He pocketed his revolver and turned back the fastening of the window. There was a noise in the passage.
“Good-bye,” he said again. “I’m only just in time.”
But the idea stopped him. With a quick movement, he examined the pocket-book:
“Damn and blast it!” He grated through his teeth. “The paper’s not there.—You’ve done me—”
He leaped into the room. Two shots rang out. Isidore, in his turn, had seized his pistol and fired.
“Missed, old chap!” shouted Brédoux. “Your hand’s shaking.—You’re afraid—”
They caught each other round the body and came down to the floor together. There was a violent and incessant knocking at the door. Isidore’s strength gave way and he was at once over come by his adversary. It was the end. A hand was lifted over him, armed with a knife, and fell. A fierce pain burst into his shoulder. He let go.
He had an impression of some one fumbling in the inside pocket of his jacket and taking the paper from it. Then, through the lowered veil of his eyelids, he half saw the man stepping over the window-sill.
The same newspapers which, on the following morning, related the last episodes that had occurred at the Château d’Ambrumésy—the trickery at the chapel, the discovery of Arsène Lupin’s body and of Raymonde’s body and, lastly, the murderous attempt made upon Beautrelet by the clerk to the examining magistrate—also announced two further pieces of news: the disappearance of Ganimard, and the kidnapping of Holmlock Shears, in broad daylight, in the heart of London, at the moment when he was about to take the train for Dover.
Lupin’s gang, therefore, which had been disorganized for a moment by the extraordinary ingenuity of a seventeen-year-old schoolboy, was now resuming the offensive and was winning all along the line from the first. Lupin’s two great adversaries, Shears and Ganimard, were put away. Isidore Beautrelet was disabled. The police were powerless. For the moment there was no one left capable of struggling against such enemies.