"Monsieur Fandor, I am entirely of your opinion!"

Hearing these words, Fandor, who had regained his self-possession, and was ready to start fighting again if necessary, looked at the individual who had made this statement—the individual whose face was oddly familiar.

"Who are you?" he asked.

The individual smiled broadly.

"Don't you recognise me?" he asked.

He removed his wig, threw the candle light on himself, and smilingly announced his style and title.

"Sergeant Juve, once of the detective force; formerly dead: now amateur policeman!"

"You! You, Juve!" cried Fandor. "And to think I suspected you...."

But the two bankers interrupted at one and the same moment.

"What are you doing here?"

Juve smiled.

"The art I practise brought me! Since my interest in the Dollon affair is so keen, I follow it up, I wish to find the secret of it, just through love of my art. I dabble in it nowadays."

"But Juve—how did you get here?" questioned Fandor.

"Ah, ha! If you have made some psychological discoveries: if reasoning has landed you here, now facts have led me here!... You know I was shadowing the band of Numbers. You know that in the skin of Cranajour I was intimate with those rascals. To my astonishment I found that my wretched companions had dealings with the Barbey-Nanteuil bank, who, of course, had no suspicion of it! Are you surprised then that I felt it incumbent on me to visit this bank?... Besides, yesterday, I saw you enter here; but you never came out again! You had reasons for acting so. I determined to be near you, in case you needed my help. I therefore passed myself off as a workman come to attend to the telephone installation. It was easy enough, for I am a good electrician.... Well, when I found that you were preparing to pass the night here, I laid my plans accordingly. I pretended to leave the premises, but really I hid myself in the house. Just now, when you called for help, I came to your aid as quickly as I could, naturally!"

"Just as we did!" remarked Monsieur Barbey, looking at his partner.

Monsieur Nanteuil contented himself with a nod. He added:

"Alas, once again that criminal has escaped! FantÔmas, since it was FantÔmas who was here, just now, FantÔmas has got away!" And Nanteuil pointed to the broken window by which it would seem the criminal, taking advantage of the noise, had escaped.

But both Fandor and Juve shrugged doubtfully.

"You believe then, Monsieur Nanteuil, that FantÔmas has left this room?" questioned our young journalist.

"What the devil do you mean?" asked Nanteuil.

Juve demanded.

"Which way did he make his escape?"

Nanteuil pointed.

"Why that way! By this window ... where else?... You can see quite well that he has broken the panes!... Why, look! His hooded cloak has got caught on the window latch!..."

Fandor lay back in an arm-chair. He seemed much amused. He silenced Juve with a gesture, and turned to Nanteuil.

"I can assure, dear Monsieur Nanteuil, that FantÔmas has not left the room by this window!..."

"Because?..."

"Because this window has been broken by means of this chair: this chair, which he flung against the panes to put us on the wrong scent, and make us believe he had escaped that way!... Just look at this chair! It is still strewn with broken bits of glass ... look, there is even a little bit stuck into the wood!"

"But that proves nothing!... FantÔmas has broken the window panes as best he could, and then made his escape!"

"In that case," insisted Fandor, "dear Monsieur Nanteuil, can you explain how it was he troubled to remove his cloak, hood and all; and, after that, how is it he has left no footprints in the flower-beds beneath the window? When day dawns you will see for yourself that my statement is correct, though I have not verified it! The flower-beds are too wide, too big, for a man jumping from here, to jump clear of them! And the earth is soft enough to take and retain the footprints of a man who leaps down on to them from this height!... Nevertheless, such footprints are conspicuous by their absence!"

Monsieur Barbey seemed overwhelmed—aghast.

"If FantÔmas did not escape by the window, how then did he get away?" he asked.

Fandor said in clear, distinct tones:

"FantÔmas was not able to escape!..."

"But he cannot be in the room?... Where, then, can he have hidden himself?"

In a hard voice, Fandor made answer.

"He is not hidden in the room...."

"You think then that he has hidden himself somewhere in the house?"

Speaking in the same hard, decisive tone, Fandor asserted:

"He is not hidden in the house! In the very height of the struggle, I kept a strict watch on the direction taken by the man who was doing his utmost to strangle me. I am positive I had my back against the door when I fired, so that exit was barred! Neither by door nor window did FantÔmas escape!" Fandor's tone was one of absolute assurance.

"If you are certain of that," said Nanteuil, "can you tell us how FantÔmas did escape?"

Fandor's reply was to rise from his arm-chair. He took the candlestick from the table where Juve had placed it and walked towards a large mirror. He carefully examined his neck.

"Very curious!" said he, in a low voice...: "Now, monsieur, the man who tried to strangle me was FantÔmas—we have seen him.... Well, this man had a wound on his thumb, or, more probably, he wounded me, anyhow he has left on my collar the mark of his thumb in blood—you guess what this thumb-mark is?"

Simultaneously, Barbey, Nanteuil, and Juve rushed towards the young journalist.... Fandor showed them a little red mark, clear cut on the white surface of the collar; it was a finger-print so characteristic, that the two bankers cried in a trembling voice:

"Again the imprint of Jacques Dollon!"

Silence fell—a pregnant silence. The four men gazed at one another. Fandor soon started whistling a popular air. Juve smiled: Monsieur Barbey was the first to speak:

"Good Heavens! Do you mean to say that Jacques Dollon was here—in this room!... It is certain, you say, Monsieur Fandor, that he did not get away either by door or window—for pity's sake explain the mystery!"

But Fandor contented himself with a smile and a question.

"Do you really think, then, that I know it?..."

Nanteuil stamped with impatience.

"But hang it all! If you don't know anything, don't let us waste time! Let us begin the search! Hunt through the house! Search the garden from end to end!..."

Fandor went on—his tone was ironic.

"And warn the police? Well, no, Monsieur Nanteuil, we will not make any search whatever, you can rely on that!... For the last three months we have been striving and struggling to solve a maddening mystery: we never could reach a certain solution of it: we have been vainly pursuing an assassin, who for ever escaped us ... and now, when for once, we get hold of a definite fact, an indisputable reality, are we going to risk muddling up the whole business?... Not if I know it!"

"What do you mean?" demanded Monsieur Barbey.

"Listen!" replied Fandor: "Some minutes ago, I was alone in this room; Jacques Dollon entered the room, because I bear on my neck the imprint of his thumb. Jacques Dollon was FantÔmas, because he declared it himself when he believed he would emerge victorious from the struggle. Jacques Dollon—FantÔmas—has not left this room, either by door or window. On the other hand, you have entered the room—you Monsieur Barbey, you Monsieur Nanteuil, and you Juve. Since these individuals have entered the room, and no one has left it, it necessarily follows that the personage, Jacques Dollon—FantÔmas, must have entered among you, and that he has remained here, between these four walls."

Simultaneously, Barbey and Nanteuil raised protesting voices: but Juve continued to smile.

"Do you believe then?..."

But JÉrÔme Fandor did not allow him to finish.

"I do not think anything," said he. "I know that I, JÉrÔme Fandor, am I, and that I am not Jacques Dollon!... Juve knows that he is Juve, and that he is not Jacques Dollon. You, Monsieur Barbey; you, Monsieur Nanteuil, you know who you are, and who you are not! None of us can leave imprints similar to those of Jacques Dollon. But, I also know, that Jacques Dollon has entered this room, and that he has not left it—this is all that I know!"

To this extraordinary declaration, Monsieur Nanteuil, with an incredulous shrug of the shoulders, exclaimed:

"This is downright madness, monsieur!"

But Juve congratulated Fandor.

"That's logic, my boy! You are going it strong, lad!"

Fandor continued.

"It follows, that if Jacques Dollon has not left the room, he must be here in this room. He must be arrested. In order to arrest him, we must beg Monsieur Havard to come here as fast as he possibly can! Jacques Dollon is FantÔmas, or I should say, FantÔmas is Jacques Dollon. Monsieur Havard will not hesitate to put himself to any inconvenience in order to effect such a capture! I am going to call him up at once, messieurs, thanks to this telephone!"

And profiting by the bewilderment of his hearers, Fandor, then and there, telephoned to Police Headquarters; he spoke to one of the officials, who undertook to inform his chief that he was wanted at the telephone on most urgent business.

A minute or two later, Fandor was telling Monsieur Havard what had happened. He terminated his narrative thus:

"I myself had locked the door of the room in which the struggle took place. No one left the room, nor shall anyone leave it before your arrival, I give you my word of honour on that! Come, post-haste. It is of the utmost urgency. Bring a locksmith. He must open the great door of the house. He will have to force open the door of the room in which we now are. I must keep an incessant watch over this room. I do not see FantÔmas—Jacques Dollon—in this room; but in this room he must inevitably be—he is in it!"

Fandor, listening to Monsieur Havard's answer, repeated it to his companions.

"In a very short time, the chief will be here; in a very short time, messieurs, we shall witness the arrest of FantÔmas, that is, of the most inhuman monster that has ever existed!"

"It seems to me you are going too fast!" remarked Monsieur Barbey. "All is mystery—yet you talk of making an arrest!"

"But what do you consider mysterious now?" asked Fandor, laughing.

"Why, everything! Take one thing: do you know what were the motives of the different FantÔmas-Dollon crimes?"

Juve replied to this:

"Oh, as for that, perfectly! The motives are clear as crystal!... Madame de Vibray was ruined, and really committed suicide because—you will pardon me, I am sure—because the Bourse transactions you advised were not successful.... She poisoned herself, and went to Jacques Dollon's studio to die: perhaps she felt for him a secret attachment! Fate willed it that the assassins should choose this very evening to make their way into the painter's studio ... by means of this first corpse they created an alibi for themselves, and prepared the scene which was bound to mislead justice and make lawyers and police believe in the murder of Madame de Vibray and the suicide of her murderer.... Unfortunately for them, Dollon was discovered before the poison they administered had done its deadly work on him, and Dollon was arrested.... You can imagine the fury, the distracted state of the guilty! Dollon had seen them—he was going to speak at the legal interrogation—very well, then—they will kill him—and they do kill him...."

"But Jacques Dollon lives, since his imprints are found here, there and everywhere!..." cried Monsieur Barbey.

Fandor replied:

"They kill Jacques Dollon, since it has been formally established that Jacques Dollon was seen dead; and once they have killed Dollon, they think that a dead man cannot be arrested by the police, and they accept this dead man as one of their band.... He, they decide, shall steal the pearls of Princess Danidoff!..."

"This is raving lunacy!"

"All that is pretty clearly proved, Monsieur Nanteuil!... It is he also who stole the millions in the rue du Quatre Septembre, a sensational robbery which would have ruined your bank, had not this issue of bullion been well covered by an insurance: this insurance signified that you were no losers by this robbery—in fact, owing to an ingenious combination of insurances, you have actually gained by the robbery! As we are on this subject, I might add that were I a member of the Band I should propose restoring to you the vanished ingots—robbers find bullion somewhat difficult to put into circulation: you might buy them back; then turn them into false coin, for instance—that would be all profit—for you!..."

"I wonder at you—making such a joke as that!" remarked Nanteuil.

"Please wonder at me!... To continue!... Having carried out their plan successfully, these robbers remembered something they had forgotten—a compromising paper, or something like it, which had been left in Elizabeth Dollon's possession. Thereupon, they send the dead man—Jacques Dollon—to look for it: he attempts to murder his sister: I arrive just in time to open the windows before she is past all human aid.... Meanwhile a series of cleverly arranged deals on the Bourse are brought off, so that if Thomery disappeared the Barbey-Nanteuil Bank would rake in important profits ... in haste the assassins get rid of an accomplice who is in their way—that duffer of a Jules, the rue Raffet servant, and they send Dollon to kill Thomery. After that they decide to rob your Bank which is stuffed with gold; for, were it not for this theft, it would be your Bank, burdened as it is, with Thomery shares, which would pay out to speculators the differences in value between past and present prices—which amounts would have to come out of the money paid in the day before. Messieurs, with regard to this, Thomery's death did you a great service.... Without his death, which enriched you, you would have had to settle up your sales by a certain date, and you would have lost more than you gained at the moment, owing to the sole fact of his disappearance!... I think you are very grateful to Jacques Dollon because of what he has done for you."

Monsieur Nanteuil, on hearing these last words, rose. He walked up to the journalist and said, in a voice quivering with some emotion:

"For my part, Monsieur Fandor, I think your way of explaining the Dollon affair is a very strange way!... You assert that this painter is dead, and you make him behave as if he were alive!... Besides, I have understood your words! In truth, what you say is senseless: you make wild statements! You have involved our Bank in every one of the Dollon crimes!... You have shown us as interested parties in all these robberies!"

Fandor said quietly:

"Nevertheless, it is unquestionably true that you are the gainers by these crimes: beginning with Madame de Vibray and ending with Thomery. Madame de Vibray might have brought an action against you for the loss of her fortune, owing to your risky speculations and bad management. Thomery's murder brought down his shares with a run, and you found that a most advantageous state of affairs—you gained by it!... But, of course, this is coincidence, since you are not FantÔmas, since you are not Jacques Dollon, since you cannot imitate the imprint of his thumb!... I have only said this to show ..." Fandor stopped short.

"Hark!... Someone is coming upstairs! Here is Monsieur Havard!"

As the bankers were hurrying impatiently to the door, Fandor said in a bantering tone:

"Do not stir a step further, I beg of you! Not a step! Let us receive the chief of the detective force exactly in the position we were, not an hour ago, when we encountered him whom the chief has now come to arrest!"

Barbey and Nanteuil returned to their former positions. Those in the room could hear voices on the other side of the door exchanging brief remarks. The lock was being picked. Monsieur Havard entered and hurried up to the journalist.

"Well, my dear Fandor, I have followed all your instructions to the letter!... Ah! you here, too, Juve! Well?... Speak! Anything fresh since your extraordinary telephone communication?... What were you telling me?"

"I was saying, Monsieur Havard, that the assassin had entered this room, and assuredly had not left it—that he was here!..."

"Here?"

Monsieur Havard had recognised the bankers at the first glance.... His question betrayed a certain incredulity which piqued Fandor.

"Here! Yes! That is absolutely so, because it is impossible that he can have left the room! Besides, you shall convince yourself of that!... Monsieur Nanteuil, will you do me a small service? Will you draw a plan of the first floor of your house?"

The banker rose and seated himself at his writing-table, which was placed in a corner of the room.

"I am at your disposal." And he began to trace a plan, a pretty rough one, of the various rooms which made up the first floor of his house.

"Is that what you want?" he asked.

JÉrÔme Fandor rose quickly and went towards Nanteuil.

The journalist's nerves must have been out of order—in a jumpy state, despite his apparent calm, for, in approaching the writing-table, he suddenly staggered, nearly fell, tried to regain his balance, and that so clumsily that he upset the contents of a large ink-pot on the writing-desk....

"Take care!" said Monsieur Nanteuil, who, to save himself from coming into contact with this inky inundation, threw himself back in his chair, and lifted his hands above the flood of ink....

The banker repeated:

"Take care!... Here is a fresh catastrophe!..."

But he did not finish what he intended to say! Quick as thought, Fandor steadied himself, and before anyone could guess his intention he seized the banker's right hand, pushed it forcibly into the wide-spreading ink, then, immediately after, pressed it on to a sheet of blotting paper which took the hand's imprint quite clearly....

This imprint he glanced at but a moment.... Like a flag, he waved it above his head!

"It is the Jacques Dollon imprint!" he shouted. "The hand of Monsieur Nanteuil, whose characteristics are known in the anthropometric section, has just left the imprint of—Jacques Dollon!..."

The journalist's action created a momentary stupour!

Juve rushed to him.

"Bravo! Bravo!" he cried.

But Monsieur Havard had gone quite pale. He said in a low voice:

"I don't understand!"

Barbey and Nanteuil retained their self-possession!

Then Monsieur Barbey rose. He looked fixedly at his partner. He spoke in a tone of sad finality:

"I suspected this!... Farewell...."

A shout of horror answered him: he had drawn a sharp dagger from inside his coat, and had plunged it in his heart up to the hilt!

Juve knelt by the fallen man. Monsieur Havard kept a sharp eye on Nanteuil.

"Here, then, is Jacques Dollon, the dead-alive!... Here is the elusive FantÔmas!" said the chief of the detective force.

But the bandit brazened it out as he recoiled before the chief.

"Why do you arrest me because of this imprint?" he demanded. "It is a piece of juggling on the part of this journalist!... Take a fresh imprint of my hand, my fingers, my thumb, and you will see whether my hand could possibly leave such an impression as that put on the blotting pad, by some sleight-of-hand trick of this much too smart reporter!" He stretched out his arm in the direction of the blotting pad, as though begging for a fresh trial....

Fandor marched up to Nanteuil.

"Useless," said he, in a curt tone. "I have been watching you!... I know the trick!"

Nanteuil stood stock-still, dumb. Fandor lifted the cuff of Nanteuil's coat, and pointed out to Monsieur Havard, and to Juve, a sort of thin film of glove-like form. It was fastened to the wrist by an almost imperceptible piece of elastic.

"This is human skin," said Fandor. "Human skin marvellously preserved by some special process: all its lines and marks are intact. Can you not guess whence it came? Do you need to be told whose dead body has supplied this phantom glove?"

Monsieur Havard was as white as a sheet.

"The body of Jacques Dollon," he murmured.... "Yes, that is it!..."

There was a moment's intense silence in the room.

"How do you imagine this wretch set to work?" demanded Monsieur Havard.

"Simple enough," replied Fandor.... "FantÔmas knows the danger criminals run, owing to the exact science of anthropometry: he knows that every imprint denounces the assassin: he knows that it is difficult to do anything without leaving such imprints—and that is why, every time he has committed a crime, he has taken care to glove his hands in the skin of Jacques Dollon's hands."

Nanteuil, at bay, attempted denial.

"You are talking mere newspaper romance," said he.

Fandor looked the banker in the eye.

"FantÔmas!" said he. "Do not attempt to deny what is no longer possible to deny!... The trick is remarkably clever, and you have reason to be proud of your invention. Perhaps I should never have discovered it, if in this very room, this very night, you had not been imprudent enough to leave those imprints on my collar!... No one had left the room, therefore the guilty person was in the room—of necessity he was: therefore, it followed, that someone had the hands of Dollon!... But how could this someone have the hands of Dollon?... Of course, naturally, the idea of these gloves occurred to me!..."

Fandor turned to the chief of the detective force.

"Monsieur Havard, Madame de Vibray committed suicide because she lost her fortune through Barbey-Nanteuil mismanagement—she might even have been poisoned by them! But that does not matter! Her death might compromise the Bank: they carried her dead body to Jacques Dollon's studio, and they tried to poison this painter, in order to put the law off their track. You know Dollon was saved! He was a dangerous witness. They killed him in his cell, some warder being accessory to the fact—killed him before his innocence could be established! Then they took his hands, that they might commit murders with them!... Dollon is dead, as I have held all along. It is Nanteuil who has committed the crimes ascribed to the most unfortunate Dollon. These crimes have profited the Barbey-Nanteuil Bank—as I pointed out just now!"

Whilst Nanteuil stood speechless, whilst Barbey, whom they had lifted to a sofa, was gasping out his last breath, whilst Juve was giving little nods of approval to what his dear lad was saying, Fandor was treating Monsieur Havard to a further version of the affair.

"When I telephoned to you I was morally certain of the approaching arrest. Not a soul quitted the room after the hands of Dollon had left imprints on my collar and on my neck. Therefore someone had the hands of Dollon. The finger imprints of all the personages present were known to me—therefore someone had a method by which he changed his own finger-prints into those of Dollon.... How was it done? It must be a removable method or means ... why, of course, it could only be by a pair of gloves that the trick was done ... of course it must be by means of a pair of gloves made with the skin of Jacques Dollon's hands!... I noticed that Nanteuil kept his hands obstinately behind his back. I guessed that it was he who had played the part of Dollon to-night, so I managed to prevent him removing those Dollon gloves, that I might take their imprint before your eyes—the rest can be guessed, can it not?... The imprint taken, profiting by the confusion, Nanteuil slipped off the glove which, as you see, was no thicker than a cigarette when rolled up.... To throw it aside was risky: he pushed it up his sleeve while pretending to arrange his cuff, and at the same time to put ink on his ungloved hand and so hide his trick!... Only I saw it all.... Monsieur Havard, it is not only the false Jacques Dollon I denounce, for Juve and I fully realised that he was also the elusive FantÔmas! Here is this cloak with hooded mask, which is an irrefutable proof: besides he himself declared he was FantÔmas.... Monsieur Havard, all you have to do now is seize this man: Juve and I will hand him over to you!"

It was a thrilling moment! Juve and Fandor, in this hour of decisive victory, mutely embraced. Monsieur Havard advanced with raised hands towards Nanteuil who retreated.

"FantÔmas," he commenced, "in the name of the law I arr..."

The word was strangled in his throat!...

As he advanced another step, Nanteuil suddenly sprang backwards, and his hand rested on the moulding of a wooden panel.... At the same moment, Monsieur Havard, as if hampered by some invisible obstacle, stretched his length on the floor!

Juve and Fandor were about to rush to his aid ... but while Fandor, in his turn, measured his length on the floor also, Juve yelled:

"Good lord!... We are caught!... He escapes!..."

Whilst the detective made a frantic effort to move a step—he seemed nailed to the floor—FantÔmas, quick as lightning, leaped over the prone body of Monsieur Havard, gained the door, and banged it to behind him!... They heard a triumphant burst of laughter.... FantÔmas was escaping!

"This is sorcery!" shouted the chief of the detective force, in a voice hoarse with rage.

"Take your boots off!... Take your boots off!" yelled Juve, who, with bare feet, was rushing through the house, revolver in hand, hoping to come up with the banker bandit!...

But, when the detective arrived at the entrance gateway of the house, he found the policemen brought by Monsieur Havard chatting away quietly ... they had not seen a thing ... the street was deserted ... in a second FantÔmas had disappeared, vanished into thin air ... he, the elusive one, had got away: once more he had escaped those who were pursuing him with such keen determination!

"It is very simple," explained Juve to Monsieur Havard and Fandor, who seemed deprived of speech. "Yes, it is simple enough; I guessed it at once when I saw you fall, Monsieur Havard, just after FantÔmas had pressed the woodwork."

"He pressed an electric button, did he not?"

"Yes, Fandor, he established a current!... The wretch must have placed powerful electric magnets under the floor ... and the moment he realised that it was impossible to brazen it out any longer—was on the very point of being arrested—he established the current ... so we three were nailed to the ground by the attraction exercised by these electro-magnets on the nails of our shoes—he, FantÔmas, was then free to cut and run for it, whose shoes must certainly have had soles made of some insulating material...."

Monsieur Havard and Fandor made no answer to this.

To have held FantÔmas at their mercy, if only for a minute; to have believed that they were going to lay hands on the atrocious criminal, at last; to have seen him slip through their fingers—the thought of this almost brought tears to their eyes: they were in a state of the deepest despondency.

"There's a curse on us!" cried Fandor. "This time, at any rate, we have nothing to reproach ourselves with! We could not foresee that!..." Then, to himself in a low tone, he added:

"Poor Elizabeth!... How are we to tell her that we have let her brother's murderer escape?"