nding calmly on
a table, took aim a second time, fired from the shoulder; and the crack
of the second report was heard. Then he withdrew into the room.

Down below, as nobody answered the peal at the bell, the assailants
demolished the door, which gave way almost immediately. They made for
the staircase, but their onrush was at once stopped, on the first
floor, by an accumulation of beds, chairs and other furniture, forming
a regular barricade and so close-entangled that it took the aggressors
four or five minutes to clear themselves a passage.

Those four or five minutes lost were enough to render all pursuit
hopeless. When they reached the second floor they heard a voice shouting
from above:

"This way, friends! Eighteen stairs more. A thousand apologies for
giving you so much trouble!"

They ran up those eighteen stairs and nimbly at that! But, at the top,
above the third story, was the garret, which was reached by a ladder and
a trapdoor. And the fugitive had taken away the ladder and bolted the
trapdoor.

The reader will not have forgotten the sensation created by this amazing
action, the editions of the papers issued in quick succession, the
newsboys tearing and shouting through the streets, the whole metropolis
on edge with indignation and, we may say, with anxious curiosity.

But it was at the headquarters of police that the excitement developed
into a paroxysm. Men flung themselves about on every side. Messages,
telegrams, telephone calls followed one upon the other.

At last, at eleven o'clock in the morning, there was a meeting in
the office of the prefect of police, and Prasville was there. The
chief-detective read a report of his inquiry, the results of which
amounted to this: shortly before midnight yesterday some one had rung
at the house on the Boulevard Arago. The portress, who slept in a small
room on the ground-floor, behind one of the shops pulled the rope. A man
came and tapped at her door. He said that he had come from the police on
an urgent matter concerning to-morrow's execution. The portress opened
the door and was at once attacked, gagged and bound.

Ten minutes later a lady and gentleman who lived on the first floor and
who had just come home were also reduced to helplessness by the same
individual and locked up, each in one of the two empty shops. The
third-floor tenant underwent a similar fate, but in his own flat and his
own bedroom, which the man was able to enter without being h