"It's an illusion, no doubt," he thought. "That creature is becoming an obsession. . . . Come, if I want to pull off my stroke and win the game, I must hurry. . . . The hole in which I hid the parcel of clothes is not far off. I shall take the parcel . . . and the trick is done. . . . And what a trick! One of Lupin's best! . . ."
He came to a door that stood open and at once stopped. To the right was an excavation, the one which M. Lenormand had made to escape from the rising water. He stooped and threw his light into the opening:
"Oh!" he said, with a start. "No, it's not possible . . . Doudeville must have pushed the parcel farther along."
But, search and pry into the darkness as he might, the parcel was gone; and he had no doubt but that it was once more the mysterious being who had taken it.
"What a pity! The thing was so neatly arranged! The adventure would have resumed its natural course, and I should have achieved my aim with greater certainty. . . . As it is, I must push along as fast as I can. . . . Doudeville is at the Pavillon Hortense. . . . My retreat is insured. . . . No more nonsense. . . . I must hurry and set things straight again, if I can. . . . And we'll attend to 'him' afterward. . . . Oh, he'd better keep clear of my claws, that one!"
But an exclamation of stupor escaped his lips; he had come to the other door; and this door, the last before the garden-house, was shut. He flung himself upon it. What was the good? What could he do?
"This time," he muttered, "I'm badly done!"
And, seized with a sort of lassitude, he sat down. He had a sense of his weakness in the face of the mysterious being. Altenheim hardly counted. But the other, that person of darkness and silence, the other loomed up before him, upset all his plans and exhausted him with his cunning and infernal attacks.
He was beaten.
Weber would find him there, like an animal run to earth, at the bottom of his cave.