“And yet, you know,” he said with a queer smile, “you’re all wrong!”
He crossed swiftly to the door and flung it open.
A man stood on the threshold—a man with a neat black beard, eyeglasses, and a foppish appearance slightly marred by a bandage round the head.
“Allow me to present you to the real Monsieur Lemoine of the Sûreté.”
There was a rush and a scuffle, and then the nasal tones of Mr. Hiram Fish rose bland and reassuring from the window.
“No, you don’t, Sonny—not this way. I have been stationed here this whole evening for the particular purpose of preventing your escape. You will observe that I have you covered well and good with this gun of mine. I came over to get you, and I’ve got you—but you sure are some lad!”
29
Further Explanations
“You owe us an explanation, I think, Mr. Cade,” said Herman Isaacstein, somewhat later in the evening.
“There’s nothing much to explain,” said Anthony modestly. “I went to Dover and Fish followed me under the impression that I was King Victor. We found a mysterious stranger imprisoned there, and as soon as we heard his story we knew where we were. The same idea again, you see. The real man kidnapped, and the false one—in this case King Victor himself—takes his place. But it seems that Battle here always thought there was something fishy about his French colleague, and wired to Paris for his fingerprints and other means of identification.”