“And that is?”
“Just this,” declared the detective, “that Fantômas was present at the ball and that Fantômas made himself out to be me, Tom Bob: that it was actually Fantômas who was wounded, that he boasted of it out of a criminal’s vanity who takes his impunity as a matter of course. And, that he committed a blunder, after all, for this wound in the arm will help us to identify him the more easily.”
But now, as Tom Bob finished speaking, the Minister and M. Havard exchanged a meaning look; both had been struck by the same idea.
“Egad!” M. Havard spoke in a low voice, almost as if talking to himself, “egad! if Mr. Bob is right, we shall have the means, once and for all, of clearing up all these matters. Fantômas is in prison, Fantômas is Juve ... if Juve is wounded!”
But the Minister broke in: “Yes, Havard, you are right; Juve is Fantômas, then it is Juve must be wounded. But inasmuch as Juve is in the Santé prison, inasmuch as Juve is in gaol, he was not, he could not be, at the Grand Duchess Alexandra’s ball yesterday!”—and as if the better to strengthen his conviction, the Minister repeated in a loud, emphatic voice:
“Fantômas is in gaol! What the deuce, Fantômas is in gaol!”
Tom Bob was going to reply, when the door opened, and a man-servant put in his head to announce:
“If you please, Monsieur Bob, you are wanted at the ’phone—someone who declines to give his name.”
The detective got up, took two or three steps as if to leave the room, then observing there was a telephone instrument standing on a side-table near at hand, he told the servant: “Very good, my man, put me through here, will you?”—and turning to the Minister and M. Havard, who sat buried in their own thoughts: “Excuse me,” he said, as he unhooked the receiver.
But he had hardly put the receiver to his ear before Tom Bob started violently.