"Dubreuil, I should love to see the faces of those who discover all these wonderful contrivances: alarm-bells, a network of electric wires and speaking-tubes, invisible passages, sliding floor-boards, secret staircases!... regular pantomime machinery!"
"What an advertisement for Arsène Lupin!"
"We could very well have done without the advertisement. It seems a pity to leave so fine an installation. We shall have to begin all over again, Dubreuil ... and upon a new plan, of course, for it never does to repeat one's self. Confound that Shears!"
"He's not come back, I suppose?"
"How could he? There's only one boat from Southampton, which leaves at midnight. From the Havre, there's only one train, which leaves at eight in the morning and arrives at eleven three. Once he has not taken the midnight steamer—and he has not, for my orders to the captain were formal—he can't reach France till this evening, via Newhaven and Dieppe."
"If he comes back!"
"Shears never throws up the game. He will come back, but it will be too late. We shall be far away."
"And Mlle. Destange?"
"I am to meet her in an hour."
"At her house?"