loor were shuttered. No light gleamed anywhere. I then left the
garden, closing the gate behind me. I heard a clock strike the hour a
few minutes afterwards, so that I can be sure of the time. It was now
eleven o'clock. I came round a third time an hour after, and to my
astonishment I found the gate once more open. I had left it closed and
the house shut up and dark. Now it stood open! I looked up to the
windows and I saw that in a room on the second floor, close beneath the
roof, a light was burning brightly. That room had been dark an hour
before. I stood and watched the light for a few minutes, thinking that
I should see it suddenly go out. But it did not: it burned quite
steadily. This light and the gate opened and reopened aroused my
suspicions. I went again into the garden, but this time with greater
caution. It was a clear night, and, although there was no moon, I could
see without the aid of my lantern. I stole quietly along the drive.
When I came round to the front door, I noticed immediately that the
shutters of one of the ground-floor windows were swung back, and that
the inside glass window which descended to the ground stood open. The
sight gave me a shock. Within the house those shutters had been opened.
I felt the blood turn to ice in my veins and a chill crept along my
spine. I thought of that solitary light burning steadily under the
roof. I was convinced that something terrible had happened."

"Yes, yes. Quite so," said Hanaud. "Go on, my friend."

"The interior of the room gaped black," Perrichet resumed. "I crept up
to the window at the side of the wall and dashed my lantern into the
room. The window, however, was in a recess which opened into the room
through an arch, and at each side of the arch curtains were draped. The
curtains were not closed, but between them I could see nothing but a
strip of the room. I stepped carefully in, taking heed not to walk on
the patch of grass before the window. The light of my lantern showed me
a chair overturned upon the floor, and to my right, below the middle
one of the three windows in the right-hand side wall, a woman lying
huddled upon the floor. It was Mme. Dauvray. She was dressed. There was
a little mud upon her shoes, as though she had walked after the rain
had ceased. Monsieur will remember that two heavy showers fell last
evening between six and eight."

"Yes," said Hanaud, nodding his approval.

"She was quite dead. Her face was terribly swollen and