e, investigating books and papers. When they turned the combination
lock, he tried to learn the figures and the number of turns they made to
the right and left. He watched their movements; he sought to catch their
words. There was also a key necessary to complete the opening of the
safe. What did they do with it? Did they hide it?

One day, he saw them leave the room without locking the safe. He
descended the stairs quickly, and boldly entered the room. But they had
returned.

"Oh! excuse me," said, "I made a mistake in the door."

"Come in, Monsieur Lupin, come in," cried Madame Imbert, "are you not at
home here? We want your advice. What bonds should we sell? The foreign
securities or the government annuities?"

"But the injunction?" said Lupin, with surprise.

"Oh! it doesn't cover all the bonds."

She opened the door of the safe and withdrew a package of bonds. But her
husband protested.

"No, no, Gervaise, it would be foolish to sell the foreign bonds. They
are going up, whilst the annuities are as high as they ever will be.
What do you think, my dear friend?"

The dear friend had no opinion; yet he advised the sacrifice of the
annuities. Then she withdrew another package and, from it, she took
a paper at random. It proved to be a three-per-cent annuity worth two
thousand francs. Ludovic placed the package of bonds in his pocket.
That afternoon, accompanied by his secretary, he sold the annuities to a
stock-broker and realized forty-six thousand francs.

Whatever Madame Imbert might have said about it, Arsene Lupin did not
feel at home in the Imbert house. On the contrary, his position there
was a peculiar one. He learned that the servants did not even know his
name. They called him "monsieur." Ludovic always spoke of him in the
same way: "You will tell monsieur. Has monsieur arrived?" Why that
mysterious appellation?

Moreover, after their first outburst of enthusiasm, the Imberts seldom
spoke to him, and, although treating him with the consideration due to
a benefactor, they gave him little or no attention. They appeared to
regard him as an eccentric character who did not like to be disturbed,
and they respected his isolation as if it were a stringent rule on his
part. On one occasion, while passing through the vestibule, he heard
Madame Imbert say to the two gentlemen:

"He is such a barbarian!"

"Very well," he said to himself, "I am a barbarian."

And, without seeking to solve the question of t