hunted down by a score of detectives.

As for the Mornington inheritance, there could be no more question of
that, because the legatee, in his turn, had set himself in open rebellion
against society.

"Capital!" said Don Luis, with a grin. "This is life as I understand it.
The question is a simple one and may be put in different ways. How can a
wretched, unwashed beggar, with not a penny in his pocket, make a fortune
in twenty-four hours without setting foot outside his hovel? How can a
general, with no soldiers and no ammunition left, win a battle which he
has lost? In short, how shall I, Arsene Lupin, manage to be present
to-morrow evening at the meeting which will be held on the Boulevard
Suchet and to behave in such a way as to save Marie Fauville, Florence
Levasseur, Gaston Sauverand, and my excellent friend Don Luis Perenna in
the bargain?"

Dull blows came from somewhere. The men must be hunting the roofs and
sounding the walls.

Don Luis stretched himself flat on the floor, hid his face in his folded
arms and, shutting his eyes, murmured:

"Let's think."

CHAPTER TWELVE

"HELP!"

When Lupin afterward told me this episode of the tragic story, he said,
not without a certain self-complacency:

"What astonished me then, and what astonishes me still, as one of the
most amazing victories on which I am entitled to pride myself, is that I
was able to admit Sauverand and Marie Fauville's innocence on the spot,
as a problem solved once and for all. It was a first-class performance, I
swear, and surpassed the most famous deductions of the most famous
investigators both in psychological value and in detective merit.

"After all, taking everything into account, there was not the shadow of a
fresh fact to enable me to alter the verdict. The charges accumulated
against the two prisoners were the same, and were so grave that no
examining magistrate would have hesitated for a second to commit them for
trial, nor any jury to bring them in guilty. I will not speak of Marie
Fauville: you had only to think of the marks of her teeth to be
absolutely certain. But Gaston Sauverand, the son of Victor Sauverand and
consequently the heir of Cosmo Mornington--Gaston Sauverand, the man with
the ebony walking-stick and the murderer of Chief Inspector Ancenis--was
he not just as guilty as Marie Fauville, incriminated with her by the
mysterious letters, incriminated by the very revelation of the husband
whom they had kill