He was of a good height in this position; and Don Luis easily understood why the driver of the yellow taxi, who had seen him under two such different aspects, was unable to say whether he was very tall or very short.

But his legs, slack and unsteady, gave way beneath him, as if any prolonged exertion were beyond his power. He relapsed into his first att.i.tude.

The man was a cripple, smitten with some disease that affected his powers of locomotion. He was excessively thin. Don Luis also saw his pallid face, his cavernous cheeks, his hollow temples, his skin the colour of parchment: the face of a sufferer from consumption, a bloodless face.

When he had finished his inspection, he came up to Florence and said:

"Though you've been very good, baby, and haven't screamed so far, we'd better take our precautions and remove any possibility of a surprise by giving you a nice little gag to wear, don't you think?"

He stooped over her and wound a large handkerchief round the lower part of her face. Then, bending still farther down, he began to speak to her in a very low voice, talking almost into her ear. But wild bursts of laughter, horrible to hear, interrupted this whispering.

Feeling the imminence of the danger, dreading some movement on the wretch's part, a sudden murderous attack, the prompt p.r.i.c.k of a poisoned needle, Don Luis had levelled his revolver and, confident of his skill, waited events.

What was happening over there? What were the words spoken? What infamous bargain was the villain proposing to Florence? At what shameful price could she obtain her release?

The cripple stepped back angrily, shouting in furious accents:

"But don't you understand that you are done for? Now that I have nothing more to fear, now that you have been silly enough to come with me and place yourself in my power, what hope have you left? To move me, perhaps: is that it? Because I'm burning with pa.s.sion, you imagine--? Oh, you never made a greater mistake, my pet! I don't care a fig if you do die.

Once dead, you cease to count....

"What else? Perhaps you consider that, being crippled, I shall not have the strength to kill you? But there's no question of my killing you, Florence. Have you ever known me kill people? Never! I'm much too big a coward, I should be frightened, I should shake all over. No, no, Florence, I shan't touch you, and yet--

"Here, look what's going to happen, see for yourself. I tell you the thing's managed in my own style.... And, whatever you do, don't be afraid. It's only a preliminary warning."

He had moved away and, helping himself with his hands, holding on to the branches of a tree, he climbed up the first layers of rock that formed the grotto on the right. Here he knelt down. There was a small pickaxe lying beside him. He took it and gave three blows to the nearest heap of stones. They came tumbling down in front of the grotto.

Don Luis sprang from his hiding-place with a roar of terror. He had suddenly realized the position: The grotto, the acc.u.mulation of boulders, the piles of granite, everything was so placed that its equilibrium could be shattered at any moment, and that Florence ran the risk of being buried under the rubbish. It was not a question, therefore, of slaying the villain, but of saving Florence on the spot.

He was halfway across in two or three seconds. But here, in one of those mental flashes which are even quicker than the maddest rush, he became aware that the tracks of trampled gra.s.s did not cross the central circus and that the scoundrel had gone round it. Why? That was one of the questions which instinct, ever suspicious, puts, but which reason has not the time to answer. Don Luis went straight ahead. And he had no sooner set foot on the place than the catastrophe occurred.

It all happened with incredible suddenness, as though he had tried to walk on s.p.a.ce and found himself hurled into it. The ground gave way beneath him. The clods of gra.s.s separated, and he fell.

He fell down a hole which was none other than the mouth of a well four feet wide at most, the curb of which had been cut down level with the ground. Only this was what took place: as he was running very fast, his impetus flung him against the opposite wall in such a way that his forearms lay on the outer ledge and his hands were able to clutch at the roots of plants.

So great was his strength that he might just have been able to drag himself up by his wrists. But responding to the attack, the scoundrel had at once hurried to meet his a.s.sailant and was now standing at ten paces from Don Luis, threatening him with his revolver:

"Don't move!" he cried, "or I'll smash you!"

Don Luis was thus reduced to helplessness, at the risk of receiving the enemy's fire.

Their eyes met for a few seconds. The cripple's were burning with fever, like the eyes of a sick man.

Crawling along, watching Don Luis's slightest movement, he came and squatted beside the well. The revolver was levelled in his outstretched hand. And his infernal chuckle rang out again:

"Lupin! Lupin! That's done it! Lupin's dive!... What a mug you must be! I warned you, you know, warned you in blood-red ink. Remember my words: 'The place of your death is chosen. The snare is laid. Beware, Lupin!'

And here you are! So you're not in prison? You warded off that stroke, you rogue, you! Fortunately, I foresaw events and took my precautions.

What do you say to it? What do you think of my little scheme? I said to myself, 'All the police will come rushing at my heels. But there's only one who's capable of catching me, and that's Lupin. So we'll show him the way, we'll lead him on the leash all along a little path sc.r.a.ped clean by the victim's body.'

"And then a few landmarks, scattered here and there. First, the fair damsel's ring, with a blade of gra.s.s twisted round it; farther on a flower without its petals; farther on the marks of five fingers in the ground; next, the sign of the cross.' No mistaking them, was there? Once you thought me fool enough to give Florence time to play Hop-o'-my-Thumb's game, it was bound to lead you straight to the mouth of the well, to the clods of turf which I dabbed across it, last month, in antic.i.p.ation of this windfall.

"Remember: 'The snare is laid.' And a snare after my own style, Lupin; one of the best! Oh, I love getting rid of people with their kind a.s.sistance. We work together like friends and partners. You've caught the notion, haven't you?

"I don't do my own job. The others do it for me, hanging themselves or giving themselves careless injections--unless they prefer the mouth of a well, as you seem to do, Lupin. My poor old chap, what a sticky mess you're in! I never saw such a face, never, on my word! Florence, do look at the expression on your swain's mobile features!"

He broke off, seized with a fit of laughter that shook his outstretched arm, imparted the most savage look to his face, and set his legs jerking under his body like the legs of a dancing doll. His enemy was growing weaker before his eyes. Don Luis's fingers, which had first gripped the roots of the gra.s.s, were now vainly clutching the stones of the wall. And his shoulders were sinking lower and lower into the well.

"We've done it!" spluttered the villain, in the midst of his convulsions of merriment. "Lord, how good it is to laugh! Especially when one so seldom does. Yes, I'm a wet blanket, I am; a first-rate man at a funeral!

You've never seen me laugh, Florence, have you? But this time it's really too amusing. Lupin in his hole and Florence in her grotto; one dancing a jig above the abyss and the other at her last gasp under her mountain.

What a sight!

"Come, Lupin, don't tire yourself! What's the use of those grimaces?

You're not afraid of eternity, are you? A good man like you, the Don Quixote of modern times! Come, let yourself go. There's not even any water in the well to splash about in. No, it's just a nice little slide into infinity. You can't so much as hear the sound of a pebble when you drop it in; and just now I threw a piece of lighted paper down and lost sight of it in the dark. Brrrr! It sent a cold shiver down my back!

"Come, be a man. It'll only take a moment; and you've been through worse than that! ... Good, you nearly did it then. You're making up your mind to it.... I say, Lupin! ... Lupin! ... Aren't you going to say good-bye?

Not a smile, not a word of thanks? Au revoir, Lupin, an revoir--"

He ceased. He watched for the appalling end which he had so cleverly prepared and of which all the incidents were following close on one another in accordance with his inflexible will.

It did not take long. The shoulders had gone down; the chin; and then the mouth convulsed with the death-grin; and then the eyes, drunk with terror; and then the forehead and the hair: the whole head, in short, had disappeared.

The cripple sat gazing wildly, as though in ecstasy, motionless, with an expression of fierce delight, and without a word that could trouble the silence and interrupt his hatred.

At the edge of the abyss nothing remained but the hands, the obstinate, stubborn, desperate, heroic hands, the poor, helpless hands which alone still lived, and which, gradually, retreating toward death, yielded and fell back and let go.

The hands had slipped. For a moment the fingers held on like claws. So natural was the effort which they made that it looked as if they did not even yet despair, unaided, of resuscitating and bringing back to the light of day the corpse already entombed in the darkness. And then they in their turn gave way. And then--and then, suddenly, there was nothing more to be seen and nothing more to be heard.

The cripple started to his feet, as though released by a spring, and yelled with delight:

"Oof! That's done it! Lupin in the bottomless pit! One more adventure finished! Oof!"

Turning in Florence's direction, he once more danced his dance of death.

He raised himself to his full height and then suddenly crouched down again, throwing about his legs like the grotesque, ragged limbs of a scarecrow. And he sang and whistled and belched forth insults and hideous blasphemies.

Then he came back to the yawning mouth of the well and, standing some way off, as if still afraid to come nearer, he spat into it three times.

Nor was this enough for his hatred. There were some broken pieces of statuary on the ground. He took a carved head, rolled it along the gra.s.s, and sent it crashing down the well. A little farther away was a stack of old, rusty cannon b.a.l.l.s. These also he rolled to the edge and pushed in.

Five, ten, fifteen cannon b.a.l.l.s went scooting down, one after the other, banging against the walls with a loud and sinister noise which the echo swelled into the angry roar of distant thunder.

"There, take that, Lupin! I'm sick of you, you dirty cad!

That's for the spokes you put in my wheel, over that d.a.m.ned inheritance! ... Here, take this, too!... And this!... And this!... Here's a chocolate for you in case you're hungry.... Do you want another? Here you are, old chap! catch!"

He staggered, seized with a sort of giddiness, and had to squat on his haunches. He was utterly spent. However, obeying a last convulsion, he still found the strength to kneel down by the well, and leaning over the darkness, he stammered, breathlessly:

"Hi! I say! Corpse! Don't go knocking at the gate of h.e.l.l at once!... The little girl's joining you in twenty minutes.... Yes, that's it, at four o'clock.... You know I'm a punctual man and keep my appointments to the minute.... She'll be with you at four o'clock exactly.

"By the way, I was almost forgetting: the inheritance--you know, Mornington's hundred millions--well, that's mine. Why, of course! You can't doubt that I took all my precautions! Florence will explain everything presently.... It's very well thought out--you'll see--you'll see--"

He could not get out another word. The last syllables sounded more like hiccoughs. The sweat poured from his hair and his forehead, and he sank to the ground, moaning like a dying man tortured by the last throes of death.