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Updated: September 26, 2025
Valmeras, the plucky friend who had made Raymonde's escape possible by felling one of Lupin's accomplices, or pretending to fell him, in the dusk of the great hall! And Valmeras was Lupin! "You you So it's you!" he stammered. "Why not?" exclaimed Lupin. "Did you think that you knew me for good and all because you had seen me in the guise of a clergyman or under the features of M. Massiban?
"All the same, it may date back to a few months since," observed Massiban. "Even so even so some one must have hunted out and taken the book Tell me, monsieur," cried Beautrelet, addressing the baron, "is there no one whom you suspect?" "We might ask my daughter." "Yes yes that's it perhaps she will know." M. de Velines rang for the footman. A few minutes later, Mme. de Villemon entered.
Beautrelet put his hand in his trousers pocket, seized the butt of his revolver, cocked it with his forefinger, then suddenly produced the weapon and fired at Massiban. Massiban, as though he were watching the boy's movements, had avoided the shot, so to speak, in advance. But already Beautrelet had sprung upon him, shouting to the servants: "Help! It's Lupin!"
It was half-past ten. There was a train at eleven-fifty. He slowly followed the avenue in the park and turned into the road that led to the station. "Well, what do you say to that?" It was Massiban, or rather Lupin, who appeared out of the wood adjoining the road. "Was it pretty well contrived, or was it not? Is your old friend great on the tight-rope, or is he not?
She ran out headlong, accompanied by Beautrelet, Massiban and the baron. The child was not in his room. They hunted in every direction. At last, they found him playing behind the castle. But those three people seemed so excited and called him so peremptorily to account that he began to yell aloud. Everybody ran about to right and left. The servants were questioned. It was an indescribable tumult.
"Oh, yes, I know, you wrote to me about it, M. Massiban. It has something to do with a book about a needle, hasn't it, a book which is supposed to have come down to me from my ancestors?" "Just so." "I may as well tell you that my ancestors and I have fallen out. They had funny ideas in those days. I belong to my own time. I have broken with the past."
Isidore thanked the old man for the first-rate information which he owed to him and Massiban expressed his admiration for Beautrelet in the warmest terms. Then they exchanged impressions on the document, on their prospects of discovering the book; and Massiban repeated what he had heard at Rennes regarding M. de Velines.
"Has not some one else been asking for him, a gentleman with a white beard and a slight stoop?" asked Beautrelet, who knew Massiban's appearance from the photographs in the newspapers. "Yes, the gentleman came about ten minutes ago; I showed him into the drawing room. If monsieur will come this way " The interview between Massiban and Beautrelet was of the most cordial character.
Did the castle contain the key to the mystery? He was not without fear. It all seemed too good to be true; and he asked himself if he was not once more acting in obedience to some infernal plan contrived by Lupin, if Massiban was not for instance, a tool in the hands of his enemy. He burst out laughing: "Tut, tut, I'm becoming absurd!
And Beautrelet received the awful impression that the truth was ebbing away from him, like water trickling through his fingers. He made an effort to recover himself, took Mme. de Villemon's arm, and, followed by the baron and Massiban, led her back to the drawing room and said: "The book is incomplete. Very well. There are two pages torn out; but you read them, did you not, madame?" "Yes."
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