The Adventures of Arsène Lupin - The Riddle of the Hollow Needle

Author's name: Maurice Emile Leblanc

Raymond listened attentively. Twice the noise was repeated, distinctly enough to distinguish it from the vague sounds that make up the great silence of the night. But still too faint to know whether it came from near or far—from within the walls of the great country house, or from without—from among those obscure recesses of the garden. She rose gently. The window was half open, so she opened it all the way. The moonlight spread silently over meadows and woods, from which emerged the scattered ruins of the old monastery, the truncated columns, side by side with the arches of distorted buildings, the fragments of arcades, and the shreds of wall buttresses. A light breeze enveloped everything, which swept noiselessly through the still, leafless branches of the trees and shook the young buds on the bushes.