point of fact, a monkey; but
he is also a man. He has the gentleness and the wisdom of the domestic
animals and the sadness which they feel when their master dies. But he
has many other qualities that bring him much closer to humanity: he is
treacherous, cruel, idle, greedy and quarrelsome; and, above all, he is
immoderately fond of brandy.

Apart from that, he is a monkey. Unless indeed ...!

* * * * *

A few days after Three Stars' arrest, I saw Arsene Lupin standing in
front of his cage. Lupin was manifestly trying to solve this interesting
problem for himself. I at once said, for I had set my heart upon having
the matter out with him:

"You know, Lupin, that intervention of yours, your argument, your
letter, in short, did not surprise me so much as you might think!"

"Oh, really?" he said, calmly. "And why?"

"Why? Because the incident has occurred before, seventy or eighty years
ago. Edgar Allan Poe made it the subject of one of his finest tales. In
those circumstances, the key to the riddle was easy enough to find."

Arsene Lupin took my arm, and walking away with me, said:

"When did you guess it, yourself?"

"On reading your letter," I confessed.

"And at what part of my letter?"

"At the end."

"At the end, eh? After I had dotted all the i's. So here is a crime
which accident causes to be repeated, under quite different conditions,
it is true, but still with the same sort of hero; and your eyes had to
be opened, as well as other people's. It needed the assistance of my
letter, the letter in which I amused myself--apart from the exigencies
of the facts--by employing the argument and sometimes the identical
words used by the American poet in a story which everybody has read. So
you see that my letter was not absolutely useless and that one may
safely venture to repeat to people things which they have learnt only to
forget them."

Wherewith Lupin turned on his heel and burst out laughing in the face of
an old monkey, who sat with the air of a philosopher, gravely
meditating.

VIII

LUPIN'S MARRIAGE

"Monsieur Arsene Lupin has the honour to inform you of his
approaching marriage with Mademoiselle Angelique de
Sarzeau-Vendome, Princesse de Bourbon-Conde, and to request the
pleasure of your company at the wedding, which will take place at
the church of Sainte-Clotilde...."

"The Duc de Sarzeau-Vendome has the honour to inform you of