as at once shown
into the study on the first floor. Hardly taking time to throw off his
great-coat, he rushed at Don Luis:

"It's all up with you this time, Chief!" he exclaimed. "This is no moment
for joking: pack up your trunks and be off as quick as you can!"

Don Luis, who sat quietly smoking in an easy chair, answered:

"Which will you have, Mazeroux? A cigar or a cigarette?"

Mazeroux at once grew indignant.

"But look here, Chief, don't you read the papers?"

"Worse luck!"

"In that case, the situation must appear as clear to you as it does to me
and everybody else. During the last three days, since the double suicide,
or, rather, the double murder of Marie Fauville and her cousin Gaston
Sauverand, there hasn't been a newspaper but has said this kind of thing:
'And, now that M. Fauville, his son, his wife, and his cousin Gaston
Sauverand are dead, there's nothing standing between Don Luis Perenna and
the Mornington inheritance!'

"Do you understand what that means? Of course, people speak of the
explosion on the Boulevard Suchet and of Fauville's posthumous
revelations; and they are disgusted with that dirty brute of a Fauville;
and they don't know how to praise your cleverness enough. But there is
one fact that forms the main subject of every conversation and every
discussion.

"Now that the three branches of the Roussel family are extinct, who
remains? Don Luis Perenna. In default of the natural heirs, who inherits
the property? Don Luis Perenna."

"Lucky dog!"

"That's what people are saying, Chief. They say that this series of
murders and atrocities cannot be the effort of chance coincidences, but,
on the contrary, points to the existence of an all-powerful will which
began with the murder of Cosmo Mornington and ended with the capture of
the hundred millions. And to give a name to that will, they pitch on the
nearest, that of the extraordinary, glorious, ill-famed, bewildering,
mysterious, omnipotent, and ubiquitous person who was Cosmo Mornington's
intimate friend and who, from the beginning, has controlled events and
pieced them together, accusing and acquitting people, getting them
arrested, and helping them to escape.

"They say," he went on hurriedly, "that he manages the whole business and
that, if he works it in accordance with his interests, there are a
hundred millions waiting for him at the finish. And this person is Don
Luis Perenna, in other words, Arsene Lupin, the man with the un