“It’s he!  It was Sauverand in disguise.  Stop him!  He’s made off.  Run, can’t you?”

He himself darted away followed by Mazeroux and a number of warders and journalists, He soon outdistanced them, so that, three minutes later, he heard no one more behind him.  He had rushed down the staircase of the “Mousetrap,” and through the subway leading from one courtyard to the other.  Here two people told him that they had met a man walking at a smart pace.

The track was a false one.  He became aware of this, hunted about, lost a good deal of time, and managed to discover that Sauverand had left by the Boulevard du Palais and joined a very pretty, fair-haired woman—­Florence Levasseur, obviously—­on the Quai de l’Horloge.  They had both got into the motor bus that runs from the Place Saint-Michel to the Gare Saint-Lazare.

Don Luis went back to a lonely little street where he had left his car in the charge of a boy.  He set the engine going and drove at full speed to the Gare Saint-Lazare, From the omnibus shelter he went off on a fresh track which also proved to be wrong, lost quite another hour, returned to the terminus, and ended by learning for certain that Florence had stepped by herself into a motor bus which would take her toward the Place du Palais-Bourbon.  Contrary to all his expectations, therefore, the girl must have gone home.

The thought of seeing her again roused his anger to its highest pitch.  All the way down the Rue Royale and across the Place de la Concorde he kept blurting out words of revenge and threats which he was itching to carry out.  He would abuse Florence.  He would sting her with his insults.  He felt a bitter and painful need to hurt the odious creature.

But on reaching the Place du Palais-Bourbon he pulled up short.  His practised eye had counted at a glance, on the right and left, a half-dozen men whose professional look there was no mistaking.  And Mazeroux, who had caught sight of him, had spun round on his heel and was hiding under a gateway.

He called him: 

“Mazeroux!”

The sergeant appeared greatly surprised to hear his name and came up to the car.

“Hullo, the Chief!”

His face expressed such embarrassment that Don Luis felt his fears taking definite shape.

“Look here, is it for me that you and your men are hanging about outside my house?”

“There’s a notion, Chief,” replied Mazeroux, looking very uncomfortable.  “You know that you’re in favour all right!”

Don Luis gave a start.  He understood.  Mazeroux had betrayed his confidence.  To obey his scruples of conscience as well as to rescue the chief from the dangers of a fatal passion, Mazeroux had denounced Florence Levasseur.

Perenna clenched his fists in an effort of his whole being to stifle his boiling rage.  It was a terrible blow.  He received a sudden intuition of all the blunders which his mad jealousy had made him commit since the day before, and a presentiment of the irreparable disasters that might result from them.  The conduct of events was slipping from him.