with the
master key to this problem? Have we not a better chance of
discovering the powerful head of this band if we allow his
collaborators to perform their manoeuvres in a fancied security?"

The prime mover of these mysteries? Juve was convinced that the prime
mover of these nefarious mysteries, the murderous master mind was, and
could be, none other than--Fantomas!

Juve paused abruptly.

A man was coming to meet them--an investigating agent attached to the
general commissariat department at Dieppe.

"They are asking for Monsieur Henri on the telephone," he announced.

De Loubersac rushed to the police station. Over the telephone, a War
Office colleague informed him that the fugitive corporal, accompanied
by a priest, had during the last hour arrived at a garage in Rouen.

Meanwhile Juve had received a cypher telegram at the police station,
confirming the news, with the addition that, after replenishing the
motor with petrol, they had set off again at once--they had received a
telegram.

Juve and de Loubersac returned to the quay.

"Our beauties will not be so long now," said he.

With twilight the tempest had died down, night was falling fast. The
waters in the docks reflected the light from the quay lamps on their
shining, heaving, surface.

Now, for some time, Henri de Loubersac had been longing to ask Juve a
question, longing yet fearing to voice it--a question relating to his
personal affairs. Had not Juve, as Vagualame, clearly insinuated that
Wilhelmine de Naarboveck must have been the mistress of Captain Brocq?
Had not de Loubersac protested vehemently against such an odious
calumny? But now that he knew this statement was Juve's, he was in a
state of torment--his love was bleeding with the torture of it!

At last he summoned up courage to put the question to Juve.

Juve frowned, looked embarrassed. He had foreseen the question. He did
not believe that Wilhelmine de Naarboveck had been Captain Brocq's
mistress; but he knew there was an undecipherable mystery in this
girl's life, and he had an intuition that the discovery of this
secret would probably throw light on certain points which, as far as
he was concerned, had remained obscure. Was this fair-haired girl
really the baron's daughter? Since he had learned that Wilhelmine
visited Lady Beltham's tomb regularly--this notorious Lady Beltham,
mistress of Fantomas--he had been saying to himself:

"No--Mademoiselle Wilhelmine is not the daught