nt.

Lastly, there is an even more precise fact related by the author of the
pamphlet of 1815. During the French campaign, he being then an officer
under Napoleon, his horse dropped dead, one evening, and he rang at the
door of a castle where he was received by an old knight of St. Louis.
And, in the course of conversation with the old man, he learnt that
this castle, standing on the bank of the Creuse, was called the Chateau
de l'Aiguille, that it had been built and christened by Louis XIV., and
that, by his express order, it was adorned with turrets and with a
spire which represented the Needle. As its date it bore, it must still
bear, the figure 1680.

1680! One year after the publication of the book and the imprisonment
of the Iron Mask! Everything was now explained: Louis XIV., foreseeing
that the secret might be noised abroad, had built and named that castle
so as to offer the quidnuncs a natural explanation of the ancient
mystery. The Hollow Needle! A castle with pointed bell-turrets standing
on the bank of the Creuse and belonging to the King. People would at
once think that they had the key to the riddle and all enquiries would
cease.

The calculation was just, seeing that, more than two centuries later,
M. Beautrelet fell into the trap. And this, Sir, is what I was leading
up to in writing this letter. If Lupin, under the name of Anfredi,
rented from M. Valmeras the Chateau de l'Aiguille on the bank of the
Creuse; if, admitting the success of the inevitable investigations of
M. Beautrelet, he lodged his two prisoners there, it was because he
admitted the success of the inevitable researches made by M. Beautrelet
and because, with the object of obtaining the peace for which he had
asked, he laid for M. Beautrelet precisely what we may call the
historic trap of Louis XIV.

And hence we come to this undeniable conclusion, that he, Lupin, by his
unaided lights, without possessing any other facts than those which we
possess, managed by means of the witchcraft of a really extraordinary
genius, to decipher the undecipherable document; and that he, Lupin,
the last heir of the Kings of France, knows the royal mystery of the
Hollow Needle!

* * * * *

Here ended the letter. But, for some minutes, from the passage that
referred to the Chateau de l'Aiguille onward, it was not Beautrelet's
but another voice that read it aloud. Realizing his defeat, crushed
under the weight of his hum