o
commit the least imprudence, he said to Clarisse:

"Listen. I will ask you to give me two or three days more. This is
Monday, the 4th of March. On Wednesday or Thursday, at latest, I shall
be up and about. And you can be sure that we shall succeed."

"And, in the meantime..."

"In the meantime, go back to Paris. Take rooms, with the Growler and the
Masher, in the Hotel Franklin, near the Trocadero, and keep a watch on
Daubrecq's house. You are free to go in and out as you please. Stimulate
the zeal of the detectives on duty."

"Suppose Daubrecq returns?"

"If he returns, that will be so much the better: we shall have him."

"And, if he only passes?"

"In that case, the Growler and the Masher must follow him."

"And if they lose sight of him?"

Lupin did not reply. No one felt more than he how fatal it was to remain
inactive in a hotel bedroom and how useful his presence would have been
on the battlefield! Perhaps even this vague idea had already prolonged
his illness beyond the ordinary limits.

He murmured:

"Go now, please."

There was a constraint between them which increased as the awful day
drew nigh. In her injustice, forgetting or wishing to forget that it was
she who had forced her son into the Enghien enterprise, Mme. Mergy did
not forget that the law was pursuing Gilbert with such rigour not so
much because he was a criminal as because he was an accomplice of Arsene
Lupin's. And then, notwithstanding all his efforts, notwithstanding his
prodigious expenditure of energy, what result had Lupin achieved, when
all was said? How far had his intervention benefited Gilbert?

After a pause, she rose and left him alone.

The next day he was feeling rather low. But on the day after, the
Wednesday, when his doctor wanted him to keep quiet until the end of the
week, he said:

"If not, what have I to fear?"

"A return of the fever."

"Nothing worse?"

"No. The wound is pretty well healed."

"Then I don't care. I'll go back with you in your car. We shall be in
Paris by mid-day."

What decided Lupin to start at once was, first, a letter in which
Clarisse told him that she had found Daubrecq's traces, and, also, a
telegram, published in the Amiens papers, which stated that the Marquis
d'Albufex had been arrested for his complicity in the affair of the
canal.

Daubrecq was taking his revenge.

Now the fact that Daubrecq was taking his revenge proved that the
marquis had not been able to prevent