Page:Leblanc Arsene Lupin (Doubleday, 1909).djvu/180

166 "I dare say. Yet he can have his pick of sweethearts. I've been offered thousands of francs by women—women of your Grace's world and wealthy Viennese—to make them acquainted with Lupin," said Guerchard.

"You don't surprise me," said the Duke with his ironic smile. "Women never do stop to think—where one of their heroes is concerned. And did you do it?"

"How could I? If I only could! If I could find Lupin entangled with a woman like Ganimard did—well—" said Guerchard between his teeth.

"He'd never get out of your clutches," said the Duke with conviction.

"I think not—I think not," said Guerchard grimly. "But come, I may as well get on."

He walked across the turf to the foot of the ladder and looked at the footprints round it. He made but a cursory examination of them, and took his way down the garden-path, out of the door in the wall into the space about the house that was building. He was not long examining it, and he went right through it out into the street on which the house would face when it was finished. He looked up and down it, and began to retrace his footsteps.

"I've seen all I want to see out here. We