it
as a repetition of the sound she had heard when nearing her sinister
rendezvous.

Bobinette understood!... She knew!... It was a bear!... It had been
asleep. She had waked it!

Fantomas had shut her in with a bear: she was to be devoured alive!

Bobinette softly withdrew to the other side of the van. She waited. No
growling sound reached her. The bear must have gone to sleep again.
She could hear its heavy breathing. As the air became exhausted in the
confined space the noisome odour of the beast caught her by the
throat.... What was she to do? Bobinette asked herself this again and
again as the slow and dreadful hours of that night wore on.

"The bear sleeps," she said to herself; "but he will wake in the
morning hungry: he will hurl himself on me and I shall be done for!"

After interminable hours of waiting, of aching immobility, of dull
agony of mind, the interior of the van was becoming slowly visible....
She had listened to the lessening fury of the wind: the rain had
ceased. The wan light of early day came through the cracks in the
planking. Bobinette could see the bear waking up: it turned, yawned:
suddenly it fixed its eyes on her and crouched.

What should she do? What could she do?

Bobinette had once read that the human eye could frighten a wild beast
into submission: she forced herself to stare at the animal with
concentrated energy. Alas! she was too frightened herself to terrify a
ferocious animal into harmless submission!

The bear licked itself. As though sure of its prey, which he would
presently fall upon and rend, he took his time and proceeded to make
his toilette.

It was grotesquely tragic, the leisurely tranquillity of this beast
face to face with this girl who could count the seconds of life
remaining to her.

* * * * *

Now and again Bobinette could hear the rapid passings of motor-cars on
the high road outside, speeding to Paris or Versailles, passing the
van abandoned, left derelict by the wayside. Far, indeed, were these
passers from suspecting the terrible drama of which it was the
theatre.

Call out?

That were madness! Her cries might pass unheeded. Why should she
suppose the drivers of these cars racing on their appointed way would
stop, locate the cry, and succour her? No, it would but excite the
anger of the bear, rouse it to action, thus hasten her own dreadful
end!...

* * * * *

A man was walking