It leaked out through an indiscretion at the Prefecture of Police. The governor of the Santé, it appeared, had been warned that Lupin was communicating with his accomplices by means of the packets of envelopes which he made. Nothing had been discovered; but it was thought best, in any case, to forbid all work to the insufferable prisoner.
To this the insufferable prisoner replied:
"As I have nothing to do now, I may as well attend to my trial. Please let my counsel, Maître Quimbel, know."
It was true. Lupin, who, hitherto, had refused to hold any intercourse with Maître Quimbel, now consented to see him and to prepare his defence.
On the next day Maître Quimbel, in cheery tones, asked for Lupin to be brought to the barristers' room. He was an elderly man, wearing a pair of very powerful spectacles, which made his eyes seem enormous. He put his hat on the table, spread out his brief-case and at once began to put a series of questions which he had carefully prepared.
Lupin replied with extreme readiness and even volunteered a host of particulars, which Maître Quimbel took down, as he spoke, on slips pinned one to the other.
"And so you say," continued the barrister, with his head over his papers, "that, at that time . . ."
"I say that, at that time . . ." Lupin answered.
Little by little, with a series of natural and hardly perceptible movements, he leant elbows on the table. He gradually lowered his arms, slipped his hand under Maître Quimbel's hat, put his finger into the leather band and took out one of those strips of paper, folded lengthwise, which the hatter inserts between the leather and the lining when the hat is a trifle too large.
He unfolded the paper. It was a message from Doudeville, written in a cipher agreed upon beforehand: