- Libros en formato ePub -  

 The Hollow Needle
Raymonde listened. The noise was repeated twice over, clearly enough to be distinguished from the medley of vague sounds that formed the great silence of the night and yet too faintly to enable her to tell whether it was near or far, within the walls of the big country-house, or outside, among the murky recesses of the park.
She rose softly. Her window was half open: she flung it back wide. The moonlight lay over a peaceful landscape of lawns and thickets, against which the straggling ruins of the old abbey stood out in tragic outlines, truncated columns, mutilated arches, fragments of porches and shreds of flying buttresses. A light breeze hovered over the face of things, gliding noiselessly through the bare motionless branches of the trees, but shaking the tiny budding leaves of the shrubs.
And, suddenly, she heard the same sound again. It was on the left and on the floor below her, in the living rooms, therefore, that occupied the left wing of the house. Brave and plucky though she was, the girl felt afraid. She slipped on her dressing gown and took the matches.
"Raymonde—Raymonde!"
A voice as low as a breath was calling to her from the next room, the door of which had not been closed. She was feeling her way there, when Suzanne, her cousin, came out of the room and fell into her arms:
"Raymonde—is that you? Did you hear—?"
"Yes. So you're not asleep?"
"I suppose the dog woke me—some time ago. But he's not barking now. What time is it?"
"About four."
"Listen! Surely, some one's walking in the drawing room!"
"There's no danger, your father is down there, Suzanne."
"But there is danger for him. His room is next to the boudoir."...
 

 The Crystal Sopper
The two boats fastened to the little pier that jutted out from the garden lay rocking in its shadow. Here and there lighted windows showed through the thick mist on the margins of the lake. The Enghien Casino opposite blazed with light, though it was late in the season, the end of September. A few stars appeared through the clouds. A light breeze ruffled the surface of the water.
Arsene Lupin left the summer-house where he was smoking a cigar and, bending forward at the end of the pier:
“Growler?” he asked. “Masher?... Are you there?”
A man rose from each of the boats, and one of them answered:
“Yes, governor.”
“Get ready. I hear the car coming with Gilbert and Vaucheray.”
He crossed the garden, walked round a house in process of construction, the scaffolding of which loomed overhead, and cautiously opened the door on the Avenue de Ceinture. He was not mistaken: a bright light flashed round the bend and a large, open motor-car drew up, whence sprang two men in great-coats, with the collars turned up, and caps.
It was Gilbert and Vaucheray: Gilbert, a young fellow of twenty or twenty-two, with an attractive cast of features and a supple and sinewy frame; Vaucheray, older, shorter, with grizzled hair and a pale, sickly face.
“Well,” asked Lupin, “did you see him, the deputy?”
“Yes, governor,” said Gilbert, “we saw him take the 7.40 tram for Paris, as we knew he would.”
“Then we are free to act?”
“Absolutely. The Villa Marie-Therese is ours to do as we please with.” ...