me complicated matters of business which I
have to set going, for I should much have liked to see the end of
this rather curious adventure.

"Pray, therefore excuse me to my kind friends in the police and
permit me to be, sir,

"Your obedient servant,

"ARSENE LUPIN."

* * * * *

The upshot will be remembered. The "gentlemen of the police and the
gendarmerie" shrugged their shoulders and paid no attention to this
lucubration. But four of the local country gentry took their rifles and
went shooting, with their eyes fixed skyward, as though they meant to
pot a few rooks. In half an hour they had caught sight of the murderer.
Two shots, and he came tumbling from bough to bough. He was only
wounded, and they took him alive.

That evening, a Paris paper, which did not yet know of the capture,
printed the following paragraphs:

"Enquiries are being made after a M. and Mme. Bragoff, who landed
at Marseilles six weeks ago and there hired a motor-car. They had
been living in Australia for many years, during which time they had
not visited Europe; and they wrote to the director of the Jardin
d'Acclimatation, with whom they were in the habit of corresponding,
that they were bringing with them a curious creature, of an
entirely unknown species, of which it was difficult to say whether
it was a man or a monkey.

"According to M. Bragoff, who is an eminent archaeologist, the
specimen in question is the anthropoid ape, or rather the ape-man,
the existence of which had not hitherto been definitely proved. The
structure is said to be exactly similar to that of _Pithecanthropus
erectus_, discovered by Dr. Dubois in Java in 1891.

"This curious, intelligent and observant animal acted as its
owner's servant on their property in Australia and used to clean
their motor-car and even attempt to drive it.

"The question that is being asked is where are M. and Mme. Bragoff?
Where is the strange primate that landed with them at Marseilles?"

The answer to this question was now made easy. Thanks to the hints
supplied by Arsene Lupin, all the elements of the tragedy were known.
Thanks to him, the culprit was in the hands of the law.

You can see him at the Jardin d'Acclimatation, where he is locked up
under the name of "Three Stars." He is, in