“Drink it,” said Lupin, with gentle insistence. She yielded all of a sudden, from cowardice, from excessive suffering, and did as she was told and lay on the sofa and closed her eyes. In a few minutes she was asleep.
Lupin rang for his servant:
“The newspapers . . . quick!... Have you bought them?”
“Here they are, governor.”
Lupin opened one of them and at once read the following lines:
“ARSENE LUPIN’S ACCOMPLICES”
“We know from a positive source that Arsène Lupin’s accomplices, Gilbert and Vaucheray, will be executed to-morrow, Tuesday, morning. M. Deibler has inspected the scaffold. Everything is ready.”
He raised his head with a defiant look.
“Arsène Lupin’s accomplices! The execution of Arsène Lupin’s accomplices! What a fine spectacle! And what a crowd there will be to witness it! Sorry, gentlemen, but the curtain will not rise. Theatre closed by order of the authorities. And the authorities are myself!”
He struck his chest violently, with an arrogant gesture: