es, Shears and Ganimard, were put
away. Isidore Beautrelet was disabled. The police were powerless. For
the moment there was no one left capable of struggling against such
enemies.

CHAPTER FOUR

FACE TO FACE

One evening, five weeks later, I had given my man leave to go out. It
was the day before the 14th of July. The night was hot, a storm
threatened and I felt no inclination to leave the flat. I opened wide
the glass doors leading to my balcony, lit my reading lamp and sat down
in an easy-chair to look through the papers, which I had not yet seen.

It goes without saying that there was something about Arsene Lupin in
all of them. Since the attempt at murder of which poor Isidore
Beautrelet had been the victim, not a day had passed without some
mention of the Ambrumesy mystery. It had a permanent headline devoted
to it. Never had public opinion been excited to that extent, thanks to
the extraordinary series of hurried events, of unexpected and
disconcerting surprises. M. Filleul, who was certainly accepting the
secondary part allotted to him with a good faith worthy of all praise,
had let the interviewers into the secret of his young advisor's
exploits during the memorable three days, so that the public was able
to indulge in the rashest suppositions. And the public gave itself free
scope. Specialists and experts in crime, novelists and playwrights,
retired magistrates and chief-detectives, erstwhile Lecocqs and budding
Holmlock Shearses, each had his theory and expounded it in lengthy
contributions to the press. Everybody corrected and supplemented the
inquiry of the examining magistrate; and all on the word of a child, on
the word of Isidore Beautrelet, a sixth-form schoolboy at the Lycee
Janson-de-Sailly!

For really, it had to be admitted, the complete elements of the truth
were now in everybody's possession. What did the mystery consist of?
They knew the hiding-place where Arsene Lupin had taken refuge and lain
a-dying; there was no doubt about it: Dr. Delattre, who continued to
plead professional secrecy and refused to give evidence, nevertheless
confessed to his intimate friends--who lost no time in blabbing--that
he really had been taken to a crypt to attend a wounded man whom his
confederates introduced to him by the name of Arsene Lupin. And, as the
corpse of Etienne de Vaudreix was found in that same crypt and as the
said Etienne de Vaudreix was none other than Arsene Lupin--as the
official e