Читать книгу Arsène Lupin онлайн

32 страница из 64

* * *

“Well, what do you think of Baron Repstein?” cried Lupin, after giving me all the details of that tragic night. “What a dirty scoundrel! And how it teaches one to distrust appearances! I swear to you, the fellow looked a thoroughly honest man!”

“But what about the millions?” I asked. “The princess’s jewels?”

“They were in the safe. I remember seeing the parcel.”

“Well?”

“They are there still.”

“Impossible!”

“They are, upon my word! I might tell you that I was afraid of the detectives, or else plead a sudden attack of delicacy. But the truth is simpler … and more prosaic: the smell was too awful!…”

“What?”

“Yes, my dear fellow, the smell that came from that safe … from that coffin…. No, I couldn’t do it … my head swam…. Another second and I should have been ill…. Isn’t it silly?… Look, this is all I got from my expedition: the tie-pin…. The bed-rock value of the pearl is thirty thousand francs…. But all the same, I feel jolly well annoyed. What a sell!”

“One more question,” I said. “The word that opened the safe!”