and found Leonard lying flat on his stomach, quite alone,
with his hands tied behind his back:

"So it's you growling, my confidential flunkey? Don't get excited: it's
almost finished. Only, if you make too much noise, you'll oblige us to
take severer measures... Do you like pears? We might give you one, you
know: a choke-pear!..."

As he went upstairs, he again heard the same sound and, stopping to
listen, he caught these words, uttered in a hoarse, groaning voice,
which came, beyond a doubt, from the pantry:

"Help!... Murder!... Help!... I shall be killed!... Inform the
commissary!"

"The fellow's clean off his chump!" muttered Lupin. "By Jove!... To
disturb the police at nine o'clock in the evening: there's a notion for
you!"

He set to work again. It took longer than he expected, for they
discovered in the cupboards all sorts of valuable knick-knacks which it
would have been very wrong to disdain and, on the other hand, Vaucheray
and Gilbert were going about their investigations with signs of laboured
concentration that nonplussed him.

At long last, he lost his patience:

"That will do!" he said. "We're not going to spoil the whole job and
keep the motor waiting for the sake of the few odd bits that remain. I'm
taking the boat."

They were now by the waterside and Lupin went down the steps. Gilbert
held him back:

"I say, governor, we want one more look round five minutes, no longer."

"But what for, dash it all?"

"Well, it's like this: we were told of an old reliquary, something
stunning..."

"Well?"

"We can't lay our hands on it. And I was thinking... There's a cupboard
with a big lock to it in the pantry... You see, we can't very well..."
He was already on his way to the villa. Vaucheray ran back too.

"I'll give you ten minutes, not a second longer!" cried Lupin. "In ten
minutes, I'm off."

But the ten minutes passed and he was still waiting.

He looked at his watch:

"A quarter-past nine," he said to himself. "This is madness."

And he also remembered that Gilbert and Vaucheray had behaved rather
queerly throughout the removal of the things, keeping close together and
apparently watching each other. What could be happening?

Lupin mechanically returned to the house, urged by a feeling of anxiety
which he was unable to explain; and, at the same time, he listened to
a dull sound which rose in the distance, from the direction of Enghien,
and which seemed to be coming nearer... People