s eyes fixed on him, was busy
unwinding a coil of rope which he had picked up, and seemed to pay no
further attention to him.

He retreated.

And suddenly, after a glance at his enemy, he spun round, drew himself up
on his slack legs with an effort, and started running toward the well.

He was twenty paces from it. He covered one half, three quarters of the
distance. Already the mouth opened before him. He put out his arms, with
the movement of a man about to dive, and shot forward.

His rush was stopped. He rolled over on the ground, dragged back
violently, with his arms fixed so firmly to his body that he was
unable to stir.

It was Don Luis, who had never wholly lost sight of him, who had made a
slip-knot to his rope and who had lassoed the cripple at the moment when
he was going to fling himself down the abyss. The cripple struggled for a
few moments. But the slip-knot bit into his flesh. He ceased moving.
Everything was over.

Then Don Luis Perenna, holding the other end of the lasso, came up to him
and bound him hand and foot with what remained of the rope. The operation
was carefully performed. Don Luis repeated it time after time, using the
coils of rope which the cripple had brought to the well and gagging him
with a handkerchief. And, while applying himself to his work, he
explained, with affected politeness:

"You see, sir, people always come to grief through excessive
self-confidence. They never imagine that their adversaries can have
resources which they themselves do not possess. For instance, when you
got me to fall into your trap, how could you have supposed, my dear sir,
that a man like myself, a man like Arsene Lupin, hanging on the brim of a
well, with his arms resting on the brim and his feet against the inner
wall, would allow himself to drop down it like the first silly fool that
comes along?

"Look here: you were fifteen or twenty yards away; and do you think that
I had not the strength to leap out nor the courage to face the bullets of
your revolver, when it was a question of saving Florence Levasseur's life
and my own? Why, my poor sir, the tiniest effort would have been enough,
believe me!

"My reason for not making the effort was that I had something better to
do, something infinitely better. I will tell you why, that is, if you
care to know. Do you?

"Well, then, at the very first moment, my knees and feet, propped against
the inner wall, had smashed in a thick layer of plaster w