“Good,” he said. “Take the trunk down between you. It would be dangerous to give it to the hotel-servants.”
“But if any one meets us?”
“Well, what then, Masher? Aren’t you a chauffeur? You’re carrying the trunk of your employer here present, the lady in No. 130, who will also go down, step into her motor . . . and wait for me two hundred yards farther on. Growler, you help to hoist the trunk up. Oh, first lock the partition-door!”
Lupin went to the next room, closed the other door, shot the bolt, walked out, locked the door behind him and went down in the lift.
In the office, he said:
“M. Daubrecq has suddenly been called away to Monte Carlo. He asked me to say that he would not be back until Tuesday and that you were to keep his room for him. His things are all there. Here is the key.”
He walked away quietly and went after the car, where he found Clarisse lamenting:
“We shall never be in Paris to-morrow! It’s madness! The least breakdown....”
“That’s why you and I are going to take the train. It’s safer....”
He put her into a cab and gave his parting instructions to the two men: