"Yes, sire."

"Well, could you be relied upon-could you be relied upon-"

He hesitated. The officer completed the sentence:

"Not to betray your Majesty! Oh, sire!-"

"Then listen to me."

He took from his pocket a little book of which he tore out one of the last pages. But, altering his mind:

"No, I had better copy it-"

He seized a large sheet of paper and tore it in such a way as to leave only a small rectangular s.p.a.ce, on which he copied five lines of dots, letters and figures from the printed page. Then, after burning the latter, he folded the ma.n.u.script sheet in four, sealed it with red wax, and gave it to the officer.

"Monsieur, after my death, you must hand this to the Queen and say to her, 'From the King, madame-for Your Majesty and for your son.' If she does not understand-"

"If she does not understand, sire-"

"You must add, 'It concerns the secret, the secret of the Needle.' The Queen will understand."

When he had finished speaking, he flung the book into the embers glowing on the hearth.

He ascended the scaffold on the 21st of January.

It took the officer several months, in consequence of the removal of the Queen to the Conciergerie, before he could fulfil the mission with which he was entrusted. At last, by dint of cunning intrigues, he succeeded, one day, in finding himself in the presence of Marie Antoinette.

Speaking so that she could just hear him, he said:

"Madame, from the late King, your husband, for Your Majesty and your son."

And he gave her the sealed letter.

She satisfied herself that the jailers could not see her, broke the seals, appeared surprised at the sight of those undecipherable lines and then, all at once, seemed to understand.

She smiled bitterly and the officer caught the words:

"Why so late?"

She hesitated. Where should she hide this dangerous doc.u.ment? At last, she opened her book of hours and slipped the paper into a sort of secret pocket contrived between the leather of the binding and the parchment that covered it.

"Why so late?" she had asked.

It is, in fact, probable that this doc.u.ment, if it could have saved her, came too late, for, in the month of October next, Queen Marie Antoinette ascended the scaffold in her turn.

Now the officer, when going through his family papers, came upon his ancestor's ma.n.u.script. From that moment, he had but one idea, which was to devote his leisure to elucidating this strange problem. He read all the Latin authors, studied all the chronicles of France and those of the neighboring countries, visited the monasteries, deciphered account-books, cartularies, treaties; and, in this way, succeeded in discovering certain references scattered over the ages.

In Book III of Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War (MS. edition, Alexandria), it is stated that, after the defeat of Veridovix by G. t.i.tullius Sabinus, the chief of the Caleti was brought before Caesar and that, for his ransom, he revealed the secret of the Needle-

The Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, between Charles the Simple and Rollo, the chief of the Norse barbarians, gives Rollo's name followed by all his t.i.tles, among which we read that of Master of the Secret of the Needle.

The Saxon Chronicle (Gibson's edition, page 134), speaking of William the Conqueror, says that the staff of his banner ended in a steel point pierced with an eye, like a needle.

In a rather ambiguous phrase in her examination, Joan of Arc admits that she has still a great secret to tell the King of France. To which her judges reply, "Yes, we know of what you speak; and that, Joan, is why you shall die the death."

Philippe de Comines mentions it in connection with Louis XI., and, later, Sully in connection with Henry IV.: "By the virtue of the Needle!" the good king sometimes swears.

Between these two, Francis I., in a speech addressed to the notables of the Havre, in 1520, uttered this phrase, which has been handed down in the diary of a Honfleur burgess; "The Kings of France carry secrets that often decide the conduct of affairs and the fate of towns."

All these quotations, all the stories relating to the Iron Mask, the captain of the guards and his descendant, I have found to-day in a pamphlet written by this same descendant and published in the month of June, 1815, just before or just after the battle of Waterloo, in a period, therefore, of great upheavals, in which the revelations which it contained were likely to pa.s.s unperceived.

What is the value of this pamphlet? Nothing, you will tell me, and we must attach no credit to it. And this is the impression which I myself would have carried away, if it had not occurred to me to open Caesar's Commentaries at the chapter given. What was my astonishment when I came upon the phrase quoted in the little book before me! And it was the same thing with the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, with the Saxon Chronicle, with the examination of Joan of Arc, in short, with all that I have been able to verify up to the present.

Lastly, there is an even more precise fact related by the author of the pamphlet of 1815. During the French campaign, he being then an officer under Napoleon, his horse dropped dead, one evening, and he rang at the door of a castle where he was received by an old knight of St. Louis. And, in the course of conversation with the old man, he learnt that this castle, standing on the bank of the Creuse, was called the Chateau de l'Aiguille, that it had been built and christened by Louis XIV., and that, by his express order, it was adorned with turrets and with a spire which represented the Needle. As its date it bore, it must still bear, the figure 1680.

1680! One year after the publication of the book and the imprisonment of the Iron Mask! Everything was now explained: Louis XIV., foreseeing that the secret might be noised abroad, had built and named that castle so as to offer the quidnuncs a natural explanation of the ancient mystery. The Hollow Needle! A castle with pointed bell-turrets standing on the bank of the Creuse and belonging to the King. People would at once think that they had the key to the riddle and all enquiries would cease.

The calculation was just, seeing that, more than two centuries later, M. Beautrelet fell into the trap. And this, Sir, is what I was leading up to in writing this letter. If Lupin, under the name of Anfredi, rented from M. Valmeras the Chateau de l'Aiguille on the bank of the Creuse; if, admitting the success of the inevitable investigations of M. Beautrelet, he lodged his two prisoners there, it was because he admitted the success of the inevitable researches made by M. Beautrelet and because, with the object of obtaining the peace for which he had asked, he laid for M. Beautrelet precisely what we may call the historic trap of Louis XIV.

And hence we come to this undeniable conclusion, that he, Lupin, by his unaided lights, without possessing any other facts than those which we possess, managed by means of the witchcraft of a really extraordinary genius, to decipher the undecipherable doc.u.ment; and that he, Lupin, the last heir of the Kings of France, knows the royal mystery of the Hollow Needle!

Here ended the letter. But, for some minutes, from the pa.s.sage that referred to the Chateau de l'Aiguille onward, it was not Beautrelet's but another voice that read it aloud. Realizing his defeat, crushed under the weight of his humiliation, Isidore had dropped the newspaper and sunk into his chair, with his face buried in his hands.

Panting, shaken with excitement by this incredible story, the crowd had come gradually nearer and was now pressing round.

With a thrill of anguish, they waited for the words which he would say in reply, the objections which he would raise.

He did not stir.

Valmeras gently uncrossed his hands and raised his head.

Isidore Beautrelet was weeping.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE TREATISE OF THE NEEDLE

It is four o'clock in the morning. Isidore has not returned to the Lycee Janson. He has no intention of returning before the end of the war of extermination which he has declared against Lupin. This much he swore to himself under his breath, while his friends drove off with him, all faint and bruised, in a cab.

A mad oath! An absurd and illogical war! What can he do, a single, unarmed stripling, against that phenomenon of energy and strength? On which side is he to attack him? He is una.s.sailable. Where to wound him? He is invulnerable. Where to get at him? He is inaccessible.

Four o'clock in the morning. Isidore has again accepted his schoolfellow's hospitality. Standing before the chimney in his bedroom, with his elbows flat on the mantel-shelf and his two fists under his chin, he stares at his image in the looking-gla.s.s. He is not crying now, he can shed no more tears, nor fling himself about on his bed, nor give way to despair, as he has been doing for the last two hours and more. He wants to think, to think and understand.

And he does not remove his eyes from those same eyes reflected in the gla.s.s, as though he hoped to double his powers of thought by contemplating his pensive image, as though he hoped to find at the back of that mirrored Beautrelet the unsolvable solution of what he does not find within himself.

He stands thus until six o'clock, and, little by little, the question presents itself to his mind with the strictness of an equation, bare and dry and cleared of all the details that complicate and obscure it.