He looked at Ganimard to see what impression his speech had produced on the inspector. Ganimard did not depart from his attitude of silence.
Lupin began to laugh:
“As a matter of fact, you’re annoyed and surprised. But you’re suspicious as welclass="underline" ‘Why should that confounded Lupin hand the business over to me,’ say you, ‘instead of keeping it for himself, hunting down the murderer and rifling his pockets, if there was a robbery?’ The question is quite logical, of course. But — there is a ‘but’ — I have no time, you see. I am full up with work at the present moment: a burglary in London, another at Lausanne, an exchange of children at Marseilles, to say nothing of having to save a young girl who is at this moment shadowed by death. That’s always the way: it never rains but it pours. So I said to myself, ‘Suppose I handed the business over to my dear old Ganimard? Now that it is half solved for him, he is quite capable of succeeding. And what a service I shall be doing him! How magnificently he will be able to distinguish himself!’ No sooner said than done. At eight o’clock in the morning, I sent the joker with the orange peel to meet you. You swallowed the bait; and you were here by nine, all on edge and eager for the fray.”
Lupin rose from his chair. He went over to the inspector and, with his eyes on Ganimard’s, said:
“That’s all. You now know the whole story. Presently, you will know the victim: some ballet dancer, probably, some singer at a music hall. On the other hand, the chances are that the criminal lives near the Pont-Neuf, most likely on the left bank. Lastly, here are all the exhibits. I make you a present of them. Set to work. I shall only keep this end of the scarf. If ever you want to piece the scarf together, bring me the other end, the one which the police will find round the victim’s neck. Bring it to me in four weeks from now to the day, that is to say, on the 29th of December, at ten o’clock in the morning. You can be sure of finding me here. And don’t be afraid: this is all perfectly serious, friend of my youth, I sweat it is. No humbug, honor bright. You can go straight ahead. Oh, by the way, when you arrest the fellow with the eyeglass, be a bit carefuclass="underline" he is left-handed! Good-by, old dear, and good luck to you!”
Lupin spun round on his heel, went to the door, opened it and disappeared before Ganimard had even thought of taking a decision. The inspector rushed after him, but at once found that the handle of the door, by some trick of mechanism which he did not know, refused to turn. It took him ten minutes to unscrew the lock and ten minutes more to unscrew the lock of the hall door. By the time that he had scrambled down the three flights of stairs, Ganimard had given up all hope of catching Arsène Lupin.
Besides, he was not thinking of it. Lupin inspired him with a queer, complex feeling, made up of fear, hatred, involuntary admiration and also the vague instinct that he, Ganimard, in spite of all his efforts, in spite of the persistency of his endeavors, would never get the better of this particular adversary. He pursued him from a sense of duty and pride, but with the continual dread of being taken in by that formidable hoaxer and flouted and fooled in the face of a public that was always only too willing to laugh at the chief inspector’s mishaps.
This business of the red scarf, in particular, struck him as most suspicious. It was interesting, certainly, in more ways than one, but so very improbable! And Lupin’s explanation, apparently so logical, would never stand the test of a severe examination!
“No,” said Ganimard, “this is all swank: a parcel of suppositions and guesswork based upon nothing at all. I’m not to be caught with chaff.”
When he reached the headquarters of police, at 36 Quai des Orfèvres, he had quite made up his mind to treat the incident as though it had never happened.
He went up to the Criminal Investigation Department. Here, one of his fellow inspectors said:
“Seen the chief?”
“No.”
“He was asking for you just now.”
“Oh, was he?”
“Yes, you had better go after him.”
“Where?”
“To the Rue de Berne... there was a murder there last night.”
“Oh! Who’s the victim?”
“I don’t know exactly... a music-hall singer, I believe.”
Ganimard simply muttered:
“By Jove!”
Twenty minutes later he stepped out of the underground railway station and made for the Rue de Berne.
The victim, who was known in the theatrical world by her stage name of Jenny Saphir, occupied a small flat on the second floor of one of the houses. A policeman took the chief inspector upstairs and showed him the way, through two sitting rooms, to a bedroom, where he found the magistrates in charge of the inquiry, together with the divisional surgeon and M. Dudouis, the head of the detective service.
Ganimard started at the first glance which he gave into the room. He saw, lying on a sofa, the corpse of a young woman whose hands clutched a strip of red silk! One of the shoulders, which appeared above the low-cut bodice, bore the marks of two wounds surrounded with clotted blood. The distorted and almost blackened features still bore an expression of frenzied terror.
The divisional surgeon, who had just finished his examination, said:
“My first conclusions are very clear. The victim was twice stabbed with a dagger and afterward strangled. The immediate cause of death was asphyxia.”
“By Jove!” thought Ganimard again, remembering Lupin’s words and the picture which he had drawn of the crime.
The examining magistrate objected:
“But the neck shows no discoloration.”
“She may have been strangled with a napkin or a handkerchief,” said the doctor.
“Most probably,” said the chief detective, “with this silk scarf, which the victim was wearing and a piece of which remains, as though she had clung to it with her two hands to protect herself.”
“But why does only that piece remain?” asked the magistrate. “What has become of the other?”
“The other may have been stained with blood and carried off by the murderer. You can plainly distinguish the hurried slashing of the scissors.”
“By Jove!” said Ganimard, between his teeth, for the third time. “That brute of a Lupin saw everything without seeing a thing!”
“And what about the motive of the murder?” asked the magistrate. “The locks have been forced, the cupboards turned upside down. Have you anything to tell me, M. Dudouis?”
The chief of the detective service replied:
“I can at least suggest a supposition, derived from the statements made by the servant. The victim, who enjoyed a greater reputation on account of her looks than through her talent as a singer, went to Russia, two years ago, and brought back with her a magnificent sapphire, which she appears to have received from some person of importance at the court. Since then, she went by the name of Jenny Saphir and seems generally to have been very proud of that present, although, for prudence’s sake, she never wore it. I daresay that we shall not be far out if we presume the theft of the sapphire to have been the cause of the crime.”