listening, but heard nothing save the beating of his own heart. From time to time, he leaned over the tunnel and cast a fearful eye into its depths. He heard the clock strike eleven, twelve, one.

      Suddenly, he seized Ganimard’s arm. The latter leaped up, awakened from his sleep.

      “Do you hear?” asked the baron, in a whisper.

      “Yes.”

      “What is it?”

      “I was snoring, I suppose.”

      “No, no, listen.”

      “Ah! yes, it is the horn of an automobile.”

      “Well?”

      “Well! it is very improbable that Lupin would use an automobile like a battering-ram to demolish your castle. Come, Monsieur le Baron, return to your post. I am going to sleep. Good-night.”

      That was the only alarm. Ganimard resumed his interrupted slumbers, and the baron heard nothing except the regular snoring of his companion. At break of day, they left the room. The castle was enveloped in a profound calm; it was a peaceful dawn on the bosom of a tranquil river. They mounted the stairs, Cahorn radiant with joy, Ganimard calm as usual. They heard no sound; they saw nothing to arouse suspicion.

      “What did I tell you, Monsieur le Baron? Really, I should not have accepted your offer. I am ashamed.”

      He unlocked the door and entered the gallery. Upon two chairs, with drooping heads and pendent arms, the detective’s two assistants were asleep.

      “Tonnerre de nom d’un chien!” exclaimed Ganimard. At the same moment, the baron cried out:

      “The pictures! The credence!”

      He stammered, choked, with arms outstretched toward the empty places, toward the denuded walls where naught remained but the useless nails and cords. The Watteau, disappeared! The Rubens, carried away! The tapestries taken down! The cabinets, despoiled of their jewels!

      “And my Louis XVI candelabra! And the Regent chandelier!…And my twelfth-century Virgin!”

      He ran from one spot to another in wildest despair. He recalled the purchase price of each article, added up the figures, counted his losses, pell-mell, in confused words and unfinished phrases. He stamped with rage; he groaned with grief. He acted like a ruined man whose only hope is suicide.

      If anything could have consoled him, it would have been the stupefaction displayed by Ganimard. The famous detective did not move. He appeared to be petrified; he examined the room in a listless manner. The windows?…closed. The locks on the doors?…intact. Not a break in the ceiling; not a hole in the floor. Everything was in perfect order. The theft had been carried out methodically, according to a logical and inexorable plan.

      “Arsène Lupin.… Arsène Lupin,” he muttered.

      Suddenly, as if moved by anger, he rushed upon his two assistants and shook them violently. They did not awaken.

      “The devil!” he cried. “Can it be possible?”

      He leaned over them and, in turn, examined them closely. They were asleep; but their response was unnatural.

      “They have been drugged,” he said to the baron.

      “By whom?”

      “By him, of course, or his men under his discretion. That work bears his stamp.”

      “In that case, I am lost—nothing can be done.”

      “Nothing,” assented Ganimard.

      “It is dreadful; it is monstrous.”

      “Lodge a complaint.”

      “What good will that do?”

      “Oh; it is well to try it. The law has some resources.”

      “The law! Bah! it is useless. You represent the law, and, at this moment, when you should be looking for a clue and trying to discover something, you do not even stir.”

      “Discover something with Arsène Lupin! Why, my dear monsieur, Arsène Lupin never leaves any clue behind him. He leaves nothing to chance. Sometimes I think he put himself in my way and simply allowed me to arrest him in America.”

      “Then, I must renounce my pictures! He has taken the gems of my collection. I would give a fortune to recover them. If there is no other way, let him name his own price.”

      Ganimard regarded the baron attentively, as he said:

      “Now, that is sensible. Will you stick to it?”

      “Yes, yes. But why?”

      “An idea that I have.”

      “What is it?”

      “We will discuss it later—if the official examination does not succeed. But, not one word about me, if you wish my assistance.”

      He added, between his teeth:

      “It is true I have nothing to boast of in this affair.”

      The assistants were gradually regaining consciousness with the bewildered air of people who come out of an hypnotic sleep. They opened their eyes and looked about them in astonishment. Ganimard questioned them; they remembered nothing.

      “But you must have seen some one?”

      “No.”

      “Can’t you remember?”

      “No, no.”

      “Did you drink anything?”

      They considered a moment, and then one of them replied:

      “Yes, I drank a little water.”

      “Out of that carafe?”

      “Yes.”

      “So did I,” declared the other.

      Ganimard smelled and tasted it. It had no particular taste and no odor.

      “Come,” he said, “we are wasting our time here. One can’t decide an Arsène Lupin problem in five minutes. But, morbleau! I swear I will catch him again.”

      The same day, a charge of burglary was duly performed by Baron Cahorn against Arsène Lupin, a prisoner in the Prison de la Santé.

      * * * *

      The baron afterwards regretted making the charge against Lupin when he saw his castle delivered over to the gendarmes, the procureur, the judge d’instruction, the newspaper reporters and photographers, and a throng of idle curiosity-seekers.

      The affair soon became a topic of general discussion, and the name of Arsène Lupin excited the public imagination to such an extent that the newspapers filled their columns with the most fantastic stories of his exploits which found ready credence amongst their readers.

      But the letter of Arsène Lupin that was published in the `Echo de France’ (no once ever knew how the newspaper obtained it), that letter in which Baron Cahorn was impudently warned of the coming theft, caused considerable excitement. The most fabulous theories were advanced. Some recalled the existence of the famous subterranean tunnels, and that was the line of research pursued by the officers of the law, who searched the house from top to bottom, questioned every stone, studied the wainscoting and the chimneys, the window-frames and the girders in the ceilings. By the light of torches, they examined the immense cellars where the lords of Malaquis were wont to store their munitions and provisions. They sounded the rocky foundation to its very centre. But it was all in vain. They discovered no trace of a subterranean tunnel. No secret passage existed.

      But the eager public declared that the pictures and furniture could not vanish like so many ghosts. They are substantial, material things and require doors and windows for their exits and their entrances, and so do the people that remove them. Who were those people? How did

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