Arsène Lupin, super-sleuth

Ralph de Limézy was strolling along the boulevards with the careless air of a happy man, who has only to look about him to enjoy the charming sights and the light gaiety which the life of Paris presents to the intelligent observer on certain luminous days in April. Of middle height, he had a figure at once slender and powerful.

As he passed the Gymnase, he had the impression that a man who was walking abreast of him was following a woman, an impression which he was presently able to assure himself was exact.

In the humor he was in nothing appeared more comic and amusing to Ralph than a man who followed a woman.

Only the vast experience of the Baron de Limézy enabled him to divine that this discreet gentleman was following the lady. Ralph de Limézy was no less discreet, and availing himself of the screen afforded by the throng, he quickened his steps in order to make a careful examination of these two persons.

Viewed from behind, the gentleman was distinguished by an impeccable back-parting which divided exactly his black and pomaded hair, and by a coat, no less impeccable, which gave full value to his large shoulders and high waist. Seen from in front, his face was of extreme regularity, furnished with a carefully trimmed beard and a fresh, pink complexion. Thirty years of age perhaps. With a confident walk. Carrying himself with an air of importance. Vulgar in appearance. Rings on his fingers. A gold tip to the cigarette he was smoking.

Ralph again quickened his step. The lady, tall, self-possessed, of noble bearing, set firmly on the pavement an Englishwoman’s feet, which were redeemed by well-shaped legs and slim ankles. Her face was uncommonly pretty, lighted by eyes of a wonderful blue, crowned by a heavy mass of fair hair. Those who passed her half stopped and turned to stare after her. She displayed an utter indifference to this homage of the crowd.

“Goodness!” thought Ralph. “What an aristocrat! She deserves something better than that pomaded bounder who is following her. What is he up to? A jealous husband? A jilted lover? Or simply a lady-killer in search of adventure? Yes: that must be it. The fellow wore the air of a man lucky in love who believes himself to be irresistible.”

The girl crossed the Place de l’Opera without taking any notice of the vehicles which thronged it. A dray was about to bar her way; she quietly seized the horse’s reins and stopped it. The driver jumped down from his seat in a fury and began to abuse her, thrusting his face into hers. She landed a jolting right hook on his nose that sent the blood gushing out of it. A policeman hurried up and demanded an explanation; she turned her back on him and went quietly on her way.

In the Rue Auber two small boys were fighting, she caught them by the scruff of the neck and flung them away from her with such violence that they rolled over and over for a good ten feet. Then she threw a ten-franc note to each of them.

On the Boulevard Haussmann she went into a confectioner’s and from a distance Ralph saw her sit down at a table. Since the man who was following her did not enter the shop, he went into it himself and took a seat in a quiet fashion that did not attract her attention to him.

She ordered tea and toast which she ate hungrily with magnificent teeth. The people sitting at the neighboring tables stared at her. She took no notice whatever of them. Presently she ordered more toast.

But another young woman, sitting at a table further off also excited Ralph’s curiosity. Fair as the English girl, with wavy hair, dressed less expensively but with a Parisienne’s surer taste, she was surrounded by three poorly dressed children, whom she was feeding with cakes and glasses of grenadine.

More of a child than the children themselves, she was amusing herself infinitely as she babbled for the three of them.

“What was it you said to the young lady?”

“Louder ... I did not hear.... No: you shouldn’t call me ‘Madame’. You should say: ‘Thank you, Mademoiselle.’”

Ralph was instantly enslaved by two things: the natural gayety of her expression, and the profound seductiveness of her large green eyes, the color of jade, and streaked with gold, from which one could not tear one’s own eyes once one had fixed them on them.

As a rule such eyes are filled with strangeness, thoughtful and melancholy; and that was perhaps the habitual expression of those eyes. But at the moment they diffused the same radiance of intense life as the rest of the face, the mischievous mouth, the dilated nostrils, and the warmly-colored cheeks with smiling dimples.

“Extravagant joys or excessive griefs: there is no mean for creatures of that kind,” said Ralph to himself; and he felt spring to sudden birth in him the desire to play a part in those joys and fight those sorrows.

He turned to the English girl again. She was really beautiful, with a powerful beauty compounded of balance, poise, and quietness. But he found the girl with the green eyes, as he called her, far more fascinating. If one admired the former, one desired to know the latter, to discover the secret of her existence.

Nevertheless, when she had paid her bill and left the confectioner’s with the three children, he hesitated. Should he follow her? Or should he stay where he was? Which should carry the day? Green eyes? Blue eyes?

He rose hastily, dropped some money on the counter and went out into the street. The green eyes had their way with him.

As he came out his eyes fell on an unexpected sight. The girl with the green eyes stood on the curb talking to the lady-killer who, a little while before, had been following the English girl, with the air of a timid or jealous sweetheart. It was animated, heated talk too, on both sides—more like a dispute than a talk. It was evident that the young girl was trying to pass the lady-killer and that the lady-killer would not let her; and this was so evident that Ralph was, contrary to every convention, on the point of interposing.

He had no time to do so. A taxi stopped in front of the confectioner’s; a man sprang out of it who seemed to have already taken in the altercation on the curb, for he stepped up to the squabbling pair, raised his stick and with a hearty whack sent the lady-killer’s hat flying off his pomaded head.

Dumfounded, he started back, then, careless of the people hurrying up, sprang forward and howled: “You’re mad! Absolutely mad!”

The newcomer, who was smaller and older, threw himself into a posture of defense, and, ready to strike, shouted:

“I’ve forbidden you to speak to this young lady! I’m her father and I tell you that you’re nothing but a rotter—a miserable rotter!”

Both of them were fairly shaking with spasms of hate. The lady-killer, stung by the insult, drew himself up to spring on the newcomer, whom the young girl had gripped by the arm and was trying to drag to the taxi. He had succeeded in separating them and snatching the newcomer’s cane, when he found himself glaring into a face which had suddenly interposed between him and his adversary, an unknown, curious face, the right eye of which was winking nervously, and the mouth, curved into an expression of the grimmest irony, holding a cigarette.

It was Ralph who had thus risen before him; and he said in harsh accents:

“Could you oblige me with a light?”

A truly inopportune request. What was this interloper up to? The pomaded one bristled.

“Clear off! I haven’t any matches!” he snapped.

“But you have. A minute ago you were smoking,” the interloper asserted.

Beside himself, the lady-killer tried to thrust him away. Not succeeding in doing so and being unable even to move his arms, he looked down to see what was paralyzing them. He appeared thunderstruck. The two hands of the interloper gripped his hands in such a manner that it was impossible to move them. An iron band could not have paralyzed them more thoroughly. And the interloper did not cease to repeat in obstinate, worrying accents:

“Please oblige me with a light. It would be most unfortunate if you were to refuse me a light.”

The group that had gathered round them began to laugh. The exasperated lady-killer snarled:

“Will you leave me alone? I tell you I haven’t got a light!”

The interloper shrugged his shoulders with a melancholy air.

“Most uncivil, I call it,” he said mournfully. “I never heard of any one refusing a light when he was asked for it politely. But since you make such a fuss about rendering me this slight service—”

He loosed his grip. The liberated lady-killer turned and ran. But the taxi had gathered speed and was bearing away his adversary and the girl with the green eyes, at a pace that made it quite plain that the most strenuous effort on his part to catch them would prove vain.

“And a lot forwarder I’ve got,” said Ralph watching him run. “I play the Don Quixote to a lovely unknown; and she rushes off without giving me her name and address! There isn’t a chance of finding her. Well?”