He rose to his feet and went.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE DEVIL’S POST-OFFICE

Of all these events the public knew only of the attempted suicide of Mme. Fauville, the capture and escape of Gaston Sauverand, the murder of Chief Inspector Ancenis, and the discovery of a letter written by Hippolyte Fauville.  This was enough, however, to reawaken their curiosity, as they were already singularly puzzled by the Mornington case and took the greatest interest in all the movements, however slight, of the mysterious Don Luis Perenna, whom they insisted on confusing with Arsene Lupin.

He was, of course, credited with the brief capture of the man with the ebony walking-stick.  It was also known that he had saved the life of the Prefect of Police, and that, finally, having at his own request spent the night in the house on the Boulevard Suchet, he had become the recipient of Hippolyte Fauville’s famous letter.  And all this added immensely to the excitement of the aforesaid public.

But how much more complicated and disconcerting were the problems set to Don Luis Perenna himself!  Not to mention the denunciation in the anonymous article, there had been, in the short space of forty-eight hours, no fewer than four separate attempts to kill him:  by the iron curtain, by poison, by the shooting on the Boulevard Suchet, and by the deliberately prepared motor accident.

Florence’s share in this series of attempts was not to be denied.  And, now, behold her relations with the Fauvilles’ murderers duly established by the little note found in the eighth volume of Shakespeare’s plays, while two more deaths were added to the melancholy list:  the deaths of Chief Inspector Ancenis and of the chauffeur.  How to describe and how to explain the part played, in the midst of all these catastrophes, by that enigmatical girl?

Strangely enough, life went on as usual at the house in the Place du Palais-Bourbon, as though nothing out of the way had happened there.  Every morning Florence Levasseur sorted Don Luis’s post in his presence and read out the newspaper articles referring to himself or bearing upon the Mornington case.

Not a single allusion was made to the fierce fight that had been waged against him for two days.  It was as though a truce had been proclaimed between them; and the enemy appeared to have ceased his attacks for the moment.  Don Luis felt easy, out of the reach of danger; and he talked to the girl with an indifferent air, as he might have talked to anybody.

But with what a feverish interest he studied her unobserved!  He watched the expression of her face, at once calm and eager, and a painful sensitiveness which showed under the placid mask and which, difficult to control, revealed itself in the frequent quivering of the lips and nostrils.

“Who are you?  Who are you?” he felt inclined to exclaim.  “Will nothing content you, you she-devil, but to deal out murder all round?  And do you want my death also, in order to attain your object?  Where do you come from and where are you making for?”