“Oh, sir,” he cried, “thank you for what you say, I thank you from the bottom of my heart! At the first word, I guessed you were to be an ally. _You_ do not think, do you, that Juve is Fantômas?” Tom Bob interrupted sharply again: “I think I told you to sit on the floor! You get up instead; you are in the wrong, you must do what I ask. If you mean to jump up and down like this, I prefer to put off the interview you desire till to-morrow.” “But, sir ... but!” Fandor stammered, again bemused with surprise, as he sat down again, while the other insisted: “There’s no ‘but’ about it; it is so! However, let’s leave that. You did not come to see me, I presume, for the mere pleasure of annoying me by standing? You came to tell me something. What have you to tell me?” Fandor called up all his coolness, shut his eyes a second, pulled himself together, and now, in a calm voice, assented, without troubling further about his interlocutor’s eccentricities: “You are right, sir: I _have_ come to tell you something, to tell you this—I am indeed Jérôme Fandor.” “Excuse me,” broke in Tom Bob, “but how came you to recognize me?” “Gad! sir,” confessed Fandor, smiling innocently, “the newspapers, announcing your sensational arrival the other day, published your portrait, which no doubt they had among their stock of blocks. I knew, moreover, that you would land from the _Lorraine_, saw the Trans-Atlantic special come in, I followed you from the Commissary’s office which you visited, I don’t know for what reason, to this hotel, and ...” “Very good!... Now, you came to tell me?” “Sir,” replied Fandor, “you have challenged Fantômas to mortal combat; Fantômas, as you know, has set himself to terrorize Paris, to make war on France, on civilization itself ...” Tom Bob interrupted again: “I have heard of _his_ challenge to the Chamber. Proceed!” “Good!” Fandor agreed. “But Fantômas has committed crimes you have not heard of. Yesterday a Minister was killed ...” “I know,” again affirmed the detective. “Already?” “Already?... the papers I bought at Rouen!” “Then you also know that the day before yesterday, Mr. Bob, Fantômas murdered three police-officers, so arranging it as to make it believed I was the criminal?” “No, I did not know that.” “In that case I will tell you about it”—and Fandor proceeded to relate clearly and succinctly his extraordinary adventure, concluding his narrative with the words: “Which comes to this, Mr. Tom Bob, that at this present moment not only does the fear of Fantômas paralyse all Paris, but further, public opinion accuses me of being Fantômas’ accomplice, or even Fantômas himself!” All the time the young man was speaking, Tom Bob kept nodding his approval at intervals. Now he broke in on the other’s remarks. “If you please,” he said, “better lie down, don’t you think, on the floor instead of just crouching, as you are now?” And as Fandor gazed at him in a sort of panic, the detective added in an explanatory tone: