Page:The Teeth of the Tiger - Leblanc - 1914.djvu/349

 "Do you understand what that means? Of course, people speak of the explosion on the Boulevard Suchet and of Fauville's posthumous revelations; and they are disgusted with that dirty brute of a Fauville; and they don't know how to praise your cleverness enough. But there is one fact that forms the main subject of every conversation and every discussion.

"Now that the three branches of the Roussel family are extinct, who remains? Don Luis Perenna. In default of the natural heirs, who inherits the property? Don Luis Perenna."

"Lucky dog!"

"That's what people are saying, Chief. They say that this series of murders and atrocities cannot be the effort of chance coincidences, but, on the contrary, points to the existence of an all-powerful will which began with the murder of Cosmo Mornington and ended with the capture of the hundred millions. And to give a name to that will, they pitch on the nearest, that of the extraordinary, glorious, ill-famed, bewildering, mysterious, omnipotent, and ubiquitous person who was Cosmo Mornington's intimate friend and who, from the beginning, has controlled events and pieced them together, accusing and acquitting people, getting them arrested, and helping them to escape.

"They say," he went on hurriedly, "that he manages the whole business and that, if he works it in accordance with his interests, there are a hundred millions waiting for him at the finish. And this person is Don Luis Perenna, in other words, Arsène Lupin, the man with the unsavoury reputation whom it would be madness not to think of in connection with so colossal a job."

"Thank you!"