claim my authority."

At this point Maitre attempted to speak. Bintrey silenced him with a
compassionate indulgence of tone and manner, as if he was silencing a
favourite child.

"No, my worthy friend, not a word. Don't excite yourself unnecessarily;
leave it to me." He turned, and addressed himself again to Obenreizer.
"I can think of nothing comparable to you, Mr. Obenreizer, but
granite--and even that wears out in course of time. In the interests of
peace and quietness--for the sake of your own dignity--relax a little. If
you will only delegate your authority to another person whom I know of,
that person may be trusted never to lose sight of your niece, night or
day!"

"You are wasting your time and mine," returned Obenreizer. "If my niece
is not rendered up to my authority within one week from this day, I
invoke the law. If you resist the law, I take her by force."

He rose to his feet as he said the last word. Maitre Voigt looked round
again towards the brown door which led into the inner room.

"Have some pity on the poor girl," pleaded Bintrey. "Remember how lately
she lost her lover by a dreadful death! Will nothing move you?"

"Nothing."

Bintrey, in his turn, rose to his feet, and looked at Maitre Voigt.
Maitre Voigt's hand, resting on the table, began to tremble. Maitre
Voigt's eyes remained fixed, as if by irresistible fascination, on the
brown door. Obenreizer, suspiciously observing him, looked that way too.

"There is somebody listening in there!" he exclaimed, with a sharp
backward glance at Bintrey.

"There are two people listening," answered Bintrey.

"Who are they?"

"You shall see."

With this answer, he raised his voice and spoke the next words--the two
common words which are on everybody's lips, at every hour of the day:
"Come in!"

The brown door opened. Supported on Marguerite's arm--his sun-burnt
colour gone, his right arm bandaged and clung over his breast--Vendale
stood before the murderer, a man risen from the dead.

In the moment of silence that followed, the singing of a caged bird in
the court-yard outside was the one sound stirring in the room. Maitre
Voigt touched Bintrey, and pointed to Obenreizer. "Look at him!" said
the notary, in a whisper.

The shock had paralysed every movement in the villain's body, but the
movement of the blood. His face was like the face of a corpse. The one
vestige of colour left in it was a livid purple streak which marked t