ly that body, dressed in
Colonel Sparmiento's clothes."

"Precisely, chief."

"Then Colonel Sparmiento is not dead?"

"No more dead than you or I, chief."

"But then why all these complications? Why the theft of one tapestry,
followed by its recovery, followed by the theft of the twelve? Why that
house-warming? Why that disturbance? Why everything? Your story won't
hold water, Ganimard."

"Only because you, chief, like myself, have stopped halfway; because,
strange as this story already sounds, we must go still farther, very
much farther, in the direction of the improbable and the astounding. And
why not, after all? Remember that we are dealing with Arsene Lupin. With
him, is it not always just the improbable and the astounding that we
must look for? Must we not always go straight for the maddest
suppositions? And, when I say the maddest, I am using the wrong word. On
the contrary, the whole thing is wonderfully logical and so simple that
a child could understand it. Confederates only betray you. Why employ
confederates, when it is so easy and so natural to act for yourself, by
yourself, with your own hands and by the means within your own reach?"

"What are you saying?... What are you saying?... What are you saying?"
cried M. Dudouis, in a sort of sing-song voice and a tone of
bewilderment that increased with each separate exclamation.

Ganimard gave a fresh chuckle.

"Takes your breath away, chief, doesn't it? So it did mine, on the day
when you came to see me here and when the notion was beginning to grow
upon me. I was flabbergasted with astonishment. And yet I've had
experience of my customer. I know what he's capable of.... But this, no,
this was really a bit too stiff!"

"It's impossible! It's impossible!" said M. Dudouis, in a low voice.

"On the contrary, chief, it's quite possible and quite logical and quite
normal. It's the threefold incarnation of one and the same individual. A
schoolboy would solve the problem in a minute, by a simple process of
elimination. Take away the dead man: there remains Sparmiento and Lupin.
Take away Sparmiento...."

"There remains Lupin," muttered the chief-detective.

"Yes, chief, Lupin simply, Lupin in five letters and two syllables,
Lupin taken out of his Brazilian skin, Lupin revived from the dead,
Lupin translated, for the past six months, into Colonel Sparmiento,
travelling in Brittany, hearing of the discovery of the twelve
tapestries, buying them, planning