But the Minister broke in: “Yes, Havard, you are right; Juve is Fantômas, then it is Juve must be wounded. But inasmuch as Juve is in the _Santé_ prison, inasmuch as Juve is in gaol, he was not, he could not be, at the Grand Duchess Alexandra’s ball yesterday!”—and as if the better to strengthen his conviction, the Minister repeated in a loud, emphatic voice: “Fantômas is in gaol! What the deuce, Fantômas is in gaol!” Tom Bob was going to reply, when the door opened, and a man-servant put in his head to announce: “If you please, Monsieur Bob, you are wanted at the ’phone—someone who declines to give his name.” The detective got up, took two or three steps as if to leave the room, then observing there was a telephone instrument standing on a side-table near at hand, he told the servant: “Very good, my man, put me through here, will you?”—and turning to the Minister and M. Havard, who sat buried in their own thoughts: “Excuse me,” he said, as he unhooked the receiver. But he had hardly put the receiver to his ear before Tom Bob started violently. “One second!” he cried, “hello, just a second! will you hold the line? I’m shutting a door so as to hear you better.” The detective laid down the receiver and turning quickly to the Minister and M. Harvard, he said in a mocking voice: “Fantômas is in gaol, you say? what a mistake! Do you know who is telephoning me at this moment?” “Not I!” said the Minister, looking up. Tom Bob answered in half-a-dozen words, spoken with all his usual phlegm, without so much as raising his voice: “Well, the person now speaking to me is just simply the man—just Fantômas!” And as the Minister and M. Havard looked at one another incredulously, the detective, turning the instrument round, politely offered one of the two receivers to the Minister, keeping the other himself, and proceeded with the conversation over the wires: “Hello! Yes, I’m back again now; it is I, Tom Bob, speaking. You say—will I excuse you for having borrowed my personality? Why, certainly; it would be very poor taste not to forgive you, Fantômas, for I must own it was a stroke of genius! Hello! yes—you want to make it up to me for the liberty you took? Yes, thank you. Hello! what say? D’you mind repeating. Oh! you tell me, in order to let me win a score off you in the eyes of the Criminal Department, that to-night, this very evening, something will be doing at the Restaurant Azaïs ... what o’clock?... seven!... very good, thank you again!—I’ll make a careful note of it ... I shall be there ... hello! hello! are you there?” But a blunder of the telephone girl had cut off connection, and henceforth it was in vain Tom Bob repeated his hello! hello! There was no answer. So he put down the receiver, while the Minister also hung up his. “Well!” remarked the detective, “you see, sir, we are on the best of terms.”