lf. What could it be
for? Was it a trap? Perhaps it was a police souriciere? He remembered
the warning of Benoit.

Jean hesitated,--quite naturally, since he was up to the tricks of the
political police. If this were a trap, why, Mlle. Fouchette must have
known all about it! Yet that would be impossible.

Then he thought of M. de Beauchamp, and his brow cleared. Whatever the
arrangement, it could have never been designed with regard to the
present occupant of the appartement,--and M. de Beauchamp had escaped.

He lighted a cigarette and took a turn or two up and down,--a habit of
his when lost in thought.

"Ah! it is a door of love!" he concluded. "Yes; that is all. Well, we
shall find out about that pretty soon."

The more he thought of the handsome, godlike artist who had so
mysteriously fled, why, the more he recalled Mlle. Fouchette's
confusion on a certain evening when he first called on her, and her
recent disinclination to discuss his disappearance. He was now certain
that this mysterious exit emptied into her room. He smiled at his own
sagacity. His philosophy found the same expression of the cabman of
Rue Monge,--

"Toujours de meme, ces femmes-la!"

He laughed at the trick she had played him; he would show her how
quickly he had reached its solution. He went outside and tapped gently
on her door.

No reply.

He tried the lock, but it was unyielding. Examination by the light of
a match showed no key on the inside.

"Eh bien! I will go by the same route," he said, returning to his
room.

He brought a lighted candle to bear on the magical closet. It proved
to be, as stated, the ordinary blind closet of the ancient Parisian
houses, the depth of the wall's thickness and about three feet wide;
the door being flush with the wall and covered with the same paper,
the opening was unnoticeable to the casual view.

All Parisian doors close with a snap-lock, and a key is indispensable.
This knowledge is acquired by the foreigner after leaving his key on
the inside a few times and hunting up a locksmith after midnight.

The back of these closets, which are used for cupboards as well as
receptacles for clothing, abuts on the adjoining room, quite often, in
a thin sheathing of lath and plaster, which, being covered with the
wall-paper, is concealed from the neighboring eyes, but through which
a listener may be constantly informed as to what is going on next
door.

A superficial survey of the place having d