is searching,
whom none has ever seen, whom none can recognise!... I am Crime
incarnated!... I am Night!... No human sees my face, because Crime and
Night are featureless!... I am illimitable Power!... I am he who mocks
at all the powers, at all the efforts, at all the forces!... I am
master of all, of everything; of all times and seasons.... I am
Death!... Bobinette, thou hast said it--I am Fantomas."

His wretched listener could not breathe. She felt death in her veins:
she felt the earth dissolving into dust.... She sank on her knees.

"Pity, master! Pity!... Fantomas, have pity!"...

"You join those words together!... Fantomas and Pity!"... A furious
anger seized the bandit. "Fantomas knows not what mercy is, I tell
you!... Fantomas ordains that whoso resist him shall perish--shall
disappear!"

"But, Master!... What have I done?... Master!... Fantomas, what have I
done?"

Slowly the bandit enveloped himself once more in his cloak....
Bobinette was on her knees, as one nailed to the earth!... Fantomas
had hypnotised her into immobility, as the bird is hypnotised by the
cat watching its prey. He played with her. He could seize and master
her at his pleasure.

In a voice cold and hard as the nether millstone, he denounced his
victim:

"Bobinette, you aimed at my betrayal!... You pointed out the
Nihilist's haunt to Juve, to Fandor, to my most personal enemies, to
those who would hound me to the guillotine!"

"I never did!... I did not do it!... I swear it!" shrieked the
maddened girl.

Fantomas, convinced that Bobinette, and she alone, was the traitor
here....

"You are to die; but not by my hand!... The hand of Fantomas does not
deal death to those who once served him, to the traitorous wretches
once in his employ!... But you shall die, Bobinette! I deliver you to
death!"...

Fantomas laughed. He laughed because the body of this woman, huddled
in the mud, crushed to the earth, was a pleasing thing, because
Fantomas was happy when he made human creatures suffer, when he
tortured, when he wrought sweet vengeance....

Far away sounded the church bells.... The carillon was ringing....
Church bells were chiming through the night. To Bobinette, the abject
creature grovelling in the mire of the roadway, the bells sounded
vaguely serene, far, far away....

She seemed to be floating in some indefinable element, floating like
thistledown on an irresistible breeze.... Suddenly she had the
sensation that she w