"Bah! I shall know all in good time. Let's get to the most pressing problem. I have been given money, a ticket with the time of departure marked on the time-table, that is as much as to say:
"'My dear Sir, you are to go to the Station and take the 1.22 train, first class, for the frontier, there you will be left to your own devices ... but be careful to use the disguise given you.'"
"Well," continued Juve to himself, "I haven't the least desire to thwart my mysterious friends, having no wish to prolong my visit here."
Soon afterward Juve set out toward the town. As he walked the dawn broke on the horizon.
For three hours the Berlin express had been speeding across Hesse-Weimar on its way to Paris. Night was beginning to fall and multi-colored signals showed their points of light as the train sped past way stations.
Juve, plunged in his thoughts, paid no attention to what was passing without. He had picked up a copy of the Hesse-Weimar Gazette before leaving, and in it had read the following:
"The desperate bandit, Fantômas, arrested two days ago in the Royal Palace while in the act of stealing the diamond, has committed suicide by shooting himself through the head with a small revolver he had hidden in his clothes. His body is now lying in the mortuary chapel of the cemetery awaiting the inevitable autopsy."
This information but confirmed Juve in the hypothesis he had formed. But there still remained a point to be cleared up. Undoubtedly the public were being duped ... but who was duping them, and why? If Juve was thought to be Fantômas, they wouldn't have let him escape and put a dead man in his place. On the other hand, if they knew that Juve was not Fantômas, why the devil had this suicide story been invented?
A new idea suddenly flashed through Juve's mind.