It was broad daylight by this time and the morning, still a trifle chilly, gave promise of a very fine day. The tragic scenes just enacted had had, thanks to the radiant beams of the rising sun, an almost cheerful setting. As the forage-wagon, now transformed into a “Black Maria,” was driving off, loaded up with the sinister crew so opportunely captured by Juve, the latter rubbed his hands, a customary mark of inward satisfaction with that officer. “Good work Fandor!” he said—“and none too soon, neither! I was beginning to despair.” Fandor wagged his head sententiously. “We should never despair, Juve; but all the same, like you, I confess this morning has held some surprise for us. I was just eating my heart out down in that cellar; I thought one time neither you nor I would ever see the light of day again!...” But Juve was lost in a brown study. With head cast down and hands clasped behind his back, he paced a few steps in the direction taken by the army vehicle carrying the gang of apaches. “We are going to the police-station?” Fandor asked. “To the station? no! We have something better to do.” Fandor stood with folded arms, fixing a look of interrogation on his companion’s face. “You are leaving all those fellows in the lurch?” he inquired. “I am not leaving them in the lurch, Fandor! We shall catch up with them again before long; now at once, if need be. Only we have more pressing business. Never forget, my boy, that all those fellows are really and truly only supers. What we want now is to come upon the leading actor.” Fandor smiled: “The leader, Fantômas, eh? But I take it, Juve, that now, like me, you are no longer in ignorance who it is? Moche strikes me ...” Juve laughed too, a hearty laugh of triumph. After the terrible hours the gallant inspector had spent in his prison, after the depressing times he had known when everybody accused him of being Fantômas, he was at last nearing the final victory, the rehabilitation of his character, the arrest of the real culprits! It was in fact barely a few hours since M. Fuselier and his colleagues had recognized the fact that he was really Juve, and yet with marvellous skill and coolness, owing more to his own amazing boldness than to circumstances, he had succeeded in wresting the mask from a gang of the most dangerous criminals, accomplices of the ever-elusive arch-criminal himself; nay more, he had pushed his investigations so far that the actual identity of Fantômas hardly admitted of further doubt for him, that he could feel confident the arrest of the _Lord of Terror_ was now only a question of hours. Taking Fandor by the shoulder, Juve spoke softly: “Egad! yes, I know who Fantômas is! I even know twice over who he is!” “Twice over? Juve, what do you mean?”