Fandor smiled: “The leader, Fantômas, eh? But I take it, Juve, that now, like me, you are no longer in ignorance who it is? Moche strikes me ...”
Juve laughed too, a hearty laugh of triumph. After the terrible hours the gallant inspector had spent in his prison, after the depressing times he had known when everybody accused him of being Fantômas, he was at last nearing the final victory, the rehabilitation of his character, the arrest of the real culprits! It was in fact barely a few hours since M. Fuselier and his colleagues had recognized the fact that he was really Juve, and yet with marvellous skill and coolness, owing more to his own amazing boldness than to circumstances, he had succeeded in wresting the mask from a gang of the most dangerous criminals, accomplices of the ever-elusive arch-criminal himself; nay more, he had pushed his investigations so far that the actual identity of Fantômas hardly admitted of further doubt for him, that he could feel confident the arrest of the Lord of Terror was now only a question of hours.
Taking Fandor by the shoulder, Juve spoke softly:
“Egad! yes, I know who Fantômas is! I even know twice over who he is!”
“Twice over? Juve, what do you mean?”
“You don’t understand me, Fandor? Come now, you accuse Moche, don’t you? You do this, by reason of the part he played with these apaches? and you are in the right. But there’s more to follow. For Fantômas to be Moche was not enough; that travesty held good only for his confederates. Fantômas, to dupe all Paris as he did, believe me, was someone else into the bargain, someone I suspect, astounding as the thing may sound. And it is of this suspicion, Fandor, we must now establish strict, undoubted, undisputable proof.”
Dumb with amazement at the cool confidence of the man, Fandor demanded in a stammering voice:
“Whom do you suspect then, Juve? have you a scheme of investigation?”
Juve nodded his head gravely.
“I have more,” he declared: “I have a fear.”