s face that he would not obtain a reply. With a threatening gesture,
"I'll make you talk, my man. Sure as my name's Lupin, you shall come out
with it. But, for the moment, we must see about decamping. Here, help
me. We must get Vaucheray into the boat..."

They had returned to the dining-room and Gilbert was bending over the
wounded man, when Lupin stopped him:

"Listen."

They exchanged one look of alarm... Some one was speaking in the pantry
... a very low, strange, very distant voice... Nevertheless, as they at
once made certain, there was no one in the room, no one except the dead
man, whose dark outline lay stretched upon the floor.

And the voice spake anew, by turns shrill, stifled, bleating,
stammering, yelling, fearsome. It uttered indistinct words, broken
syllables.

Lupin felt the top of his head covering with perspiration. What was this
incoherent voice, mysterious as a voice from beyond the grave?

He had knelt down by the man-servant's side. The voice was silent and
then began again:

"Give us a better light," he said to Gilbert.

He was trembling a little, shaken with a nervous dread which he was
unable to master, for there was no doubt possible: when Gilbert had
removed the shade from the lamp, Lupin realized that the voice issued
from the corpse itself, without a movement of the lifeless mass, without
a quiver of the bleeding mouth.

"Governor, I've got the shivers," stammered Gilbert.

Again the same voice, the same snuffling whisper.

Suddenly, Lupin burst out laughing, seized the corpse and pulled it
aside:

"Exactly!" he said, catching sight of an object made of polished metal.
"Exactly! That's it!... Well, upon my word, it took me long enough!"

On the spot on the floor which he had uncovered lay the receiver of a
telephone, the cord of which ran up to the apparatus fixed on the wall,
at the usual height.

Lupin put the receiver to his ear. The noise began again at once, but
it was a mixed noise, made up of different calls, exclamations, confused
cries, the noise produced by a number of persons questioning one another
at the same time.

"Are you there?... He won't answer. It's awful... They must have killed
him. What is it?... Keep up your courage. There's help on the way...
police... soldiers..."

"Dash it!" said Lupin, dropping the receiver.

The truth appeared to him in a terrifying vision. Quite at the
beginning, while the things upstairs were being moved, Leonard, whose