No object that was at all extraordinary appeared in any part of it.  The subprefect looked round the place, commanded everybody to be silent, stamped twice on the floor, called for a candle, looked attentively at the spot he had stamped on, and ordered the flooring there to be carefully taken up.  This was done in no time.  Lights were produced, and we saw a deep raftered cavity between the floor of this room and the ceiling of the room beneath.  Through this cavity there ran perpendicularly a sort of case of iron, thickly greased; and inside the case appeared the screw, which communicated with the bedtop below.  Extra lengths of screw, freshly oiled; levers covered with felt; all the complete upper works of a heavy press—­constructed with infernal ingenuity so as to join the fixtures below, and when taken to pieces again to go into the smallest possible compass—­were next discovered and pulled out on the floor.  After some little difficulty the subprefect succeeded in putting the machinery together, and, leaving his men to work it, descended with me to the bedroom.  The smothering canopy was then lowered, but not so noiselessly as I had seen it lowered.  When I mentioned this to the subprefect, his answer, simple as it was, had a terrible significance.  “My men,” said he, “are working down the bedtop for the first time; the men whose money you won were in better practice.”

We left the house in the sole possession of two police agents, every one of the inmates being removed to prison on the spot.  The subprefect, after taking down my proces verbal in his office, returned with me to my hotel to get my passport.  “Do you think,” I asked, as I gave it to him, “that any men have really been smothered in that bed, as they tried to smother me?”

“I have seen dozens of drowned men laid out at the morgue,” answered the subprefect, “in whose pocket-books were found letters stating that they had committed suicide in the Seine, because they had lost everything at the gaming-table.  Do I know how many of those men entered the same gambling-house that you entered? won as you won? took that bed as you took it? slept in it? were smothered in it? and were privately thrown into the river, with a letter of explanation written by the murderers and placed in their pocket-books?  No man can say how many or how few have suffered the fate from which you have escaped.  The people of the gambling-house kept their bedstead machinery a secret from us—­even from the police!  The dead kept the rest of the secret for them.  Good-night, or rather good-morning, Monsieur Faulkner!  Be at my office again at nine o’clock; in the meantime, au revoir!”