your light down on that table," she said. "Besides, I have got to
open my desk, for I must look at the lottery tickets I gave to Therese a
few weeks ago." She pushed back the roll top of her Empire desk and
looked up at the young fellow. "It would be a piece of good luck if my
little Therese won the first prize, eh, Charles? A million francs! That
would be worth winning?"

"Rather!" said Charles Rambert with a smile.

The Marquise found the book she was searching for and gave it to the lad
with one hand while with the other she smoothed out several variegated
papers.

"These are my tickets," she said, and then broke off. "How stupid of me!
I have not kept the number of the winning ticket that was advertised in
_La Capitale_."

Charles Rambert immediately offered to go downstairs again to fetch the
newspaper, but the Marquise would not let him.

"It is no good, my dear boy; it is not there now. You know--or rather
you don't know--that the Abbe takes away all the week's newspapers every
Wednesday night in order to read all the political articles." The old
lady turned away from her writing-table, which she left wide open,
conducted the young man to the door, and held out a friendly hand. "It
is to-morrow morning already!" she said. "So now good night, dear
Charles!"

In his own room, with the lights extinguished and the curtains closed,
Charles Rambert lay wide awake, a prey to strange excitement. He turned
and tossed in his bed nervously. In vain did he try to banish from his
mind the words spoken during the evening by President Bonnet. In
imagination Charles Rambert saw all manner of sinister and dramatic
scenes, crimes and murders: hugely interested, intensely curious,
craving for knowledge, he was ever trying to concoct plots and unravel
mysteries. If for an instant he dozed off, the image of Fantomas took
shape in his mind, but never twice the same: sometimes he saw a colossal
figure with bestial face and muscular shoulders; sometimes a wan, thin
creature, with strange and piercing eyes; sometimes a vague form, a
phantom--Fantomas!

Charles Rambert slept, and woke, and dozed again. In the silence of the
night he thought he heard creakings and heavy sounds. Then suddenly he
felt a breath pass over his face--and again nothing! And suddenly again
strange sounds were buzzing in his ears.

Bathed in cold sweat Charles Rambert started and sat upright in bed,
every muscle tense, listening with all his ears. Was he