Chapter 18: Arsène I Emperor Op Mauretania

Don Luis ceased. A smile of amusement played round his lips. The recollection of those four minutes seemed to divert him immensely.

Valenglay and the Prefect of Police, who were neither of them men to be unduly surprised at courage and coolness, had listened to him, nevertheless, and were now looking at him in bewildered silence. Was it possible for a human being to carry heroism to such unlikely lengths?

Meanwhile, he went up to the other side of the chimney and pointed to a larger map, representing the French roads.

"You told me, Monsieur le President, that the scoundrel's motor car had left Versailles and was going toward Nantes?"

"Yes; and all our arrangements are made to arrest him either on the way, or else at Nantes or at Saint-Nazaire, where he may intend to take ship."

Don Luis Perenna followed with his forefinger the road across France, stopping here and there, marking successive stages. And nothing could have been more impressive than this dumb show.

The man that he was, preserving his composure amid the overthrow of all that he had most at heart, seemed by his calmness to dominate time and circumstances. It was as though the murderer were running away at one end of an unbreakable thread of which Don Luis held the other, and as though Don Luis could stop his flight at any time by a mere movement of his finger and thumb.

As he studied the map, the master seemed to command not only a sheet of cardboard, but also the highroad on which a motor car was spinning along, subject to his despotic will.

He went back to the table and continued:

"The battle was over. And there was no question of its being resumed. My forty-two worthies found themselves face to face with a conqueror, against whom revenge is always possible, by fair means or foul, but with one who had subjugated them in a supernatural manner. There was no other explanation of the inexplicable facts which they had witnessed. I was a sorcerer, a kind of marabout, a direct emissary of the Prophet."

Valenglay laughed and said:

"Their interpretation was not so very unreasonable, for, after all, you must have performed a sleight-of-hand trick which strikes me also as being little less than miraculous."

"Monsieur le President, do you know a curious short story of Balzac's called 'A Passion in the Desert?'"

"Yes."

"Well, the key to the riddle lies in that."

"Does it? I don't quite see. You were not under the claws of a tigress. There, was no tigress to tame in this instance."

"No, but there were women."

"Eh? How do you mean?"

"Upon my word, Monsieur le President," said Don Luis gayly, "I should not like to shock you. But I repeat that the troop which carried me off on that week's march included women; and women are a little like Balzac's tigress, creatures whom it is not impossible to tame, to charm, to break in, until you make friends of them."

"Yes, yes," muttered the Premier, madly puzzled, "but that needs time."

"I had a week."

"And complete liberty of action."

"No, no, Monsieur le President. The eyes are enough to start with. The eyes give rise to sympathy, interest, affection, curiosity, a wish to know you better. After that, the merest opportunity..."

"And did an opportunity offer?"

"Yes, one night. I was fastened up, or at least they thought I was. I knew that the chief's favourite was alone in her tent close by. I went there. I left her an hour afterward."

"And the tigress was tamed?"

"Yes, as thoroughly as Balzac's: tamed and blindly submissive."

"But there were several of them?"

"I know, Monsieur le President, and that was the difficulty. I was afraid of rivalry. But all went well: the favourite was not jealous, far from it. And then, as I have told you, her submission was absolute. In short, I had five staunch, invisible friends, resolved to do anything I wanted and suspected by nobody.

"My plan was being carried out before we reached the last halting-place. My five secret agents collected all the arms during the night. They dashed the daggers to the ground and broke them. They removed the bullets from the pistols. They damped the powder. Everything was ready for ringing up the curtain."

Valenglay bowed.

"My compliments! You are a man of resource. And your scheme was not lacking in charm. For I take it that your five ladies were pretty?"

Don Luis put on a bantering expression. He closed his eyes, as if to recall his bliss, and let fall the one word:

"Hags!"

The epithet gave rise to a burst of merriment. But Don Luis, as though in a hurry to finish his story, at once went on:

"In any case, they saved my life, the hussies, and their aid never failed me. My forty-two watch-dogs, deprived of their arms and shaking with fear in those solitudes where everything is a trap and where death lies in wait for you at any minute, gathered round me as their real protector. When we joined the great tribe to which they belonged I was their actual chief. And it took me less than three months of dangers faced in common, of ambushes defeated under my advice, of raids and pillages effected by my direction, to become the chief also of the whole tribe.

"I spoke their language, I practised their religion, I wore their dress, I conformed to their customs: alas! had I not five wives? Henceforward, my dream, which had gradually taken definite shape in my mind, became possible.

"I sent one of my most faithful adherents to France, with sixty letters to hand to sixty men whose names and addresses he learned by heart. Those sixty men were sixty associates whom Arsène Lupin had disbanded before he threw himself from the Capri cliffs. All had retired from business, with a hundred thousand francs apiece in ready money and a small trade or public post to keep them occupied. I had provided one with a tobacconist's shop, another with a job as a park-keeper, others with sinecures in the government offices. In short, they were respectable citizens.

"To all of them—whether public servants, farmers, municipal councillors, grocers, sacristans, or what not—I wrote the same letter, made the same offer, and gave the same instructions in case they should accept ... Monsieur le President, I thought that, of the sixty, ten or fifteen at most would come and join me: sixty came, Monsieur le President, sixty, and not one less! Sixty men punctually arrived at the appointed place.

"On the day fixed, at the hour named, my old armed cruiser, the Ascendam, which they had brought back, anchored in the mouth of the Wady Draa, on the Atlantic coast, between Cape Nun and Cape Juby. Two longboats plied to and fro and landed my friends and the munitions of war which they had brought with them: camp furniture, quick-firing guns, ammunition, motor-boats, stores and provisions, trading wares, glass beads, and cases of gold as well, for my sixty good men and true had insisted on turning their share of the old profits into cash and on putting into the new venture the six million francs which they had received from their governor...

"Need I say more, Monsieur le President? Must I tell you what a chief like Arsène Lupin was able to attempt seconded by sixty fine fellows of that stamp and backed by an army of ten thousand well-armed and well-trained Moorish fanatics? He attempted it; and his success was unparalleled.

"I do not think that there has ever been an idyl like that through which we lived during those fifteen months, first on the heights of the Atlas range and then in the infernal plains of the Sahara: an idyl of heroism, of privation, of superhuman torture and superhuman joy; an idyl of hunger and thirst, of total defeat and dazzling victory...

"My sixty trusty followers threw themselves into their work with might and main. Oh, what men! You know them, Monsieur le President du Conseil! You've had them to deal with, Monsieur le Prefet de Police! The beggars! Tears come to my eyes when I think of some of them.

"There were Charolais and his son, who distinguished themselves in the case of the Princesse de Lamballe's tiara. There were Marco, who owed his fame to the Kesselbach case, and Auguste, who was your chief messenger, Monsieur le President. There were the Growler and the Masher, who achieved such glory in the hunt for the crystal stopper. There were the brothers Beuzeville, whom I used to call the two Ajaxes. There were Philippe d'Antrac, who was better born than any Bourbon, and Pierre Le Grand and Tristan Le Roux and Joseph Le Jeune."

"And there was Arsène Lupin," said Valenglay, roused to enthusiasm by this list of Homeric heroes.

"And there was Arsène Lupin," repeated Don Luis.

He nodded his head, smiled, and continued, in a very quiet voice:

"I will not speak of him, Monsieur le President. I will not speak of him, for the simple reason that you would not believe my story. What they tell about him when he was with the Foreign Legion is mere child's play beside what was to come later. Lupin was only a private soldier. In South Morocco he was a general. Not till then did Arsène Lupin really show what he could do. And, I say it without pride, not even I foresaw what that was. The Achilles of the legend performed no greater feats. Hannibal and Caesar achieved no more striking results.

"All I need tell you is that, in fifteen months, Arsène Lupin conquered a kingdom twice the size of France. From the Berbers of Morocco, from the indomitable Tuaregs, from the Arabs of the extreme south of Algeria, from the negroes who overrun Senegal, from the Moors along the Atlantic coast, under the blazing sun, in the flames of hell, he conquered half the Sahara and what we may call ancient Mauretania.

"A kingdom of deserts and swamps? Partly, but a kingdom all the same, with oases, wells, rivers, forests, and incalculable riches, a kingdom with ten million men and a hundred thousand warriors. This is the kingdom which I offer to France, Monsieur le President du Conseil."

Valenglay did not conceal his amazement. Greatly excited and even perturbed by what he had learned, looking over his extraordinary visitor, with his hands clutching at the map of Africa, he whispered:

"Explain yourself; be more precise."

Don Luis answered:

"Monsieur le President du Conseil, I will not remind you of the events of the last few years. France, resolving to pursue a splendid dream of dominion over North Africa, has had to part with a portion of the Congo. I propose to heal the painful wound by giving her thirty times as much as she has lost. And I turn the magnificent and distant dream into an immediate certainty by joining the small slice of Morocco which you have conquered to Senegal at one blow.

"Today, Greater France in Africa exists. Thanks to me, it is a solid and compact expanse. Millions of square miles of territory and a coastline stretching for several thousand miles from Tunis to the Congo, save for a few insignificant interruptions."

"It's a Utopia," Valenglay protested.

"It's a reality."

"Nonsense! It will take us twenty years' fighting to achieve."

"It will take you exactly five minutes!" cried Don Luis, with irresistible enthusiasm. "What I offer you is not the conquest of an empire, but a conquered empire, duly pacified and administered, in full working order and full of life. My gift is a present, not a future gift.

"I, too, Monsieur le President du Conseil, I, Arsène Lupin, had cherished a splendid dream. After toiling and moiling all my life, after knowing all the ups and downs of existence, richer than Croesus, because all the wealth of the world was mine, and poorer than Job, because I had distributed all my treasures, surfeited with everything, tired of unhappiness, and more tired still of happiness, sick of pleasure, of passion, of excitement, I wanted to do something that is incredible in the present day: to reign!

"And a still more incredible phenomenon: when this thing was accomplished, when the dead Arsène Lupin had come to life again as a sultan out of the Arabian Nights, as a reigning, governing, law-giving Arsène Lupin, head of the state and head of the church, I determined, in a few years, at one stroke, to tear down the screen of rebel tribes against which you were waging a desultory and tiresome war in the north of Morocco, while I was quietly and silently building up my kingdom at the back of it.

"Then, face to face with France and as powerful as herself, like a neighbour treating on equal terms, I would have cried to her, 'It's I, Arsène Lupin! Behold the former swindler and gentleman burglar! The Sultan of Adrar, the Sultan of Iguidi, the Sultan of El Djouf, the Sultan of the Tuaregs, the Sultan of Aubata, the Sultan of Brakna and Frerzon, all these am I, the Sultan of Sultans, grandson of Mahomet, son of Allah, I, I, I, Arsène Lupin!'

"And, before taking the little grain of poison that sets one free—for a man like Arsène Lupin has no right to grow old—I should have signed the treaty of peace, the deed of gift in which I bestowed a kingdom on France, signed it, below the flourishes of my grand dignitaries, kaids, pashas, and marabouts, with my lawful signature, the signature to which I am fully entitled, which I conquered at the point of my sword and by my all-powerful will: 'Arsène I, Emperor of Mauretania!'"

Don Luis uttered all these words in a strong voice, but without emphasis, with the very simple emotion and pride of a man who has done much and who knows the value of what he has done. There were but two ways of replying to him: by a shrug of the shoulders, as one replies to a madman, or by the silence that expresses reflection and approval.

The Prime Minister and the Prefect of Police said nothing, but their looks betrayed their secret thoughts. And deep down within themselves they felt that they were in the presence of an absolutely exceptional specimen of mankind, created to perform immoderate actions and fashioned by his own hand for a superhuman destiny.