"Why Monsieur Juve, I have just this moment left him at the entrance to the ball-rooms. He had just come out of here!... But why are you putting all this furniture in the gallery?"
"What of the Baron, Mademoiselle?" cried Juve, on tenterhooks.
"Ah, yes! The Baron said to me: 'Wilhelmine, I feel a little tired, and am going up to my room for a few minutes; but go to Monsieur Juve, and tell him ...'"
Not waiting to hear more, Juve rushed out to the gallery, but only to stop dead.... He had run up against a large, an unusually large, arm-chair standing apart. Thus isolated, it was remarkable. Juve paused to examine it. This arm-chair was astonishing, extraordinary! Yes—it opened in the middle—a kind of a double chair! Why—the interior could hold a man who knew how to pack himself in! It had a false bottom with a spring! One in hiding could escape that way!... Once closed on the person concealed within, the chair looked empty. A most ingenious hide-hole! Juve now knew the answer to the riddle of the bandit's disappearance. Within an ace of arrest, he had seized the chance offered by Juve's interchange of glances with the king, and with an acrobat's agility had slipped inside this chair! No sooner was the chair abandoned in the gallery than de Naarboveck-Fantômas had slipped out and away. When leaving his magnificent house forever, and all the securities and privileges of his position, he had sent Wilhelmine to announce his escape to Juve! Could cynicism—could mordant irony go further?
Juve felt crushed. It was too, too much.
"What ails you, Juve?" asked a gentle voice beside him. It was Fandor, who, knowing nothing of what had passed, but suspecting there was mischief afoot, had come in search of Juve. Had he not seen the diplomat whom he knew to be Fantômas, and Fantômas on the point of being arrested, cross the ballroom rapidly and disappear in the crowd of dancers?
Juve could not find words for speech.
Great tears rolled down his cheeks, hollowed and lined with an immense fatigue.
At last he gave low utterance to his feelings.
"Fantômas! I had got him!... And it was I who had that cursed chair taken out of the library—I did it ... I!... It is thanks to me!"