"If, indeed," he said, "you can call it an escape. It was so simple! My friends were on the watch, since we had arranged to meet in order to fish up the Jewish lamp. And so, after remaining a good half-hour under the overturned keel of the boat, I took advantage of a moment when Folenfant and his men were looking for my corpse along the banks and I climbed on to the wreck again. My friends had only to pick me up in their motor-boat and to dash off before the astounded eyes of the five hundred sightseers, Ganimard and Folenfant."
"Very pretty!" cried Shears. "Most successful! And now have you business in England?"
"Yes, a few accounts to settle.... But I was forgetting.... M. d'Imblevalle...?"
"He knows all."
"Ah, my dear maître, what did I tell you? The harm's done now, beyond repair. Would it not have been better to let me go to work in my own way? A day or two more and I should have recovered the Jewish lamp and the other things from Bresson and sent them back to the d'Imblevalles; and those two good people would have gone on living peacefully together. Instead of which...."
"Instead of which," snarled Shears, "I have muddled everything up and brought discord into a family which you were protecting."
"Well, yes, if you like, protecting! Is it indispensable that one should always steal, cheat and do harm?"
"When I have time. Besides, it amuses me. I think it extremely funny that, in the present adventure, I should be the good genius who rescues and saves and you the wicked genius who brings despair and tears."
"Certainly! The d'Imblevalle home is broken up and Alice Demun is weeping."