The night was dark and stormy. On the Sceaux road a gipsy was braving the tempest, making difficult headway in the teeth of a gale which flapped her long cloak with impeding force, soaked her to the skin, dashed masses of water in her face, plastered streaming locks to her forehead, taking her breath with its suffocating rush. Shielding her mouth with her hand, the gipsy pressed steadily forward.

A church struck eleven slow strokes, borne on the wind. Lashed by the tempest, the gipsy pressed on, muttering as she moved:

"Vagualame told me that he would be at the first milestone beyond the aviation sheds.... I must get there! I will get there!"

It was Bobinette, struggling on in blind obedience to him whom she considered her master, towards the strange meeting-place fixed by the bandit five days ago.

Under her looks of Parisian delicacy, Bobinette had a valiant spirit, a high-strung temperament and a will of steel.... Bobinette wished to reach the appointed trysting-place: she would reach it.

But gipsy Bobinette had her fears. She was painfully impressed by the obscurity of the night—sinister, menacing. From the marshy fields flanking her to right and left unaccustomed sounds, weird noises reached her straining ears through the gusty darkness.

Then what did her master want with her here, and at such an hour?

Never had Bobinette confessed to herself that Vagualame's real identity was unknown to her. What dark personality was hid behind that familiar figure? She asked herself that now, with shuddering apprehension. She had remarked certain coincidences, noted certain details: she divined that this enigmatic accordion player might well be none other than—FantÔmas.

FantÔmas! That name was it not a frightful symbol of all the crimes, all the atrocities, the monstrous synthesis of unpunished evil?

In her tormented brain those three syllables of sinister intent were sounding like a funeral knell.... At thought of FantÔmas and Vagualame co-mingled, Bobinette's terror-filled heart fainted within her. Yet, prey to haunting terrors as she was, Bobinette pressed unfalteringly forward towards what Fate held for her.

One reassuring thought came to hearten her. At every step she took the sequins of her gipsy circlet moved and shook and tinkled on her forehead. They reminded her of the words chanted by the old second-hand dealer when he sold her the string of sequins, words from the celebrated song of the Andalusian gipsies.:

Was she truly hastening towards good fortune through this night of wind and rain?... Why not? Bobinette felt comforted. She said to herself that since Vagualame had summoned her to meet him in gipsy costume, it must be because he intended to help her to escape: otherwise why had he foreseen the necessity for such a disguise?

To make sure of finding the rendezvous, she had taken a reconnoitering journey along the Sceaux road the night before.... She knew now she was close to the famous milestone.

Bobinette jumped as though she would leap out of her skin!

On the left side of the road tall trees, stripped of their leaves, stood swaying like skeletons in the wind. Just there her eyes had seen something dark, a black patch, blacker than the surrounding night.

What was it?

A strange sound issued from the darkness, a low, dull, deep, complaining sound breathed from some infernal throat! Was it a cry, a growl, a snarl?... She halted, shivering with fright, her ears humming, her heart contracted in the grip of an indescribable terror, doubting her senses, doubting the reality of the sound she had heard.

Bobinette stood motionless.

The wind whistling through the branches conveyed another sound to her senses. She heard a mocking voice, harsh, imperious, a menacing voice, a voice whose orders she had obeyed many a time and oft, a voice she had never heard without secret terror, the voice of her master—Vagualame!

"Go forward, you fool! Why do you halt?"

As though galvanised, Bobinette with a supreme effort of will obeyed. A few seconds and she was by the side of Vagualame, who had come to meet her.

"Did you hear?" she gasped.

"I heard the bellowing of the wind," laughed Vagualame: "I heard the sound of sleety rain, I heard the noise of trees writhing and creaking in the wind—nothing more!"

"Someone or something cried out!"

"Who could?... We are alone here!... Bobinette you are alone here with me!"

There was a pause. Vagualame's voice was once more mocking.

"Am I to think you are afraid?"

"No, Vagualame, I am not afraid; but."...

"But you are trembling like a leaf!" cried Vagualame, with a burst of laughter which sounded strangely false. He seized Bobinette in an iron grip and forced her forward.

"Come! Come under shelter!" They moved towards the black blot Bobinette had not yet identified. Almost directly they were leaning against a gipsy van drawn up at the side of the road.

"Your future domicile," said Vagualame, showing the van to the bewildered Bobinette. "But this is not the time to install yourself—there are things to be said first—between you and me, Bobinette!"

The bandit was enveloped from head to foot in a dark cloak. All Bobinette could see of him was his profile: his features were concealed by a soft felt hat with turned-down brim, which showed at intervals against the sky when the lightning flashed and flickered.

The girl shivered: her master's last words were full of some dark menace.

"What do you want to say?" she murmured.

Vagualame took a few steps forward, then returned to where the girl was leaning against the van.

"Listen to me, Bobinette, listen, for, by Heaven, the words I am about to utter are the last you will ever hear."

Before Bobinette could interrupt, Vagualame continued:

"Tell me, do you know of anything more wicked, more contemptible, more vile, more shameful than treachery, than betrayal, than a trap set, a snare laid to catch one who has always been your friend, your defender?... Tell me, Bobinette, who is more hateful than the Judas who sells you with a kiss?... Tell me, Bobinette, who is less worthy of pity than the cowardly criminal who betrays his accomplice?... Than the bandit who delivers up his chief for money, perhaps for less than money—because of fear—who betrays his master to save his own skin?"...

Bobinette did not seem to understand one word of this apostrophe. She kept silence, terrified, crushed, in front of the awful abyss she divined.

Vagualame seized her by the shoulders and shook her brutally, thrusting her fiercely against the side of the van.

"Speak! Reply, Bobinette! I command you!"

"I do not understand you! I am afraid!"

A shout of ferocious laughter burst from Vagualame.

"You do not understand me! You are afraid?... Ah! If you are afraid it is because you understand well enough!... Bobinette! You know well enough what I have to reproach you with!... What I have to force you to expiate!"...

A hoarse cry escaped the girl's parched lips:

"You are mad, mad, Vagualame!... Pity!... Pity!"

In a voice so hard, so biting, that the words seemed arrows piercing her quivering flesh, the bandit addressed his victim:

"Bobinette, you deceive yourself strangely! I am not of those to whom one cries for pity!... I know not the word, nor such weakness. I have never had it, and never shall have it for any living soul."

The bandit paused. Then, in a tone of rising anger, he continued:

"And you think me mad? But what sort of woman are you, Bobinette, to try and deceive me? What madness is yours to think, to imagine you can dupe me?... To confess that with such words and speeches as your feminine mind can think of you are going to ensnare me, make me alter my decision, turn me from my vengeance—that you should decide how I shall act—I?... I?... Vagualame?"

The bandit pronounced "I?" with such an accent of authority, with such terrific pride, that Bobinette, with a sound as though the death rattle were in her throat, cried:

"Vagualame! Who are you? Tell me!... Tell me!"...

"You ask me who I am?... You wish to know?... It be according to your wish!... Who am I?... Look!"...

Slowly, with a movement firm and dignified, Vagualame unfolded the long cloak which enveloped him. He tore off his hat and flung it at his feet. With arms crossed he apostrophied Bobinette:

"Dare to utter my name! Dare to name me!"

Before Bobinette's distracted eyes a terrifying outline showed itself.... The beggar of a moment ago, his cloak removed, his hat thrown to the ground, appeared no more a bent old man: he stood there, upright, young, vigorous, superbly muscular. He was sheathed from head to foot in a tight-fitting garment, black as Erebus!

Bobinette could not see his face, a black hood covered it: two gleaming eyes alone were visible, eyes that to the distraught girl seemed lit by fires from hell!

This vision, the vision of this man without a face, resembling no other man, this apparition with nameless mask, its body like some statue cut from solid darkness, was yet so definite in its mystery that Bobinette, uttering the indescribable cry of some inhuman thing, articulated:

"FantÔmas!... You are FantÔmas!"

The bandit spoke:

"I am FantÔmas!... I am he for whom the entire world is searching, whom none has ever seen, whom none can recognise!... I am Crime incarnated!... I am Night!... No human sees my face, because Crime and Night are featureless!... I am illimitable Power!... I am he who mocks at all the powers, at all the efforts, at all the forces!... I am master of all, of everything; of all times and seasons.... I am Death!... Bobinette, thou hast said it—I am FantÔmas."

His wretched listener could not breathe. She felt death in her veins: she felt the earth dissolving into dust.... She sank on her knees.

"Pity, master! Pity!... FantÔmas, have pity!"...

"You join those words together!... FantÔmas and Pity!"... A furious anger seized the bandit. "FantÔmas knows not what mercy is, I tell you!... FantÔmas ordains that whoso resist him shall perish—shall disappear!"

"But, Master!... What have I done?... Master!... FantÔmas, what have I done?"

Slowly the bandit enveloped himself once more in his cloak.... Bobinette was on her knees, as one nailed to the earth!... FantÔmas had hypnotised her into immobility, as the bird is hypnotised by the cat watching its prey. He played with her. He could seize and master her at his pleasure.

In a voice cold and hard as the nether millstone, he denounced his victim:

"Bobinette, you aimed at my betrayal!... You pointed out the Nihilist's haunt to Juve, to Fandor, to my most personal enemies, to those who would hound me to the guillotine!"

"I never did!... I did not do it!... I swear it!" shrieked the maddened girl.

FantÔmas, convinced that Bobinette, and she alone, was the traitor here....

"You are to die; but not by my hand!... The hand of FantÔmas does not deal death to those who once served him, to the traitorous wretches once in his employ!... But you shall die, Bobinette! I deliver you to death!"...

FantÔmas laughed. He laughed because the body of this woman, huddled in the mud, crushed to the earth, was a pleasing thing, because FantÔmas was happy when he made human creatures suffer, when he tortured, when he wrought sweet vengeance....

Far away sounded the church bells.... The carillon was ringing.... Church bells were chiming through the night. To Bobinette, the abject creature grovelling in the mire of the roadway, the bells sounded vaguely serene, far, far away....

She seemed to be floating in some indefinable element, floating like thistledown on an irresistible breeze.... Suddenly she had the sensation that she was sinking, falling, that she was rolling down, down, into the depths of a bottomless abyss....

When she opened her eyes, tried to move, sat up, she knew she was not dreaming.... She knew she had lost consciousness and was coming back to life.... She asked herself could she possibly be alive? FantÔmas had threatened her with death, and yet she lived.... Where was she?... Bobinette felt so weak and giddy that she remained in a sitting posture.... What exactly had happened?... Ah!—yes!—when FantÔmas had announced she was to die, she had fallen down on the road: her skirt was still wet and muddy, her testing fingers told her that! She was cold! What had happened since?... Bobinette heard the wind blowing rain as still falling, but she noticed none fell on her face.

"Where am I?" she asked aloud. Clear came the mental answer:

"FantÔmas has shut me up in this van! I am imprisoned in this van!"... She felt about her with her fingers. She was certainly sitting on rough boards.... She knelt, she stretched out her arms: she touched rough boards.... Yes, this was the van she was in!... Was FantÔmas quite near? He might appear again! She was not saved!... But in Bobinette who, terrified at being confronted with FantÔmas self-confessed, had tasted the bitterness of death, a powerful reaction had set in: she was becoming mistress of herself once more.

FantÔmas had said to her: "Thou shalt die!" She now decided that she would live, would save herself!... She must escape!

"If FantÔmas were there I should hear him," she thought. "He must have gone.... I must at all costs escape from this prison before he returns."

Bobinette got up.... The van must have a door, a window. She would force her way out somehow. She was strong, and she was fighting for her life!... She would make a tour of the van!... She felt her way by fingering the wooden side of her prison.... The van must be empty, she thought, for she had not encountered any furniture—when, suddenly, she felt her hand come into contact with something soft and warm, which moved. What was it?...

Bobinette jumped back.... She must be mad to imagine!... She waited a few moments—she stepped forward—anew her fingers touched something.... She could not say what!... But while she tried to define the strange object her fingers touched, she felt the unknown thing was drawing back—was avoiding her caress!...

The van was now filled with a formidable growling. She recognised 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!

FantÔmas 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 on the Sceaux road—walking fast. He wore the clothes of a working man. He was leading a sorry nag.... The man halted and let the nag go free. A sound had caught his ear—a growling sound.

He listened intently.

"Did I imagine it?" he murmured.

Again that growling, punctuated by a woman's sharp scream. The man was off at racing speed towards the van, which was but a hundred yards away.

"Great Heaven! Shall I arrive too late?" ejaculated the man.

Reaching it, breathless, he glued his ear to the door. The van shook with the movement and growling of some beast of prey about to spring.

The man drew back, rushed forward, hurled himself against the door and drove it inwards.

A shot broke the silence of the morning.

The man rolled over the body of the bear, shot dead through the heart. The man freed himself; escaped the convulsive movement of its limbs, and crawled towards a crumpled heap huddled in a corner of this tragic stage. Bobinette's poor face, exposed to view, was slashed and torn: it bore the dreadful claw-marks of the bear.

The man placed his hand on her heart.

"She lives!" he said softly.

Supporting her with infinite gentleness, the man addressed her in a voice trembling with emotion:

"Do not be afraid, Bobinette! You are saved! It is Juve who is telling you so! It is Juve!"