CHAPTER XIH 128

reveal,"

Lupin sat long, silent and gloomy, under the obsession, no doubt, of the mysterious being.

Doudeville objected:

"What had he to fear from his sister Isida? She was mad, they told me.

"Mad, yes, but capable of remembering certain details of her childhood. She must have recognized the brother with whom she
grew up.. and that recollection cost her her life. And he added, "Mad! But all those people were mad... The mother was mad..
The father a dipsomaniac... Altenheim a regular brute beast... Isida, a poor innocent... As for the other, the murderer, lie is the
monster, the crazy lunatic..."

*Crazy? Do you think so, governor?"

"Yes, crazy! With flashes of genius, of devilish cunning and intuition, but a crack-brained fool, a madman, like all that Malreich
family. Only madmen kill and especially madmen of his stamp. For, after all..."

He interrupted himself; and his face underwent so great a change that Doudeville was struck by it:

"What's the matter, governor?"

"LOOK."

A man had entered and hung his hat-a soft, black felt hat-on a peg. He sat down at a little table, examined the bill of fare which
a waiter brought him, gave his order and waited motionless, with his body stiff and erect and his two arms crossed over the
Tablecloth.

And Lupin saw him full-face.

He had a lean, had visage, absolutely smooth and pierced with two sockets in the depths of which appeared a pair of stee-gray
eyes. The skin seemed stretched from bone to bone, like a sheet of parchment, so stiff and so thick that not a hair could have
penetrated through it.

And the face was dismal and dull. No expression enlivened it. No thought seemed to abide under that ivory forehead; and the
eye-lids, entirely devoid of lashes, nevertlickered, which gave the eyes the fixed look of the eyes in a statue.

Lupin beckoned to one of the waiters:

"Who is that gentleman?"

"The one eating his lunch over there?"

"Yes."

"He is a customer. He comes here two or three times a week"

"Can you tell me his name?"

"Why, yes... Leon Massier."

"Oh!' blurted Lupin, very excitedly. "L M... the same two letters.. could it be Louis de Malreich ?"

He watched him eagerly. Indeed, the man's appearance agreed with Lupin's conjectures, with what he knew of him and of his hideous mode of
existence. But what puzzled' him was that look of death about him: where he anticipated life and fire, where he would have expected to find the
torment, the disorder, the violent facial distortion of the great accursed, he beheld sheer
I'm passiveness.

He asked the waiter:

"What does he do?

"I really can't say. He's a rum cove... He's always quite alone... He never talks to anybody... We here dont even know the sound
of his voice... Hé points his finger at the dishes on the bill of fare which he wants... He has finished in twenty minutes; then he
pays and goes..."

"And he comes back again ?"

"Every three or four days. He's not regular."

"It's he, it cannot be any one else,' said Lupin to himself. "its Malreich. There he is... breathing... at four steps from me. There
are the hands that kill. There is the brain that gloats upon the smell of blood. There is the monster, the vampire!"

And. yet, was it possible? Lupin had ended by looking upon Malreich as so fantastic a being that he was disconcerted at seeing him in the flesh,
coming, going, moving. He could not explain to himself how the man could eat bread and meat like other men, drink beer like any one else: this
man whom he had pictured as a foul beast, feeding on live flesh and sucking the blood of his
Victims.

"Come away, Doudeville."

"What's the matter with you, governor? You look quite white!"

"I want air. Come out.

Outside, he drew a deep breath, wiped the perspiration from his forehead and muttered: