wager you still believe in
Fantomas!... That one fine day you will write us a rattling good
article, announcing some fresh Fantomas crime!"

Jerome Fandor made no direct reply to this--it was useless to try and
convince those who had not closely followed the records of crimes
perpetrated during recent years: you could not make them believe in the
existence of Fantomas. Fandor _knew_; but, Juve dead, was there another
soul who could know the true facts?

All he said was:

"Well, my dear fellow, this does not tell us what we are to fill up the
paper with now!... If the doings connected with Fantomas are frightful,
rousing our feelings in the highest degree, I repeat that yesterday's
crime bears no resemblance to them: we can put in a paragraph or
so--that is all!"

"No way, is there, of compromising anyone with our Baroness de Vibray?"

"I don't think so! It's a perfectly common-place affair. An elderly
woman patronises a young painter, whose mistress she may or may not be,
and she ends up by getting herself assassinated when the young man
imagines he is mentioned in her will."

"Ah! good! Well, I think you will have to fall back on the opening of
the artesian well. That suit you?"

"Oh, quite all right!... If you like I can give you my copy in half an
hour. I know who are going to speak at the inauguration ceremony, and I
can add names this evening! You know I am a bit of a specialist as
regards reports written beforehand!"

Fandor had got well on with his article: at the rate he was going he
would have finished that morning, he thought with pleasure, and would
have a free afternoon. Just then an office boy appeared:

"Monsieur Fandor, you are being asked for at the telephone."

Like most journalists, Fandor was accustomed to reply in nine cases out
of ten, in similar cases, that he was not to be found. On this occasion,
however, some interior prompting made him say:

"I will come."

A few minutes later Fandor went up to the editorial secretary:

"Look here, old fellow, something unexpected has happened.... I must go
to the Palais de Justice ... you don't want me for anything else this
morning, do you?"

"No, go along! But what's up?"

"Oh ... this Jacques Dollon, you know, the assassin of the rue Norvins?
Well, this imbecile has gone and hanged himself in his cell!"

* * * * *

At the exit door of _La Capitale_, in the noisy rue Montmartre, crowded
with costermongers