ked casually through the
newspaper, and suddenly broke into a sharp exclamation. "Good heavens,
it can't be possible!"

"What's the matter?" the door-keeper enquired.

Charlot pointed a shaking finger to another column.

"Read that, Jean, read that! Surely I am mistaken."

The door-keeper peered over Charlot's shoulder at the indicated passage.

"I don't see anything in that; it's that Gurn affair again. Yes, he is
to be executed at daybreak on the eighteenth."

"But that is this morning--presently," Charlot exclaimed.

"May be," said the door-keeper indifferently; "yes, last night was the
seventeenth, so it is the eighteenth now! Are you ill, Charlot?"

Charlot pulled himself together.

"No, it's nothing; I'm only tired. You can put out the lights. I shall
be out of the theatre in five minutes; I only want to do one or two
little things here."

"All right," said Jean, turning away. "Shut the door behind you when you
leave, if I have gone to bed."

Charlot sat on the arm of a chair and wiped his brow.

"I don't like this business," he muttered. "Why the deuce did he want
to go? What does this woman want with him? I may be only an old fool,
but I know what I know, and there have been no end of queer stories
about this job already." He sat there meditating, till an idea took
shape in his mind. "Can I dare to go round there and just prowl about?
Of course he will be furious, but suppose that letter was a decoy and he
is walking into a trap? One never can tell. An assignation in that
particular street, with that prison opposite, and Gurn to be guillotined
within the next hour or so?" The man made up his mind, hurriedly put on
his coat and hat, and switched off the electric lights in the
exquisitely appointed dressing-room. "I'll go!" he said aloud. "If I see
anything suspicious, or if at the end of half an hour I don't see M.
Valgrand leaving the house--well!" Charlot turned the key in the lock.
"Yes, I will go. I shall be much easier in my mind!"

XXXI. FELL TREACHERY

Number 22 rue Messier was a wretched one-storeyed house that belonged to
a country vine-dresser who seldom came to Paris. It was damp, dirty, and
dilapidated, and would have had to be rebuilt from top to bottom if it
were to be rendered habitable. There had been a long succession of
so-called tenants of this hovel, shady, disreputable people who, for the
most part, left without paying any rent, the landlord being only too
glad if occ