"Doctor Chaleck, I arrest you in the name of the law."
Chaleck quietly flicked off his cigar ash and smiled:
"Do you know, M. Juve, I am not pleased with you. I read in the papers, during a recent holiday abroad, that you had pulled my house absolutely to pieces! That was not nice of you, when we had been on such good terms."
This speech was so startling, so unlooked for, that Juve, though not easily surprised, had nothing to answer for the moment.
Meanwhile, Chaleck tamely let himself be dragged toward the station in the Rue Rochefoucauld.
"The fine fellow," thought Juve, "must have got his whole case prepared—he will give us a run for our money; still it must——"
The detective gave vent to a loud yell. They had just got to the point where the Rue Rochefoucauld is intersected by the Rue Notre Dame de Lorette: a cab drawn by a big horse was moving in one direction and a motor-bus coming from another. It had already cleared the Rue Pigalle, and in a second would cut across the Rue Rochefoucauld, when Chaleck, literally coming out of the Inverness coat he wore, leaped ahead of Juve, dodged under the cab horse and boarded the bus, which rapidly went on its way. All this had been accomplished in an instant.
Left dumbfounded, face to face, Juve and Fandor, together with the officer, contemplated the only token left them by Chaleck. An elegant Inverness cloak with capes, which, oddly enough, had shoulders and arms—arms of India-rubber, so well imitated that through the cloth they distinctly gave the impression of human arms.
Juve let fly a tremendous oath, then turned to Fandor and cried:
"How about Loupart?"