He looked at his watch:
“Ten o’clock. … How long will it take me to reach Paris? Well … I shall be there presently … yes, presently, I must. … And this very evening I shall take measures to prevent. … But what measures? How can I prove his innocence? … How prevent the execution? Oh, never mind! Once I am there, I shall find a way. My name is not Lupin for nothing! … Come on! …”
He set off again at a run, entered the castle and called out:
“Pierre! Pierre! … Has anyone seen M. Pierre Leduc? … Oh, there you are! … Listen. …”
He took him on one side and jerked out, in imperious tones:
“Listen, Dolores is not here. … Yes, she was called away on urgent business … she left last night in my motor. … I am going too. … Don’t interrupt, not a word! … A second lost means irreparable harm. … You, send away all the servants, without any explanation. Here is money. In half an hour from now, the castle must be empty. And let no one enter it until I return. … Not you either, do you understand? … I forbid you to enter the castle. … I’ll explain later … serious reasons. Here, take the key with you. … Wait for me in the village. …”
And once more, he darted away.
Five minutes later, he was with Octave. He jumped into the car:
“Paris!”
The journey was a real race for life or death. Lupin, thinking that Octave was not driving fast enough, took the steering-wheel himself and drove at a furious, breakneck speed. On the road, through the villages, along the crowded streets of the towns they rushed at sixty miles an hour. People whom they nearly upset roared and yelled with rage: the meteor was far away, was out of sight.
“G—governor,” stammered Octave, livid with dismay, “we shall be stuck!”
“You, perhaps, the motor, perhaps; but I shall arrive!” said Lupin.
He had a feeling as though it were not the car that was carrying him, but he carrying the car and as though he were cleaving space by dint of his own strength, his own willpower. Then what miracle could prevent his arriving, seeing that his strength was inexhaustible, his willpower unbounded?
“I shall arrive because I have got to arrive,” he repeated.
And he thought of the man who would die, if he did not arrive in time to save him, of the mysterious Louis de Malreich, so disconcerting with his stubborn silence and his expressionless face.
And amid the roar of the road, under the trees whose branches made a noise as of furious waves, amid the buzzing of his thoughts, Lupin, all the same, strove to set up an hypothesis. And this hypothesis became gradually more defined, logical, probable, certain, he said to himself, now that he knew the hideous truth about Dolores and saw all the resources and all the odious designs of that crazy mind:
“Yes, it was she who contrived that most terrible plot against Malreich. What was it she wanted? To marry Pierre Leduc, whom she had bewitched, and to become the sovereign of the little principality from which she had been banished. The object was attainable, within reach of her hand. There was one sole obstacle. … I, Lupin, who, for weeks and weeks, persistently barred her road; I, whom she encountered after every murder; I, whose perspicacity she dreaded; I, who would never lay down my arms before I had discovered the culprit and found the letters stolen from the Emperor. … Well, the culprit should be Louis de Malreich, or rather, Leon Massier. Who was this Leon Massier? Did she know him before her marriage? Had she been in love with him? It is probable; but this, no doubt, we shall never know. One thing is certain, that she was struck by the resemblance to Leon Massier in figure and stature which she might attain by dressing up like him, in black clothes, and putting on a fair wig. She must have noticed the eccentric life led by that lonely man, his nocturnal expeditions, his manner of walking in the streets and of throwing any who might follow him off the scent. And it was in consequence of these observations and in anticipation of possible eventualities that she advised Mr. Kesselbach to erase the name of Dolores from the register of births and to replace it by the name of Louis, so that the initials might correspond with those of Leon Massier. … The moment arrived at which she must act; and thereupon she concocted her plot and proceeded to put it into execution. Leon lived in the Rue Delaizement. She ordered her accomplices to take up their quarters in the street that backed on to it. And she herself told me the address of Dominique the headwaiter, and put me on the track of the seven scoundrels, knowing perfectly well that, once on the track, I was bound to follow it to the end, that is to say, beyond the seven scoundrels, till I came up with their leader, the man who watched them and who commanded them, the man in black, Leon Massier, Louis de Malreich. … As a matter of fact, I came up with the seven scoundrels first. Then what would happen? Either I should be beaten or we should all destroy one another, as she must have hoped, that night in the Rue des Vignes. In either case Dolores would have been rid of me. But what really happened was this: I captured the seven scoundrels. Dolores fled from the Rue des Vignes. I found her in the Broker’s shed. She sent me after Leon Massier, that is to say, Louis de Malreich. I found in his house the Emperor’s letters, which she herself had placed there, and I delivered him to justice and I revealed the secret communication, which she herself had caused to be made, between the two coach-houses, and
