LITMIR.BIZ

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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."

      CHAPTER FOUR

THE CLOUDED TURQUOISE

      It was about nine o'clock in the morning when the Prefect of Police entered the study in which the incomprehensible tragedy of that double murder had been enacted.

      He did not even bow to Don Luis; and the magistrates who accompanied him might have thought that Don Luis was merely an assistant of Sergeant Mazeroux, if the chief detective had not made it his business to tell them, in a few words, the part played by the stranger.

      M. Desmalions briefly examined the two corpses and received a rapid explanation from Mazeroux. Then, returning to the hall, he went up to a drawing-room on the first floor, where Mme. Fauville, who had been informed of his visit, joined him almost at once.

      Perenna, who had not stirred from the passage, slipped into the hall himself. The servants of the house, who by this time had heard of the murder, were crossing it in every direction. He went down the few stairs leading to a ground-floor landing, on which the front door opened.

      There were two men there, of whom one said:

      "You can't pass."

      "But—"

      "You can't pass: those are our orders."

      "Your orders? Who gave them?"

      "The Prefect himself."

      "No luck," said Perenna, laughing. "I have been up all night and I am starving. Is there no way of getting something to eat?"

      The two policemen exchanged glances and one of them beckoned to Silvestre and spoke to him. Silvestre went toward the dining-room, and returned with a horseshoe roll.

      "Good," thought Don Luis, after thanking him. "This settles it. I'm nabbed. That's what I wanted to know. But M. Desmalions is deficient in logic. For, if it's Arsène Lupin whom he means to detain here, all these worthy plain-clothesmen are hardly enough; and, if it's Don Luis Perenna, they are superfluous, because the flight of Master Perenna would deprive Master Perenna of every chance of seeing the colour of my poor Cosmo's shekels. Having said which, I will take a chair."

      He resumed his seat in the passage and awaited events.

      Through the open door of the study he saw the magistrates pursuing their investigations. The divisional surgeon made a first examination of the two bodies and at once recognized the same symptoms of poisoning which he himself had perceived, the evening before, on the corpse of Inspector Vérot.

      Next, the detectives took up the bodies and carried them to the adjoining bedrooms which the father and son formerly occupied on the second floor of the house.

      The Prefect of Police then came downstairs; and Don Luis heard him say to the magistrates:

      "Poor woman! She refused to understand…. When at last she understood, she fell to the ground in a dead faint. Only think, her husband and her son at one blow!… Poor thing!"

      From that moment Perenna heard and saw nothing. The door was shut. The Prefect must afterward have given some order through the outside, through the communication with the front door offered by the garden, for the two detectives came and took up their positions in the hall, at the entrance to the passage, on the right and left of the dividing curtain.

      "One thing's certain," thought Don Luis. "My shares are not booming. What a state Alexandre must be in! Oh, what a state!"

      At twelve o'clock Silvestre brought him some food on a tray.

      And the long and painful wait began anew.

      In the study and in the house, the inquiry, which had been adjourned for lunch, was resumed. Perenna heard footsteps and the sound of voices on every side. At last, feeling tired and bored, he leaned back in his chair and fell asleep.

* * * * *

      It was four o'clock when Sergeant Mazeroux came and woke him. As he led him to the study, Mazeroux whispered:

      "Well, have you discovered him?"

      "Whom?"

      "The murderer."

      "Of course!" said Perenna. "It's as easy as shelling peas!"

      "That's a good thing!" said Mazeroux, greatly relieved and failing to see the joke. "But for that, as you saw for yourself, you would have been done for."

      Don Luis entered. In the room were the public prosecutor, the examining magistrate, the chief detective, the local commissary of police, two inspectors, and three constables in uniform.

      Outside, on the Boulevard Suchet, shouts were raised; and, when the commissary and his three policemen went out, by the Prefect's orders, to listen to the crowd, the hoarse voice of a newsboy was heard shouting:

      "The double murder on the Boulevard Suchet! Full particulars of the death of Inspector Vérot! The police at a loss!—"

      Then, when the door was closed, all was silent.

      "Mazeroux was quite right," thought Don Luis. "It's I or the other one: that's clear. Unless the words that will be spoken and the facts that will come to light in the course of this examination supply me with some clue that will enable me to give them the name of that mysterious X, they'll surrender me this evening for the people to batten on. Attention, Lupin, old chap, the great game is about to commence!"

      He felt that thrill of delight which always ran through him at the approach of the great struggles. This one, indeed, might be numbered among the most terrible that he had yet sustained.

      He knew the Prefect's reputation, his experience, his tenacity, and the keen pleasure which he took in conducting important inquiries and in personally pushing them to a conclusion before placing them in the magistrate's hands; and he also knew all the professional qualities of the chief detective, and all the subtlety, all the penetrating logic possessed by the examining magistrate.

      The Prefect of Police himself directed the attack. He did so in a straightforward fashion, without beating about the bush, and in a rather harsh voice, which had lost its former tone of sympathy for Don Luis. His attitude also was more formal and lacked that geniality which had struck Don Luis on the previous day.

      "Monsieur," he said,

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