more disturbed in mind and spirit than she would have been in the face of any threat on the part of the police.  The Prefecture was a known and measured force, an engine that ran as it were on mapped lines of rail; its moves might be forecast, guarded against, watched, evaded.  But this other force worked in the dark, this hostile power personified in the creature who had called himself Albert Dupont; the very composition of its being was cloaked in a secrecy impenetrable and terrifying, its intentions and its workings could not be surmised or opposed until it struck and the success or failure of the stroke revealed its origin and aim.

Liane—­or one misjudged her—­would never sit still and wait for the blow to fall.  She was too high-strung, too much in love with life.  She must either strike first in self-defence—­and, in such case, strike at what?—­or remove beyond the range of the enemy’s malice.  Lanyard was confident she would choose the latter course.

But confidence was not knowledge....

He transferred his attention from the formidable defences of the lower storey to the second.  Here all the windows were of the type called french, and opened inward from shallow balconies with wrought bronze railings.  Lanyard was acquainted with every form of fastening used for such windows; all were simple, none could resist his persuasions, provided he stood upon one of those balconies.  Nor did he count it a difficult matter for a man of his activity and strength to scale the front of the house as far as the second storey; its walls were builded of heavy blocks of dressed stone with deep horizontal channels between each tier.  These grooves would be greasy with rain; otherwise one could hardly ask for better footholds.  A climb of some twelve or fifteen feet to the balcony:  one should be able to make that within two minutes, granted freedom from interruption.  The rub was there; the quarter seemed quite fast asleep; in the five minutes which had elapsed since Lanyard had ensconced himself in the doorway no motor car had passed, not a footfall had disturbed the stillness, never a sound of any sort had come to his attention other than one distant blare of a two-toned automobile horn from the neighbourhood of the Arc de Triomphe.  But one dared not count on long continuance of such conditions.  Already the sky showed a lighter shade above the profile of the roofs.  And one wakeful watcher at a nearby window would spell ruin.

Nevertheless he must adventure the consequences....

Poised to leave his shelter and dart across the street, with his point of attack already selected, his thoughts already busy with consideration of steps to follow—­he checked and fell still farther back into the shadow.  Something was happening in the house across the way.

A man had opened the service-door and paused behind the bronze gate.  There was no light behind him, and the gloom and intervening strips of metal rendered his figure indistinct.  Lanyard’s high-keyed perceptions had none the less been instant to remark that slight movement and the accompanying change in the texture of the darkness barred by the gate.