matter were as follows:

"Jerome Fandor, pay attention, great attention! The affair on which
you are concentrating all your powers is worthy of all possible
interest, but may have terribly dangerous consequences."

Of course there was no signature.

Evidently the warning referred to the Dollon case.

"Why," exclaimed Fandor, "this is simply an invitation not to busy
myself hunting for the guilty persons!... Who has sent this invitation
and warning? Surely the sender is the assassin, to whose interest it is
that the inquiry into the rue Norvins murder should be dropped!... It
must be Jacques Dollon!... But how could Dollon know my address? How
could he have found time between his flight from the Depot and the
present minute, to put this message of printed letters together, and
take it to the rue Bergere?... And that at the risk of encountering
someone who could recognise him, and might have him arrested afresh? Had
he accomplices?"

Fandor was puzzled, agitated:

"But I am mad!... mad! It cannot be Dollon!... Dollon is dead--dead as a
door nail--dead beyond dispute, because fifty men have seen him dead;
dead, because the Depot doctors have certified his death!"

Daylight was fading; evening was coming on; Fandor was still turning the
whole affair over in his mind. Every now and again he murmured:

"Fantomas! Fantomas has to do with this extraordinary, this mysterious
affair! Fantomas is in it!... Fantomas!"

IV

A SURPRISING ITINERARY

Jerome Fandor had passed a bad night!

Visions of horror had continually arisen in his troubled mind. Between
nightmare after nightmare he had heard all the horrors of the night
sound out in the darkness and the glimmering dawn. Then he had fallen
into a heavy sleep, which had left him on awaking broken with fatigue.
He had given himself a cold douche, and this had calmed his nerves; then
he had dressed quickly. When eight o'clock struck he was at his
writing-table, thinking things over:

"It's no laughing matter. I thought at first that the Dollon affair was
quite ordinary; but I am mistaken. The warning I received last night
leaves me no doubts on that head. Since the guilty person thinks it
necessary to ask me to keep quiet, it is evident he fears my
intervention; if he is afraid of that it is because it must be hurtful
to him; if disastrous to him, a criminal, it is evident that it must be
useful to honest folk. My duty, then, is to go straight a