the
armistice demanded by the needs of his passion! They were both free,
the two prisoners! And the secret of the Hollow Needle was known,
published, flung to the four corners of the world!

The crowd amused itself with a will. Ballads were sold and sung about
the defeated adventurer: Lupin's Little Love-Affairs!--Arsene's Piteous
Sobs!--The Lovesick Burglar! The Pickpocket's Lament!--They were cried
on the boulevards and hummed in the artists' studios.

Raymonde, pressed with questions and pursued by interviewers, replied
with the most extreme reserve. But there was no denying the letter, or
the bouquets of flowers, or any part of the pitiful story! Then and
there, Lupin, scoffed and jeered at, toppled from his pedestal.

And Beautrelet became the popular idol. He had foretold everything,
thrown light on everything. The evidence which Mlle. de Saint-Veran
gave before the examining magistrate confirmed, down to the smallest
detail, the hypothesis imagined by Isidore. Reality seemed to submit,
in every point, to what he had decreed beforehand. Lupin had found his
master.--

* * * * *

Beautrelet insisted that his father, before returning to his mountains
in Savoy, should take a few months' rest in the sunshine, and himself
escorted him and Mlle. de Saint-Veran to the outskirts of Nice, where
the Comte de Gesvres and his daughter Suzanne were already settled for
the winter. Two days later, Valmeras brought his mother to see his new
friends and they thus composed a little colony grouped around the Villa
de Gesvres and watched over day and night by half a dozen men engaged
by the comte.

Early in October, Beautrelet, once more the sixth-form pupil, returned
to Paris to resume the interrupted course of his studies and to prepare
for his examinations. And life began again, calmer, this time, and free
from incident. What could happen, for that matter. Was the war not over?

Lupin, on his side, must have felt this very clearly, must have felt
that there was nothing left for him but to resign himself to the
accomplished fact; for, one fine day, his two other victims, Ganimard
and Holmlock Shears, made their reappearance. Their return to the life
of this planet, however, was devoid of any sort of glamor or
fascination. An itinerant rag-man picked them up on the Quai des
Orfevres, opposite the headquarters of police. Both of them were
gagged, bound and fast asleep.

After a week of complet