“And now, Juve,” he asked, “now, by your showing, what is best to do?” Juve had likewise risen. Casting a last look at the corpse: “Sleep in peace,” he murmured, “sleep in peace, you shall be avenged!” Then, turning to Fandor: “Now?” cried Juve in his clear, ringing voice, “now? Now, it is only left us for one time more to risk our lives! We must make all speed—you can guess to whose house, I imagine? and with what object?... My lad, the hour is come at last when Fantômas is to settle up accounts with us!” Fandor involuntarily turned pale. Oh! that decisive moment Juve announced, with what anxiety he had been waiting for it all these long months! that moment they were now to know! What a joyful triumph they would both enjoy to grip Fantômas by the collar, the ever elusive Fantômas! The journalist could hardly credit the reality; he asked: “Juve! Juve! then we are going to arrest him, him the never-to-be-captured?” Juve shrugged his shoulders, smiling, almost unmoved. “Yes,” he replied, “we are going to arrest Fantômas! But can you guess, Fandor, where we are going to arrest him?” “Not I!” “For sure, you are losing your wits! Come, think! Tom Bob, at this present moment, must know we are hot on the scent and be thinking of disappearing. Now, is he the man simply to disappear without reaping the profits of his crimes?” “Why, no!” “Then, my dear man, all we have to do is to go to the grand duchess’s, to Lady Beltham’s, to seek the organizer of the famous subscription. It is heavy odds, don’t you see? that Tom Bob, before disappearing, will want to get hold of the moneys collected for his benefit. The strong-box where they are locked up, that is the decoy, the bait, that is bound to attract him powerfully; it is beside it we must take him in our toils.” “Or shoot him down like a noxious wild beast,” concluded Fandor, brandishing his Browning. * * * * * M. Landais, Minister of Justice, was that morning at nine o’clock clad in a very summary costume. Wearing a long dressing-gown, gaping open over his chest, his naked feet thrust into a pair of slippers, unshaven, and only half awake, he was seated on his desk in his official rooms in the Rue Franklin; he held his telephone receiver in one hand, he was driving his secretaries frantic with a hundred contradictory orders, while at the same time worrying the unfortunate girl on duty at the Exchange out of her life. “Hello!” called the Minister, “I’m asking you to put me through to the Prefecture. The Prefecture of Police? Yes! that’s plain enough, surely; _can’t_ you understand?” Then he dropped the receiver, and swearing out loud a terrific oath, he yelled, as if to somebody behind the scenes: “But, hell and damnation! the thing’s outrageous! Havard has not been told about it! Else he’d be here!”