treat you, discover the criminal and hand him over. … You have the whole day to do it in … and Lupin has done greater things than that!"
He was stammering, weeping, wringing his hands, grimacing with every feature of his comic face. And it was really touching, this grief, this dismay at the approach of the danger that threatened his master.
M. Desmalions's voice was heard in the hall, through the curtain that closed the passage. A third motor car stopped on the boulevard, and a fourth, both doubtless laden with policemen.
The house was surrounded, besieged.
Perenna was silent.
Beside him, anxious-faced, Mazeroux seemed to be imploring him.
A few seconds elapsed.
Then Perenna declared, deliberately:
"Looking at things all round, Alexandre, I admit that you have seen the position clearly and that your fears are fully justified. If I do not manage to hand over the murderer or murderers of Hippolyte Fauville and his son to the police in a few hours from now, it is I, Don Luis Perenna, who will be lodged in durance vile on the evening of this Thursday, the first of April."
