“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 widespreading ink, then, immediately after, pressed it onto 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 well-known in the anthropometric section, has just left the imprint of – Jacques Dollon!”

The journalist’s action created a momentary stupor!

Then 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-composure.

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 into his own 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 living dead! Here is the corpse who kills – and here is the elusive Fantômas!” said the chief of the detective force.

But the arch-villain continued to brazen 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 far 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 marvelously 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.