He put out his arms as he spoke, ready to catch the girl as she came across the room, and was on the very point of taking her into his arms as he had suggested, when she broke from his grasp with a sudden turn and, furious with rage, dealt him a tremendous blow right on the temple. With a stifled groan, Henri Verbier dropped unconscious to the floor.
Mlle. Jeanne stared at him for a moment, as if dumbfounded. Then with quite amazing rapidity the young cashier sprang to the window and hurriedly closed it. She took down her hat from a hook on the wall, and put it on with a single gesture, opened a drawer and took out a little bag, and then, after listening for a minute to make sure that there was nobody in the passage outside her room, she opened her door, went out, rapidly turned the key behind her and ran down the stairs.
Two minutes later Mlle. Jeanne smilingly passed the porter on duty and wished him good night.
"Bye-bye," she said. "I'm going out to get a little fresh air!"
Slowly, as if emerging from some extraordinary dream, Henri Verbier began to recover from his brief unconsciousness: he could not understand at first what had happened to him, why he was lying on the floor, why his head ached so much, or why his blood-shot eyes saw everything through a mist. He gradually struggled into a sitting posture and looked around the room.
"Nobody here!" he muttered. Then as if the sound of his own voice had brought him back to life, he got up and hurried to the door and shook it furiously. "Locked!" he growled angrily. "And I can call till I'm black in the face! No one has come upstairs yet. I'm trapped!" He turned towards the window, with some idea of calling for help, but as he passed the mirror over the mantelpiece he caught sight of his own reflection and saw the bruise on his forehead, with a tiny stream of blood beginning to trickle from a cut in the skin. He went close to the glass and looked at himself in dismay. "Juve though I am," he murmured, "I've let myself be knocked out by a woman!" And then Juve, for Juve it was, cleverly disguised, uttered a sudden oath, clenching his fists and grinding his teeth in rage. "Confound it all, I'll take my oath that blow was never dealt by any woman!"