r to-night's work?"

"Four; the concierge and his wife will watch at all hazards. I don't
set much value on them before--but the concierge may be useful after--if
there's to be any killing!"

"Then you think there may be?"

"If he wishes it."

"Why haven't you brought in Daddy Jacques?--Have you made no use of him
to-day?"

"No," replied Rouletabille sharply.

I kept silence for awhile, then, anxious to know his thoughts, I asked
him point blank:

"Why not tell Arthur Rance?--He may be of great assistance to us?"

"Oh!" said Rouletabille crossly, "then you want to let everybody into
Mademoiselle Stangerson's secrets?--Come, let us go to dinner; it is
time. This evening we dine in Frederic Larsan's room,--at least, if
he is not on the heels of Darzac. He sticks to him like a leech. But,
anyhow, if he is not there now, I am quite sure he will be, to-night!
He's the one I am going to knock over!"

At this moment we heard a noise in the room near us.

"It must be he," said Rouletabille.

"I forgot to ask you," I said, "if we are to make any allusion to
to-night's business when we are with this policeman. I take it we are
not. Is that so?"

"Evidently. We are going to operate alone, on our own personal account."

"So that all the glory will be ours?"

Rouletabille laughed.

We dined with Frederic Larsan in his room. He told us he had just come
in and invited us to be seated at table. We ate our dinner in the best
of humours, and I had no difficulty in appreciating the feelings of
certainty which both Rouletabille and Larsan felt. Rouletabille told the
great Fred that I had come on a chance visit, and that he had asked me
to stay and help him in the heavy batch of writing he had to get through
for the "Epoque." I was going back to Paris, he said, by the eleven
o'clock train, taking his "copy," which took a story form, recounting
the principal episodes in the mysteries of the Glandier. Larsan smiled
at the explanation like a man who was not fooled and politely refrains
from making the slightest remark on matters which did not concern him.

With infinite precautions as to the words they used, and even as to the
tones of their voices, Larsan and Rouletabille discussed, for a long
time, Mr. Arthur Rance's appearance at the chateau, and his past in
America, about which they expressed a desire to know more, at any rate,
so far as his relations with the Stangersons. At one time, Larsan, who
appeared to me to be