eft the theatre, too ill to finish your performance.
You have had plenty of time already to get home. Quick! Leave me to deal
with this young man. I tell you to go."

She retreated down the stairs, dumb, her knees shaking still as though
with fear. Guillot entered the room, closing the door behind him. Even
as he bowed to that dark figure standing in the corner, his left hand
shot forward the bolt.

"Monsieur," he said.

"What is the meaning of this?" the visitor interrupted haughtily. "I am
expecting Mademoiselle Louise. I did not understand that strangers had
the right of entry into this room."

Guillot bowed low.

"Monsieur," he said once more, "it is a matter for my eternal regret
that I am forced to intrude even for a moment upon an assignation so
romantic. But there is a little matter which must first be settled. I
have some friends here who have a thing to say to you."

He walked softly, with catlike tread, along by the wall to where the
thick curtains shut out the inner apartment. He caught at the thick
velvet, dragged it back, and the two rooms were suddenly flooded with
light. In the recently discovered one, two stalwart-looking men in plain
clothes, but of very unmistakable appearance, were standing waiting.
Guillot staggered back. They were strangers to him. He was like a man
who looks upon a nightmare. His eyes protruded. The words which he tried
to utter failed him. Then, with a swift, nervous presentiment, he turned
quickly around towards the man who had been standing in the shadows.
Here, too, the unexpected had happened. It was Peter, Baron de Grost,
who threw his muffler and broad-brimmed hat upon the table.

"Five minutes to eleven, I believe, Monsieur Guillot," Peter declared.
"I win by an hour and five minutes."

Guillot said nothing for several seconds. After all, though, he had
great gifts. He recovered alike his power of speech and his composure.

"These gentlemen," he said, pointing with his left hand towards the
inner room. "I do not understand their presence in my apartments."

Peter shrugged his shoulders.

"They represent, I am afraid, the obvious end of things," he explained.
"You have given me a run for my money, I confess. A Monsieur Guillot who
is remarkably like you still occupies your box at the Empire, and
Mademoiselle Jeanne Lemere, the accomplished understudy of the lady who
has just left us, is sufficiently like the incomparable Louise to
escape, perhaps, detection for