"Send the two watchers away at once . . . and all my men. . . . Tell them to meet me at the Grand Hotel. Have no fear."
"Thunder! And you believed it? . . . But your servants?"
"Gone."
He went up to the window. Outside, three men were coming from the other end of the garden.
From the window in the next room, which looked out on the street, he saw two others, on the pavement.
And he thought of Dieudonne, of Chubby, of Louis de Malreich, above all, who must now be prowling around, invisible and formidable.
"Hang it!" he muttered. "I half believe they've done me this time!"
CHAPTER XIV
THE MAN IN BLACK
At that moment, Arsène Lupin felt the impression, the certainty, that he had been drawn into an ambush, by means which he had not the time to perceive, but of which he guessed the prodigious skill and address. Everything had been calculated, everything ordained; the dismissal of his men, the disappearance or treachery of the servants, his own presence in Mrs. Kesselbach's house.