"Things … coincidences …" repeated Don Luis slowly.
He remained pensive; and, in a low voice, he said:
"Yes, after all, there's truth in what you say…. Yes, it all fits in…. Why didn't I think of it?… My relations with Cosmo Mornington, my arrival in Paris in time for the reading of the will, my insisting on spending the night here, the fact that the death of the two Fauvilles undoubtedly gives me the millions…. And then … and then … why, he's absolutely right, your Prefect of Police!… All the more so as…. Well, there, I'm a goner!"
"Come, come, Chief!"
"A dead-goner, old chap; you just get that into your head. Not as Arsène Lupin, ex-burglar, ex-convict, ex-anything you please—I'm unattackable on that ground—but as Don Luis Perenna, respectable man, residuary legatee, and the rest of it. And it's too stupid! For, after all, who will find the murderers of Cosmo, Vérot, and the two Fauvilles, if they go clapping me into jail?"
"Come, come, Chief—"
"Shut up! … Listen!"
A motor car was stopping on the boulevard, followed by another. It was evidently the Prefect and the magistrates from the public prosecutor's office.
Don Luis took Mazeroux by the arm.
"There's only one way out of it, Alexandre! Don't say you went to sleep."