"Yes, you had to see Mme. Mergy home."

"Just so, and to look after her. You can understand the poor thing's despair... Her son Gilbert so near death... And such a death!... At that time we could only hope for a miracle... an impossible miracle. I myself was resigned to the inevitable... You know as well as I do, when fate shows itself implacable, one ends by despairing."

"But I thought," observed Prasville, "that your intention, on leaving me, was to drag Daubrecq's secret from him at all costs."

"Certainly. But Daubrecq was not in Paris."

"Oh?"

"No. He was on his way to Paris in a motor-car."

"Have you a motor-car, M. Nicole?"

"Yes, when I need it: an out-of-date concern, an old tin kettle of sorts. Well, he was on his way to Paris in a motor-car, or rather on the roof of a motor-car, inside a trunk in which I packed him. But, unfortunately, the motor was unable to reach Paris until after the execution. Thereupon... "

Prasville stared at M. Nicole with an air of stupefaction. If he had retained the least doubt of the individual's real identity, this manner of dealing with Daubrecq would have removed it. By Jingo! To pack a man in a trunk and pitch him on the top of a motorcar!... No one but Lupin would indulge in such a freak, no one but Lupin Lupin would confess it with that ingenuous coolness!

"Thereupon," echoed Prasville, "you decided what?"

"I cast about for another method."

"What method?"

"Why, surely, monsieur le secretaire-genera1, you know as well as I do!"

"How do you mean?"

"Why, weren't you at the execution?"

"I was."

"In that case, you saw both Vaucheray and the executioner bit, one mortally, the other with a slight wound. And you can't fail to see... "

"Oh," exclaimed Prasville, dumbfounded, "you confess it? It was you who fired the shots, this morning?"

"Come, monsieur le secretaire-general, think! What choice had I? The list of the Twenty-seven which you examined was a forgery. Daubrecq, who possessed the genuine one, would not arrive until a few hours after the execution. There was therefore but one way for me to save Gilbert and obtain his pardon; and that was to delay the execution by a few hours."

"Obviously."

"Well, of course. By killing that infamous brute, that hardened criminal, Vaucheray, and wounding the executioner, I spread disorder and panic; I made Gilbert's execution physically and morally impossible; and I thus gained the few hours which were indispensable for my purpose."

"Obviously," repeated Prasville.

"Well, of course," repeated Lupin, "it gives us all - the government, the president and myself - time to reflect and to see the question in a clearer light. What do you think of it, monsieur le secretaire-general?"

Prasville thought a number of things, especially that this Nicole was giving proof, to use a vulgar phrase, of the most infernal cheek, of a cheek so great that Prasville felt inclined to ask himself if he was really right in identifying Nico1e with Lupin and Lupin with Nicole.

"I think, M. Nicole, that a man has to be a jolly good shot to kill a person whom he wants to kill, at a distance of a hundred yards, and to wound another person whom he only wants to wound."

“We can follow the various steps quite clearly, and they show a remarkable subtlety of mind. A note was extracted very cleverly from Miss Dunbar which would make it appear that she had chosen the scene of the crime. In her anxiety that it should be discovered she somewhat overdid it by holding it in her hand to the last. This alone should have excited my suspicions earlier than it did.

“Then she took one of her husband’s revolvers — there was, as you saw, an arsenal in the house — and kept it for her own use. A similar one she concealed that morning in Miss Dunbar’s wardrobe after discharging one barrel, which she could easily do in the woods without attracting attention. She then went down to the bridge where she had contrived this exceedingly ingenious method for getting rid of her weapon. When Miss Dunbar appeared she used her last breath in pouring out her hatred, and then, when she was out of hearing, carried out her terrible purpose. Every link is now in its place and the chain is complete. The papers may ask why the mere was not dragged in the first instance, but it is easy to be wise after the event, and in any case the expanse of a reed-filled lake is no easy matter to drag unless you have a clear perception of what you are looking for and where. Well, Watson, we have helped a remarkable woman, and also a formidable man. Should they in the future join their forces, as seems not unlikely, the financial world may find that Mr. Neil Gibson has learned something in that schoolroom of sorrow where our earthly lessons are taught.”

Mr. Sherlock Holmes was always of opinion that I should publish the singular facts connected with Professor Presbury, if only to dispel once for all the ugly rumours which some twenty years ago agitated the university and were echoed in the learned societies of London. There were, however, certain obstacles in the way, and the true history of this curious case remained entombed in the tin box which contains so many records of my friend’s adventures. Now we have at last obtained permission to ventilate the facts which formed one of the very last cases handled by Holmes before his retirement from practice. Even now a certain reticence and discretion have to be observed in laying the matter before the public.

It was one Sunday evening early in September of the year 1903 that I received one of Holmes’s laconic messages:

Come at once if convenient — if inconvenient come all the same. S. H.

The relations between us in those latter days were peculiar. He was a man of habits, narrow and concentrated habits, and I had become one of them. As an institution I was like the violin, the shag tobacco, the old black pipe, the index books, and others perhaps less excusable. When it was a case of active work and a comrade was needed upon whose nerve he could place some reliance, my role was obvious. But apart from this I had uses. I was a whetstone for his mind. I stimulated him. He liked to think aloud in my presence. His remarks could hardly be said to be made to me — many of them would have been as appropriately addressed to his bedstead — but none the less, having formed the habit, it had become in some way helpful that I should register and interject. If I irritated him by a certain methodical slowness in my mentality, that irritation served only to make his own flame-like intuitions and impressions flash up the more vividly and swiftly. Such was my humble role in our alliance.