“You are of my opinion, I hope?” he said.

“Why, yes, Monsieur le Prefet.”

“Well, of course!  To begin with, that supposition is based on nothing serious.  And, besides, we are guarded, aren’t we?  Bombs don’t come tumbling on one’s head like that.  It takes some one to throw them.  Well, how are they to come?  By what way?”

“Same way as the letters,” the secretary general ventured to suggest.

“What’s that?  Then you admit—?”

The secretary general did not reply and M. Desmalions did not complete his sentence.  He himself, like the others, experienced that same feeling of uneasiness which gradually, as the seconds sped past, was becoming almost intolerably painful.

Three o’clock in the morning! ...  The words kept on recurring to his mind.  Twice he looked at his watch.  There was twelve minutes left.  There was ten minutes.  Was the house really going to be blown up, by the mere effect of an infernal and all-powerful will?

“It’s senseless, absolutely senseless!” he cried, stamping his foot.

But, on looking at his companions, he was amazed to see how drawn their faces were; and he felt his courage sink in a strange way.  He was certainly not afraid; and the others were no more afraid than he.  But all of them, from the chiefs to the simple detectives, were under the influence of that Don Luis Perenna whom they had seen accomplishing such extraordinary feats, and who had shown such wonderful ability throughout this mysterious adventure.

Consciously or unconsciously, whether they wished it or no, they looked upon him as an exceptional being endowed with special faculties, a being of whom they could not think without conjuring up the image of the amazing Arsene Lupin, with his legend of daring, genius, and superhuman insight.

And Lupin was telling them to fly.  Pursued and hunted as he was, he voluntarily gave himself up to warn them of their danger.  And the danger was immediate.  Seven minutes more, six minutes more—­and the house would be blown up.

With great simplicity, Mazeroux went on his knees, made the sign of the cross, and said his prayers in a low voice.  The action was so impressive that the secretary general and the chief detective made a movement as though to go toward the Prefect of Police.

M. Desmalions turned away his head and continued his walk up and down the room.  But his anguish increased; and the words which he had heard over the telephone rang in his ears; and all Perenna’s authority, his ardent entreaties, his frenzied conviction—­all this upset him.  He had seen Perenna at work.  He felt it borne in upon him that he had no right, in the present circumstances, to neglect the man’s warning.

“Let’s go,” he said.

The words were spoken in the calmest manner; and it really seemed as if those who heard them regarded them merely as the sensible conclusion of a very ordinary state of affairs.  They went away without hurry or disorder, not as fugitives, but as men deliberately obeying the dictates of prudence.