The Crystal Stopper | Page 9

strokes.
The commissary watched, revolver in hand, ready for the least
movement. He raised his arm:
"If you stir, I'll blow out your brains!"
But the enemy did not stir for a moment; and, when the boat was
bumped and the two men, letting go their oars, prepared for the
formidable assault, the commissary understood the reason of this
passive attitude: there was no one in the boat. The enemy had escaped
by swimming, leaving in the hands of the victor a certain number of the
stolen articles, which, heaped up and surmounted by a jacket and a
bowler hat, might be taken, at a pinch, in the semi-darkness, vaguely to
represent the figure of a man.
They struck matches and examined the enemy's cast clothes. There
were no initials in the hat. The jacket contained neither papers nor
pocketbook. Nevertheless, they made a discovery which was destined
to give the case no little celebrity and which had a terrible influence on
the fate of Gilbert and Vaucheray: in one of the pockets was a
visiting-card which the fugitive had left behind... the card of Arsene
Lupin.
At almost the same moment, while the police, towing the captured skiff
behind them, continued their empty search and while the soldiers stood
drawn up on the bank, straining their eyes to try and follow the fortunes
of the naval combat, the aforesaid Arsene Lupin was quietly landing at
the very spot which he had left two hours earlier.
He was there met by his two other accomplices, the Growler and the
Masher, flung them a few sentences by way of explanation, jumped
into the motor-car, among Daubrecq the deputy's armchairs and other
valuables, wrapped himself in his furs and drove, by deserted roads, to
his repository at Neuilly, where he left the chauffeur. A taxicab brought
him back to Paris and put him down by the church of Saint-Philippe-du

-Roule, not far from which, in the Rue Matignon, he had a flat, on the
entresol-floor, of which none of his gang, excepting Gilbert, knew, a
flat with a private entrance. He was glad to take off his clothes and rub
himself down; for, in spite of his strong constitution, he felt chilled to
the bone. On retiring to bed, he emptied the contents of his pockets, as
usual, on the mantelpiece. It was not till then that he noticed, near his
pocketbook and his keys, the object which Gilbert had put into his hand
at the last moment.
And he was very much surprised. It was a decanter-stopper, a little
crystal stopper, like those used for the bottles in a liqueur-stand. And
this crystal stopper had nothing particular about it. The most that Lupin
observed was that the knob, with its many facets, was gilded right
down to the indent. But, to tell the truth, this detail did not seem to him
of a nature to attract special notice.
"And it was this bit of glass to which Gilbert and Vaucheray attached
such stubborn importance!" he said to himself. "It was for this that they
killed the valet, fought each other, wasted their time, risked prison...
trial... the scaffold!..."
Too tired to linger further upon this matter, exciting though it appeared
to him, he replaced the stopper on the chimney-piece and got into bed.
He had bad dreams. Gilbert and Vaucheray were kneeling on the flags
of their cells, wildly stretching out their hands to him and yelling with
fright:
"Help!... Help!" they cried.
But, notwithstanding all his efforts, he was unable to move. He himself
was fastened by invisible bonds. And, trembling, obsessed by a
monstrous vision, he watched the dismal preparations, the cutting of the
condemned men's hair and shirt-collars, the squalid tragedy.
"By Jove!" he said, when he woke after a series of nightmares. "There's
a lot of bad omens! Fortunately, we don't err on the side of superstition.
Otherwise... !" And he added, "For that matter, we have a talisman

which, to judge by Gilbert and Vaucheray's behaviour, should be
enough, with Lupin's help, to frustrate bad luck and secure the triumph
of the good cause. Let's have a look at that crystal stopper!"
He sprang out of bed to take the thing and examine it more closely. An
exclamation escaped him. The crystal stopper had disappeared...

CHAPTER II
EIGHT FROM NINE LEAVES ONE
Notwithstanding my friendly relations with Lupin and the many
flattering proofs of his confidence which he has given me, there is one
thing which I have never been quite able to fathom, and that is the
organization of his gang.
The existence of the gang is an undoubted fact. Certain adventures can
be explained only by countless acts of devotion, invincible efforts of
energy and powerful cases of complicity, representing so many forces
which all