Again the peremptory raps, louder than before. There was also a clank of steel.
"Police agents or I'm a German!" said Villeroy.
Henri Lerouge, a contemptuous smile on his handsome face, arose to admit the callers.
"Wait!" whispered Massard,—"one moment! Madame la Concierge shall receive them."
This idea tickled the young men exceedingly. They had little to fear from the police, unless it was the chance identification on the Place de la Concorde. But these things are rarely pushed.
Madame la Concierge was quickly arranged, her candle lighted. Then the other light was turned down.
When the door was slowly opened four police officers, headed by the commissary of the quarter, entered.
But they stopped abruptly on the threshold. The hideous skeleton with the candle confronted them. A sepulchral voice demanded,—
"Who knocks so loudly at an honest door?"
It is no impeachment of the courage and efficiency of the Paris police to say that the men recoiled in terror from this horrible apparition. So suddenly, in fact, that the two agents in the rear were precipitated headlong down the short flight. The other two vanished scarcely less hastily. A fifth man, who had evidently been following the agents at a respectful distance, received the full impact of the falling bodies, and with one terrified yell sank almost senseless on the stair.