The Project Gutenberg EBook of Caught In The Net, by Emile Gaboriau

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Title: Caught In The Net

Author: Emile Gaboriau

Release Date: March 31, 2006 [EBook #2451]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Dagny; John Bickers

CAUGHT IN THE NET

By Emile Gaboriau

CHAPTER I.

PUTTING ON THE SCREW.

The cold on the 8th of February, 186-, was more intense than the
Parisians had experienced during the whole of the severe winter
which had preceded it, for at twelve o'clock on that day Chevalier's
thermometer, so well known by the denizens of Paris, registered three
degrees below zero. The sky was overcast and full of threatening signs
of snow, while the moisture on the pavement and roads had frozen hard,
rendering traffic of all kinds exceedingly hazardous. The whole great
city wore an air of dreariness and desolation, for even when a thin
crust of ice covers the waters of the Seine, the mind involuntarily
turns to those who have neither food, shelter, nor fuel.

This bitterly cold day actually made the landlady of the Hotel de Perou,
though she was a hard, grasping woman of Auvergne, gave a thought to the
condition of her lodgers, and one quite different from her usual idea of
obtaining the maximum of rent for the minimum of accommodation.

"The cold," remarked she to her husband, who was busily engaged in
replenishing the stove with fuel, "is enough to frighten the wits out of
a Polar bear. In this kind of weather I always feel very anxious, for
it was during a winter like this that one of our lodgers hung himself, a
trick which cost us fifty francs, in good, honest money, besides giving
us a bad name in the neighborhood. The fact is, one never knows what
lodgers are capable of doing. You should go up to the top floor, and see
how they are getting on there."

"Pooh, pooh!" replied her husband, M. Loupins; "they will do well
enough."

"Is that really your opinion?"

"I know that I am right. Daddy Tantaine went out as soon as it was
light, and a short time afterward Paul Violaine came down. There is no
one upstairs now but little Rose, and I expect th