ays.... And then it
disappeared.... It was stolen from me like other things that had already
been stolen from me, at that time--"

And, sinking her voice still lower, speaking her name as if she were
addressing some other woman, some unhappy friend, she repeated:

"Florence.... Florence--"

Tears streamed down her cheeks.

"She is not one of those who kill," thought Don Luis. "I can't believe
that she is an accomplice. And yet--and yet--"

He moved away from her and walked across the room from the window to the
door. The drawings of Italian landscapes on the wall attracted his
attention. Next, he read the titles of the books on the shelves. They
represented French and foreign works, novels, plays, essays, volumes of
poetry, pointing to a really cultivated and varied taste.

He saw Racine next to Dante, Stendhal near Edgar Allan Poe, Montaigne
between Goethe and Virgil. And suddenly, with that extraordinary faculty
which enabled him, in any collection of objects, to perceive details
which he did not at once take in, he noticed that one of the volumes of
an English edition of Shakespeare's works did not look exactly like the
others. There was something peculiar about the red morocco back,
something stiff, without the cracks and creases which show that a book
has been used.

It was the eighth volume. He took it out, taking care not to be heard.

He was not mistaken. The volume was a sham, a mere set of boards
surrounding a hollow space that formed a box and thus provided a regular
hiding-place; and, inside this book, he caught sight of plain note-paper,
envelopes of different kinds, and some sheets of ordinary ruled paper,
all of the same size and looking as if they had been taken from a
writing-pad.

And the appearance of these ruled sheets struck him at once. He
remembered the look of the paper on which the article for the _Echo de
France_ had been drafted. The ruling was identical, and the shape and
size appeared to be the same.

On lifting the sheets one after the other, he saw, on the last but one, a
series of lines consisting of words and figures in pencil, like notes
hurriedly jotted down.

He read:

"House on the Boulevard Suchet.
"First letter. Night of 15 April.
"Second. Night of 25th.
"Third and fourth. Nights of 5 and 15 May.
"Fifth and explosion. Night of 25 May."

And, while noting first that the date of the first night was that of the
actual day, and next that all these dates followed one