The Confessions of Arsène Lupin

“Lupin,” I said, “tell me something about yourself.”

“Why, what would you have me tell you? Everybody knows my life!” replied Lupin, who lay drowsing on the sofa in my study.

“Nobody knows it!” I protested. “People know from your letters in the newspapers that you were mixed up in this case, that you started that case. But the part which you played in it all, the plain facts of the story, the upshot of the mystery: these are things of which they know nothing.”

“Pooh! A heap of uninteresting twaddle!”

“What! Your present of fifty thousand francs to Nicolas Dugrival’s wife! Do you call that uninteresting? And what about the way in which you solved the puzzle of the three pictures?”

Lupin laughed:

“Yes, that was a queer puzzle, certainly. I can suggest a title for you if you like: what do you say to The Sign of the Shadow?”

“And your successes in society and with the fair sex?” I continued. “The dashing Arsène’s love-affairs!⁠ ⁠… And the clue to your good actions? Those chapters in your life to which you have so often alluded under the names of The Wedding-Ring, Shadowed by Death, and so on!⁠ ⁠… Why delay these confidences and confessions, my dear Lupin?⁠ ⁠… Come, do what I ask you!⁠ ⁠…”

It was at the time when Lupin, though already famous, had not yet fought his biggest battles; the time that preceded the great adventures of The Hollow Needle and 813.

Yvonne d’Origny kissed her son and told him to be good:

“You know your grandmother d’Origny is not very fond of children. Now that she has sent for you to come and see her, you must show her what a sensible little boy you are.” And, turning to the governess, “Don’t forget, Fräulein, to bring him home immediately after dinner.⁠ ⁠… Is monsieur still in the house?”

“Yes, madame, monsieur le comte is in his study.”

As soon as she was alone, Yvonne d’Origny walked to the window to catch a glimpse of her son as he left the house. He was out in the street in a moment, raised his head and blew her a kiss, as was his custom every day. Then the governess took his hand with, as Yvonne remarked to her surprise, a movement of unusual violence. Yvonne leant further out of the window and, when the boy reached the corner of the boulevard, she suddenly saw a man step out of a motorcar and go up to him. The man, in whom she recognized Bernard, her husband’s confidential servant, took the child by the arm, made both him and the governess get into the car, and ordered the chauffeur to drive off.

The whole incident did not take ten seconds.

Yvonne, in her trepidation, ran to her bedroom, seized a wrap and went to the door. The door was locked; and there was no key in the lock.

He had hardly finished his sentence when we heard the sound of footsteps behind us. It was two old beggars, a man and a woman, tattered, dirty, squalid, covered in rags. They passed us without paying the least attention to our presence. The man took from his wallet a key similar to my neighbour’s and put it into the lock. The door closed behind them.

And, suddenly, at the top of the lane, came the noise of a motorcar stopping.⁠ ⁠… Lupin dragged me fifty yards lower down, to a corner in which we were able to hide. And we saw coming down the lane, carrying a little dog under her arm, a young and very much overdressed woman, wearing a quantity of jewellery, a young woman whose eyes were too dark, her lips too red, her hair too fair. In front of the door, the same performance, with the same key.⁠ ⁠… The lady and the dog disappeared from view.

“This promises to be most amusing,” said Lupin, chuckling. “What earthly connection can there be between those different people?”

There hove in sight successively two elderly ladies, lean and rather poverty-stricken in appearance, very much alike, evidently sisters; a footman in livery; an infantry corporal; a fat gentleman in a soiled and patched jacket-suit; and, lastly, a workman’s family, father, mother, and four children, all six of them pale and sickly, looking like people who never eat their fill. And each of the newcomers carried a basket or string-bag filled with provisions.

“It’s a picnic!” I cried.

“It grows more and more surprising,” said Lupin, “and I shan’t be satisfied till I know what is happening behind that wall.”

On leaving his house one morning, at his usual early hour for going to the Law Courts, Chief-inspector Ganimard noticed the curious behaviour of an individual who was walking along the Rue Pergolèse in front of him. Shabbily dressed and wearing a straw hat, though the day was the first of December, the man stooped at every thirty or forty yards to fasten his bootlace, or pick up his stick, or for some other reason. And, each time, he took a little piece of orange-peel from his pocket and laid it stealthily on the kerb of the pavement. It was probably a mere display of eccentricity, a childish amusement to which no one else would have paid attention; but Ganimard was one of those shrewd observers who are indifferent to nothing that strikes their eyes and who are never satisfied until they know the secret cause of things. He therefore began to follow the man.

Now, at the moment when the fellow was turning to the right, into the Avenue de la Grande-Armée, the inspector caught him exchanging signals with a boy of twelve or thirteen, who was walking along the houses on the left-hand side. Twenty yards farther, the man stooped and turned up the bottom of his trousers legs. A bit of orange-peel marked the place. At the same moment, the boy stopped and, with a piece of chalk, drew a white cross, surrounded by a circle, on the wall of the house next to him.

The village was terror-stricken.

It was on a Sunday morning. The peasants of Saint-Nicolas and the neighbourhood were coming out of church and spreading across the square, when, suddenly, the women who were walking ahead and who had already turned into the high road fell back with loud cries of dismay.

At the same moment, an enormous motorcar, looking like some appalling monster, came tearing into sight at a headlong rate of speed. Amid the shouts of the madly scattering people, it made straight for the church, swerved, just as it seemed about to dash itself to pieces against the steps, grazed the wall of the presbytery, regained the continuation of the national road, dashed along, turned the corner and disappeared, without, by some incomprehensible miracle, having so much as brushed against any of the persons crowding the square.

But they had seen! They had seen a man in the driver’s seat, wrapped in a goatskin coat, with a fur cap on his head and his face disguised in a pair of large goggles, and, with him, on the front of that seat, flung back, bent in two, a woman whose head, all covered with blood, hung down over the bonnet.⁠ ⁠…

And they had heard! They had heard the woman’s screams, screams of horror, screams of agony.⁠ ⁠…

And it was all such a vision of hell and carnage that the people stood, for some seconds, motionless, stupefied.