"I've got them, the ruffians!" he murmured. "I shall at last know . . ."
A second whistle sounded, followed by a guttural shout. He was now within twenty yards of them and could hear them speak.
"I've got them, I've got them!" he repeated, with fierce delight.
And he made up his mind to strike one of them in the face with the barrel of his revolver and to spring at the other's throat.
But, before they even reached the wall, the door was pushed open from the outside and a third man appeared and let them through.
Paul flung away the revolver; and his impetus was such and the effort which he made so great that he managed to seize the door and draw it to him.
The door gave way. And what he then saw scared him to such a degree that he started backwards and did not even dream of defending himself against this fresh attack. The third man—Oh, hideous nightmare! Could it moreover be anything but a nightmare?—the third ruffian was raising a knife against him; and Paul knew his face . . . it was a face resembling the one which he had seen before, a man's face and not a woman's, but the same sort of face, undoubtedly the same sort: a face marked by fifteen additional years and by an even harder and more wicked expression, but the same sort of face, the same sort!
And the man stabbed Paul, even as the woman of fifteen years ago, even as she who was since dead had stabbed Paul's father.
Paul Delroze staggered, but rather as the result of the nervous shock caused by the sudden appearance of this ghost of the past; for the blade of the dagger, striking the button on the shoulder-strap of his shooting-jacket, broke into splinters. Dazed and misty-eyed, he heard the sound of the door closing, the grating of the key in the lock and lastly the hum of a motor car starting on the other side of the wall. When Paul recovered from his torpor there was nothing left for him to do. The man and his two confederates were out of reach.