“I am not haggling, Monsieur le President,” declared Don Luis, in a very straightforward manner and tone.  “What I have to offer you is certainly much more extraordinary and tremendous than you imagine.  But if it were twice as extraordinary and twice as tremendous, it would not count once Florence Levasseur’s life is in danger.  Nevertheless, I was entitled to try for a less expensive transaction.  Of this your words remove all hope.  I will therefore lay my cards upon the table, as you demand, and as I had made up my mind to do.”

He sat down opposite Valenglay, in the attitude of a man treating with another on equal terms.

“I shall not be long.  A single sentence, Monsieur le President, will express the bargain which I am proposing to the Prime Minister of my country.”

And, looking Valenglay straight in the eyes, he said slowly, syllable by syllable: 

“In exchange for twenty-four hours’ liberty and no more, undertaking on my honour to return here to-morrow morning and to return here either with Florence, to give you every proof of her innocence, or without her, to constitute myself a prisoner, I offer you—­”

He took his time and, in a serious voice, concluded: 

“I offer you a kingdom, Monsieur le President du Conseil.”

The sentence sounded bombastic and ludicrous, sounded silly enough to provoke a shrug of the shoulders, sounded like one of those sentences which only an imbecile or a lunatic could utter.  And yet Valenglay remained impassive.  He knew that, in such circumstances as the present, the man before him was not the man to indulge in jesting.

And he knew it so fully that, instinctively, accustomed as he was to momentous political questions in which secrecy is of the utmost importance, he cast a glance toward the Prefect of Police, as though M. Desmalions’s presence in the room hindered him.

“I positively insist,” said Don Luis, “that Monsieur le Prefet de Police shall stay and hear what I have to say.  He is better able than any one else to appreciate the value of it; and he will bear witness to its correctness in certain particulars.”

“Speak!” said Valenglay.

His curiosity knew no bounds.  He did not much care whether Don Luis’s proposal could have any practical results.  In his heart he did not believe in it.  But what he wanted to know was the lengths to which that demon of audacity was prepared to go, and on what new prodigious adventure he based the pretensions which he was putting forward so calmly and frankly.

Don Luis smiled: 

“Will you allow me?” he asked.

Rising and going to the mantelpiece, he took down from the wall a small map representing Northwest Africa.  He spread it on the table, placed different objects on the four corners to hold it in position, and resumed: 

“There is one matter, Monsieur le President, which puzzled Monsieur le Prefet de Police and about which I know that he caused inquiries to be made; and that matter is how I employed my time, or, rather, how Arsene Lupin employed his time during the last three years of his service with the Foreign Legion.”