"Are you going out to-night?"
"You forget," she said. "The Auverards offered me a seat in their box at
the opera; and you yourself asked me to look in at Mme. d'Ersingen's
party afterward--"
"So I did, so I did," he said. "It escaped my memory; I am working so
hard."
She finished buttoning her gloves and asked:
"Won't you come and fetch me at Mme. d'Ersingen's?"
"What for?"
"They would like it."
"But I shouldn't. Besides, I don't feel well enough."
"Then I'll make your apologies for you."
"Yes, do."
She drew her cloak around her with a graceful gesture, and stood for a
few moments, without moving, as though seeking a word of farewell.
Then she said:
"Edmond's not here! I thought he was working with you?"
"He was feeling tired."
"Is he asleep?"
"Yes."
"I wanted to kiss him good-night."
"No, you would only wake him. And here's your car; so go, dear. Amuse
yourself."
"Oh, amuse myself!" she said. "There's not much amusement about the opera
and an evening party."
"Still, it's better than keeping one's room."
There was some little constraint. It was obviously one of those
ill-assorted households in which the husband, suffering in health and not
caring for the pleasures of society, stays at home, while the wife seeks
the enjoyments to which her age and habits entitle her.
As he said nothing more, she bent over and kissed him on the forehead.
Then, once more bowing to the two visitors, she went out. A moment later
they heard the sound of the motor driving away.
Hippolyte Fauville at once rose and rang the bell. Then he said:
"No one here has any idea of the danger hanging over me. I have confided
in nobody, not even in Silvestre, my own man, though he has been in my
service for years and is honesty itself."
The manservant entered.
"I am going to bed, Silvestre," said M. Fauville. "Get everything ready."
Silvestre opened the upper part of the great sofa, which made a
comfortable bed, and laid the sheets and blankets. Next, at his master's
orders, he brought a jug of water, a glass, a plate of biscuits, and a
dish of fruit.
M. Fauville ate a couple of biscuits and then cut a dessert-apple. It was
not ripe. He took two others, felt them, and, not thinking them good, put
them back as well. Then he peeled a pear and ate it.
"You can leave the fruit dish," he said to his man. "I shall be glad of
it, if I am hungry during the night.... Oh, I was forgetting! These two
gentlemen are staying. Don't mention it to anybody. And, in the morning,
don't come until I ring."
The man placed the fruit dish on the table before retiring. Perenna, who
was noticing everything, and who was afterward to remember every smallest
detail of that evening, which his memory recorded with a sort of
mechanical faithfulness, counted three pears and four apples in the dish.
Meanwhile, Fauville went up the winding staircase, and, going along the
gallery, reached the room where his son lay in bed.
"He's fast asleep," he said to Perenna, who had joined him.
The bedroom was a small one. The air was admitted by a special system of
ventilation, for the dormer window was hermetically closed by a wooden
shutter tightly nailed down.
"I took the precaution last year," Hippolyte Fauville explained. "I used
to make my electrical experiments in this room and was afraid of being
spied upon, so I closed the aperture opening on the roof."
And he added in a low voice:
"They have been prowling around me for a long time."
The two men went downstairs again.
Fauville looked at his watch.
"A quarter past ten: bedtime, I am exceedingly tired, and you will
excuse me--"
It was arranged that Perenna and Mazeroux should make themselves
comfortable in a couple of easy chairs which they carried into the
passage between the study and the entrance hall. But, before bidding them
good-night, Hippolyte Fauville, who, although greatly excited, had
appeared until then to retain his self-control, was seized with a sudden
attack of weakness. He uttered a faint cry. Don Luis turned round and saw
the sweat pouring like gleaming water down his face and neck, while he
shook with fever and anguish.
"What's the matter?" asked Perenna.
"I'm frightened! I'm frightened!" he said.
"This is madness!" cried Don Luis. "Aren't we here, the two of us? We can
easily spend the night with you, if you prefer, by your bedside."
Fauville replied by shaking Perenna violently by the shoulder, and, with
distorted features, stammering:
"If there were ten of you--if there were twenty of you with me, you need
not think that it would spoil their schemes! They can do anything they
please, do you hear, anything! They have already killed Inspector
Vérot--they will kill me--and they will kill my son. Oh, the blackguards!
My God, take pity on me! The awful terror of it! The pain I suffer!"
He had fallen on his knees and was striking his breast and repeating:
"O God, have pity on me! I can't die! I can't let my son die! Have pity
on me, I beseech Thee!"
He sprang to his feet and led Perenna to a glass-fronted case, which
he rolled back on its brass castors, revealing a small safe built
into the wall.
"You will find my whole story here, written up day by day for the past
three years. If anything should happen to me, revenge will be easy."
He hurriedly turned the letters of the padlock and, with a key which he
took from his pocket, opened the safe.
It was three fourths empty; but on one of the shelves, between some piles
of papers, was a diary bound in drab cloth, with a rubber band round it.
He took the diary, and, emphasizing his words, said:
"There, look, it's all in here. With this, the hideous business can
be reconstructed.... There are my suspicions first and then my
certainties.... Everything, everything ... how to trap them and how
to do for them.... You'll remember, won't you? A diary bound in drab
cloth.... I'm putting it back in the safe."
Gradually his calmness returned. He pushed back the glass case, tidied a
few papers, switched on the electric lamp above his bed, put out the
lights in the middle of the ceiling, and asked Don Luis and Mazeroux to
leave him.
Don Luis, who was walking round the room and examining the iron shutters
of the two windows, noticed a door opposite the entrance door and asked
the engineer about it.
"I use it for my regular clients," said Fauville, "and sometimes I go out
that way."
"Does it open on the garden?"
"Yes."
"Is it properly closed?"
"You can see for yourself; it's locked and bolted with a safety bolt.
Both keys are on my bunch; so is the key of the garden gate."
He placed the bunch of keys on the table with his pocket-book and, after
first winding it, his watch.
Don Luis, without troubling to ask permission, took the keys and
unfastened the lock and the bolt. A flight of three steps brought him to
the garden. He followed the length of the narrow border. Through the ivy
he saw and heard the two policemen pacing up and down the boulevard. He
tried the lock of the gate. It was fastened.
"Everything's all right," he said when he returned, "and you can be easy.
Good-night."
"Good-night," said the engineer, seeing Perenna and Mazeroux out.
Between his study and the passage were two doors, one of which was padded
and covered with oilcloth. On the other side, the passage was separated
from the hall by a heavy curtain.
"You can go to sleep," said Perenna to his companion. "I'll sit up."
"But surely, Chief, you don't think that anything's going to happen!"
"I don't think so, seeing the precautions which we've taken. But,
knowing Inspector Vérot as you did, do you think he was the man to
imagine things?"
"No, Chief."
"Well, you know what he prophesied. That means that he had his reasons
for doing so. And therefore I shall keep my eyes open."
"We'll take it in turns, Chief; wake me when it's my time to watch."
Seated motionlessly, side by side, they exchanged an occasional remark.
Soon after, Mazeroux fell asleep. Don Luis remained in his chair without
moving, his ears pricked up. Everything was quiet in the house. Outside,
from time to time, the sound of a motor car or of a cab rolled by. He
could also hear the late trains on the Auteuil line.
He rose several times and went up to the door. Not a sound. Hippolyte
Fauville was evidently asleep.
"Capital!" said Perenna to himself. "The boulevard is watched. No one can
enter the room except by this way. So there is nothing to fear."
At two o'clock in the morning a car stopped outside the house, and one of
the manservants, who must have been waiting in the kitchen, hastened to
the front door. Perenna switched off the light in the passage, and,
drawing the curtain slightly aside, saw Mme. Fauville enter, followed by
Silvestre.
She went up. The lights on the staircase were put out. For half an hour
or so there was a sound overhead of voices and of chairs moving. Then all
was silence.
And, amid this silence, Perenna felt an unspeakable anguish arise within
him, he could not tell why. But it was so violent, the impression became
so acute, that he muttered:
"I shall go and see if he's asleep. I don't expect that he has bolted
the doors."
He had only to push both doors to open them; and, with his electric
lantern in his hand, he went up to the bed. Hippolyte Fauville was
sleeping with his face turned to the wall.
Perenna gave a smile of relief. He returned to the passage and,
shaking Mazeroux:
"Your turn, Alexandre."
"No news, Chief?"
"No, none; he's asleep."
"How do you know?"
"I've had a look at him."
"That's funny; I never heard you. It's true, though, I've slept
like a pig."
He followed Perenna into the study, and Perenna said:
"Sit down and don't wake him. I shall take forty winks."
He had one more turn at sentry duty. But, even while dozing, he remained
conscious of all that happened around him. A clock struck the hours with
a low chime; and each time Perenna counted the strokes. Then came the
life outside awakening, the rattle of the milk-carts, the whistle of the
early suburban trains.
People began to stir inside the house. The daylight trickled in
through the crannies of the shutters, and the room gradually became
filled with light.
"Let's go away," said Sergeant Mazeroux. "It would be better for him not
to find us here."
"Hold your tongue!" said Don Luis, with an imperious gesture.
"Why?"
"You'll wake him up."
"But you can see I'm not waking him," said Mazeroux, without
lowering his tone.
"That's true, that's true," whispered Don Luis, astonished that the sound
of that voice had not disturbed the sleeper.
And he felt himself overcome with the same anguish that had seized upon
him in the middle of the night, a more clearly defined anguish, although
he would not, although he dared not, try to realize the reason of it.
"What's the matter with you, Chief? You're looking like nothing on earth.
What is it?"
"Nothing--nothing. I'm frightened--"
Mazeroux shuddered.
"Frightened of what? You say that just as he did last night."
"Yes ... yes ... and for the same reason."
"But--?"
"Don't you understand? Don't you understand that I'm wondering--?"
"No; what?"
"If he's not dead!"
"But you're mad, Chief!"
"No.... I don't know.... Only, only ... I have an impression of death--"
Lantern in hand, he stood as one paralyzed, opposite the bed; and he
who was afraid of nothing in the world had not the courage to throw the
light on Hippolyte Fauville's face. A terrifying silence rose and
filled the room.
"Oh, Chief, he's not moving!"
"I know ... I know ... and I now see that he has not moved once during
the night. And that's what frightens me."
He had to make a real effort in order to step forward. He was now almost
touching the bed.
The engineer did not appear to breathe.
This time, Perenna resolutely took hold of his hand.
It was icy cold.
Don Luis at once recovered all his self-possession.
"The window! Open the window!" he cried.
And, when the light flooded the room, he saw the face of Hippolyte
Fauville all swollen, stained with brown patches.
"Oh," he said, under his breath, "he's dead!"
"Dash it all! Dash it all!" spluttered the detective sergeant.
For two or three minutes they stood petrified, stupefied, staggered at
the sight of this most astonishing and mysterious phenomenon. Then a
sudden idea made Perenna start. He flew up the winding staircase, rushed
along the gallery, and darted into the attic.
Edmond, Hippolyte Fauville's son, lay stiff and stark on his bed, with a
cadaverous face, dead, too.
"Dash it all! Dash it all!" repeated Mazeroux.
Never, perhaps, in the course of his adventurous career, had Perenna
experienced such a knockdown blow. It gave him a feeling of extreme
lassitude, depriving him of all power of speech or movement. Father and
son were dead! They had been killed during that night! A few hours
earlier, though the house was watched and every outlet hermetically
closed, both had been poisoned by an infernal puncture, even as Inspector
Vérot was poisoned, even as Cosmo Mornington was poisoned.
"Dash it all!" said Mazeroux once more. "It was not worth troubling about
the poor devils and performing such miracles to save them!"
The exclamation conveyed a reproach. Perenna grasped it and admitted:
"You are right, Mazeroux; I was not equal to the job."
"Nor I, Chief."
"You ... you have only been in this business since yesterday evening--"
"Well, so have you, Chief!"
"Yes, I know, since yesterday evening, whereas the others have been
working at it for weeks and weeks. But, all the same, these two are dead;
and I was there, I, Lupin, was there! The thing has been done under my
eyes; and I saw nothing! I saw nothing! How is it possible?"
He uncovered the poor boy's shoulders, showing the mark of a puncture at
the top of the arm.
"The same mark--the same mark obviously that we shall find on the
father.... The lad does not seem to have suffered, either.... Poor little
chap! He did not look very strong.... Never mind, it's a nice face; what
a terrible blow for his mother when she learns!"
The detective sergeant wept with anger and pity, while he kept on
mumbling:
"Dash it all!... Dash it all!"
"We shall avenge them, eh, Mazeroux?"
"Rather, Chief! Twice over!"
"Once will do, Mazeroux. But it shall be done with a will."
"That I swear it shall!"
"You're right; let's swear. Let us swear that this dead pair shall be
avenged. Let us swear not to lay down our arms until the murderers of
Hippolyte Fauville and his son are punished as they deserve."
"I swear it as I hope to be saved, Chief."
"Good!" said Perenna. "And now to work. You go and telephone at once to
the police office. I am sure that M. Desmalions will approve of your
informing him without delay. He takes an immense interest in the case."
"And if the servants come? If Mme. Fauville--?"
"No one will come till we open the doors; and we shan't open them except
to the Prefect of Police. It will be for him, afterward, to tell Mme.
Fauville that she is a widow and that she has no son. Go! Hurry!"
"One moment, Chief; we are forgetting something that will help us
enormously."
"What's that?"
"The little drab-cloth diary in the safe, in which M. Fauville describes
the plot against him."
"Why, of course!" said Perenna. "You're right ... especially as he
omitted to mix up the letters of the lock last night, and the key is on
the bunch which he left lying on the table."
They ran down the stairs.
"Leave this to me," said Mazeroux. "It's more regular that you shouldn't
touch the safe."
He took the bunch, moved the glass case, and inserted the key with a
feverish emotion which Don Luis felt even more acutely than he did. They
were at last about to know the details of the mysterious story. The dead
man himself would betray the secret of his murderers.
"Lord, what a time you take!" growled Don Luis.
Mazeroux plunged both hands into the crowd of papers that encumbered the
iron shelf.
"Well, Mazeroux, hand it over."
"What?"
"The diary."
"I can't Chief."
"What's that?"
"It's gone."
Don Luis stifled an oath. The drab-cloth diary, which the engineer had
placed in the safe before their eyes, had disappeared.
Mazeroux shook his head.
"Dash it all! So they knew about that diary!"
"Of course they did; and they knew plenty of other things besides.
We've not seen the end of it with those fellows. There's no time to
lose. Ring up!"
Mazeroux did so and soon received the answer that M. Desmalions was
coming to the telephone. He waited.
In a few minutes Perenna, who had been walking up and down, examining
different objects in the room, came and sat down beside Mazeroux. He
seemed thoughtful. He reflected for some time. But then, his eyes falling
on the fruit dish, he muttered:
"Hullo! There are only three apples instead of four. Then he ate
the fourth."
"Yes," said Mazeroux, "he must have eaten it."
"That's funny," replied Perenna, "for he didn't think them ripe."
He was silent once more, sat leaning his elbows on the table, visibly
preoccupied; then, raising his head, he let fall these words:
"The murder was committed before we entered the room, at half-past
twelve exactly."
"How do you know, Chief?"
"M. Fauville's murderer or murderers, in touching the things on the
table, knocked down the watch which M. Fauville had placed there.
They put it back; but the fall had stopped it. And it stopped at
half-past twelve."
"Then, Chief, when we settled ourselves here, at two in the morning, it
was a corpse that was lying beside us and another over our heads?"
"Yes."
"But how did those devils get in?"
"Through this door, which opens on the garden, and through the gate that
opens on the Boulevard Suchet."
"Then they had keys to the locks and bolts?"
"False keys, yes."
"But the policemen watching the house outside?"
"They are still watching it, as that sort watch a house, walking from
point to point without thinking that people can slip into a garden
while they have their backs turned. That's what took place in coming
and going."
Sergeant Mazeroux seemed flabbergasted. The criminals' daring, their
skill, the precision of their acts bewildered him.
"They're deuced clever," he said.
"Deuced clever, Mazeroux, as you say; and I foresee a tremendous battle.
By Jupiter, with what a vim they set to work!"
The telephone bell rang. Don Luis left Mazeroux to his conversation with
the Prefect, and, taking the bunch of keys, easily unfastened the lock
and the bolt of the door and went out into the garden, in the hope of
there finding some trace that should facilitate his quest.
As on the day before, he saw, through the ivy, two policemen walking
between one lamp-post and the next. They did not see him. Moreover,
anything that might happen inside the house appeared to be to them a
matter of total indifference.
"That's my great mistake," said Perenna to himself. "It doesn't do to
entrust a job to people who do not suspect its importance."
His investigations led to the discovery of some traces of footsteps on
the gravel, traces not sufficiently plain to enable him to distinguish
the shape of the shoes that had left them, yet distinct enough to confirm
his supposition. The scoundrels had been that way.
Suddenly he gave a movement of delight. Against the border of the path,
among the leaves of a little clump of rhododendrons, he saw something
red, the shape of which at once struck him. He stooped. It was an
apple, the fourth apple, the one whose absence from the fruit dish he
had noticed.
"Excellent!" he said. "Hippolyte Fauville did not eat it. One of them
must have carried it away--a fit of appetite, a sudden hunger--and it
must have rolled from his hand without his having time to look for it and
pick it up."
He took up the fruit and examined it.
"What!" he exclaimed, with a start. "Can it be possible?"
He stood dumfounded, a prey to real excitement, refusing to admit the
inadmissible thing which nevertheless presented itself to his eyes
with the direct evidence of actuality. Some one had bitten into the
apple; into the apple which was too sour to eat. And the teeth had
left their mark!
"Is it possible?" repeated Don Luis. "Is it possible that one of them
can have been guilty of such an imprudence! The apple must have
fallen without his knowing ... or he must have been unable to find it
in the dark."
He could not get over his surprise. He cast about for plausible
explanations. But the fact was there before him. Two rows of teeth,
cutting through the thin red peel, had left their regular, semicircular
bite clearly in the pulp of the fruit. They were clearly marked on the
top, while the lower row had melted into a single curved line.
"The teeth of the tiger!" murmured Perenna, who could not remove his eyes
from that double imprint. "The teeth of the tiger! The teeth that had
already left their mark on Inspector Vérot's piece of chocolate! What a
coincidence! It can hardly be fortuitous. Must we not take it as certain
that the same person bit into this apple and into that cake of chocolate
which Inspector Vérot brought to the police office as an incontestable
piece of evidence?"
He hesitated a second. Should he keep this evidence for himself, for the
personal inquiry which he meant to conduct? Or should he surrender it to
the investigations of the police? But the touch of the object filled him
with such repugnance, with such a sense of physical discomfort, that he
flung away the apple and sent it rolling under the leaves of the shrubs.
And he repeated to himself:
"The teeth of the tiger! The teeth of the wild beast!"
He locked the garden door behind him, bolted it, put back the keys on the
table and said to Mazeroux:
"Have you spoken to the Chief of Police?"
"Yes."
"Is he coming?"
"Yes."
"Didn't he order you to telephone for the commissary of police?"
"No."
"That means that he wants to see everything by himself. So much the
better. But the detective office? The public prosecutor?"
"He's told them."
"What's the matter with you, Alexandre? I have to drag your answers out
of you. Well, what is it? You're looking at me very queerly. What's up?"
"Nothing."
"That's all right. I expect this business has turned your head. And no
wonder.... The Prefect won't enjoy himself, either, ... especially as he
put his faith in me a bit light-heartedly and will be called upon to give
an explanation of my presence here. By the way, it's much better that you
should take upon yourself the responsibility for all that we have done.
Don't you agree? Besides, it'll do you all the good in the world.
"Put yourself forward, flatly; suppress me as much as you can; and, above
all--I don't suppose that you will have any objection to this little
detail--don't be such a fool as to say that you went to sleep for a
single second, last night, in the passage. First of all, you'd only be
blamed for it. And then ... well, that's understood, eh? So we have only
to say good-bye.
"If the Prefect wants me, as I expect he will, telephone to my address,
Place du Palais-Bourbon. I shall be there. Good-bye. It is not necessary
for me to assist at the inquiry; my presence would be out of place.
Good-bye, old chap."
He turned toward the door of the passage.
"Half a moment!" cried Mazeroux.
"Half a moment?... What do you mean?"
The detective sergeant had flung himself between him and the door and was
blocking his way.
"Yes, half a moment ... I am not of your opinion. It's far better that
you should wait until the Prefect comes."
"But I don't care a hang about your opinion!"
"May be; but you shan't pass."
"What! Why, Alexandre, you must be ill!"
"Look here, Chief," said Mazeroux feebly. "What can it matter to you?
It's only natural that the Prefect should wish to speak to you."
"Ah, it's the Prefect who wishes, is it?... Well, my lad, you can tell
him that I am not at his orders, that I am at nobody's orders, and that,
if the President of the Republic, if Napoleon I himself were to bar my
way ... Besides, rats! Enough said. Get out of the road!"
"You shall not pass!" declared Mazeroux, in a resolute tone,
extending his arms.
"Well, I like that!"
"You shall not pass."
"Alexandre, just count ten."
"A hundred, if you like, but you shall not...."
"Oh, blow your catchwords! Get out of this."
He seized Mazeroux by both shoulders, made him spin round on his
heels and, with a push, sent him floundering over the sofa. Then he
opened the door.
"Halt, or I fire!"
It was Mazeroux, who had scrambled to his feet and now stood with his
revolver in his hand and a determined expression on his face.
Don Luis stopped in amazement. The threat was absolutely indifferent to
him, and the barrel of that revolver aimed at him left him as cold as
could be. But by what prodigy did Mazeroux, his former accomplice, his
ardent disciple, his devoted servant, by what prodigy did Mazeroux dare
to act as he was doing?
Perenna went up to him and pressed gently on the detective's
outstretched arm.
"Prefect's orders?" he asked.
"Yes," muttered the sergeant, uncomfortably.
"Orders to keep me here until he comes?"
"Yes."
"And if I betrayed an intention of leaving, to prevent me?"
"Yes."
"By every means?"
"Yes."
"Even by putting a bullet through my skin?"
"Yes."
Perenna reflected; and then, in a serious voice:
"Would you have fired, Mazeroux?"
The sergeant lowered his head and said faintly:
"Yes, Chief."
Perenna looked at him without anger, with a glance of affectionate
sympathy; and it was an absorbing sight for him to see his former
companion dominated by such a sense of discipline and duty. Nothing was
able to prevail against that sense, not even the fierce admiration, the
almost animal attachment which Mazeroux retained for his master.
"I'm not angry, Mazeroux. In fact, I approve. Only you must tell me the
reason why the Prefect of Police--"
The detective did not reply, but his eyes wore an expression of such
sadness that Don Luis started, suddenly understanding.
"No," he cried, "no!... It's absurd ... he can't have thought
that!... And you, Mazeroux, do you believe me guilty?"
"Oh, I, Chief, am as sure of you as I am of myself!... You don't take
life!... But, all the same, there are things ... coincidences--"
"Things ... coincidences ..." repeated Don Luis slowly.
He remained pensive; and, in a low voice, he said:
"Yes, after all, there's truth in what you say.... Yes, it all fits
in.... Why didn't I think of it?... My relations with Cosmo Mornington,
my arrival in Paris in time for the reading of the will, my insisting on
spending the night here, the fact that the death of the two Fauvilles
undoubtedly gives me the millions.... And then ... and then ... why, he's
absolutely right, your Prefect of Police!... All the more so as.... Well,
there, I'm a goner!"
"Come, come, Chief!"
"A dead-goner, old chap; you just get that into your head. Not as Arsène
Lupin, ex-burglar, ex-convict, ex-anything you please--I'm unattackable
on that ground--but as Don Luis Perenna, respectable man, residuary
legatee, and the rest of it. And it's too stupid! For, after all, who
will find the murderers of Cosmo, Vérot, and the two Fauvilles, if they
go clapping me into jail?"
"Come, come, Chief--"
"Shut up! ... Listen!"
A motor car was stopping on the boulevard, followed by another. It
was evidently the Prefect and the magistrates from the public
prosecutor's office.
Don Luis took Mazeroux by the arm.
"There's only one way out of it, Alexandre! Don't say you went to sleep."
"I must, Chief."
"You silly ass!" growled Don Luis. "How is it possible to be such an ass!
It's enough to disgust one with honesty. What am I to do, then?"
"Discover the culprit, Chief."
"What! ... What are you talking about?"
Mazeroux, in his turn, took him by the arm and, clutching him with a sort
of despair, said, in a voice choked with tears:
"Discover the culprit, Chief. If not, you're done for ... that's
certain ... the Prefect told me so. ... The police want a
culprit ... they want him this evening.... One has got to be
found.... It's up to you to find him."
"What you have, Alexandre, is a merry wit."
"It's child's play for you, Chief. You have only to set your mind to it."
"But there's not the least clue, you ass!"
"You'll find one ... you must ... I entreat you, hand them over
somebody.... It would be more than I could bear if you were arrested.
You, the chief, accused of murder! No, no.... I entreat you, discover the
criminal and hand him over.... You have the whole day to do it in...and
Lupin has done greater things than that!"
He was stammering, weeping, wringing his hands, grimacing with every
feature of his comic face. And it was really touching, this grief, this
dismay at the approach of the danger that threatened his master.
M. Desmalions's voice was heard in the hall, through the curtain that
closed the passage. A third motor car stopped on the boulevard, and a
fourth, both doubtless laden with policemen.
The house was surrounded, besieged.
Perenna was silent.
Beside him, anxious-faced, Mazeroux seemed to be imploring him.
A few seconds elapsed.
Then Perenna declared, deliberately:
"Looking at things all round, Alexandre, I admit that you have seen the
position clearly and that your fears are fully justified. If I do not
manage to hand over the murderer or murderers of Hippolyte Fauville and
his son to the police in a few hours from now, it is I, Don Luis Perenna,
who will be lodged in durance vile on the evening of this Thursday, the
first of April."