"What!" I cried. "Have you succeeded?... In twelve minutes?..."
He took a few steps up and down the room, lit a cigarette and said:
"You might ring up Baron Repstein, if you don't mind, and tell him I shall be with him at ten o'clock this evening."
"Baron Repstein?" I asked. "The husband of the famous baroness?"
"Yes."
"Are you serious?"
"Quite serious."
Feeling absolutely at a loss, but incapable of resisting him, I opened the telephone-directory and unhooked the receiver. But, at that moment, Lupin stopped me with a peremptory gesture and said, with his eyes on the paper, which he had taken up again:
"No, don't say anything.... It's no use letting him know.... There's something more urgent ... a queer thing that puzzles me.... Why on earth wasn't the last sentence finished? Why is the sentence...."
He snatched up his hat and stick: