ppealed
to you, he would be a dead man inside of twenty-four hours, and not only
dead, but--disgraced. Oh, Mr. Cleek!"--she stretched out two shaking
hands and laid them on his arm, lifted a white, imploring face to
his--"save him! save that dear broken old man! Ah, think! think! They
are our friends, our dear country's friends, these French people. Their
welfare is our welfare, ours is theirs. Oh, help him, save him, Mr.
Cleek--for his own sake--for mine--for France. Save him, and win my
gratitude for ever!"

"That is a temptation that would carry me to the ends of the earth, Miss
Lorne. Tell me what the work is, and I will carry it through. What is
this incomprehensible thing of which both you and Baron de Carjorac have
spoken--this thing you allude to as 'The Red Crawl'?"

She gave a little shuddering cry and fell back a step, covering her face
with both hands.

"Oh!" she said, with a shiver of repulsion. "It is loathly--it is
horrible--it is necromancy--beyond belief! Why, oh, why were we ever
driven to that horrible Chateau Larouge! Why could not fate have spared
the Villa de Carjorac? It could not have happened then!"

"Villa de Carjorac? That was the name of the baron's residence, I
believe. I remember reading in the newspapers some five or six weeks ago
that it was destroyed by fire, which originated--nobody knew how--in the
apartments of the late baroness in the very dead of the night. I thought
at the time it read suspiciously like the work of an incendiary,
although nobody hinted at such a thing. The Chateau Larouge I also have
a distinct memory of, as an old historic property in the neighbourhood
of St. Cloud. Speaking from past experience, I know that, although it is
in such a state of decay, and supposed to be uninhabitable, it has, in
fact, often been occupied at a period when the police and the public
believed it to be quite empty. Gentlemen of the Apache persuasion have
frequently made it a place of retreat. There is also an underground
passage--executed by those same individuals--which connects with the
Paris sewers. That, too, the police are unaware of. What can the ruined
Chateau Larouge possibly have to do with the affairs of the Baron de
Carjorac, Miss Lorne, that you connect them like this?"

"They have everything to do with them--everything. The Chateau is no
longer a ruin, however. It was purchased, rebuilt, refitted by the
Comtesse Susanne de la Tour, Mr. Cleek, and she and her brother liv