"Yes, yes, Prince Arsène, Prince Lupin in person. . . . Aha, you breathe again! . . . You're saying to yourself that you have nothing to fear from Lupin, isn't that it? Well, you're wrong, old chap, you have everything to fear." He took a card from his pocket and showed it to him. "There, look, I belong to the police now. Can't be helped: that's what we all come to in the end, all of us robber-kings and emperors of crime." "Well?" said the head-waiter, still greatly alarmed. "Well, go to that customer over there, who's calling you, get him what he wants and come back to me. And no nonsense, mind you: don't go trying to get away. I have ten men outside, with orders to keep their eyes on you. Be off." The head-waiter obeyed. Five minutes after, he returned and, standing in front of the table, with his back to the restaurant, as though discussing the quality of the cigars with his customers, he said: "Well? What is it?" Lupin laid a number of hundred-franc notes in a row on the table: "One note for each definite answer to my questions." "Done!" "Now then. How many of you were there with Baron Altenheim?" "Seven, without counting myself." "No more?" "No. Once only, we picked up some workmen in Italy to make the underground passage from the Villa des Glycines, at Garches." "Were there two underground passages?" "Yes, one led to the Pavillon Hortense and the other branched off from the first and ran under Mrs. Kesselbach's house." "What was the object?" "To carry off Mrs. Kesselbach." "Were the two maids, Suzanne and Gertrude, accomplices?" "Yes." "Where are they?" "Abroad." "And your seven pals, those of the Altenheim gang?" "I have left them. They are still going on." "Where can I find them?" Dominique hesitated. Lupin unfolded two notes of a thousand francs each and said: "Your scruples do you honor, Dominique. There's nothing for it but to swallow them like a man and answer." Dominique replied: "You will find them at No. 3, Route de la Revolte, Neuilly. One of them is called the Broker." "Capital. And now the name, the real name of Altenheim. Do you know it?" "Yes, Ribeira." "Dominique, Dominique, you're asking for trouble. Ribeira was only an assumed name. I asked you the real name." "Parbury." "That's another assumed name." The head-waiter hesitated. Lupin unfolded three hundred franc notes. "Pshaw, what do I care!" said the man. "After all, he's dead, isn't he? Quite dead." "His name," said Lupin. "His name? The Chevalier de Malreich." Lupin gave a jump in his chair: "What? What do you say? The Chevalier--say it again--the Chevalier . . . ?" "Raoul de Malreich." A long pause. Lupin, with his eyes fixed before him, thought of the mad girl at Veldenz, who had died by poison: Isilda bore the same name, Malreich. And it was the name borne by the small French noble who came to the court of Veldenz in the eighteenth century. He resumed his questions: "What country did this Malreich belong to?"