en and, as Mlle. de
Saint-Veran refuses to be touched by a love that offends her, as she
relaxes her visits when they become less necessary, as she ceases them
entirely on the day when he is cured--desperate, maddened by grief, he
takes a terrible resolve. He leaves his lair, prepares his stroke and,
on Saturday the sixth of June, assisted by his accomplices, he carries
off the girl.

This is not all. The abduction must not be known. All search, all
surmises, all hope, even, must be cut short. Mlle. de Saint-Veran must
pass for dead. There is a mock murder: proofs are supplied for the
police inquiries. There is doubt about the crime, a crime, for that
matter, not unexpected, a crime foretold by the accomplices, a crime
perpetrated to revenge the chief's death. And, through this very
fact--observe the marvelous ingenuity of the conception--through this
very fact, the belief in this death is, so to speak, stimulated.

It is not enough to suggest a belief; it is necessary to compel a
certainty. Lupin foresees my interference. I am sure to guess the
trickery of the chapel. I am sure to discover the crypt. And, as the
crypt will be empty, the whole scaffolding will come to the ground.

THE CRYPT SHALL NOT BE EMPTY.

In the same way, the death of Mlle. de Saint-Veran will not be
definite, unless the sea gives up her corpse.

THE SEA SHALL GIVE UP THE CORPSE OF MLLE. DE SAINT-VERAN.

The difficulty is tremendous. The double obstacle seems insurmountable.
Yes, to any one but Lupin, but not to Lupin.

As he had foreseen, I guess the trickery of the chapel, I discover the
crypt and I go down into the lair where Lupin has taken refuge. His
corpse is there!

Any person who had admitted the death of Lupin as possible would have
been baffled. But I had not admitted this eventuality for an instant
(first, by intuition and, secondly, by reasoning). Pretense thereupon
became useless and every scheme vain. I said to myself at once that the
block of stone disturbed by the pickaxe had been placed there with a
very curious exactness, that the least knock was bound to make it fall
and that, in falling, it must inevitably reduce the head of the false
Arsene Lupin to pulp, in such a way as to make it utterly
irrecognizable.

Another discovery: half an hour later, I hear that the body of Mlle. de
Saint-Veran has been found on the rocks at Dieppe--or rather a body
which is considered to be Mlle. de Saint-Veran's, for the reason that