After a moment, bolts and bars were drawn outside, a key turned in the lock and a warder appeared. "Hot water, please," said Lupin. The other looked at him with an air of mingled amazement and rage. "Oh," said Lupin, "and a bath-towel! By Jove, there's no bath-towel!" The man growled: "You're getting at me, aren't you? You'd better be careful!" He was going away, when Lupin caught him roughly by the arm: "Here! A hundred francs if you'll post a letter for me." He took out a hundred-franc note, which he had concealed during the search, and offered it to him. "Where's the letter?" said the warder, taking the money. "Just give me a moment to write it." He sat down at the table, scribbled a few words in pencil on a sheet of paper, put it in an envelope and addressed the letter: _"To Monsieur S. B. 42,_ _"Poste Restante,_ "PARIS." The warder took the letter and walked away. "That letter," said Lupin to himself, "will reach destination as safely as if I delivered it myself. I shall have the reply in an hour at latest: just the time I want to take a good look into my position." He sat down on his chair and, in an undertone, summed up the situation as follows: "When all is said and done, I have two adversaries to fight at the present moment. There is, first, society, which holds me and which I can afford to laugh at. Secondly, there is a person unknown, who does not hold me, but whom I am not inclined to laugh at in the very least. It is he who told the police that I was Sernine. It was he who guessed that I was M. Lenormand. It was he who locked the door of the underground passage and it was he who had me clapped into prison." Arsène Lupin reflected for a second and then continued: "So, at long last, the struggle lies between him and me. And, to keep up that struggle, that is to say, to discover and get to the bottom of the Kesselbach case, here am I, a prisoner, while he is free, unknown, and inaccessible, and holds the two trump-cards which I considered mine: Pierre Leduc and old Steinweg. . . . In short, he is near the goal, after finally pushing me back." A fresh contemplative pause, followed by a fresh soliloquy: "The position is far from brilliant. On the one side, everything; on the other, nothing. Opposite me, a man of my own strength, or stronger, because he has not the same scruples that hamper me. And I am without weapons to attack him with." He repeated the last sentence several times, in a mechanical voice, and then stopped and, taking his forehead between his hands, sat for a long time wrapped in thought. "Come in, Mr. Governor," he said, seeing the door open. "Were you expecting me?" "Why, I wrote to you, Mr. Governor, asking you to come! I felt certain that the warder would give you my letter. I was so certain of it that I put your initials, S. B., and your age, forty-two, on the envelope!"