by Maurice LeBlanc...

THE ARRESTS The two boats fastened to the little pier that jutted out from the garden lay rocking in its shadow. Here and there lighted windows showed through the thick mist on the margins of the lake. The Enghien Casino opposite blazed with light, though it was late in the season, the end of September. A few stars appeared through the clouds. A light breeze ruffled the surface of the water. Arsène Lupin left the summer-house where he was smoking a cigar and, bending forward at the end of the pi

THE CHIEF OF THE ENEMIES “Poor boy!” murmured Lupin, when his eyes fell on Gilbert’s letter next morning. “How he must feel it!” On the very first day when he saw him, he had taken a liking to that well-set-up youngster, so careless, gay and fond of life. Gilbert was devoted to him, would have accepted death at a sign from his master. And Lupin also loved his frankness, his good humour, his simplicity, his bright, open face. “Gilbert,” he often used to say, “you are an honest man. Do you know, i

THE TWENTY-SEVEN The child was sleeping peacefully on the bed. The mother did not move from the sofa on which Lupin had laid her; but her easier breathing and the blood which was now returning to her face announced her impending recovery from her swoon. He observed that she wore a wedding-ring. Seeing a locket hanging from her bodice, he stooped and, turning it, found a miniature photograph representing a man of about forty and a lad—a stripling rather—in a schoolboy’s uniform. He studied the fr

THE DEATH-SENTENCE Lupin’s motor-car was not only an office, a writing-room furnished with books, stationery, pens and ink, but also a regular actor’s dressing-room, containing a complete make-up box, a trunk filled with every variety of wearing-apparel, another crammed with “properties”—umbrellas, walking-sticks, scarves, eye-glasses and so on—in short, a complete set of paraphernalia which enabled him to alter his appearance from top to toe in the course of a drive. The man who rang at Daubrec

THE PROFILE OF NAPOLEON Soon as the prefect of police, the chief of the criminal-investigation department and the examining-magistrates had left Daubrecq’s house, after a preliminary and entirely fruitless inquiry, Prasville resumed his personal search. He was examining the study and the traces of the struggle which had taken place there, when the portress brought him a visiting-card, with a few words in pencil scribbled upon it. “Show the lady in,” he said. “The lady has some one with her,” sai

EXTRA-DRY? On one of the hills that girdle Nice with the finest scenery in the world, between the Vallon de Saint-Silvestre and the Vallon de La Mantéga, stands a huge hotel which overlooks the town and the wonderful Baie des Anges. A crowd flocks to it from all parts, forming a medley of every class and nation. On the evening of the same Saturday when Lupin, the Growler and the Masher were plunging into Italy, Clarisse Mergy entered this hotel, asked for a bedroom facing south and selected No.

THE SCAFFOLD “I will save him, I will save him,” Lupin repeated, without ceasing, in the taxicab in which he and Clarisse drove away. “I swear that I will save him.” Clarisse did not listen, sat as though numbed, as though possessed by some great nightmare of death, which left her ignorant of all that was happening outside her. And Lupin set forth his plans, perhaps more to reassure himself than to convince Clarisse: “No, no, the game is not lost yet. There is one trump left, a huge trump, in th