"I am, Sir,
"Your obedient servant.
"Arsène Lupin,
"Chief of the Detective-service."
At eight o'clock in the evening, Arsène Lupin and Jean Doudeville walked into Caillard's, the fashionable restaurant, Lupin in evening-clothes, but dressed like an artist, with rather wide trousers and a rather loose tie, and Doudeville in a frock-coat, with the serious air and appearance of a magistrate.
They sat down in that part of the restaurant which is set back and divided from the big room by two columns.
A head-waiter, perfectly dressed and supercilious in manner, came to take their orders, note-book in hand. Lupin selected the dinner with the nice thought of an accomplished epicure:
"Certainly," he said, "the prison ordinary was quite acceptable; but, all the same, it is nice to have a carefully-ordered meal."
He ate with a good appetite and silently, contenting himself with uttering, from time to time, a short sentence that marked his train of thought:
"Of course, I shall manage . . . but it will be a hard job. . . . Such an adversary! . . . What staggers me is that, after six months' fighting, I don't even know what he wants! . . . His chief accomplice is dead, we are near the end of the battle and yet, even now, I can't understand his game. . . . What is the wretch after? . . . My own plan is quite clear: to lay hands on the grand-duchy, to shove a grand-duke of my own making on the throne, to give him Geneviève for a wife . . . and to reign. That is what I call lucid, honest and fair. But he, the low fellow, the ghost in the dark: what is he aiming at?"