“I will ask you to observe, monsieur le préfet, that, being absolute master of the house from one o’clock in the morning, he had until five o’clock to prepare his flight.”
“And that flight took place...?”
“Over the roofs. At that spot the houses in the next street, the Rue de la Glacière, are quite near and there is only one break in the roofs, about three yards wide, with a drop of one yard in height.”
“Well?”
“Well, our man had taken away the ladder leading to the garret and used it as a foot-bridge. After crossing to the next block of buildings, all he had to do was to look through the windows until he found an empty attic, enter one of the houses in the Rue de la Glacière and walk out quietly with his hands in his pockets. In this way his flight, duly prepared beforehand, was effected very simply and without the least obstacle.”
“But you had taken the necessary measures.”
“Those which you ordered, monsieur le préfet. My men spent three hours last evening visiting all the houses, so as to make sure that there was no stranger hiding there. At the moment when they were leaving the last house I had the street barred. Our man must have slipped through during that few minutes’ interval.”
“Capital! Capital! And there is no doubt in your minds, of course: it’s Arsène Lupin?”
“Not a doubt. In the first place, it was all a question of his accomplices. And then . . . and then . . . no one but Arsène Lupin was capable of contriving such a master-stroke and carrying it out with that inconceivable boldness.”
“But, in that case,” muttered the prefect of police—and, turning to Prasville, he continued—“but, in that case, my dear Prasville, the fellow of whom you spoke to me, the fellow whom you and the chief-detective have had watched since yesterday evening, in his flat in the Place de Clichy, that fellow is not Arsène Lupin?”