"But for that, should I have put myself out? You now see my plan of campaign. On the one side, I am setting traps in which the murderer will be caught sooner or later. Pierre Leduc or Steinweg will deliver him into my hands. On the other side, I am on Arsène Lupin's heels. Two of his agents are in my pay and he believes them to be his most devoted helpers. In addition to this, he is working for me, because he is pursuing the perpetrator of the threefold crime as I am. Only, he imagines that he is dishing me, whereas it is I who am dishing him. So I shall succeed, but on one condition. . . ." "What is that?" "That I am given free scope and allowed to act according to the needs of the moment, without troubling about the public, who are growing impatient, or my superiors, who are intriguing against me." "I agree." "In that case, Monsieur le Président, in a few days from this I shall be the victor . . . or I shall be dead." * * * * * At Saint-Cloud. A little villa situated on one of the highest points of the upland, in an unfrequented road. It was eleven o'clock at night. M. Lenormand left his car at Saint-Cloud and walked cautiously along the road. A shadow appeared. "Is that you, Gourel?" "Yes, chief." "Did you tell the brothers Doudeville that I was coming?" "Yes, your room is ready, you can go to bed and sleep . . . unless they try to carry off Pierre Leduc to-night, which would not surprise me, considering the behavior of the fellow whom the Doudevilles saw." They walked across the garden, softly entered the house and went up to the first floor. The two brothers, Jean and Jacques Doudeville, were there. "No news of Prince Sernine?" asked Lenormand. "No, chief." "What about Pierre Leduc?" "He spends the whole day lying flat on his back in his room on the ground-floor, or else in the garden. He never comes up to see us." "Is he better?" "Much better. The rest has made a great change in his appearance." "Is he wholly devoted to Lupin?" "To Prince Sernine, rather, for he does not suspect that the two are one and the same man. At least, I suppose so. One never knows, with him. He does not speak at all. Oh, he's a queer fish! There's only one person who has the gift of cheering him up, of making him talk and even laugh. That's a young girl from Garches, to whom Prince Sernine introduced him. Geneviève Ernemont her name is. She has been here three times already . . . she was here to-day." He added, jestingly, "I believe there's a little flirting going on. . . . It's like his highness Prince Sernine and Mrs. Kesselbach. . . . It seems he's making eyes at her! . . . That devil of a Lupin!" M. Lenormand did not reply. But it was obvious that all these details, to which he seemed to attach no importance, were noted in the recesses of his memory, to be used whenever he might need to draw the logical inferences from them. He lit a cigar, chewed it without smoking it, lit it again and dropped it.