The Hollow Needle (23 page)

Like a madman, Beautrelet seized the iron door in which the bricks were sealed, pulled it back, violently and closed it. Astonishment, delight, the fear of being surprised convulsed his face so as to render it unrecognizable. He beheld the awful vision of all that had happened there, in front of that door, during twenty centuries; of all those people, initiated into the great secret, who had penetrated through that issue: Celts, Gauls, Romans, Normans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, barons, dukes, kings—and, after all of them, Arsène Lupin—and, after Lupin, himself, Beautrelet. He felt that his brain was slipping away from him. His eyelids fluttered. He fell fainting and rolled to the bottom of the slope, to the very edge of the precipice.

His task was done, at least the task which he was able to accomplish alone, with his unaided resources.

That evening, he wrote a long letter to the chief of the detective service, giving a faithful account of the results of his investigations and revealing the secret of the Hollow Needle. He asked for assistance to complete his work and gave his address.

While waiting for the reply, he spent two consecutive nights in the Chambre des Demoiselles. He spent them overcome with fear, his nerves shaken with a terror which was increased by the sounds of the night. At every moment, he thought he saw shadows approach in his direction. People knew of his presence in the cave—they were coming—they were murdering him!

His eyes, however, staring madly before them, sustained by all the power of his will, clung to the piece of wall.

On the first night, nothing stirred; but, on the second, by the light of the stars and a slender crescent-moon, he saw the door open and figures emerge from the darkness: he counted two, three, four, five of them.

It seemed to him that those five men were carrying fairly large loads. He followed them for a little way. They cut straight across the fields to the Havre road; and he heard the sound of a motor car driving away.

He retraced his steps, skirting a big farm. But, at the turn of the road that ran beside it, he had only just time to scramble up a slope and hide behind some trees. More men passed—four, five men—all carrying packages. And, two minutes later, another motor snorted.

This time, he had not the strength to return to his post; and he went back to bed.

When he woke and had finished dressing, the hotel waiter brought him a letter. He opened it. It contained Ganimard’s card.

“At last!” cried Beautrelet, who, after so hard a campaign, was really feeling the need of a comrade-in-arms.

He ran downstairs with outstretched hands. Ganimard took them, looked at him for a moment and said:

“You’re a fine fellow, my lad!”

“Pooh!” he said. “Luck has served me.”

“There’s no such thing as luck with ‘him,’” declared the inspector, who always spoke of Lupin in a solemn tone and without mentioning his name.

He sat down:

“So we’ve got him!”

“Just as we’ve had him twenty times over,” said Beautrelet, laughing.

“Yes, but to-day—”

“To-day, of course, the case is different. We know his retreat, his stronghold, which means, when all is said, that Lupin is Lupin. He can escape. The Etretat Needle cannot.”

“Why do you suppose that he will escape?” asked Ganimard, anxiously.

“Why do you suppose that he requires to escape?” replied Beautrelet. “There is nothing to prove that he is in the Needle at present. Last night, eleven of his men left it. He may be one of the eleven.”

Ganimard reflected:

“You are right. The great thing is the Hollow Needle. For the rest, let us hope that chance will favor us. And now, let us talk.”

He resumed his serious voice, his self-important air and said:

“My dear Beautrelet, I have orders to recommend you to observe the most absolute discretion in regard to this matter.”

“Orders from whom?” asked Beautrelet, jestingly. “The prefect of police?”

“Higher than that.”

“The prime minister?”

“Higher.”

“Whew!”

Ganimard lowered his voice:

“Beautrelet, I was at the Elysee last night. They look upon this matter as a state secret of the utmost gravity. There are serious reasons for concealing the existence of this citadel—reasons of military strategy, in particular. It might become a revictualling centre, a magazine for new explosives, for lately-invented projectiles, for anything of that sort: the secret arsenal of France, in fact.”

“But how can they hope to keep a secret like this? In the old days, one man alone held it: the king. To-day, already, there are a good few of us who know it, without counting Lupin’s gang.”

“Still, if we gained only ten years’, only five years’ silence! Those five years may be—the saving of us.”

“But, in order to capture this citadel, this future arsenal, it will have to be attacked, Lupin must be dislodged. And all this cannot be done without noise.”

“Of course, people will guess something, but they won’t know. Besides, we can but try.”

“All right. What’s your plan?”

“Here it is, in two words. To begin with, you are not Isidore Beautrelet and there’s no question of Arsène Lupin either. You are and you remain a small boy of Etretat, who, while strolling about the place, caught some fellows coming out of an underground passage. This makes you suspect the existence of a flight of steps which cuts through the cliff from top to bottom.”

“Yes, there are several of those flights of steps along the coast. For instance, to the right of Etretat, opposite Benouville, they showed me the Devil’s Staircase, which every bather knows. And I say nothing of the three or four tunnels used by the fishermen.”

“So you will guide me and one-half of my men. I shall enter alone, or accompanied, that remains to be seen. This much is certain, that the attack must be delivered that way. If Lupin is not in the Needle, we shall fix up a trap in which he will be caught sooner or later. If he is there—”

“If he is there, he will escape from the Needle by the other side, the side overlooking the sea.”

“In that case, he will at once be arrested by the other half of my men.”

“Yes, but if, as I presume, you choose a moment when the sea is at low ebb, leaving the base of the Needle uncovered, the chase will be public, because it will take place before all the men and women fishing for mussels, shrimps and shell-fish who swarm on the rocks round about.”

“That is why I just mean to select the time when the sea is full.”

“In that case, he will make off in a boat.”

“Ah, but I shall have a dozen fishing-smacks, each of which will be commanded by one of my men, and we shall collar him—”

“If he doesn’t slip through your dozen smacks, like a fish through the meshes.”

“All right, then I’ll sink him.”

“The devil you will! Shall you have guns?”

“Why, of course! There’s a torpedo-boat at the Havre at this moment. A telegram from me will bring her to the Needle at the appointed hour.”

“How proud Lupin will be! A torpedo-boat! Well, M. Ganimard, I see that you have provided for everything. We have only to go ahead. When do we deliver the assault?”

“To-morrow.”

“At night?”

“No, by daylight, at the flood-tide, as the clock strikes ten in the morning.”

“Capital.”

Under his show of gaiety, Beautrelet concealed a real anguish of mind. He did not sleep until the morning, but lay pondering over the most impracticable schemes, one after the other.

Ganimard had left him in order to go to Yport, six or seven miles from Etretat, where, for prudence’s sake, he had told his men to meet him, and where he chartered twelve fishing smacks, with the ostensible object of taking soundings along the coast.

At a quarter to ten, escorted by a body of twelve stalwart men, he met Isidore at the foot of the road that goes up the cliff.

At ten o’clock exactly, they reached the skirt of wall. It was the decisive moment.

At ten o’clock exactly.

“Why, what’s the matter with you, Beautrelet?” jeered Ganimard. “You’re quite green in the face!”

“It’s as well you can’t see yourself, Ganimard,” the boy retorted. “One would think your last hour had come!”

They both had to sit down and Ganimard swallowed a few mouthfuls of rum.

“It’s not funk,” he said, “but, by Jove, this is an exciting business! Each time that I’m on the point of catching him, it takes me like that in the pit of the stomach. A dram of rum?”

“No.”

“And if you drop behind?”

“That will mean that I’m dead.”

“B-r-r-r-r! However, we’ll see. And now, open, sesame! No danger of our being observed, I suppose?”

“No. The Needle is not so high as the cliff, and, besides, there’s a bend in the ground where we are.”

Beautrelet went to the wall and pressed upon the brick. The bolt was released and the underground passage came in sight.

By the gleam of the lanterns which they lit, they saw that it was cut in the shape of a vault and that both the vaulting and the floor itself were entirely covered with bricks.

They walked for a few seconds and, suddenly, a staircase appeared. Beautrelet counted forty-five brick steps, which the slow action of many footsteps had worn away in the middle.

“Blow!” said Ganimard, holding his head and stopping suddenly, as though he had knocked against something.

“What is it?”

“A door.”

“Bother!” muttered Beautrelet, looking at it. “And not an easy one to break down either. It’s just a solid block of iron.”

“We are done,” said Ganimard. “There’s not even a lock to it.”

“Exactly. That’s what gives me hope.”

“Why?”

“A door is made to open; and, as this one has no lock, that means that there is a secret way of opening it.”

“And, as we don’t know the secret—”

“I shall know it in a minute.”

“How?”

“By means of the document. The fourth line has no other object but to solve each difficulty as and when it crops up. And the solution is comparatively easy, because it’s not written with a view to throwing searchers off the scent, but to assisting them.”

“Comparatively easy! I don’t agree with you,” cried Ganimard, who had unfolded the document. “The number 44 and a triangle with a dot in it: that doesn’t tell us much!”

“Yes, yes, it does! Look at the door. You see it’s strengthened, at each corner, with a triangular slab of iron; and the slabs are fixed with big nails. Take the left-hand bottom slab and work the nail in the corner: I’ll lay ten to one we’ve hit the mark.”

“You’ve lost your bet,” said Ganimard, after trying.

“Then the figure 44 must mean—”

In a low voice, reflecting as he spoke, Beautrelet continued:

“Let me see—Ganimard and I are both standing on the bottom step of the staircase—there are 45. Why 45, when the figure in the document is 44? A coincidence? No. In all this business, there is no such thing as a coincidence, at least not an involuntary one. Ganimard, be so good as to move one step higher up. That’s it, don’t leave this forty-fourth step. And now I will work the iron nail. And the trick’s done, or I’ll eat my boots!”

The heavy door turned on its hinges. A fairly spacious cavern appeared before their eyes.

“We must be exactly under Fort Frefosse,” said Beautrelet. “We have passed through the different earthy layers by now. There will be no more brick. We are in the heart of the solid limestone.”

The room was dimly lit by a shaft of daylight that came from the other end. Going up to it, they saw that it was a fissure in the cliff, contrived in a projecting wall and forming a sort of observatory. In front of them, at a distance of fifty yards, the impressive mass of the Needle loomed from the waves. On the right, quite close, was the arched buttress of the Porte d’Aval and, on the left, very far away, closing the graceful curve of a large inlet, another rocky gateway, more imposing still, was cut out of the cliff; the Manneporte,
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which was so wide and tall that a three-master could have passed through it with all sail set. Behind and everywhere, the sea.

“I don’t see our little fleet,” said Beautrelet.

“I know,” said Ganimard. “The Porte d’Aval hides the whole of the coast of Etretat and Yport. But look, over there, in the offing, that black line, level with the water—”

“Well?”

“That’s our fleet of war, Torpedo-boat No. 25. With her there, Lupin is welcome to break loose—if he wants to study the landscape at the bottom of the sea.”

A baluster marked the entrance to the staircase, near the fissure. They started on their way down. From time to time, a little window pierced the wall of the cliff; and, each time, they caught sight of the Needle, whose mass seemed to them to grow more and more colossal.

A little before reaching high-water level, the windows ceased and all was dark.

Isidore counted the steps aloud. At the three hundred and fifty-eight, they emerged into a wider passage, which was barred by another iron door strengthened with slabs and nails.

“We know all about this,” said Beautrelet. “The document gives us 357 and a triangle dotted on the right. We have only to repeat the performance.”

The second door obeyed like the first. A long, a very long tunnel appeared, lit up at intervals by the gleam of a lantern swung from the vault. The walls oozed moisture and drops of water fell to the ground, so that, to make walking easier a regular pavement of planks had been laid from end to end.

“We are passing under the sea,” said Beautrelet. “Are you coming, Ganimard?”

Without replying, the inspector ventured into the tunnel, followed the wooden foot-plank and stopped before a lantern, which he took down.

“The utensils may date back to the Middle Ages, but the lighting is modern,” he said. “Our friends use incandescent mantles.”

He continued his way. The tunnel ended in another and a larger cave, with, on the opposite side, the first steps of a staircase that led upward.

“It’s the ascent of the Needle beginning,” said Ganimard. “This is more serious.”

But one of his men called him:

“There’s another flight here, sir, on the left.”