bonds were not securely fastened, had contrived to scramble to his
feet, to unhook the receiver, probably with his teeth, to drop it and to
appeal for assistance to the Enghien telephone-exchange.

And those were the words which Lupin had overheard, after the first boat
started:

"Help!... Murder!... I shall be killed!"

And this was the reply of the exchange. The police were hurrying to
the spot. And Lupin remembered the sounds which he had heard from the
garden, four or five minutes earlier, at most:

"The police! Take to your heels!" he shouted, darting across the dining
room.

"What about Vaucheray?" asked Gilbert.

"Sorry, can't be helped!"

But Vaucheray, waking from his torpor, entreated him as he passed:

"Governor, you wouldn't leave me like this!"

Lupin stopped, in spite of the danger, and was lifting the wounded man,
with Gilbert's assistance, when a loud din arose outside:

"Too late!" he said.

At that moment, blows shook the hall-door at the back of the house. He
ran to the front steps: a number of men had already turned the corner of
the house at a rush. He might have managed to keep ahead of them, with
Gilbert, and reach the waterside. But what chance was there of embarking
and escaping under the enemy's fire?

He locked and bolted the door.

"We are surrounded... and done for," spluttered Gilbert.

"Hold your tongue," said Lupin.

"But they've seen us, governor. There, they're knocking."

"Hold your tongue," Lupin repeated. "Not a word. Not a movement."

He himself remained unperturbed, with an utterly calm face and the
pensive attitude of one who has all the time that he needs to examine a
delicate situation from every point of view. He had reached one of those
minutes which he called the "superior moments of existence," those
which alone give a value and a price to life. On such occasions,
however threatening the danger, he always began by counting to himself,
slowly--"One... Two... Three... Four.... Five... Six"--until the beating
of his heart became normal and regular. Then and not till then, he
reflected, but with what intensity, with what perspicacity, with what a
profound intuition of possibilities! All the factors of the problem were
present in his mind. He foresaw everything. He admitted everything. And
he took his resolution in all logic and in all certainty.

After thirty or forty seconds, while the men outside were banging at the
doors and picking the locks, he said to