“ ‘Where is he?’ Larsan asked.
“ ‘In Mademoiselle Stangerson’s room.’
“ ‘And—Mademoiselle Stangerson?’
“ ‘She is not in there.’
“ ‘Let ’s go in.’
“ ‘Don’t go there! On the least alarm the man will escape. He has four ways by which to do it—the door, the window, the boudoir, or the room in which the women are sleeping.’
“ ‘I ’ll draw him from below.’
“ ‘And if you fail?—If you only succeed in wounding him—he ’ll escape again, without reckoning that he is certainly armed. No, let me direct the expedition, and I ’ll answer for everything.’
“ ‘As you like,’ he replied, with fairly good grace.
“Then, after satisfying myself that all the windows of the two galleries were thoroughly secure, I placed Frédéric Larsan at the end of the ‘off-turning’ gallery, before the window which I had found open and had reclosed.