CHAPTER TEN. THE TREASURES OF THE KINGS OF FRANCE
A curtain was drawn back.
"Good morning, my dear Beautrelet, you're a little late. Lunch was fixed for twelve. However, it's only a few minutes—but what's the matter? Don't you know me? Have I changed so much?"
In the course of his fight with Lupin, Beautrelet had met with many surprises and he was still prepared, at the moment of the final catastrophe, to experience any number of further emotions; but the shock which he received this time was utterly unexpected. It was not astonishment, but stupefaction, terror. The man who stood before him, the man whom the brutal force of events compelled him to look upon as Arsène Lupin, was—Valméras! Valméras, the owner of the Château de l'Aiguille! Valméras, the very man to whom he had applied for
