ne-office, and
went up in the lift. Ten minutes later I knew the number of his room and
knew that a lady had been occupying the next room, No. 130, since the
day before. 'I believe we've done it,' I said to the Growler and the
Masher. I tapped lightly at your door. No answer. And the door was
locked."

"Well?" asked Clarisse.

"Well, we opened it. Do you think there's only one key in the world
that will work a lock? So I walked in. Nobody in your room. But the
partition-door was ajar. I slipped through it. Thenceforth, a mere
hanging separated me from you, from Daubrecq and from the packet of
tobacco which I saw on the chimney-slab."

"Then you knew the hiding-place?"

"A look round Daubrecq's study in Paris showed me that that packet of
tobacco had disappeared. Besides..."

"What?"

"I knew, from certain confessions wrung from Daubrecq in the Lovers'
Tower, that the word Marie held the key to the riddle. Since then I had
certainly thought of this word, but with the preconceived notion that
it was spelt M A R I E. Well, it was really the first two syllables of
another word, which I guessed, so to speak, only at the moment when I
was struck by the absence of the packet of tobacco."

"What word do you mean?"

"Maryland, Maryland tobacco, the only tobacco that Daubrecq smokes."

And Lupin began to laugh:

"Wasn't it silly? And, at the same time, wasn't it clever of Daubrecq?
We looked everywhere, we ransacked everything. Didn't I unscrew the
brass sockets of the electric lights to see if they contained a crystal
stopper? But how could I have thought, how could any one, however great
his perspicacity, have thought of tearing off the paper band of a packet
of Maryland, a band put on, gummed, sealed, stamped and dated by the
State, under the control of the Inland Revenue Office? Only think! The
State the accomplice of such an act of infamy! The Inland R-r-r-revenue
Awfice lending itself to such a trick! No, a thousand times no!
The Regie [*] is not perfect. It makes matches that won't light and
cigarettes filled with hay. But there's all the difference in the world
between recognizing that fact and believing the Inland Revenue to be
in league with Daubrecq with the object of hiding the list of the
Twenty-seven from the legitimate curiosity of the government and the
enterprising efforts of Arsene Lupin! Observe that all Daubrecq had to
do, in order to introduce the crystal stopper, was to bear upon the band
a lit