up to the hospital, found
Fargeau, who declared that he and Duchesne were ready for anything, the
nearer the real "bouche d'enfer" the better; that the following Thursday
they would both be off duty for the night, and that on that day they
would join in an attempt to outwit the devil and clear up the mystery of
No. 252.

"Does M. l'Americain go with us?" asked Fargeau.

"Why of course," I replied, "I intend to go, and you must not refuse me,
d'Ardeche; I decline to be put off. Here is a chance for you to do the
honors of your city in a manner which is faultless. Show me a real live
ghost, and I will forgive Paris for having lost the Jardin Mabille."

So it was settled.

Later we went down to Meudon and ate dinner in the terrace room of the
villa, which was all that d'Ardeche had said, and more, so utterly was
its atmosphere that of the seventeenth century. At dinner Eugene told me
more about his late aunt, and the queer goings on in the old house.

Mlle. Blaye lived, it seems, all alone, except for one female servant of
her own age; a severe, taciturn creature, with massive Breton features
and a Breton tongue, whenever she vouchsafed to use it. No one ever was
seen to enter the door of No. 252 except Jeanne the servant and the Sar
Torrevieja, the latter coming constantly from none knew whither, and
always entering, _never leaving_. Indeed, the neighbors, who for eleven
years had watched the old sorcerer sidle crab-wise up to the bell almost
every day, declared vociferously that _never_ had he been seen to leave
the house. Once, when they decided to keep absolute guard, the watcher,
none other than Maitre Garceau of the Chien Bleu, after keeping his eyes
fixed on the door from ten o'clock one morning when the Sar arrived
until four in the afternoon, during which time the door was unopened (he
knew this, for had he not gummed a ten-centime stamp over the joint and
was not the stamp unbroken) nearly fell down when the sinister figure
of Torrevieja slid wickedly by him with a dry "Pardon, Monsieur!" and
disappeared again through the black doorway.

This was curious, for No. 252 was entirely surrounded by houses, its
only windows opening on a courtyard into which no eye could look from
the hotels of the Rue M. le Prince and the Rue de l'Ecole, and the
mystery was one of the choice possessions of the Latin Quarter.

Once a year the austerity of the place was broken, and the denizens of
the whole quarter stood open-mou