The assistants were gradually regaining consciousness with the bewildered air of people who come out of an hypnotic sleep. They opened their eyes and looked about them in astonishment. Ganimard questioned them; they remembered nothing. 

 “But you must have seen some one?” 

 “No.” 

 “Can’t you remember?” 

 “No, no.” 

 “Did you drink anything?” 

 They considered a moment, and then one of them replied: 

 “Yes, I drank a little water.” 

 “Out of that carafe?” 

 “Yes.” 

 “So did I,” declared the other. 

 Ganimard smelled and tasted it. It had no particular taste and no odor. 

 “Come,” he said, “we are wasting our time here. One can’t decide an Arsène Lupin problem in five minutes. But, morbleu! I swear I will catch him again.” 

 The same day, a charge of burglary was duly performed by Baron Cahorn against Arsène Lupin, a prisoner in the Prison de la Santé. 

 The baron afterwards regretted making the charge against Lupin when he saw his castle delivered over to the gendarmes, the procureur, the judge d’instruction, the newspaper reporters and photographers, and a throng of idle curiosity-seekers. 

 The affair soon became a topic of general discussion, and the name of Arsène Lupin excited the public imagination to such an extent that the newspapers filled their columns with the most fantastic stories of his exploits which found ready credence amongst their readers. 

 But the letter of Arsène Lupin that was published in the Echo de France (no once ever knew how the newspaper obtained it), that letter in which Baron Cahorn was impudently warned of the coming 

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