The iron gate was partly opened,
and Arsene stepped inside. Almost immediately he encountered the
keeper of the prison, gesticulating and feigning a violent anger.
Arsene smiled and said:
"Come, monsieur, don't play that game with me. What! they take
the precaution to carry me alone in the van, prepare a nice little
obstruction, and imagine I am going to take to my heels and rejoin
my friends. Well, and what about the twenty agents of the Surete
who accompanied us on foot, in fiacres and on bicycles? No, the
arrangement did not please me. I should not have got away alive.
Tell me, monsieur, did they count on that?"
He shrugged his shoulders, and added:
"I beg of you, monsieur, not to worry about me. When I wish to
escape I shall not require any assistance."
On the second day thereafter, the `Echo de France,' which had
apparently become the official reporter of the exploits of Arsene
Lupin,--it was said that he was one of its principal shareholders--
published a most complete account of this attempted escape. The
exact wording of the messages exchanged between the prisoner and
his mysterious friend, the means by which correspondence was
constructed, the complicity of the police, the promenade on the
Boulevard Saint Michel, the incident at the cafe Soufflot,
everything was disclosed.
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