"Yes...?"
"We must not see each other and no one must see you, Clotilde. Don't go out. I fear nothing for myself. But I fear everything where you're concerned."
"It is impossible for that Englishman to get at me."
"Everything is possible to him and I am not easy in my mind. Yesterday, when I was nearly caught by your father, I had come to search the cupboard which contains M. Destange's old ledgers. There is danger there. There is danger everywhere. I feel that the enemy is prowling in the shade and drawing nearer and nearer. I know that he is watching us ... that he is laying his nets around us. It is one of those intuitions which never fail me."
"In that case," said she, "go, Maxime, and think no more about my tears. I shall be brave and I will wait until the danger is over. Good-bye, Maxime."
She gave him a long kiss. And she herself pushed him outside. Shears heard the sound of their voices grow fainter in the distance.
Boldly, excited by the need of action, toward and against everything, which had been stimulating him since the day before, he made his way to a passage, at the end of which was a staircase. But, just as he was going down, he heard the sound of a conversation below and thought it better to follow a circular corridor which brought him to another staircase. At the foot of this staircase, he was greatly surprised to see furniture the shape and position of which he already knew. A door stood half open. He entered a large round room. It was M. Destange's library.
"Capital! Splendid!" he muttered. "I understand everything now. The boudoir of Clotilde, that is to say, the blonde lady, communicates with one of the flats in the next house and the door of that house is not in the Place Malesherbes, but in an adjoining street, the Rue Montchanin, if I remember right.... Admirable! And now I see how Clotilde Destange slips out to meet her sweetheart while keeping up the reputation of a person who never leaves the house. And I also see how Arsène Lupin popped out close to me, yesterday evening, in the gallery: there must be another communication between the flat next door and this library...." And he concluded, "Another faked house. Once again, no doubt, 'Destange, architect!' And what I must now do is to take advantage of my presence here to examine the contents of the cupboard ... and obtain all the information I can about the other faked houses."
Shears went up to the gallery and hid behind the hangings of the rail. He stayed there till the end of the evening. A man-servant came to put out the electric lights. An hour later, the Englishman pressed the spring of his lantern and went down to the cupboard. As he knew, it contained the architect's old papers, files, plans, estimates and account-books. At the back stood a row of ledgers, arranged in chronological order.
He took down the more recent volumes one by one and at once looked through the index-pages, more particularly under the letter H. At last, finding the word "Harmingeat" followed by the number 63, he turned up page 63 and read: