Arsène Lupin, super-sleuth — A Closer Reading

s: 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—”