Fandor attempted some discreet movements as a test. The wickerwork creaked as he gently shook the trunk at short intervals. Not an answering sound came from outside! Wracked with cramp, Fandor felt that the moment of escape had arrived.

He was, certainly, the only living soul in the place – listen as he might, and his sense of hearing was acute, he could not hear any sound of breathing. Yes, the time to quit his prison had come!

Fandor had with him, besides his revolver, a box of matches, and a hunter’s knife consisting of several blades, and a little saw. Getting out his knife with some difficulty, he began to hack at the wickerwork. Dry and pliant, the interlaced rods did not long resist the saw’s steel teeth. It took him a bare ten minutes to make an opening, sufficiently large to push his head and shoulders through: the rest of his body followed easily. Such was his haste to be free, that he tore, not only his clothes, but his elbows and hands, on the jagged ends of the broken wickerwork: large drops of blood fell on the flooring.

“Bah! I’ve got off cheaply!” cried Fandor, standing up to relax his cramped muscles and stretching his aching legs and arms.

“Unless I am damned well mistaken, I am lord of all I survey! I am alone in my glory! There’s not a soul in the place! Good luck indeed!”

He turned for a last look at his broken prison house, the cage in which he had spent such stressful hours. He suddenly stiffened and drew back: a nervous trembling seized him – the nervous trembling of sudden shock.

Between the trunk, which had been dumped down in the centre of a large square room, without a scrap of furniture in it, and the window, through whose shutters the rays of morning sunshine shone, Fandor had caught sight of a body lying on the floor – a man’s body! Fandor leapt forward.

Was this same cunning criminal feigning sleep for some evil purpose? Standing over that motionless figure, Fandor bent and touched one of the man’s hands: it was ice cold and rigid. The man was dead!

To see his face was imperative: it was turned towards the floor. With difficulty Fandor raised the head and shoulders, for they were unusually large and strongly built.

Fandor glanced at the face and suddenly withdrew his hand: the corpse fell back on the floor with a thud!

“Thomery!” murmured Fandor. “Why, it’s Thomery!”

It was indeed the well-known sugar refiner’s body.

The face was purple, the tongue protruding, ruptured eyeballs bulging and bloody. Round his neck was tied a tri-colored scarf – the scarf of a police inspector! Was this the murderer’s ironic touch?

Fandor sank down quite overcome. He tried to collect his thoughts.