muttered:

"Child's play!"

The clock struck half-past five.

"What!" I cried. "Have you succeeded?... In twelve minutes?..."

He took a few steps up and down the room, lit a cigarette and said:

"You might ring up Baron Repstein, if you don't mind, and tell him I
shall be with him at ten o'clock this evening."

"Baron Repstein?" I asked. "The husband of the famous baroness?"

"Yes."

"Are you serious?"

"Quite serious."

Feeling absolutely at a loss, but incapable of resisting him, I opened
the telephone-directory and unhooked the receiver. But, at that moment,
Lupin stopped me with a peremptory gesture and said, with his eyes on
the paper, which he had taken up again:

"No, don't say anything.... It's no use letting him know.... There's
something more urgent ... a queer thing that puzzles me.... Why on
earth wasn't the last sentence finished? Why is the sentence...."

He snatched up his hat and stick:

"Let's be off. If I'm not mistaken, this is a business that requires
immediate solution; and I don't believe I _am_ mistaken."

He put his arm through mine, as we went down the stairs, and said:

"I know what everybody knows. Baron Repstein, the company-promoter and
racing-man, whose colt Etna won the Derby and the Grand Prix this year,
has been victimized by his wife. The wife, who was well known for her
fair hair, her dress and her extravagance, ran away a fortnight ago,
taking with her a sum of three million francs, stolen from her husband,
and quite a collection of diamonds, pearls and jewellery which the
Princesse de Berny had placed in her hands and which she was supposed to
buy. For two weeks the police have been pursuing the baroness across
France and the continent: an easy job, as she scatters gold and jewels
wherever she goes. They think they have her every moment. Two days ago,
our champion detective, the egregious Ganimard, arrested a visitor at a
big hotel in Belgium, a woman against whom the most positive evidence
seemed to be heaped up. On enquiry, the lady turned out to be a
notorious chorus-girl called Nelly Darbal. As for the baroness, she has
vanished. The baron, on his side, has offered a reward of two hundred
thousand francs to whosoever finds his wife. The money is in the hands
of a solicitor. Moreover, he has sold his racing-stud, his house on the
Boulevard Haussmann and his country-seat of Roquencourt in one lump, so
that he may indemnify the Princesse de Berny for her loss."