No one could possibly enter. I swear it to you."

As she swore it a little too loudly, Rouletabille seized her arm so that
she almost cried out, but she understood instantly that it was to keep
her quiet.

"I tell you not to interrupt me, once for all."

"But, then, tell me what you are looking at like that."

"I am watching the corner where someone is going to enter the general's
chamber when everything is locked, madame. Do not move!"

Matrena, her teeth chattering, recalled that when she entered
Rouletabille's chamber she had found all the doors open that
communicated with the chain of rooms: the young man's chamber with
hers, the dressing-room and the general's chamber. She tried, under
Rouletabille's look, to keep calm, but in spite of all the reporter's
exhortations she could not hold her tongue.

"But which way? Where will they enter?"

"By the door."

"Which door?"

"That of the chamber giving on the servants' stair-way."

"Why, how? The key! The bolt!"

"They have made a key."

"But the bolt is drawn this side."

"They will draw it back from the other side."

"What! That is impossible."

Rouletabille laid his two hands on Matrena's strong shoulders and
repeated, detaching each syllable, "They will draw it back from the
other side."

"It is impossible. I repeat it."

"Madame, your Nihilists haven't invented anything. It is a trick much
in vogue with sneak thieves in hotels. All it needs is a little hole the
size of a pin bored in the panel of the door above the bolt."

"God!" quavered Matrena. "I don't understand what you mean by your
little hole. Explain to me, little domovoi."

"Follow me carefully, then," continued Rouletabille, his eyes all the
time fixed elsewhere. "The person who wishes to enter sticks through the
hole a brass wire that he has already given the necessary curve to and
which is fitted on its end with a light point of steel curved inward.
With such an instrument it is child's play, if the hole has been made
where it ought to be, to touch the bolt on the inside from the outside,
pick the knob on it, withdraw it, and open the door if the bolt is like
this one, a small door-bolt."

"Oh, oh, oh," moaned Matrena, who paled visibly. "And that hole?"

"It exists."

"You have discovered it?"

"Yes, the first hour I was here."

"Oh, domovoi! But how did you do that when you never entered the
general's chamber until to-night?"

"Doubtless, but I went up that servants'