813

"Octave! Octave?" he shouted, forgetting that the chauffeur was not there.

Help, he needed help, some one to reassure him and assist him. He shivered with fright. Oh, that coldness, that coldness of death which he had felt! Was it possible?.. Then, during those few tragic minutes, with his clenched fingers, he had..

Violently, he forced himself to look. Dolores did not stir.

He flung himself on his knees and drew her to him.

She was dead.

He remained for some seconds a prey to a sort of numbness in which his grief seemed to be swallowed up. He no longer suffered. He no longer felt rage nor hatred nor emotion of any kind.. nothing but a stupid prostration, the sensation of a man who has received a blow with a club and who does not know if he is still alive, if he is thinking, or if he is the sport of a nightmare.

Nevertheless, it seemed to him that an act of justice had taken place, and it did not for a second occur to him that it was he who had taken life. No, it was not he. It was outside him and his will. It was destiny, inexorable destiny that had accomplished the work of equity by slaying the noxious beast.

Outside, the birds were singing. Life was recommencing under the old trees, which the spring was preparing to bring into bud. And Lupin, waking from his torpor, felt gradually welling up within him an indefinable and ridiculous compassion for the wretched woman, odious, certainly, abject and twenty times criminal, but so young still and now.. dead.

And he thought of the tortures which she must have undergone in her lucid moments, when reason returned to the unspeakable madwoman and brought the sinister vision of her deeds.

"Protect me… I am so unhappy!" she used to beg.

It was against herself that she asked to be protected, against her wild-beast instincts, against the monster that dwelt within her and forced her to kill, always to kill.

"Always?" Lupin asked himself.

And he remembered the night, two days since, when, standing over him, with her dagger raised against the enemy who had been harassing her for months, against the indefatigable enemy who had run her to earth after each of her crimes, he remembered that, on that night, she had not killed. And yet it would have been easy: the enemy lay lifeless and powerless. One blow and the implacable struggle was over. No, she had not killed, she too had given way to feelings stronger than her own cruelty, to mysterious feelings of pity, of sympathy, of admiration for the man who had so often mastered her.

No, she had not killed, that time. And now, by a really terrifying vicissitude of fate, it was he who had killed her.

"I have taken life!" he thought, shuddering from head to foot. "These hands have killed a living being; and that creature is Dolores!.. Dolores!.. Dolores!."

He never ceased repeating her name, her name of sorrow, and he never ceased staring at her, a sad, lifeless thing, harmless now, a poor hunk of flesh, with no more consciousness than a little heap of withered leaves or a little dead bird by the roadside.

Oh! how could he do other than quiver with compassion, seeing that of those two, face to face, he was the murderer, and she, who was no more, the victim?

"Dolores!.. Dolores!.. Dolores!."

The daylight found Lupin seated beside the dead woman, remembering and thinking, while his lips, from time to time, uttered the disconsolate syllables:

"Dolores!.. Dolores!."

He had to act, however, and, in the disorder of his ideas, he did not know how to act nor with what act to begin:

"I must close her eyes first," he said.

The eyes, all empty, filled only with death, those beautiful gold-spangled eyes, had still the melancholy softness that gave them their charm. Was it possible that those eyes were the eyes of a monster? In spite of himself and in the face of the implacable reality, Lupin was not yet able to blend into one single being those two creatures whose images remained so distinct at the back of his brain.

He stooped swiftly, lowered the long, silky eyelids, and covered the poor distorted face with a veil.

Then it seemed to him that Dolores was farther away and that the man in black was really there, this time, in his dark clothes, in his murderer's disguise.

He now ventured to touch her, to feel in her clothes. In an inside pocket were two pocket-books. He took one of them and opened it. He found first a letter signed by Steinweg, the old German. It contained the following lines:

"Should I die before being able to reveal the terrible secret, let it be known that the murderer of my friend Kesselbach is his wife, whose real name is Dolores de Malreich, sister to Altenheim and sister to Isilda.

"The initials L. and M. relate to her. Kesselbach never, in their private life, called his wife Dolores, which is the name of sorrow, but Letitia, which denotes joy. L. M. – Letitia de Malreich – were the initials inscribed on all the presents which he used to give her, for instance, on the cigarette-case which was found at the Palace Hotel and which belonged to Mrs. Kesselbach. She had contracted the smoking-habit on her travels.

"Letitia! She was indeed the joy of his life for four years, four years of lies and hypocrisy, in which she prepared the death of the man who loved her so well and who trusted her so whole-heartedly.

"Perhaps I ought to have spoken at once. I had not the courage, in memory of my old friend Kesselbach, whose name she bore.

"And then I was afraid… On the day when I unmasked her, at the Palais de Justice, I read my doom in her eyes.

"Will my weakness save me?"

"Him also," thought Lupin, "him also she killed!.. Why, of course, he knew too much!.. The initials.. that name, Letitia.. the secret habit of smoking!"

And he remembered the previous night, that smell of tobacco in her room.

He continued his inspection of the first pocket-book. There were scraps of letters, in cipher, no doubt handed to Dolores by her accomplices, in the course of their nocturnal meetings. There were also addresses on bits of paper, addresses of milliners and dressmakers, but addresses also of low haunts, of common hotels… And names.. twenty, thirty names.. queer names: Hector the Butcher, Armand of Grenelle, the Sick Man.

But a photograph caught Lupin's eye. He looked at it. And, at once, as though shot from a spring, dropping the pocket-book, he bolted out of the room, out of the chalet and rushed into the park.

He had recognized the portrait of Louis de Malreich, the prisoner at the Santé!

Not till then, not till that exact moment did he remember: the execution was to take place next day.

And, as the man in black, as the murderer was none other than Dolores Kesselbach, Louis de Malreich's name was really and truly Leon Massier and he was innocent!

Innocent? But the evidence found in his house, the Emperor's letters, all, all the things that accused him beyond hope of denial, all those incontrovertible proofs?

Lupin stopped for a second, with his brain on fire:

"Oh," he cried, "I shall go mad, I, too! Come, though, I must act.. the sentence is to be executed.. to-morrow.. to-morrow at break of day."

He looked at his watch:

"Ten o'clock… How long will it take me to reach Paris? Well.. I shall be there presently.. yes, presently, I must… And this very evening I shall take measures to prevent… But what measures? How can I prove his innocence?.. How prevent the execution? Oh, never mind! Once I am there, I shall find a way. My name is not Lupin for nothing!.. Come on!."

He set off again at a run, entered the castle and called out:

"Pierre! Pierre!.. Has any one seen M. Pierre Leduc?.. Oh, there you are!.. Listen.."

He took him on one side and jerked out, in imperious tones:

"Listen, Dolores is not here… Yes, she was called away on urgent business.. she left last night in my motor… I am going too… Don't interrupt, not a word!.. A second lost means irreparable harm… You, send away all the servants, without any explanation. Here is money. In half an hour from now, the castle must be empty. And let no one enter it until I return… Not you either, do you understand?.. I forbid you to enter the castle… I'll explain later.. serious reasons. Here, take the key with you… Wait for me in the village.."

And once more, he darted away.

Five minutes later, he was with Octave. He jumped into the car: