en ... and still she would bow to
me!"

"Why? Because she loved you once?"

"Rot! That would be an additional reason, on the contrary, why she
should now despise me."

"What then?"

"I am the man who gave her back her son!"

III

THE SIGN OF THE SHADOW

"I received your telegram and here I am," said a gentleman with a grey
moustache, who entered my study, dressed in a dark-brown frock-coat and
a wide-brimmed hat, with a red ribbon in his buttonhole. "What's the
matter?"

Had I not been expecting Arsene Lupin, I should certainly never have
recognized him in the person of this old half-pay officer:

"What's the matter?" I echoed. "Oh, nothing much: a rather curious
coincidence, that's all. And, as I know that you would just as soon
clear up a mystery as plan one...."

"Well?"

"You seem in a great hurry!"

"I am ... unless the mystery in question is worth putting myself out
for. So let us get to the point."

"Very well. Just begin by casting your eye on this little picture, which
I picked up, a week or two ago, in a grimy old shop on the other side
of the river. I bought it for the sake of its Empire frame, with the
palm-leaf ornaments on the mouldings ... for the painting is execrable."

"Execrable, as you say," said Lupin, after he had examined it, "but the
subject itself is rather nice. That corner of an old courtyard, with its
rotunda of Greek columns, its sun-dial and its fish-pond and that ruined
well with the Renascence roof and those stone steps and stone benches:
all very picturesque."

"And genuine," I added. "The picture, good or bad, has never been taken
out of its Empire frame. Besides, it is dated.... There, in the
left-hand bottom corner: those red figures, 15. 4. 2, which obviously
stand for 15 April, 1802."

"I dare say ... I dare say.... But you were speaking of a coincidence
and, so far, I fail to see...."

I went to a corner of my study, took a telescope, fixed it on its stand
and pointed it, through the open window, at the open window of a little
room facing my flat, on the other side of the street. And I asked Lupin
to look through it.

He stooped forward. The slanting rays of the morning sun lit up the room
opposite, revealing a set of mahogany furniture, all very simple, a
large bed and a child's bed hung with cretonne curtains.

"Ah!" cried Lupin, suddenly. "The same picture!"

"Exactly the same!" I said. "And the date: do you see the date, in red?
15. 4. 2."