Part 49 (2/2)

”But, from what I have heard, there were very few of you!” cried de Loubersac. ”Then the real Vagualame must have been at the Baron de Naarboveck's?”

”Hah!” was Juve's non-committal exclamation.

”Whom do you suspect?”

Juve kept silence.

Suddenly he concealed himself behind a deserted goods waggon. De Loubersac did the same. Both fixed examining eyes on a couple coming in their direction. They were not the expected pair of traitors.

”Who?” again asked de Loubersac.

Juve was impenetrable.

”I am inclined to think that the companion, Mademoiselle Berthe, otherwise Bobinette, has played, and perhaps still plays, an incomprehensible part in these affairs.”

”You find it incomprehensible?” Juve burst into laughter. ”I do not!”

”Well then, were I in your place, I should not hesitate to arrest her!”

”And then?”

”Oh, explanations could follow.”

Juve considered his companion a minute: then, taking his arm in friendly fas.h.i.+on, continued their walk along the quay.

”I have a theory,” said Juve; ”that when dealing with such complex affairs as these we are now engaged on, affairs in which the actors are but puppets, acting on behalf of the prime mover, a master-mind, ungetatable, or almost so, we should aim at first securing the prime mover. To secure the puppets and leave the prime mover free is to obtain but a partial success: the victory is then more apparent than real.... I might have arrested Bobinette as we shall probably arrest Corporal Vinson before long; but would her arrest furnish us with the master key to this problem? Have we not a better chance of discovering the powerful head of this band if we allow his collaborators to perform their manoeuvres in a fancied security?”

The prime mover of these mysteries? Juve was convinced that the prime mover of these nefarious mysteries, the murderous master mind was, and could be, none other than--Fantomas!

Juve paused abruptly.

A man was coming to meet them--an investigating agent attached to the general commissariat department at Dieppe.

”They are asking for Monsieur Henri on the telephone,” he announced.

De Loubersac rushed to the police station. Over the telephone, a War Office colleague informed him that the fugitive corporal, accompanied by a priest, had during the last hour arrived at a garage in Rouen.

Meanwhile Juve had received a cypher telegram at the police station, confirming the news, with the addition that, after replenis.h.i.+ng the motor with petrol, they had set off again at once--they had received a telegram.

Juve and de Loubersac returned to the quay.

”Our beauties will not be so long now,” said he.

With twilight the tempest had died down, night was falling fast. The waters in the docks reflected the light from the quay lamps on their s.h.i.+ning, heaving, surface.

Now, for some time, Henri de Loubersac had been longing to ask Juve a question, longing yet fearing to voice it--a question relating to his personal affairs. Had not Juve, as Vagualame, clearly insinuated that Wilhelmine de Naarboveck must have been the mistress of Captain Brocq?

Had not de Loubersac protested vehemently against such an odious calumny? But now that he knew this statement was Juve's, he was in a state of torment--his love was bleeding with the torture of it!

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