"Have you anything more to say, Vaucheray?"

"Nothing, monsieur le president. Now that my mate is sentenced as well as myself, I am easy... We are both on the same footing... The governor must find a way to save the two of us."

"The governor?"

"Yes, Arsene Lupin."

There was a laugh among the crowd.

The president asked:

"And you, Gilbert?"

Tears streamed down the poor lad's cheeks and he stammered a few inarticulate sentences. But, when the judge repeated his question, he succeeded in mastering himself and replied, in a trembling voice:

"I wish to say, monsieur le president, that I am guilty of many things, that's true... I have done a lot of harm... But, all the same, not this. No, I have not committed murder... I have never committed murder... And I don't want to die... it would be too horrible... "

He swayed from side to side, supported by the warders, and he was heard to cry, like a child calling for help:

"Governor... save me!... Save me!... I don't want to die!"

Then, in the crowd, amid the general excitement, a voice rose above the surrounding clamour:

"Don't be afraid, little `un!... The governor's here!"

A tumult and hustling followed. The municipal guards and the policemen rushed into court and laid hold of a big, red-faced man, who was stated by his neighbours to be the author of that outburst and who struggled hand and foot.

Questioned without delay, he gave his name, Philippe Bonel, an undertaker's man, and declared that some one sitting beside him had offered him a hundred-franc note if he would consent, at the proper moment, to shout a few words which his neighbour scribbled on a bit of paper. How could he refuse?

In proof of his statements, he produced the hundred-franc note and the scrap of paper.

Philippe Bonel was let go.

Meanwhile, Lupin, who of course had assisted energetically in the individual's arrest and handed him over to' the guards, left the law-courts, his heart heavy with anguish. His car was waiting for him on the quay. He flung himself into it, in despair, seized with so great a sorrow that he had to make an effort to restrain his tears. Gilbert's cry, his voice wrung with affliction, his distorted features, his tottering frame: all this haunted his brain; and he felt as if he would never, for a single second, forget those impressions.

He drove home to the new place which he had selected among his different residences and which occupied a corner of the Place de Clichy. He expected to find the Growler and the Masher, with whom he was to kidnap Daubrecq that evening. But he had hardly opened the door of his flat, when a cry escaped him: Clarisse stood before him; Clarisse, who had returned from Brittany at the moment of the verdict.

He at once gathered from her attitude and her pallor that she knew. And, at once, recovering his courage in her presence, without giving her time to speak, he exclaimed:

"Yes, yes, yes... but it doesn't matter. We foresaw that. We couldn't prevent it. What we have to do is to stop the mischief. And to-night, you understand, to-night, the thing will be done."