Valenglay bowed.

“My compliments!  You are a man of resource.  And your scheme was not lacking in charm.  For I take it that your five ladies were pretty?”

Don Luis put on a bantering expression.  He closed his eyes, as if to recall his bliss, and let fall the one word: 

“Hags!”

The epithet gave rise to a burst of merriment.  But Don Luis, as though in a hurry to finish his story, at once went on: 

“In any case, they saved my life, the hussies, and their aid never failed me.  My forty-two watch-dogs, deprived of their arms and shaking with fear in those solitudes where everything is a trap and where death lies in wait for you at any minute, gathered round me as their real protector.  When we joined the great tribe to which they belonged I was their actual chief.  And it took me less than three months of dangers faced in common, of ambushes defeated under my advice, of raids and pillages effected by my direction, to become the chief also of the whole tribe.

“I spoke their language, I practised their religion, I wore their dress, I conformed to their customs:  alas! had I not five wives?  Henceforward, my dream, which had gradually taken definite shape in my mind, became possible.

“I sent one of my most faithful adherents to France, with sixty letters to hand to sixty men whose names and addresses he learned by heart.  Those sixty men were sixty associates whom Arsene Lupin had disbanded before he threw himself from the Capri cliffs.  All had retired from business, with a hundred thousand francs apiece in ready money and a small trade or public post to keep them occupied.  I had provided one with a tobacconist’s shop, another with a job as a park-keeper, others with sinecures in the government offices.  In short, they were respectable citizens.

“To all of them—­whether public servants, farmers, municipal councillors, grocers, sacristans, or what not—­I wrote the same letter, made the same offer, and gave the same instructions in case they should accept....  Monsieur le President, I thought that, of the sixty, ten or fifteen at most would come and join me:  sixty came, Monsieur le President, sixty, and not one less!  Sixty men punctually arrived at the appointed place.

“On the day fixed, at the hour named, my old armed cruiser, the Ascendam, which they had brought back, anchored in the mouth of the Wady Draa, on the Atlantic coast, between Cape Nun and Cape Juby.  Two longboats plied to and fro and landed my friends and the munitions of war which they had brought with them:  camp furniture, quick-firing guns, ammunition, motor-boats, stores and provisions, trading wares, glass beads, and cases of gold as well, for my sixty good men and true had insisted on turning their share of the old profits into cash and on putting into the new venture the six million francs which they had received from their governor....

“Need I say more, Monsieur le President?  Must I tell you what a chief like Arsene Lupin was able to attempt seconded by sixty fine fellows of that stamp and backed by an army of ten thousand well-armed and well-trained Moorish fanatics?  He attempted it; and his success was unparalleled.