The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Hollow Needle, by Maurice Leblanc

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Title: The Hollow Needle

Author: Maurice Leblanc

Posting Date: June 4, 2009 [EBook #4017]
Release Date: May, 2003
First Posted: October 11, 2001
Last Updated: January, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE HOLLOW NEEDLE

FURTHER ADVENTURES OF ARSENE LUPIN

BY

MAURICE LEBLANC

AUTHOR OF

"ARSENE LUPIN," "THE BLONDE LADY," ETC.

TRANSLATED BY ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS

CONTENTS

I. The Shot
II. Isidore Beautrelet, Sixth-form Schoolboy
III. The Corpse
IV. Face to Face
V. On the Track
VI. An Historic Secret
VII. The Treatise of the Needle
VIII. From Caesar to Lupin
IX. Open, Sesame!
X. The Treasures of the Kings of France

ILLUSTRATIONS

Valmeras loved Raymonde's melancholy charm

She put the gun to her shoulder, calmly took aim and fired

Two huge letters, each perhaps a foot long, appeared cut in relief in
the granite of the floor

"We're going now. What do you think of my cockle-shell, Beautrelet?"

THE HOLLOW NEEDLE

CHAPTER ONE

THE SHOT

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 s