s.

Two more days; and then, one night, posted on the landing of the
second floor, Lupin heard the creaking of a door, the front-door, as he
perceived, which led from the hall into the garden. In the darkness
he distinguished, or rather divined, the presence of two persons, who
climbed the stairs and stopped on the first floor, outside Daubrecq's
bedroom.

What were they doing there? It was not possible to enter the room,
because Daubrecq bolted his door every night. Then what were they
hoping?

Manifestly, a handiwork of some kind was being performed, as Lupin
discovered from the dull sounds of rubbing against the door. Then words,
uttered almost beneath a whisper, reached him:

"Is it all right?"

"Yes, quite, but, all the same, we'd better put it off till to-morrow,
because..."

Lupin did not hear the end of the sentence. The men were already groping
their way downstairs. The hall-door was closed, very gently, and then
the gate.

"It's curious, say what one likes," thought Lupin. "Here is a house in
which Daubrecq carefully conceals his rascalities and is on his guard,
not without good reason, against spies; and everybody walks in and out
as in a booth at a fair. Victoire lets me in, the portress admits the
emissaries of the police: that's well and good; but who is playing false
in these people's favour? Are we to suppose that they are acting alone?
But what fearlessness! And how well they know their way about!"

In the afternoon, during Daubrecq's absence, he examined the door of the
first-floor bedroom. And, at the first glance, he understood: one of the
lower panels had been skilfully cut out and was only held in place by
invisible tacks. The people, therefore, who had done this work were the
same who had acted at his two places, in the Rue Matignon and the Rue
Chateaubriand.

He also found that the work dated back to an earlier period and that, as
in his case, the opening had been prepared beforehand, in anticipation
of favourable circumstances or of some immediate need.

The day did not seem long to Lupin. Knowledge was at hand. Not only
would he discover the manner in which his adversaries employed those
little openings, which were apparently unemployable, since they did
not allow a person to reach the upper bolts, but he would learn who the
ingenious and energetic adversaries were with whom he repeatedly and
inevitably found himself confronted.

One incident annoyed him. In the evening Daubrecq,