With one bound, Fantômas was at the window, Fantômas had disappeared, yelling as he vanished: “Hurrah! three officers brought down! hurrah!” while into the garret, preceded by the blinding rays of electric torches, sprang a whole troop of men, shouting, swearing, revolvers in hand.
A prisoner in his lantern, still gagged, still tied hand and foot, Fandor seemed the victim of an atrocious nightmare. Scarce had the men entered the room before Fandor realized the full horror of his situation, guessed the whole secret of the villainous design. The men were police officers, they were shouting: “Jérôme Fandor, hands up! or you are a dead man.”
Then they began to search the garret, to turn everything upside down, to hunt about, to hunt for him! The young man felt a cold sweat bead his temples. What had been in Fantômas’ mind? He knew it only too well. The brigand had spared his life once more only to keep alive the man who he was planning should bear the whole weight of responsibility for his, Fantômas’ acts. If he had pinioned the journalist instead of killing him, it was because Fandor was now marked down by public odium as being Fantômas. He had hidden him in the lantern, he had taken post behind the door, he had three several times fired on the police and disappeared, all this only because he chose to make men think that Fandor—the man they were come to arrest—was really Fantômas, and that it was he, Fandor—not Fantômas—who had used his revolver to such deadly effect!
“Let the lantern give way,” thought the prisoner, “and tumble me into the middle of the constables, and I’m done for! they will kill me—and they will be justified.”
Meantime the empty garret was the scene of a frenzied search. The police, who had invaded the place like pillagers into a captured city, were now convinced that the man they sought for had escaped. “The scoundrel!” screamed one of them, who running to the window had discovered a rope hanging from it, the rope that doubtless had helped Fantômas to escape over the roofs, “the scoundrel!”
Fandor could not see the man well, but he had a better view of another officer who answered him; it was Michel, Inspector Michel, who had once served under Juve’s orders! “My word,” the Inspector was saying, “but the villain had planned it all to rights. He was expecting us; while we were breaking in the door, he had plenty of time to get away.... Curse him! to think three of us have got themselves knocked out of time!”
But at this point a constable who was still busy turning out a corner of the garret, interrupted his chief by a sharp exclamation: “Look, sir, just look here!”—“What is it?”—It was a small, shiny object—Fandor could see it quite plainly from his eyrie in the lantern—which the man held out for his chief’s inspection. The latter seemed prodigiously surprised at sight of it:
“God bless us! where did you find that?”
“In the corner over there ... It means something, that does.”
“Means something?... It means everything!”