p to bottom of
the house, in every room and at every window.

For a few seconds, a stupid disorder, an insane terror, reigned. The
women screamed. The men banged with their fists on the closed doors.
They hustled and fought. People fell to the floor and were trampled
under foot. It was like a panic-stricken crowd, scared by threatening
flames or by a bursting shell. And, above the uproar, rose the colonel's
voice, shouting:

"Silence!... Don't move!... It's all right!... The switch is over there,
in the corner.... Wait a bit.... Here!"

He had pushed his way through his guests and reached a corner of the
gallery; and, all at once, the electric light blazed up again, while the
pandemonium of bells stopped.

Then, in the sudden light, a strange sight met the eyes. Two ladies had
fainted. Mme. Sparmiento, hanging to her husband's arm, with her knees
dragging on the floor, and livid in the face, appeared half dead. The
men, pale, with their neckties awry, looked as if they had all been in
the wars.

"The tapestries are there!" cried some one.

There was a great surprise, as though the disappearance of those
hangings ought to have been the natural result and the only plausible
explanation of the incident. But nothing had been moved. A few valuable
pictures, hanging on the walls, were there still. And, though the same
din had reverberated all over the house, though all the rooms had been
thrown into darkness, the detectives had seen no one entering or trying
to enter.

"Besides," said the colonel, "it's only the windows of the gallery that
have alarms. Nobody but myself understands how they work; and I had not
set them yet."

People laughed loudly at the way in which they had been frightened, but
they laughed without conviction and in a more or less shamefaced
fashion, for each of them was keenly alive to the absurdity of his
conduct. And they had but one thought--to get out of that house where,
say what you would, the atmosphere was one of agonizing anxiety.

Two journalists stayed behind, however; and the colonel joined them,
after attending to Edith and handing her over to her maids. The three of
them, together with the detectives, made a search that did not lead to
the discovery of anything of the least interest. Then the colonel sent
for some champagne; and the result was that it was not until a late
hour--to be exact, a quarter to three in the morning--that the
journalists took their leave, the colonel retir