“It’s my photograph, but it was not sent by me. I was not even aware of its existence. It was taken, without my knowledge, in the ruins of Ambrumésy, doubtless by the examining-magistrate’s clerk, who, as you know, was an accomplice of Arsène Lupin’s.”
“And then?”
“Then this photograph became the passport, the talisman, by means of which they obtained my father’s confidence.”
“But who? Who was able to get into my house?”
“I don’t know, but my father fell into the trap. They told him and he believed that I was in the neighborhood, that I was asking to see him and that I was giving him an appointment at the Golden Lion.”
“But all this is nonsense! How can you assert—?”
“Very simply. They imitated my writing on the back of the photograph and specified the meeting-place: Valognes Road, 3 kilometres 400, Lion Inn. My father came and they seized him, that’s all.”
“Very well,” muttered Froberval, dumbfounded, “very well. I admit it—things happened as you say—but that does not explain how he was able to leave during the night.”
“He left in broad daylight, though he waited until dark to go to the meeting-place.”
“But, confound it, he didn’t leave his room the whole of the day before yesterday!”