In a few minutes, he searched his prisoner's clothes, got hold of his pocket-book, cleared the papers out of the drawers of the desk and the davenport, flung them on the table and went through them. He gave a shout of joy: the bundle of letters was there, the famous bundle of letters which he had promised to restore to the Emperor. He put back the papers in their place and went to the window: "It's all finished, Weber! You can come in! You will find Mr. Kesselbach's murderer in his bed, all ready tied up. . . . Good-bye, Weber!" And Lupin, tearing down the stairs, ran to the coach-house and went back to Dolores Kesselbach, while Weber was breaking into the villa. Single-handed, he had arrested Altenheim's seven companions! And he had delivered to justice the mysterious leader of the gang, the infamous monster, Louis de Malreich! A young man sat writing at a table on a wide wooden balcony. From time to time, he raised his head and cast a vague glance toward the horizon of hills, where the trees, stripped by the autumn, were shedding their last leaves over the red roofs of the villas and the lawns of the gardens. Then he went on writing. Presently he took up his paper and read aloud: Nos jours s'en vont à la dérive, Comme emportés par un courant Qui les pousse vers une rive Où l'on n'aborde qu'en mourant.[10] [Footnote 10: Our days go by, adrift, adrift, Borne along by current swift That urges them toward the strand Where not until we die, we land.] "Not so bad," said a voice behind him. "Mme. Amable Tastu might have written that, or Mrs. Felicia Hemans. However, we can't all be Byrons or Lamartines!" "You! . . . You! . . ." stammered the young man, in dismay. "Yes, I, poet, I myself, Arsène Lupin come to see his dear friend Pierre Leduc." Pierre Leduc began to shake, as though shivering with fever. He asked, in a low voice: "Has the hour come?" "Yes, my dear Pierre Leduc: the hour has come for you to give up, or rather to interrupt the slack poet's life which you have been leading for months at the feet of Geneviève Ernemont and Mrs. Kesselbach and to perform the part which I have allotted to you in my play . . . oh, a fine play, I assure you, thoroughly well-constructed, according to all the canons of art, with top notes, comic relief and gnashing of teeth galore! We have reached the fifth act; the grand finale is at hand; and you, Pierre Leduc, are the hero. There's fame for you!" The young man rose from his seat: "And suppose I refuse?" "Idiot!" "Yes, suppose I refuse? After all, what obliges me to submit to your will? What obliges me to accept a part which I do not know, but which I loathe in advance and feel ashamed of?" "Idiot!" repeated Lupin. And forcing Pierre Leduc back into his chair, he sat down beside him and, in the gentlest of voices: