There was no doubt that the same person had killed Cosmo Mornington, Inspector Verot, Fauville the engineer, and his son Edmond.  The same person had made the identical sinister bite, leaving against himself or herself, with a heedlessness that seemed to show the avenging hand of fate, a most impressive and incriminating proof, a proof which made people shudder as they would have shuddered at the awful reality:  the marks of his or her teeth, the teeth of the tiger!

And, in the midst of all this bloodshed, at the most tragic moment of the dismal tragedy, behold the strangest of figures emerging from the darkness!

An heroic adventurer, endowed with astounding intelligence and insight, had in a few hours partly unravelled the tangled skeins of the plot, divined the murder of Cosmo Mornington, proclaimed the murder of Inspector Verot, taken the conduct of the investigation into his own hands, delivered to justice the inhuman creature whose beautiful white teeth fitted the marks as precious stones fit their settings, received a cheque for a million francs on the day after these exploits and, finally, found himself the probable heir to an immense fortune.

And here was Arsene Lupin coming to life again!

For the public made no mistake about that, and, with wonderful intuition, proclaimed aloud that Don Luis Perenna was Arsene Lupin, before a close examination of the facts had more or less confirmed the supposition.

“But he’s dead!” objected the doubters.

To which the others replied: 

“Yes, Dolores Kesselbach’s corpse was recovered under the still smoking ruins of a little chalet near the Luxemburg frontier and, with it, the corpse of a man whom the police identified as Arsene Lupin.  But everything goes to show that the whole scene was contrived by Lupin, who, for reasons of his own, wanted to be thought dead.  And everything shows that the police accepted and legalized the theory of his death only because they wished to be rid of their everlasting adversary.

“As a proof, we have the confidences made by Valenglay, who was Prime Minister at the time and whom the chances of politics have just replaced at the head of the government.  And there is the mysterious incident on the island of Capri when the German Emperor, just as he was about to be buried under a landslip, was saved by a hermit who, according to the German version, was none other than Arsene Lupin.”

To this came a fresh objection: 

“Very well; but read the newspapers of the time:  ten minutes afterward, the hermit flung himself into the sea from Tiberius’ Leap.”  And the answer: 

“Yes, but the body was never found.  And, as it happens, we know that a steamer picked up a man who was making signals to her and that this steamer was on her way to Algiers.  Well, a few days later, Don Luis Perenna enlisted in the Foreign Legion at Sidi-bel-Abbes.”

Of course, the controversy upon which the newspapers embarked on this subject was carried on discreetly.  Everybody was afraid of Lupin; and the journalists maintained a certain reserve in their articles, confined themselves to comparing dates and pointing out coincidences, and refrained from speaking too positively of any Lupin that might lie hidden under the mask of Perenna.