The Hollow Needle by Maurice Leblanc

Author:Maurice Leblanc
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road

Isidore at once looked at the postmarks. They read, “Cuzion, Indre.”

The Indre! The department which he had been stubbornly searching for weeks!

He consulted a little pocket-guide which he always carried. Cuzion, in the canton of Eguzon—he had been there too.

For prudence’s sake, he discarded his personality as an Englishman, which was becoming too well known in the district, disguised himself as a workman and made for Cuzion. It was an unimportant village. He would easily discover the sender of the letter.

For that matter, chance served him without delay:

“A letter posted on Wednesday last?” exclaimed the mayor, a respectable tradesman in whom he confided and who placed himself at his disposal. “Listen, I think I can give you a valuable clue: on Saturday morning, Gaffer Charel, an old knife-grinder who visits all the fairs in the department, met me at the end of the village and asked, ‘Monsieur le maire, does a letter without a stamp on it go all the same?’ ‘Of course,’ said I. ‘And does it get there?’ ‘Certainly. Only there’s double postage to pay on it, that’s all the difference.’”

“And where does he live?”

“He lives over there, all alone—on the slope—the hovel that comes next after the churchyard.—Shall I go with you?”

It was a hovel standing by itself, in the middle of an orchard surrounded by tall trees. As they entered the orchard, three magpies flew away with a great splutter and they saw that the birds were flying out of the very hole in which the watch-dog was fastened. And the dog neither barked nor stirred as they approached.

Beautrelet went up in great surprise. The brute was lying on its side, with stiff paws, dead.

They ran quickly to the cottage. The door stood open. They entered. At the back of a low, damp room, on a wretched straw mattress, flung on the floor itself, lay a man fully dressed.

“Gaffer Charel!” cried the mayor. “Is he dead, too?”

The old man’s hands were cold, his face terribly pale, but his heart was still beating, with a faint, slow throb, and he seemed not to be wounded in any way.

They tried to resuscitate him and, as they failed in their efforts, Beautrelet went to fetch a doctor. The doctor succeeded no better than they had done. The old man did not seem to be suffering. He looked as if he were just asleep, but with an artificial slumber, as though he had been put to sleep by hypnotism or with the aid of a narcotic.

In the middle of the night that followed, however, Isidore, who was watching by his side, observed that the breathing became stronger and that his whole being appeared to be throwing off the invisible bonds that paralyzed it.

At daybreak, he woke up and resumed his normal functions: ate, drank and moved about. But, the whole day long, he was unable to reply to the young man’s questions and his brain seemed as though still numbed by an inexplicable torpor.

The next day, he asked Beautrelet:

“What are

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