on
which he was embarking against you and against Daubrecq, at whose house
he did the same thing. He had under his orders a sort of acrobat,
an extraordinarily thin dwarf, who was able to wriggle through those
apertures and who thus detected all your correspondence and all
your secrets. That is what his two friends revealed to me. I at once
conceived the idea of saving my elder son by making use of his brother,
my little Jacques, who is himself so slight and so intelligent,
so plucky, as you have seen. We set out that night. Acting on the
information of my companions, I went to Gilbert's rooms and found the
keys of your flat in the Rue Matignon, where it appeared that you were
to sleep. Unfortunately, I changed my mind on the way and thought much
less of asking for your help than of recovering the crystal stopper,
which, if it had been discovered at Enghien, must obviously be at
your flat. I was right in my calculations. In a few minutes, my little
Jacques, who had slipped into your bedroom, brought it to me. I went
away quivering with hope. Mistress in my turn of the talisman, keeping
it to myself, without telling Prasville, I had absolute power over
Daubrecq. I could make him do all that I wanted; he would become
the slave of my will and, instructed by me, would take every step in
Gilbert's favour and obtain that he should be given the means of escape
or else that he should not be sentenced. It meant my boy's safety."

"Well?"

Clarisse rose from her seat, with a passionate movement of her whole
being, leant over Lupin and said, in a hollow voice:

"There was nothing in that piece of crystal, nothing, do you understand?
No paper, no hiding-place! The whole expedition to Enghien was futile!
The murder of Leonard was useless! The arrest of my son was useless! All
my efforts were useless!"

"But why? Why?"

"Why? Because what you stole from Daubrecq was not the stopper made by
his instructions, but the stopper which was sent to John Howard, the
Stourbridge glassworker, to serve as a model."

If Lupin had not been in the presence of so deep a grief, he could not
have refrained from one of those satirical outbursts with which the
mischievous tricks of fate are wont to inspire him. As it was, he
muttered between his teeth:

"How stupid! And still more stupid as Daubrecq had been given the
warning."

"No," she said. "I went to Enghien on the same day. In all that business
Daubrecq saw and sees nothing but an ordin