"L'Invincible!"

I looked up to find Godfrey regarding me with a quizzical smile.

"Of course it's a joke," I said. Then I looked at him again. "Surely,
Godfrey, you don't believe this is genuine!"

"Perhaps we can prove it," he said, quietly. "That is one reason I
came up. Didn't Armand leave a note for you the day he failed to see
you?"

"Yes; on his card; I have it here!" and with trembling fingers, I got
out my pocket-book and drew the card from the compartment in which I
had carefully preserved it.

One glance at it was enough. The pencilled line on the back was
unquestionably written by the same hand which wrote the letter.

"And now you know his name," Godfrey added, tapping the signature
with his finger. "I have been certain from the first that it was he!"

I gazed at the signature without answering. I had, of course, read in
the papers many times of the Gargantuan exploits of Crochard--"The
Invincible," as he loved to call himself, and with good reason. But
his achievements, at least as the papers described them, seemed too
fantastic to be true. I had suspected more than once that he was
merely a figment of the Parisian space-writers, a sort of reserve for
the dull season; or else that he was a kind of scape-goat saddled by
the French police with every crime which proved too much for them.
Now, however, it seemed that Crochard really existed; I held his