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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
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