than
confess their ignorance."

"Yes, yes, of course," said Ganimard.

"And then," exclaimed Arsene Lupin, "I held in my hands a trump-card: an
anxious public watching and waiting for my escape. And that is the fatal
error into which you fell, you and the others, in the course of that
fascinating game pending between me and the officers of the law wherein
the stake was my liberty. And you supposed that I was playing to the
gallery; that I was intoxicated with my success. I, Arsene Lupin, guilty
of such weakness! Oh, no! And, no longer ago than the Cahorn affair, you
said: "When Arsene Lupin cries from the housetops that he will escape,
he has some object in view." But, sapristi, you must understand that
in order to escape I must create, in advance, a public belief in
that escape, a belief amounting to an article of faith, an absolute
conviction, a reality as glittering as the sun. And I did create that
belief that Arsene Lupin would escape, that Arsene Lupin would not be
present at his trial. And when you gave your evidence and said: "That
man is not Arsene Lupin," everybody was prepared to believe you. Had one
person doubted it, had any one uttered this simple restriction: Suppose
it is Arsene Lupin?--from that moment, I was lost. If anyone had
scrutinized my face, not imbued with the idea that I was not Arsene
Lupin, as you and the others did at my trial, but with the idea that I
might be Arsene Lupin; then, despite all my precautions, I should have
been recognized. But I had no fear. Logically, psychologically, no once
could entertain the idea that I was Arsene Lupin."

He grasped Ganimard's hand.

"Come, Ganimard, confess that on the Wednesday after our conversation in
the prison de la Sante, you expected me at your house at four o'clock,
exactly as I said I would go."

"And your prison-van?" said Ganimard, evading the question.

"A bluff! Some of my friends secured that old unused van and wished
to make the attempt. But I considered it impractical without the
concurrence of a number of unusual circumstances. However, I found
it useful to carry out that attempted escape and give it the widest
publicity. An audaciously planned escape, though not completed, gave to
the succeeding one the character of reality simply by anticipation."

"So that the cigar...."

"Hollowed by myself, as well as the knife."

"And the letters?"

"Written by me."

"And the mysterious correspondent?"

"Did not exist."

Ganim