“Is one of you gentlemen looking for a lady?”
“Yes, yes, . . . I am,” said Lupin. “Quick, what is it?”
“Oh, it’s you, sir! The lady told me there might be three of you or two of you.... And I didn’t know....”
“But, in heaven’s name, speak, man! What lady?”
“The lady who spent the whole day on the pavement, with the luggage, waiting.”
“Well, out with it! Has she taken a train?”
“Yes, the train-de-luxe, at six-thirty: she made up her mind at the last moment, she told me to say. And I was also to say that the gentleman was in the same train and that they were going to Monte Carlo.”
“Damn it!” muttered Lupin. “We ought to have taken the express just now! There’s nothing left but the evening trains, and they crawl! We’ve lost over three hours.”
The wait seemed interminable. They booked their seats. They telephoned to the proprietor of the Hôtel Franklin to send on their letters to Monte Carlo. They dined. They read the papers. At last, at half-past nine, the train started.
And so, by a really tragic series of circumstances, at the most critical moment of the contest, Lupin was turning his back on the battlefield and going away, at haphazard, to seek, he knew not where, and beat, he knew not how, the most formidable and elusive enemy that he had ever fought.