t, will you please make the room as dark as you can? The
shutters are gone; but you might draw the curtains across the windows
and close the doors. Monsieur le Prefet, is it by accident that the
electric light is on?"

"Yes, by accident. We will have it turned out."

"One moment. Have any of you gentlemen a pocket lantern about you? Or,
no, it doesn't matter. This will do."

There was a candle in a sconce. He took it and lit it.

Then he switched off the electric light.

There was a half darkness, amid which the flame of the candle flickered
in the draught from the windows. Don Luis protected the flame with his
hand and moved to the table.

"I do not think that we shall be kept waiting long," he said. "As I
foresee it, there will be only a few seconds before the facts speak for
themselves and better than I could do."

Those few seconds, during which no one broke the silence, were
unforgettable. M. Desmalions has since declared, in an interview in which
he ridicules himself very cleverly, that his brain, over-stimulated by
the fatigues of the night and by the whole scene before him, imagined the
most unlikely events, such as an invasion of the house by armed
assailants, or the apparition of ghosts and spirits.

He had the curiosity, however, he said, to watch Don Luis. Sitting on
the edge of the table, with his head thrown a little back and his
eyes roaming over the ceiling, Don Luis was eating a piece of bread
and nibbling at a cake of chocolate. He seemed very hungry, but quite
at his ease.

The others maintained that tense attitude which we put on at moments of
great physical effort. Their faces were distorted with a sort of
grimace. They were haunted by the memory of the explosion as well as
obsessed by what was going to happen. The flame of the candle cast
shadows on the wall.

More seconds elapsed than Don Luis Perenna had said, thirty or forty
seconds, perhaps, that seemed endless. Then Perenna lifted the candle a
little and said:

"There you are."

They had all seen what they now saw almost as soon as he spoke. A letter
was descending from the ceiling. It spun round slowly, like a leaf
falling from a tree without being driven by the wind. It just touched Don
Luis and alighted on the floor between two legs of the table.

Picking up the paper and handing it to M. Desmalions, Don Luis said:

"There you are, Monsieur le Prefet. This is the fourth letter, due
last night."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN