"Oh! who is that?"

From the shadow issued some one who calmly replied:

"It is I."

"Ah!—I know you now, but why this disguise?"

"Madame the Superior—I present myself—Doctor Chaleck. Isn't my disguise as good as yours?"

"What do you want of me? Speak quickly, I am frightened."

"To begin with, I thank you for coming to the tryst at your house—at ours. For five Tuesdays I have waited in vain. But first, madame, explain your sudden conversion, the reason of your sudden entry into Orders. That is a strange device for the mistress of Gurn."

Doctor Chaleck held under the lash of his irony the unhappy woman who seemed overcome by anxiety. The two were facing each other in the large room that formed the middle of the first floor of the house in Boulevard Inkermann at Neuilly. It was, in fact, the only room fit to use: they had left to neglect and inclement weather the other rooms in the elegant mansion which some years before was considered in the Parisian world as one of the most comfortable and luxurious in the foreign colony.

It was in truth here that in days gone by the tragic drama had been played: death had laid its cold hand upon the gilded trappings of the great apartment and laughter and joy had taken flight. However, time passes so quickly and evil memories so soon grow dim that many had forgotten the grim happenings which three years before had beset the mansion on the Boulevard.

It was at first the deep mourning of Lady Beltham whose husband had been mysteriously done to death at Belleville. Then, some weeks later, occurred the awful scene of the arrest of Lord Beltham's murderer, just as he was leaving the house, an arrest due to Juve, who, though he succeeded in laying hands on the assassin, the infamous Gurn, was not able to prove—sure though he might be of it—that the slayer of the husband was the lover of the wife.

After these shocking events Lady Beltham left France, dismissing the many attendants with whom she loved to surround herself like a true queen of beauty, luxury and wealth.

At rare intervals the Lady, whose existence grew more and more mysterious, went back for a few days to her house at Neuilly. She would vanish, would reappear, living like a recluse, almost in entire solitude, receiving none of her old acquaintances.

About a year ago she seemed to want to settle finally at Boulevard Inkermann. Workmen began to put the house in order again, the lodge was opened and a family of caretakers came; then suddenly the work had been broken off; some weeks went by while Lady Beltham lived alone with her companion; then both disappeared.

Lady Beltham shivered, and, gathering about her shoulders the cloak which covered her religious habit, muttered: "I'm cold."

"Beastly weather, and to think this is July."

Chaleck crossed to a register in the corner of the room.

"No good to leave that open! An icy wind comes through the passage to the cellar."

Lady Beltham turned in alarm toward her enigmatic companion.

"Why did you let it be supposed I was dead?"

"Why did you yourself leave here two days before the crime at the CitÉ Frochot?"

Lady Beltham hung her head and with a sob in her voice:

"I was deserted and jealous. Besides, I was enduring frightful remorse. The idea had come to me to write down the terrible secret which haunted my spirit, to give the story to some one I could trust, an attorney, and then——"

"Go on, pray!"

"And, then, what I had written suddenly vanished. It was after that I lost my head and fled. I had long been meaning to withdraw from the world. The Sisters of St. Clotilde offered to receive me in their house at Nogent."

Chaleck added brutally:

"That isn't all. You forgot to say you were afraid. Come, be frank, afraid of Gurn, of me!"

"Well, yes, I was afraid, not so much of you, but of our crimes. I am also afraid of dying."

"That confession you wrote became known to some one who confided it to me."

"Heavens," murmured the unhappy woman. "Who mentioned it?"

Chaleck had again crossed to the register, which, although closed by him some moments before, was open again, letting into the room a blast of icy air from the basement.

"This can't stay shut, it must be seen to," he muttered.

Lady Beltham, shaken by a nervous tremour, insisted:

"Who betrayed me? Who told?"

Chaleck seated himself by her side.

"You remember Valgrand, the actor? Well, Valgrand was married. His wife sought to clear up the mystery of his disappearance and went—where, I ask you? Why, to you, Lady Beltham! You took her as companion! It would have been impossible to introduce a more redoubtable spy into the house than the widow Valgrand, known by you under the false name of Mme. Raymond."

Lady Beltham remained panic-stricken.

"We are lost!"

Chaleck squeezed her two hands in a genuine burst of affection.

"We are saved!" he shouted. "Mme. Raymond will talk no more!"

"The body at the CitÉ Frochot!"

Chaleck nodded. "Yes."

She looked at him in alarm, mingled with repulsion and horror.

"Now, understand that that death saved you, and if I saved you it is because I loved you, love you still, will always love you!"

Lady Beltham, overcome, let herself fall into Chaleck's arms, her head resting on her lover's shoulder as she wept hot tears.

Lady Beltham was once more enslaved, a captive! More than two years ago she had broken with the mysterious and terrible being whom she had once egged on to kill her husband, and with whom she then committed the most appalling of crimes. During this separation the unhappy woman had tried to pull herself together, to acquire a fresh honesty of mind and body, a new soul; dreamed of finding again in religion some help, some forgetfulness. She had later experienced the frightful tortures of jealousy, knowing her late lover had mistresses! But she resisted the craving to see him again, and pictured him to herself in such terrible guise that she felt an overwhelming fear of finding herself face to face with him. Now the season of calm and quiet she had evoked was suddenly dispelled. First came the mysterious disappearance of her confession and the weird crime of the CitÉ Frochot following on its loss. To be sure she did not then know that Doctor Chaleck, of whom the papers spoke, was none other than Gurn, but had they not in La Capitale spoken of FantÔmas in that connection? And at this disquieting comparison Lady Beltham had felt sinister forebodings. Other mysteries had then supervened, unaccountable to the guilty lady who by that time was already seeking her new birth in the bosom of Religion. Alas! her miseries were to grow definite enough.

At the very gate of the convent an innocent man, Bonardin, the actor, fell victim to the attack of Juve, also innocent, and in that affair she felt the complicity of her late lover grow more and more certain. She then received a letter from him, followed by a second. Gurn called her to his place—their place—the mansion at Neuilly, every Tuesday night. She held out several times despite threatened reprisals. At last she yielded and went: she expected Gurn—it was Chaleck she found. The two were one!

From henceforth she was faced with this accomplice, guilty of new crimes, clothed in a new personality, already under suspicion, which doubtless he would cast off only to assume another which would enable him still further to extend the list of his crimes! But despite all the horror her lover inspired her with she felt herself tamed again, powerless to resist him, ready to do anything the moment he bade her!

She inquired feebly:

"Who was it killed Mme. Raymond? Was it that ruffian—whom they speak of in the papers—Loupart?"

"Well, not exactly!"

"Then was it you? Speak, I would rather know."

"It was neither he nor I, and yet it was to some extent both."

"I do not understand."

"It is rather difficult to understand. Our 'executioner' does not lack originality. I may say it is something which lives yet does not think."

"Who is it! Who is it!"

"Why not ask Detective Juve. Oh! Juve, too, would like to know who the deuce all these people are. Gurn, Chaleck, Loupart, and, above all—FantÔmas!"

"FantÔmas! Ah, I scarcely dare utter that name. And yet a doubt oppresses my heart! Tell me, are you not, yourself—FantÔmas?"

Chaleck freed himself gently, for Lady Beltham had wound her arms round his neck.

"I know nothing, I am merely the lover who loves you."

"Then let us go far away. Let us begin a new existence together. Will you? Come!" She stopped all at once—"I heard a noise." Chaleck, too, listened. Some slight creakings had, indeed, disturbed the hush of the room. But outside the wind and the rain whirled around the dilapidated, lonely abode, and it was not surprising that unaccountable sounds should be audible in the stillness. Once more Lady Beltham built up her plans, catching a glimpse of a future all peace and happiness.

With a brief, harsh remark, Chaleck brought her back to reality.

"All that cannot be, at least for the moment, we must first——"

Lady Beltham laid her hand on his lips.

"Do not speak!" she begged. "A fresh crime—that's what you mean?"

"A vengeance, an execution! A man has set himself to run me down, has determined my ruin: between us it is a struggle without quarter; my life is not safe but at the cost of his, so he must perish. In four days they will find Detective Juve dead in his own bed. And with him will finally vanish the fiction he has evoked of FantÔmas! FantÔmas! Ah, if society knew—if humanity, instead of being what it is—but it matters little!"

"And FantÔmas? What will become of him—of you?"

"Have I told you that I was FantÔmas?"

"No," stammered she, "but——"

The dim light of a pale dawn filtered through the closed shutters of the big drawing-room in which lover and mistress had met again, after long weeks of separation, to call up sinister memories. For all their hopes the limit of the tribulations to which they were a prey seemed still far off.

Chaleck blew out the lamp. He drew aside the curtains. Sharply he put an end to the interview:

"I am off, Lady Beltham. Soon we shall meet again. Never let anyone suspect what we have said to each other—Farewell."

The hapless woman, crushed and broken by emotion, remained nearly an hour alone in the great room. Then the requirements of her official life came to her mind. It was necessary to return to the convent at Nogent.

Extricating themselves painfully from the pipes of the great stove, Juve and Fandor, covered with plaster, wreathed with cobwebs, and freely sprinkled with dust, fell back suddenly into the middle of the cellar. The two men, heedless of the disarray of their dress and their painful cramped limbs, spoke both at once, dumbfounded but joyful:

"Well, Juve?"

"Well, Fandor, we got something for our money."

"Oh, what a lovely night, Juve; I wouldn't have given up my place for a fortune."

"We had front seats, though to be sure the velvet armchairs were lacking."

They were silent for a moment, their minds fully occupied with a crowd of ideas. So Chaleck and Loupart were one and the same? And Lady Beltham was indeed the accomplice of Gurn. An unhappy accomplice, repentant, wretched, a criminal through love.

"Fandor, they are ours now. Let us act!"

The pair, not sorry to breathe a little more easily than they had done for the past few hours, went upstairs, reached the ground floor and made their way into the drawing-room, where during the night Doctor Chaleck and Lady Beltham had had their memorable interview.

Juve, without a word, paced up and down the room, poking in all the corners, then gave a cry:

"Here is the famous mouth of the heater which that brute Chaleck tried to shut, and I persisted in opening so as not to lose a word of his instructive conversation. No matter, if he felt cold, what did I feel like?"

"The fact is," added Fandor, whose hoarse voice bore witness to the difficulties he had just passed through, "these stove pipes have very little comfort about them."

"What can you expect?" cried Juve. "The architect did not think of us when he built the house. And now, Fandor, we have a hard task before us and we need all the luck we can get. For certainly it is FantÔmas we have unearthed: FantÔmas, the lover of Lady Beltham, the slayer of her husband, the murderer of Valgrand, the master that got rid of Mme. Raymond! Gurn, Chaleck, Loupart. The one being who can be all those and himself too—FantÔmas."

As the two friends left Lady Beltham's house without attracting notice, the detective drew from his pocket a species of little scale which he showed Fandor.

"What do you make of that?"

"I haven't the least idea."

"Well, I have, and it may put us in the way of a great discovery. Did you notice that Chaleck did not say definitely who the 'executioner' of Mme. Raymond was?"

"To be sure."

"Well, I believe that I have a morsel of this 'executioner' in my pocket."