The name of a town had struck him and made the truth appear like a flash of lightning:  Alencon!  Then and there, by the light of his memory, he penetrated the mystery.

He repeated: 

“Where are we going?  Back again, bearing to the left.”

“Any particular place?”

“Alencon.”

“All right,” said Davanne.  “Lend a hand, some of you.  I can make an easy start from that field just there.”

Don Luis and a few others helped him, and the preparations were soon made.  Davanne tested his engine.  Everything was in perfect order.

At that moment a powerful racing car, with a siren yelling like a vicious animal, came tearing along the Angers Road and promptly stopped.  Three men got out and rushed up to the driver of the yellow taxicab.  Don Luis recognized them.  They were Weber, the deputy chief, and the men who had taken him to the lockup the night before, sent by the Prefect of Police to follow up the scoundrel’s tracks.

They had a brief interchange of words with the cab-driver, which seemed to put them out; and they kept on gesticulating and plying him with fresh questions while looking at their watches and consulting their road maps.

Don Luis went up to them.  He was unrecognizable, with his head wrapped in his aviation cap and his face concealed by his goggles.  Changing his voice: 

“The birds have flown, Mr. Deputy Chief,” he said.

Weber looked at him in utter amazement,

Don Luis grinned.

“Yes, flown.  Our friend from the Ile Saint Louis is an artful dodger, you know.  My lord’s in his third motor.  After the yellow car of which you heard at Versailles last night, he took another at Le Mans—­destination unknown.”

The deputy chief opened his eyes in amazement.  Who was this person who was mentioning facts that had been telephoned to police headquarters only at two o’clock that morning?  He gasped: 

“But who are you, Monsieur?”

“What?  Don’t you know me?  What’s the good of making appointments with people?  You strain every nerve to be punctual, and then they ask you who you are!  Come, Weber, confess that you’re doing it to annoy me.  Must you gaze on my features in broad daylight?  Here goes!”

He raised his mask.

“Arsene Lupin!” spluttered the detective.

“At your service, young fellow:  on foot, in the saddle, and in mid air.  That’s where I’m going now.  Good-bye.”

And so great was Weber’s astonishment at seeing Arsene Lupin, whom he had taken to the lockup twelve hours before, standing in front of him, free, at two hundred and forty miles from Paris, that Don Luis, as he went back to Davanne, thought: 

“What a crusher!  I’ve knocked him out in one round.  There’s no hurry.  The referee will count ten at least three times before Weber can say ‘Mother!’”

* * * * *