“Isidore, you’ve missed the chance of a lifetime. If you hadn’t told them I was Lupin, they’d have jumped on me. And, with fellows like that, what would have become of me, by Jove, with four to one against me?” He walked up to them: “Come, my lads, don’t be afraid—I shan’t hurt you. Wouldn’t you like a sugar-stick apiece to screw your courage up? Oh, you, by the way, hand me back my hundred-franc note, will you? Yes, yes, I know you! You’re the one I bribed just now to give the letter to your mistress. Come hurry, you faithless servant.” He took the blue bank-note which the servant handed him and tore it into tiny shreds: “The price of treachery! It burns my fingers.” He took off his hat and, bowing very low before Mme. de Villemon: “Will you forgive me, madame? The accidents of life—of mine especially—often drive one to acts of cruelty for which I am the first to blush. But have no fear for your son: it’s a mere prick, a little puncture in the arm which I gave him while we were questioning him. In an hour, at the most, you won’t know that it happened. Once more, all my apologies. But I had to make sure of your silence.” He bowed again, thanked M. de Vélines for his kind hospitality, took his cane, lit a cigarette, offered one to the baron, gave a circular sweep with his hat and, in a patronizing tone, said to Beautrelet: “Good-bye, baby.” And he walked away quietly, puffing the smoke of his cigarette into the servants’ faces. Beautrelet waited for a few minutes. Mme. de Villemon, now calmer, was watching by her son. He went up to her, with the intention of making one last appeal to her. Their eyes met. He said nothing. He had understood that she would never speak now, whatever happened. There, once more, in that mother’s brain, the secret of the Hollow Needle lay buried as deeply as in the night of the past. Then he gave up and went away. It was half-past ten. There was a train at eleven-fifty. He slowly followed the avenue in the park and turned into the road that led to the station. “Well, what do you say to that?” It was Massiban, or rather Lupin, who appeared out of the wood adjoining the road.