The Hollow Needle; Further adventures of Arsene Lupin

"What do you say to the way I have arranged my little home, Beautrelet?" cried Lupin. "There's a style about it, isn't there? I don't pretend that it's as comfortable as it might be. And yet, some have been quite satisfied with it; and not the least of mankind, either!—Look at the list of distinguished people who have owned the Needle in their time and who thought it an honor to leave a mark of their sojourn."

On the walls, one below the other, were carved the following names:

JULIUS CAESAR

CHARLEMAGNE ROLLO

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR

RICHARD COEUR-DE-LEON

LOUIS XI.

FRANCIS I.

HENRY IV.

LOUIS XIV.

ARSENE LUPIN

"Whose name will figure after ours?" he continued. "Alas, the list is closed! From Caesar to Lupin—and there it ends. Soon the nameless mob will come to visit the strange citadel. And to think that, but for Lupin, all this would have remained for ever unknown to men! Ah Beautrelet, what a feeling of pride was mine on the day when I first set foot on this abandoned soil. To have found the lost secret and become its master, its sole master! To inherit such an inheritance! To live in the Needle, after all those kings!—"

He was interrupted by a gesture of his wife's. She seemed greatly agitated.

"There is a noise," she said. "Underneath us.—You can hear it."

"It's the lapping of the water," said Lupin.

"No, indeed it's not. I know the sound of the waves. This is something different."

"What would you have it be, darling?" said Lupin, smiling. "I invited no one to lunch except Beautrelet." And, addressing the servant, "Charolais, did you lock the staircase doors behind the gentleman?"

"Yes, sir, and fastened the bolts."

Lupin rose:

"Come, Raymonde, don't shake like that. Why, you're quite pale!"

He spoke a few words to her in an undertone, as also to the servant, drew back the curtain and sent them both out of the room.

The noise below grew more distinct. It was a series of dull blows, repeated at intervals. Beautrelet thought:

"Ganimard has lost patience and is breaking down the doors."

Lupin resumed the thread of his conversation, speaking very calmly and as though he had really not heard:

"By Jove, the Needle was badly damaged when I succeeded in discovering it! One could see that no one had possessed the secret for more than a century, since Louis XVI. and the Revolution. The tunnel was threatening to fall in. The stairs were in a shocking state. The water was trickling in from the sea. I had to prop up and strengthen and rebuild the whole thing."

Beautrelet could not help asking:

"When you arrived, was it empty?"

"Very nearly. The kings did not use the Needle, as I have done, as a warehouse."

"As a place of refuge, then?"

"Yes, no doubt, in times of invasion and during the civil wars. But its real destination was to be—how shall I put it?—the strong-room or the bank of the kings of France."

The sound of blows increased, more distinctly now. Ganimard must have broken down the first door and was attacking the second. There was a short silence and then more blows, nearer still. It was the third door. Two remained.

Through one of the windows, Beautrelet saw a number of fishing-smacks sailing round the Needle and, not far away, floating on the waters like a great black fish, the torpedo-boat.

"What a row!" exclaimed Lupin. "One can't hear one's self speak! Let's go upstairs, shall we? It may interest you to look over the Needle."

They climbed to the floor above, which was protected, like the others, by a door which Lupin locked behind him.

"My picture gallery," he said.

The walls were covered with canvases on which Beautrelet recognized the most famous signatures. There were Raphael's Madonna of the Agnus Dei, Andrea del Sarto's Portrait of Lucrezia Fede, Titian's Salome, Botticelli's Madonna and Angels and numbers of Tintorettos, Carpaccios, Rembrandts, Velasquez.

"What fine copies!" said Beautrelet, approvingly.

Lupin looked at him with an air of stupefaction:

"What! Copies! You must be mad! The copies are in Madrid, my dear fellow, in Florence, Venice, Munich, Amsterdam."

"Then these—"

"Are the original pictures, my lad, patiently collected in all the museums of Europe, where I have replaced them, like an honest man, with first-rate copies."

"But some day or other—"

"Some day or other, the fraud will be discovered? Well, they will find my signature on each canvas—at the back—and they will know that it was I who have endowed my country with the original masterpieces. After all, I have only done what Napoleon did in Italy.—Oh, look, Beautrelet: here are M. de Gesvres's four Rubenses!—"

The knocking continued within the hollow of the Needle without ceasing.

"I can't stand this!" said Lupin. "Let's go higher."

A fresh staircase. A fresh door.

"The tapestry-room," Lupin announced.

The tapestries were not hung on the walls, but rolled, tied up with cord, ticketed; and, in addition, there were parcels of old fabrics which Lupin unfolded: wonderful brocades, admirable velvets, soft, faded silks, church vestments woven with silver and gold—

They went higher still and Beautrelet saw the room containing the clocks and other time-pieces, the book-room—oh, the splendid bindings, the precious, undiscoverable volumes, the unique copies stolen from the great public libraries—the lace-room, the knicknack-room.

And each time the circumference of the room grew smaller.