CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

LUPIN’S LUPINS

Next morning, a little before eight o’clock, Valenglay was talking in his own flat to the Prefect of Police, and asked: 

“So you think as I do, my dear Prefect?  He’ll come?”

“I haven’t the least doubt of it, Monsieur le President.  And he will come with the same punctuality that has been shown throughout this business.  He will come, for pride’s sake, at the last stroke of eight.”

“You think so?”

“Monsieur le President, I have been studying the man for months.  As things now stand, with Florence Levasseur’s life in the balance, if he has not smashed the villain whom he is hunting down, if he does not bring him back bound hand and foot, it will mean that Florence Levasseur is dead and that he, Arsene Lupin, is dead.”

“Whereas Lupin is immortal,” said Valenglay, laughing.  “You’re right.  Besides, I agree with you entirely.  No one would be more astonished than I if our good friend was not here to the minute.  You say you were rung up from Angers yesterday?”

“Yes, Monsieur le President.  My men had just seen Don Luis Perenna.  He had gone in front of them, in an aeroplane.  After that, they telephoned to me again from Le Mans, where they had been searching a deserted coach-house.

“You may be sure that the search had already been made by Lupin, and that we shall know the results.  Listen:  eight o’clock!”

At the same moment they heard the throbbing of a motor car.  It stopped outside the house; and the bell rang almost immediately after.  Orders had been given beforehand.  The door opened and Don Luis Perenna was shown in.

To Valenglay and the Prefect of Police his arrival was certainly not unexpected, for they had just been saying that they would have been surprised if he had not come.  Nevertheless, their attitude showed that astonishment which we all experience in the face of events that seem to pass the bounds of human possibility.

“Well?” cried the Prime Minister eagerly.

“It’s done, Monsieur le President.”

“Have you collared the scoundrel?”

“Yes.”

“By Jove!” said Valenglay.  “You’re a fine fellow!” And he went on to ask, “An ogre, of course?  An evil, undaunted brute?—­”

“No, Monsieur le President, a cripple, a degenerate, responsible for his actions, certainly, but a man in whom the doctors will find every form of wasting illness:  disease of the spinal cord, tuberculosis, and all the rest of it.”

“And is that the man whom Florence Levasseur loved?”

“Monsieur le President!” Don Luis violently protested.  “Florence never loved that wretch!  She felt sorry for him, as any one would for a fellow-creature doomed to an early death; and it was out of pity that she allowed him to hope that she might marry him later, at some time in the vague future.”