“One moment.  Have any of you gentlemen a pocket lantern about you?  Or, no, it doesn’t matter.  This will do.”

There was a candle in a sconce.  He took it and lit it.

Then he switched off the electric light.

There was a half darkness, amid which the flame of the candle flickered in the draught from the windows.  Don Luis protected the flame with his hand and moved to the table.

“I do not think that we shall be kept waiting long,” he said.  “As I foresee it, there will be only a few seconds before the facts speak for themselves and better than I could do.”

Those few seconds, during which no one broke the silence, were unforgettable.  M. Desmalions has since declared, in an interview in which he ridicules himself very cleverly, that his brain, over-stimulated by the fatigues of the night and by the whole scene before him, imagined the most unlikely events, such as an invasion of the house by armed assailants, or the apparition of ghosts and spirits.

He had the curiosity, however, he said, to watch Don Luis.  Sitting on the edge of the table, with his head thrown a little back and his eyes roaming over the ceiling, Don Luis was eating a piece of bread and nibbling at a cake of chocolate.  He seemed very hungry, but quite at his ease.

The others maintained that tense attitude which we put on at moments of great physical effort.  Their faces were distorted with a sort of grimace.  They were haunted by the memory of the explosion as well as obsessed by what was going to happen.  The flame of the candle cast shadows on the wall.

More seconds elapsed than Don Luis Perenna had said, thirty or forty seconds, perhaps, that seemed endless.  Then Perenna lifted the candle a little and said: 

“There you are.”

They had all seen what they now saw almost as soon as he spoke.  A letter was descending from the ceiling.  It spun round slowly, like a leaf falling from a tree without being driven by the wind.  It just touched Don Luis and alighted on the floor between two legs of the table.

Picking up the paper and handing it to M. Desmalions, Don Luis said: 

“There you are, Monsieur le Prefet.  This is the fourth letter, due last night.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE “HATER”

M. Desmalions looked at him without understanding, and looked from him to the ceiling.  Perenna said: 

“Oh, there’s no witchcraft about it; and, though no one has thrown that letter from above, though there is not the smallest hole in the ceiling, the explanation is quite simple!”

“Quite simple, is it?” said M. Desmalions.

“Yes, Monsieur le Prefet.  It all looks like an extremely complicated conjuring trick, done almost for fun.  Well, I say that it is quite simple—­and, at the same time, terribly tragic.  Sergeant Mazeroux, would you mind drawing back the curtains and giving us as much light as possible?”