he did not
see Florence. The girl had no doubt succeeded in escaping.

Weber's appearance on the steps and the deputy chief's first words
confirmed his hopes. Weber was mad with rage. His recent captivity and
the humiliation of his defeat exasperated him.

"Ah!" he roared, as he saw the prisoner. "There's one of them, at any
rate! Gaston Sauverand! Choice game, that!... Where did you catch him?"

"On the Place du Palais-Bourbon," said one of the inspectors. "We saw him
slinking out through the cellar door."

"And his accomplice, the Levasseur girl?"

"We missed her, Deputy Chief. She was the first out."

"And Don Luis? You haven't let him leave the house, I hope? I gave
orders."

"He tried to get out through the cellar door five minutes after."

"Who said so?"

"One of the men in uniform posted outside the door."

"Well?"

"The beggar went back into the cellar."

Weber gave a shout of delight.

"We've got him! And it's a nasty business for him! Charge of resisting
the police!... Complicity ... We shall be able to unmask him at last.
Tally-ho, my lads, tally-ho! Two men to guard Sauverand, four men on the
Place du Palais-Bourbon, revolver in hand. Two men on the roof. The rest
stick to me. We'll begin with the Levasseur girl's room and we'll take
his room next. Hark, forward, my lads!"

Don Luis did not wait for the enemies' attack. Knowing their intentions,
he beat a retreat, unseen, toward Florence's rooms. Here, as Weber did
not yet know the short cut through the outhouses, he had time to make
sure that the trapdoor was in perfect working order, and that there was
no reason why they should discover the existence of a secret cupboard at
the back of the alcove, behind the curtains of the bed.

Once inside the passage, he went up the first staircase, followed the
long corridor contrived in the wall, climbed the ladder leading to the
boudoir, and, perceiving that this second trapdoor fitted the woodwork so
closely that no one could suspect anything, he closed it over him. A few
minutes later he heard the noise of men making a search above his head.

And so, on the twenty-fourth of May, at five o'clock in the afternoon,
the position was as follows: Florence Levasseur with a warrant out
against her, Gaston Sauverand in prison, Marie Fauville in prison and
refusing all food, and Don Luis, who believed in their innocence and who
alone could have saved them, Don Luis was being blockaded in his own
house and