Better not attract attention to myself just at present, thought Fandor. I’ll wait until the cell door is opened. If Fuselier doesn’t wish to give me permission to remain, I can at any rate cast a rapid glance round that ill-fated little cell!

Fandor followed, at a distance, the wavering steps of the poor girl whom Monsieur Fuselier was supporting with fatherly care.

When they paused before one of the cells pointed out by the head warder, Monsieur Fuselier turned to Elizabeth Dollon:“Do you think you are strong enough to bear this ordeal, mademoiselle... You are determined to see your brother?”

Elizabeth bent her head; the magistrate turned towards the warder:

“Open,” he said. As the key was turned in the lock he said: “According to instructions from the Head, we have placed him on his bed again ... There is nothing to frighten you... he seems to be asleep... Now then!” But as he opened the door, stretching his arm in the direction of the bed where the body of Jacques Dollon should be, an oath escaped him:

“Great Heavens! The corpse is gone!”

In this cell with its bare walls, its sole furniture an iron bedstead and a stool riveted to the floor, in this little cell which the eye could glance round in a second, there was no vestige of a corpse: Jacques Dollon’s body was not there!

“You have mistaken the cell,” said the magistrate sharply.“No, no! “cried the astounded warder.

“You can see, can’t you, that Jacques Dollon is not there?” “He was there a few minutes ago!”

“Then they must have taken him somewhere else!”

“The keys have never left me!”

“Oh, come now!”

“No, sir. He was there... now he isn’t there! That’s all I know!... Hey! You down there! “yelled the warder; “Who knows what’s become of the corpse in cell 12?... The corpse we laid out just now?”

One after the other the warders came running. All confirmed what their chief had said: the dead body of Jacques Dollon had been left there, lying on the bed: not a soul had entered the cell: not a soul had touched the corpse!... Yet it was no longer there! Jérôme Fandor, well in the background, followed the scene with an ironic smile.

The frantic warders, the growing stupefaction of Monsieur Fuselier, amused him no end. The magistrate was trying to understand the how, why, and wherefore of this incredible disappearance.

“As this man is not here, he cannot have been dead

– he has escaped... but if he wanted to escape, he must have been guilty!... Oh, I cannot make head or tail of it!” Seizing the head warder by the shoulders, almost roughly, Monsieur Fuselier asked:

“Look here, chief, was this man dead, or wasn’t he?” Elizabeth Dollon was repeating:

“He lives! He lives! “ and laughing wildly.

The warder raised his hand as though taking a solemn oath: