"You are of my opinion, I hope?" he said.
"Why, yes, Monsieur le Préfet."
"Well, of course! To begin with, that supposition is based on nothing serious. And, besides, we are guarded, aren't we? Bombs don't come tumbling on one's head like that. It takes some one to throw them. Well, how are they to come? By what way?"
"Same way as the letters," the secretary general ventured to suggest.
"What's that? Then you admit—?"
The secretary general did not reply and M. Desmalions did not complete his sentence. He himself, like the others, experienced that same feeling of uneasiness which gradually, as the seconds sped past, was becoming almost intolerably painful.
Three o'clock in the morning! … The words kept on recurring to his mind. Twice he looked at his watch. There was twelve minutes left. There was ten minutes. Was the house really going to be blown up, by the mere effect of an infernal and all-powerful will?
"It's senseless, absolutely senseless!" he cried, stamping his foot.
But, on looking at his companions, he was amazed to see how drawn their faces were; and he felt his courage sink in a strange way. He was certainly not afraid; and the others were no more afraid than he. But all of them, from the chiefs to the simple detectives, were under the influence of that Don Luis Perenna whom they had seen accomplishing such extraordinary feats, and who had shown such wonderful ability throughout this mysterious adventure.
Consciously or unconsciously, whether they wished it or no, they looked upon him as an exceptional being endowed with special faculties, a being of whom they could not think without conjuring up the image of the amazing Arsène Lupin, with his legend of daring, genius, and superhuman insight.