ecame visible?"

"There's no Fantomas about that, in my opinion."

"Why not?"

"Well, it isn't one of Fantomas' little ways to leave clear traces
behind him. One might as well picture him committing robbery or murder
in a cap with a neat little band round it: 'Fantomas and Co.' He might
even add 'Discretion and Dispatch!' No, it's most unlikely."

"You don't think Fantomas capable of throwing down his glove to the
police in the shape of some such material proof of his identity?"

"I always base my arguments on the balance of probabilities," Juve
replied. "What emerges from this Royal Palace story is that some common
hotel thief conceived the ingenious idea of casting suspicion on
Fantomas: it was just a trick to mislead the police: at least, that is
my opinion."

But M. Fuselier declined to be convinced.

"No, you are wrong, Juve: it was no common hotel thief who stole Mme.
Van den Rosen's necklace and Princess Sonia's hundred and twenty
thousand francs; the prize was big enough to appeal to Fantomas: and the
amazing audacity of the crime is suggestive too. Just think what
coolness the man must have had to be able to paralyse the Princess's
power of resistance when she tried to call for help: and also to get
clear away in spite of the hosts of servants in the hotel and all the
precautions taken!"

"Tell me all about the robbery, M. Fuselier," said Juve.

The magistrate sat down at his desk and took up the notes he had made in
the course of his official enquiry that day. He told Juve everything he
had been able to elicit.

"The most amazing thing to me," he said in conclusion, "is the way the
fellow, when he had once got out of Princess Sonia's room, contrived to
get into the lift, shed his evening dress, get into livery, and make his
first attempt to escape. When the hall porter stopped him he did not
lose his head, but got into the lift again, sent that flying up to the
top of the hotel with the clothes that would have betrayed him, calmly
presented himself before Muller, the night watchman, and contrived to be
told to go for the police, ran down the stairs again, and took advantage
of the night watchman's telephoning to the hall porter to get the latter
to open the door for him, and so marched off as easily as you please. A
man who kept his nerve like that and could make such amazing use of
every circumstance, who was so quick and daring, and who was capable of
carrying through such a difficult comedy in t