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The man who stood before him, the man whom the brutal force of events compelled him to look upon as Arsene Lupin, was Valmeras! Valmeras, the owner of the Chateau de l'Aiguille! Valmeras, the very man to whom he had applied for assistance against Arsene Lupin! Valmeras, his companion on the expedition to Crozant!
Two days later, Valmeras brought his mother to see his new friends and they thus composed a little colony grouped around the Villa de Gesvres and watched over day and night by half a dozen men engaged by the comte. Early in October, Beautrelet, once more the sixth-form pupil, returned to Paris to resume the interrupted course of his studies and to prepare for his examinations.
"I don't know I saw her several times at a distance, in the park and, when I lean out of my window, I can see hers. She has made signals to me." "Do you know which is her room?" "Yes, in this passage, the third on the right." "The blue room," murmured Valmeras. "It has folding doors: they won't give us so much trouble." One of the two leaves very soon gave way.
First one and then the other stepped over the balcony. They were now in the castle, at the end of a passage which divided the left wing into two. "This room," said Valmeras, "opens at the end of a passage. Then comes an immense hall, lined with statues, and at the end of the hall a staircase which ends near the room occupied by your father." He took a step forward. "Are you coming, Beautrelet?"
They went up two storys and came out at the entrance to a corridor, covered by a hanging. "To the right," whispered Valmeras. "The fourth room on the left." They soon found the door of the room. As they expected, the captive was locked in. It took them half an hour, half an hour of stifled efforts, of muffled attempts, to force open the lock. The door yielded at last.
At the same moment a ray of moonlight pierced the clouds; and they saw the castle, with its pointed turrets arranged around the tapering spire to which, no doubt, it owed its name. There was no light in the windows; not a sound. Valmeras grasped his companion's arm: "Keep still!" "What is it?" "The dogs, over there look " There was a growl. Valmeras gave a low whistle.
"I remember that, on the left, at a place where the river terrace rises to the level of the ground-floor windows, there is a shutter which closes badly and which can be opened from the outside." They found, when they came to it, that the shutter yielded to pressure. Valmeras removed a pane with a diamond which he carried. He turned the window-latch.
Your name isn't Valmeras any more than it's Lupin: you stole the name just as you stole the name of Charmerace. And the woman whom you pass off as your mother is Victoire, your old accomplice, the one who brought you up " Arsene Lupin, play in four acts, by Maurice Leblanc and Francis de Croisset. Shears made a mistake.
How could any one suspect Valmeras of being Lupin, when Valmeras was Beautrelet's friend and after Valmeras had snatched from Lupin's clutches the girl whom Lupin loved? And how charming it was! Such delightful memories! The expedition to Crozant! The bouquets we found! My pretended love letter to Raymonde!
If Lupin, under the name of Anfredi, rented from M. Valmeras the Chateau de l'Aiguille on the bank of the Creuse; if, admitting the success of the inevitable investigations of M. Beautrelet, he lodged his two prisoners there, it was because he admitted the success of the inevitable researches made by M. Beautrelet and because, with the object of obtaining the peace for which he had asked, he laid for M. Beautrelet precisely what we may call the historic trap of Louis XIV.
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