"Help!"When Lupin afterward told me this episode of the tragic story, he said, not without a certain self–complacency:
"What astonished me then, and what astonishes me still, as one of the most amazing victories on which I am entitled to pride myself, is that I was able to admit Sauverand and Marie Fauville's innocence on the spot, as a problem solved once and for all. It was a first–class performance, I swear, and surpassed the most famous deductions of the most famous investigators both in psychological value and in detective merit.
"After all, taking everything into account, there was not the shadow of a fresh fact to enable me to alter the verdict. The charges accumulated against the two prisoners were the same, and were so grave that no examining magistrate would have hesitated for
