Another voice answered:
"I know for certain that these coppers are after Fantômas to-night!"
Shouts and hoots resounded.
Menacing voices repeated:
"Since Fantômas is indirectly our persecutor, let us avenge ourselves on Fantômas!... What matters one life compared with the cause we defend—the cause of a whole people!... If Fantômas is in our way, troubles us, let us kill him!... Trokoff will be here to-morrow, this evening perhaps! Trokoff will guide us! Trokoff will find this mysterious bandit who does us so much harm! Trokoff is a valiant man!... We do not know him, but we know what he has done!"
Juve smiled a sardonic smile. He thrust his hand into the opening wedged apart by his revolver, widened the space, opened the secret door, and entered the assembly room of the Nihilists.
"God save Russia!"
Juve pronounced these words with unction, in a solemn voice.
"God save Poland," was the reply. The oldest man present, who had thus been spokesman for the assembly advanced towards the stranger.
"Who are you?" he demanded.