THE double suicide of the Martins made a terrific impression on the Parisian public. It was perhaps a fitting c****x to a case which had for weeks aroused the strongest popular feeling. It came as a tragic and yet inevitable close to the dark trail of mystery and horror stretching back over a whole century. And it ended the long ordeal inflicted by fate on the Mélamare family.
Unexpectedly, yet after all naturally, Chief Inspector Béchoux failed to reap from this doomsday the public recognition and acclamation he seemed to have earned. All the interest centred on d’Enneris, or rather Arsène Lupin. For, all said and done, the press, and in its wake the police, were sure it was a case of two names for but a single man. Lupin was at once hailed as the real hero of the affair—the man who had
