"That's capital! I shall be reduced now to calling for help. I, Arsène Lupin! Yes, to call in the help of those gentlemen of the police. Otherwise, the odds on my being buried alive will increase every minute. They're ten to one as it is!"
He clenched his fists.
"Hang it! I'll get out of this scrape by myself! Call for help? Not if I know it!"
He summoned up all his energies to think, but his jaded brain gave him none but confused and disconnected ideas. He was haunted by Florence's image and by Marie Fauville's as well.
"It's to–night that I'm to save them," he said to himself. "And I certainly will save them, as they are not guilty and as I know the real criminal. But how shall I set about it to succeed?"
He thought of the Prefect of Police, of the meeting that was to take place at
