had not released the lampshade, she would have seen
Saniel turned pale and his lips quiver.

"Mais voila!" continued Balzajette. "He made this sacrifice to his new
functions; the student has disappeared before the professor."

He might have continued along time. Neither Madame Dammauville nor Saniel
listened to him; but, thinking of his dinner, he was not going to launch
into a discourse that at any other moment he would not have failed to
undertake. He rose to go.

As Saniel bowed, Madame Dammauville stopped him with a movement of her
hand.

"Did you not know this unfortunate who was assassinated opposite?" she
asked, pointing to the windows.

So serious as was an acknowledgment, Saniel could not answer in the
negative.

"I was called in to prove his death," he said.

And he took several steps toward the door, but she stopped him again.

"Had you business with him?" she asked.

"I saw him several times."

Balzajette cut short this conversation, which was idle talk to him.

"Good evening, dear Madame. I will see you tomorrow, but not in the
morning, for I go to the country at six o'clock, and shall not return
until noon."

CHAPTER XXXIII

SUSPENSE

"Did you observe how I cut the conversation short?" Balzajette said, as
they went down-stairs. "If you listen to women they will never let you
go. I cannot imagine why she spoke to you of this assassinated man, can
you?"

"No."

"I believe that this assassination has affected her brain to a certain
point. In any case, it has given her a horror of this house."

He continued thus without Saniel listening to what he said. On reaching
the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, Balzajette hailed a passing cab.

"You have had the kindness not to delay me," he said, pressing the hand
of his young 'confrere', "but I feel that I must hurry. 'Au revoir'."

A good riddance! This babbling gave Saniel the vertigo.

He must recover himself, look the situation in the face, and consider
that which might, which must, happen.

The situation was plain; Madame Dammauville's cry revealed it. When the
lamplight struck him full in the face, she found in him the man whom she
had seen draw Caffies curtains. If, in her amazement, she at first
refused to believe it, her questions regarding Caffie, and Balzajette's
explanations about his hair and beard, destroyed her hesitation and
replaced doubt by the horror of certainty. He was the assassin; she knew
it, she had seen him. And