he has run away,
Charles Rambert is innocent?"

"Charles Rambert is the culprit, sir," Juve replied brightly. "If he
were not, whom else could we possibly suspect?"

The detective's placidity and his perpetual self-contradictions
exasperated M. de Presles. He held his tongue, and was silently
revolving the case in his mind when Juve made yet one more suggestion.

"There is one final hypothesis which I feel obliged to put before you.
Do you realise, sir, that this is a typical Fantomas crime?"

M. de Presles shrugged his shoulders as the detective pronounced this
half-mythical name.

"Upon my word, M. Juve, I should never have expected you to invoke
Fantomas! Why, Fantomas is the too obvious subterfuge, the cheapest
device for investing a case with mock honours. Between you and me, you
know perfectly well that Fantomas is merely a legal fiction--a lawyers'
joke. Fantomas has no existence in fact!"

Juve stopped in his stride. He paused a moment before replying; then
spoke in a restrained voice, but with an emphasis on his words that
always marked him when he spoke in all seriousness.

"You are wrong to laugh, sir; very wrong. You are a magistrate and I am
only a humble detective inspector, but you have three or four years'
experience, perhaps less, while I have fifteen years' work behind me. I
know that Fantomas does exist, and I do anything but laugh when I
suspect his intervention in a case."

M. de Presles could hardly conceal his surprise, and Juve went on:

"No one has ever said of me, sir, that I was a coward. I have looked
death in the eyes; I have often hunted and arrested criminals who would
not have had the least hesitation in doing away with me. There are whole
gangs of rascals who have vowed my death. All manner of horrible
revenges threaten me to-day. For all that I have the most complete
indifference! But when people talk to me of Fantomas, when I fancy that
I can detect the intervention of that genius of crime in any case, then,
M. de Presles, I am in a funk! I tell you frankly I am in a funk. I am
frightened, because Fantomas is a being against whom it is idle to use
ordinary weapons; because he has been able to hide his identity and
elude all pursuit for years; because his daring is boundless and his
power unmeasurable; because he is everywhere and nowhere at once and, if
he has had a hand in this affair, I am not even sure that he is not
listening to me now! And finally, M. de Presles, becaus