elp to solve his doubts.
On peering through the grated aperture in the door of the cell, he
perceived the prisoner lying on the pallet that stood opposite the
door. His face was turned toward the wall, and he was enveloped in the
coverlid up to his eyes. He was not asleep, for Lecoq could detect a
strange movement of the body, which puzzled and annoyed him. On applying
his ear instead of his eye to the aperture, he distinguished a stifled
moan. There could no longer be any doubt. The death rattle was sounding
in the prisoner's throat.

"Help! help!" cried Lecoq, greatly excited. "The prisoner is killing
himself!"

A dozen keepers hastened to the spot. The door was quickly opened,
and it was then ascertained that the prisoner, having torn a strip of
binding from his clothes, had fastened it round his neck and tried to
strangle himself with the assistance of a spoon that had been left him
with his food. He was already unconscious, and the prison doctor, who
immediately bled him, declared that had another ten minutes elapsed,
help would have arrived too late.

When the prisoner regained his senses, he gazed around him with a
wild, puzzled stare. One might have supposed that he was amazed to find
himself still alive. Suddenly a couple of big tears welled from his
swollen eyelids, and rolled down his cheeks. He was pressed with
questions, but did not vouchsafe so much as a single word in response.
As he was in such a desperate frame of mind, and as the orders to
keep him in solitary confinement prevented the governor giving him a
companion, it was decided to put a straight waistcoat on him. Lecoq
assisted at this operation, and then walked away, puzzled, thoughtful,
and agitated. Intuition told him that these mysterious occurrences
concealed some terrible drama.

"Still, what can have occurred since the prisoner's arrival here?" he
murmured. "Has he confessed his guilt to the magistrate, or what is his
reason for attempting so desperate an act?"

VIII

Lecoq did not sleep that night, although he had been on his feet for
more than forty hours, and had scarcely paused either to eat or drink.
Anxiety, hope, and even fatigue itself, had imparted to his body
the fictitious strength of fever, and to his intellect the unhealthy
acuteness which is so often the result of intense mental effort.

He no longer had to occupy himself with imaginary deductions, as in
former times when in the employ of his patron, the astrono