Well, Lupin was chief of the detective-service; and every police-officer obeying his orders had made himself the involuntary and unconscious accomplice of Arsène Lupin.
What a comedy! What admirable bluff! It was the monumental and consoling farce of these drab times of ours. Lupin in prison, Lupin irretrievably conquered was, in spite of himself, the great conqueror. From his cell he shone over Paris. He was more than ever the idol, more than ever the master.
When Arsène Lupin awoke next morning, in his room at the "Santé Palace," as he at once nicknamed it, he had a very clear vision of the enormous sensation which would be produced by his arrest under the double name of Sernine and Lenormand and the double title of prince and chief of the detective-service.
He rubbed his hands and gave vent to his thoughts:
"A man can have no better companion in his loneliness than the approval of his contemporaries. O fame! The sun of all living men! . . ."
Seen by daylight, his cell pleased him even better than at night. The window, placed high up in the wall, afforded a glimpse of the branches of a tree, through which peeped the blue of the sky above. The walls were white. There was only one table and one chair, both fastened to the floor. But everything was quite nice and clean.
"Come," he said, "a little rest-cure here will be rather charming. . . . But let us see to our toilet. . . . Have I all I want? . . . No. . . . In that case, ring twice for the chambermaid."
He pressed the button of an apparatus beside the door, which released a signaling-disc in the corridor.
After a moment, bolts and bars were drawn outside, a key turned in the lock and a warder appeared.