As none of the men
budged, I slipped one of my revolvers under my arm and took from my
pocket two small boxes of cartridges containing fifty more bullets. And
from my belt I drew three great knives, all of them nicely tapering and
pointed. Half of the troop made signs of submission and drew up in line
behind me. The other half capitulated a moment after. The battle was
over. It had not lasted four minutes."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

ARSENE I EMPEROR OP MAURETANIA

Don Luis ceased. A smile of amusement played round his lips. The
recollection of those four minutes seemed to divert him immensely.

Valenglay and the Prefect of Police, who were neither of them men to be
unduly surprised at courage and coolness, had listened to him,
nevertheless, and were now looking at him in bewildered silence. Was it
possible for a human being to carry heroism to such unlikely lengths?

Meanwhile, he went up to the other side of the chimney and pointed to a
larger map, representing the French roads.

"You told me, Monsieur le President, that the scoundrel's motor car had
left Versailles and was going toward Nantes?"

"Yes; and all our arrangements are made to arrest him either on the way,
or else at Nantes or at Saint-Nazaire, where he may intend to take ship."

Don Luis Perenna followed with his forefinger the road across France,
stopping here and there, marking successive stages. And nothing could
have been more impressive than this dumb show.

The man that he was, preserving his composure amid the overthrow of all
that he had most at heart, seemed by his calmness to dominate time and
circumstances. It was as though the murderer were running away at one end
of an unbreakable thread of which Don Luis held the other, and as though
Don Luis could stop his flight at any time by a mere movement of his
finger and thumb.

As he studied the map, the master seemed to command not only a sheet of
cardboard, but also the highroad on which a motor car was spinning along,
subject to his despotic will.

He went back to the table and continued:

"The battle was over. And there was no question of its being resumed. My
forty-two worthies found themselves face to face with a conqueror,
against whom revenge is always possible, by fair means or foul, but with
one who had subjugated them in a supernatural manner. There was no other
explanation of the inexplicable facts which they had witnessed. I was a
sorcerer, a kind of marabout, a direct em