For two or three minutes, he was silent. He seemed to weigh the decision which he was about to take, to examine the reasons for and against, to count up the favorable and unfavorable chances. At last, he said to Lupin:
“If I change the sense of the article, if I confirm the version of your death and if I undertake never to contradict the false version which I shall have sanctioned, do you swear that my father will be free?”
“I swear it. My friends have taken your father by motor car to another provincial town. At seven o’clock to-morrow morning, if the article in the Grand Journal is what I want it to be, I shall telephone to them and they will restore your father to liberty.”
“Very well,” said Beautrelet. “I submit to your conditions.”
Quickly, as though he saw no object in prolonging the conversation after accepting his defeat, he rose, took his hat, bowed to me, bowed to Lupin and went out. Lupin watched him go, listened to the sound of the door closing and muttered:
“Poor little beggar!”
At eight o’clock the next morning, I sent my man out to buy the Grand Journal. It was twenty minutes before he brought me a copy, most of the kiosks being already sold out.
I unfolded the paper with feverish hands. Beautrelet’s article appeared on the front page. I give it as it stood and as it was quoted in the press of the whole world:
THE AMBRUMÉSY MYSTERY
I do not intend in these few sentences to set out in detail the mental processes and the investigations that have enabled me to reconstruct the tragedy—I should say the twofold tragedy—of Ambrumésy. In my opinion, this sort of work and the judgments which it entails, deductions, inductions, analyses and so on, are only interesting in a minor degree and, in any case, are highly commonplace. No, I shall content myself with setting forth the two leading ideas which I followed; and, if I do that, it will be seen that, in so setting them forth and in solving the two problems which they raise, I shall have told the story just as it happened, in the exact order of the different incidents.