wards the window that was behind him,
"what does that window open on to?"

The girl thought for a moment.

"On to the cellar," she said; "this hall is in the basement."

"And the cellar," Julot went on; "how do you get out of that?"

"You can't," the servant answered; "there's no door; you have to come
through here."

Momentarily becoming more uneasy, Julot scrutinised the long tunnel of a
room at the extreme end of which he was sitting; there was only one
means of egress, up the narrow corkscrew staircase leading to the
ground-floor, and at the very foot of that staircase was the table
occupied by the green man and the man with the guitar.

* * * * *

A plate aimed by Hogshead Geoffroy at Mealy Benoit crashed against the
opposite wall. Everyone jumped to his feet, the women screaming, the men
swearing. The two market porters stood confronting one another, Hogshead
Geoffroy brandishing a chair, Benoit trying to wrench the marble top
from a table to serve as a weapon. The melee became general, plates
smashing on the floor, and dinner things flying towards the ceiling.

Suddenly a shot rang out, but quickly though it had been fired, the
green man and the man with the guitar had seen who fired it. For the
last few minutes, indeed, these two mysterious individuals had never
taken their eyes off Julot.

Julot, whom Berthe had supposed from his appearance to be an honest
cattle-drover, was undoubtedly a wonderful shot. Having observed that
the room was lighted by a single chandelier composed of three electric
lamps, and that the current was supplied by only two wires running along
the cornice, Julot had taken aim at the wires and cut them clean in two
with a single shot!

Immediately following upon the shot, the room was plunged into absolute
darkness. A perfectly incredible uproar ensued, men and women struggling
together and shouting and trampling one another down, and crockery and
dinner things crashing down from the side-boards and tables on to the
floor.

Above the din a sudden hoarse cry of pain rang out, "Help!" and
simultaneously Berthe, who was lost among the mob, heard a muttered
exclamation in her ear and felt two hands groping all over her body as
if trying to identify her. The young nurse was the only woman in the
room wearing a hat. Half swooning with terror, she felt herself picked
up and thrust upon a bench, and then someone whispered in a vinous
voice: "You are not