"If I don't put a stop to this, they'll spoil everything," he said to himself.

He stood in an angle of the house, invisible in the darkness, and measured the distance between himself and the gate. The gate was open. To his right, he saw the steps, on the top of which the people were flinging themselves about; to his left, the building occupied by the portress.

The woman had come out of her lodge and was standing near the people, entreating them:

"Oh, do be quiet, do be quiet! He'll come!"

"Capital!" said Lupin. "The good woman is an accomplice of these as well. By Jingo, what a pluralist!"

He rushed across to her and, taking her by the scruff of the neck, hissed:

"Go and tell them I've got the child... They can come and fetch it at my place, Rue Chateaubriand."

A little way off, in the avenue, stood a taxi which Lupin presumed to be engaged by the gang. Speaking authoritatively, as though he were one of the accomplices, he stepped into the cab and told the man to drive him home.

"Well," he said to the child, "that wasn't much of a shake-up, was it?... What do you say to going to bye-bye on the gentleman's bed?"

As his servant, Achille, was asleep, Lupin made the little chap comfortable and stroked his hair for for him. The child seemed numbed. His poor face was as though petrified into a stiff expression made up, at one and the same time, of fear and the wish not to show fear, of the longing to scream and a pitiful effort not to scream.

"Cry, my pet, cry," said Lupin. "It'll do you good to cry."

The child did not cry, but the voice was so gentle and so kind that he relaxed his tense muscles; and, now that his eyes were calmer and his mouth less contorted, Lupin, who was examining him closely, found something that he recognized, an undoubted resemblance.

This again confirmed certain facts which he suspected and which he had for some time been linking in his mind. Indeed, unless he was mistaken, the position was becoming very different and he would soon assume the direction of events. After that...

A ring at the bell followed, at once, by two others, sharp ones.

"Hullo!" said Lupin to the child. "Here's mummy come to fetch you. Don't move."

He ran and opened the door.

A woman entered, wildly:

"My son!" she screamed. "My son! Where is he?"

"In my room," said Lupin.

Without asking more, thus proving that she knew the way, she rushed to the bedroom.

"As I thought," muttered Lupin. "The youngish woman with the gray hair: Daubrecq's friend and enemy."

He walked to the window and looked through the curtains. Two men were striding up and down the opposite pavement: the Growler and the Masher.

"And they're not even hiding themselves," he said to himself. "That's a good sign. They consider that they can't do without me any longer and that they've got to obey the governor. There remains the pretty lady with the gray hair. That will be more difficult. It's you and I now, mummy."

He found the mother and the boy clasped in each other's arms; and the mother, in a great state of alarm, her eyes moist with tears, was saying:

“I think I can, Stackhurst. Come with me now! And you, Inspector, come along! We will see if we cannot deliver this murderer into your hands.”

Leaving the unconscious man in the charge of my housekeeper, we all three went down to the deadly lagoon. On the shingle there was piled a little heap of towels and clothes left by the stricken man. Slowly I walked round the edge of the water, my comrades in Indian file behind me. Most of the pool was quite shallow, but under the cliff where the beach was hollowed out it was four or five feet deep. It was to this part that a swimmer would naturally go, for it formed a beautiful pellucid green pool as clear as crystal. A line of rocks lay above it at the base of the cliff, and along this I led the way, peering eagerly into the depths beneath me. I had reached the deepest and stillest pool when my eyes caught that for which they were searching, and I burst into a shout of triumph.

“Cyanea!” I cried. “Cyanea! Behold the Lion’s Mane!”

The strange object at which I pointed did indeed look like a tangled mass torn from the mane of a lion. It lay upon a rocky shelf some three feet under the water, a curious waving, vibrating, hairy creature with streaks of silver among its yellow tresses. It pulsated with a slow, heavy dilation and contraction.

“It has done mischief enough. Its day is over!” I cried. “Help me, Stackhurst! Let us end the murderer forever.”

There was a big boulder just above the ledge, and we pushed it until it fell with a tremendous splash into the water. When the ripples had cleared we saw that it had settled upon the ledge below. One flapping edge of yellow membrane showed that our victim was beneath it. A thick oily scum oozed out from below the stone and stained the water round, rising slowly to the surface.

“Well, this gets me!” cried the inspector. “What was it, Mr. Holmes? I’m born and bred in these parts, but I never saw such a thing. It don’t belong to Sussex.”

“Just as well for Sussex,” I remarked. “It may have been the southwest gale that brought it up. Come back to my house, both of you, and I will give you the terrible experience of one who has good reason to remember his own meeting with the same peril of the seas.”

When we reached my study we found that Murdoch was so far recovered that he could sit up. He was dazed in mind, and every now and then was shaken by a paroxysm of pain. In broken words he explained that he had no notion what had occurred to him, save that terrific pangs had suddenly shot through him, and that it had taken all his fortitude to reach the bank.

“Here is a book,” I said, taking up the little volume, “which first brought light into what might have been forever dark. It is Out of Doors, by the famous observer, J. G. Wood. Wood himself very nearly perished from contact with this vile creature, so he wrote with a very full knowledge. Cyanea capillata is the miscreant’s full name, and he can be as dangerous to life as, and far more painful than, the bite of the cobra. Let me briefly give this extract.