“ I was thinking of him at this very minute!... Yes,” she went on, as she read, “I shall certainly pay him a visit soon.” Madame de Vibray put Jacques Dollon’s letter in her handbag, recognising on the back of the second letter the initials B.N., which she knew to be the discreet superscription on the business paper of her bankers, Messieurs Barbey-Nanteuil. It was long and closely written, in a fine, regular hand. When she began to read it her attention was wandering, for her mind was full of Sonia Danidoff and Thomery, and what she had ascertained regarding their relation to each other; but little by little she became absorbed in what she was reading, till her whole attention was taken captive. As she read on, however, her eyes opened more and more widely, there was a look of keenest anguish in them, her features contracted as if in pain, her bosom heaved, her fingers were trembling under the stress of some intense emotion:

“Oh, my God! Ah! My God!” she gasped out several times in a half-choked voice.

Silence had reigned for a long while in the smart townhouse of the Baroness de Vibray in the avenue Henri Martin...From without came no sound; the avenue was quiet, deserted; the night was dark. But when three o’clock struck, the bedroom of Madame de Vibray was still flooded with light. She had not left her writing-table since she had read the letter of her bankers, Messieurs Barbey-Nanteuil. She wrote on, and on, without intermission.

CHAPTER THREE : UNEXPECTED COMPLICATIONS

At nine o’clock in the morning, the staff of that great evening paper, La Capitale, were assembled in the vast editorial room, writing out their copy, in the midst of a whirlwind of continual comings and goings, of persistent racket, of perpetual discussions.

A stranger entering this room, which among its frequenters went by the name of “The Wild Beasts’ Cage”, might easily have thought he was witnessing some thirty schoolboys at play in recreation time, instead of being in the presence of famous journalists celebrated for their reports and articles.

Jérôme Fandor had no sooner appeared on the threshold than he was accorded a variety of greetings – ironical, cordial, fault-finding, sympathetic. But he ignored them all; for, like most of those who came into the editorial room at this hour, he was preoccupied with one thing only – where would the whims of his editorial secretary send him flying for news, in the course of a few minutes? On what difficult and delicate quest would he be despatched? It depended on the exigencies of passing events, on how questions of the hour struck the editorial secretary, in relation to Fandor.

Just as he had expected, the editorial secretary called him.

“Hey! Fandor, come here a minute! I am on the make-up: what have you got for today?”

“I don’t know. Who has charge of the landing of the King of Spain?”