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Beautrelet stood facing his audience, looked in the evening paper which his father had given him for the article that was causing all this uproar and, suddenly, his eyes encountering a heading underlined in blue pencil, he raised his hand to call for silence and began in a loud voice to read a letter addressed to the editor by M. Massiban, of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres.
It was really a huge joke to see the two Massibans face to face, one asleep with his head on his chest, the other seriously occupied in paying him every sort of attention and respect: "Pity a poor blind man! There, Massiban, here's two sous and my visiting-card. And now, my lads, off we go at the fourth speed. Do you hear, driver? You've got to do seventy-five miles an hour. Jump in, Isidore.
He even went further: to two journalists who were worrying him that morning he gave the most fanciful particulars as to his plans and his state of mind. In the afternoon, he hurried round to see Massiban, who lived at 17, Quai Voltaire. To his great surprise, he was told that M. Massiban had gone out of town unexpectedly, leaving a note for him in case he should call.
He trembled, shaking with rage and disappointment. Massiban bent forward. "It is true there are the ends of two pages left, like bookbinders' guards. The marks seem pretty fresh. They've not been cut, but torn out torn out with violence. Look, all the pages at the end of the book have been rumpled." "But who can have done it? Who?" moaned Isidore, wringing his hands. "A servant? An accomplice?"
Beautrelet picked it up and, without troubling to apologize, read: Not a word! If you say a word, your son will never wake again. "My son my son!" she stammered, too weak even to go to the assistance of the threatened child. Beautrelet reassured her: "It is not serious it's a joke. Come, who could be interested?" "Unless," suggested Massiban, "it was Arsene Lupin."
"Read: The Whole Truth now first exhibited. One hundred copies printed by myself for the instruction of the Court." "That's it, that's it," muttered Massiban, in a hoarse voice. "It's the copy snatched from the flames! It's the very book which Louis XIV. condemned." They turned over the pages. The first part set forth the explanations given by Captain de Larbeyrie in his journal.
They were reduced, when all was said, to a knowledge of the pamphlet published in 1815, a pamphlet which Lupin, no doubt, like Massiban, had found by accident and thanks to which he had succeeded in discovering the indispensable document in Marie Antoinette's book of hours. Therefore, the pamphlet and the document were the only two fundamental facts upon which Lupin had relied.
The contrast was delicious between the venerable appearance of this elderly Massiban and the schoolboy ways and accent which Lupin was putting on. Beautrelet could not help laughing. "He's laughed! He's laughed!" cried Lupin, jumping for joy. "You see, baby, what you fall short in is the power of smiling; you're a trifle serious for your age.
"Well, then, since the document is genuine, since I have, with my own eyes, seen the marks of the red seals, since Marie Antoinette herself assures me, by these few words in her hand, that the whole story of the pamphlet, as printed by M. Massiban, is correct, because a problem of the Hollow Needle really exists, I am now certain to succeed." "But how?
As for me, as long as my tenants pay their rents and my leases are kept up ! You see my account-books: I live in them, gentlemen; and I confess that I know absolutely nothing whatever about that story of which you wrote to me in your letter, M. Massiban " Isidore Beautrelet, nerve-shattered at all this talk, interrupted him bluntly: "I beg your pardon, monsieur, but the book "
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