tudy which included the telephone box.

The thought of this suggested another. On reflection, remembering that he
used sometimes to wonder how Count Malonyi's ancestress had managed to
keep alive behind the curtain on the days when she had to hide there, he
realized that there must have been a communication between the secret
passage and what was now the telephone box, a communication too narrow to
admit a person's body, but serving as a ventilating shaft.

As a precaution, in case the secret passage was discovered, a stone
concealed the upper aperture of this shaft. Count Malonyi must have
closed up the lower end when he restored the wainscoting of the study.

So there he was, imprisoned in the thickness of the walls, with no very
definite intention beyond that of escaping from the clutches of the
police. More hours passed.

Gradually, tortured with hunger and thirst, he fell into a heavy sleep,
disturbed by painful nightmares which he would have given much to be able
to throw off. But he slept too deeply to recover consciousness until
eight o'clock in the evening.

When he woke up, feeling very tired, he saw his position in an
unexpectedly hideous light and, at the same time, so accurately that,
yielding to a sudden change of opinion marked by no little fear, he
resolved to leave his hiding-place and give himself up. Anything was
better than the torture which he was enduring and the dangers to which
longer waiting exposed him.

But, on turning round to reach the entrance to his hole, he perceived
first that the stone did not swing over when merely pushed, and, next,
after several attempts, that he could not manage to find the mechanism
which no doubt worked the stone. He persisted. His exertions were all in
vain. The stone did not budge. Only, at each exertion, a few bits of
stone came crumbling from the upper part of the wall and still further
narrowed the space in which he was able to move.

It cost him a considerable effort to master his excitement and to
say, jokingly:

"That's capital! I shall be reduced now to calling for help. I, Arsene
Lupin! Yes, to call in the help of those gentlemen of the police.
Otherwise, the odds on my being buried alive will increase every minute.
They're ten to one as it is!"

He clenched his fists.

"Hang it! I'll get out of this scrape by myself! Call for help? Not if
I know it!"

He summoned up all his energies to think, but his jaded brain gave him
none but confused