“Yes, indeed: Against her—against Miss Bakersfield, on the one hand the daughter of Lord Bakersfield, an English peer and multi-millionaire, but on the other an international crook, hotel thief, and chief of a gang—entirely to amuse herself, a veritable dilettante of crime. And she had penetrated my disguise as I had penetrated hers; and when I spoke to her I found her quite sure of herself and ready to jeer at me. A thief? Yes. And I’ve warned my chiefs of it. But how to catch her? Then, ever since yesterday, I held her in my grip. I had been warned by a person in our service at her hotel that she had received from Nice yesterday, the plan of a villa to be burgled—Villa B. it was named in the letter which accompanied the plan—and that she had put the plan and the letter along with a packet of compromising papers, in a little red leather wallet, and was taking the train to the South. Hence my leaving Paris. ‘Down there,’ I thought, ‘either I shall catch her in the very act, or I shall get hold of those papers.’ I had not even to wait till I got to the South. The train-robbers handed her over to me.” “And the wallet?” asked Ralph. “She carried it under her clothes, fastened to a belt; and now it’s here,” said Marescal patting the breast-pocket of his overcoat. “I’ve just had time to cast a glance over it, from which I gathered that there was no explaining away some of the papers, such as the plan of Villa B, to which she has added with a blue pencil in her own handwriting the date of the twenty-eighth of April. The twenty-eighth of April is the day after to-morrow—Wednesday.” Ralph could not help feeling shocked. His pretty traveling companion a thief! He had indeed been deceived; and his deception had been the greater since he could not protest against an accusation justified by so many details and which explained so completely the insight of the English girl with regard to himself. A member of a gang of international crooks, she possessed such a knowledge of the world of crime that she had been able to see the figure of Arsène Lupin behind the mask of Ralph de Limézy; and he was forced to believe that the words which she had forced herself so vainly to utter, were a confession and a prayer, addressed directly to Arsène Lupin himself. “Defend my memory—Let my father know nothing—Destroy my papers.” “Then this means a terrible scandal for the noble family of Bakersfield, Monsieur Commissary?” said Ralph gravely. “Of course it does,” Marescal replied. “Isn’t the idea a bit painful to you? And the idea too of handing over to justice a young girl like the one who has just escaped you. Isn’t that a bit painful to you? For she is quite young, isn’t she?” said Ralph even more gravely. “Quite young and very pretty.” “But in spite of that——” “In spite of that and in spite of any consideration whatever, nothing shall ever prevent me from doing my duty,” said Marescal firmly.