The Comte d’Astrignac hurried up to him at once, with hands outstretched, thus showing that all the tittle-tattle in no way affected the esteem in which he continued to hold Private Perenna of the Foreign Legion.  But the Prefect of Police maintained an attitude of reserve which was very significant.  He went on turning over the papers which he was examining and conversed in a low voice with the solicitor and the American Secretary of Embassy.

Don Luis thought to himself: 

“My dear Lupin, there’s some one going to leave this room with the bracelets on his wrists.  If it’s not the real culprit, it’ll be you, my poor old chap.”

And he remembered the early part of the case, when he was in the workroom at Fauville’s house, before the magistrates, and had either to deliver the criminal to justice or to incur the penalty of immediate arrest.  In the same way, from the start to the finish of the struggle, he had been obliged, while fighting the invisible enemy, to expose himself to the attacks of the law with no means of defending himself except by indispensable victories.

Harassed by constant onslaughts, never out of danger, he had successively hurried to their deaths Marie Fauville and Gaston Sauverand, two innocent people sacrificed to the cruel laws of war.  Was he at last about to fight the real enemy, or would he himself succumb at the decisive moment?

He rubbed his hands with such a cheerful gesture that M. Desmalions could not help looking at him.  Don Luis wore the radiant air of a man who is experiencing a pure joy and who is preparing to taste others even greater.

The Prefect of Police remained silent for a moment, as though asking himself what that devil of a fellow could be so pleased with; then he fumbled through his papers once more and, in the end, said: 

“We have met again, gentlemen, as we did two months ago, to come to a definite conclusion about the Mornington inheritance.  Senor Caceres, the attache of the Peruvian legation, will not be here.  I have received a telegram from Italy to tell me that Senor Caceres is seriously ill.  However, his presence was not indispensable.  There is no one lacking, therefore—­except those, alas, whose claims this meeting would gladly have sanctioned, that is to say, Cosmo Mornington’s heirs.”

“There is one other person absent, Monsieur le Prefet.”  M. Desmalions looked up.  The speaker was Don Luis.  The Prefect hesitated and then decided to ask him to explain.

“Whom do you mean?  What person?”

“The murderer of the Mornington heirs.”

This time again Don Luis compelled attention and, in spite of the resistance which he encountered, obliged the others to take notice of his presence and to yield to his ascendancy.  Whatever happened, they had to listen to him.  Whatever happened, they had to discuss with him things which seemed incredible, but which were possible because he put them into words.