The next morning, an officer led him, through a courtyard filled with soldiers, to the centre of a long row of buildings that ran round the foot of a mound covered with monumental ruins.
He was shown into a large, hastily-furnished room. His visitor of two days back was sitting at a writing-table, reading newspapers and reports, which he marked with great strokes of red pencil:
"Leave us," he said to the officer.
And, going up to Lupin:
"The papers."
The tone was no longer the same. It was now the harsh and imperious tone of the master who is at home and addressing an inferior . . . and such an inferior! A rogue, an adventurer of the worst type, before whom he had been obliged to humiliate himself!
"The papers," he repeated.
Lupin was not put out of countenance. He said, quite calmly:
"They are in Veldenz Castle."
"We are in the out-buildings of the castle. Those are the ruins of Veldenz, over there."