In the outer office there were only two or three clerks at work behind the grating.  None of these had the right to reveal the names hidden under pseudonyms; they did not even know them.  Zilch perceived, through an open door, the reporters’ room, furnished with a long table covered with pens, ink, and pads of white paper.  This room was empty; the journal was made up in the evening, and the reporters were absent.

“Is there any one who can answer me?” asked the Prince.

“Probably the secretary can,” replied a clerk.  “Have you a card, Monsieur? or, if you will write your name upon a bit of paper, it will do.”

Andras did so; the clerk opened a door in the corridor and disappeared.  After a minute or two he reappeared, and said to the Prince: 

“If you will follow me, Monsieur Freminwill see you.”

Andras found himself in the presence of a pleasant-looking middle-aged man, who was writing at a modest desk when the Hungarian entered, and who bowed politely, motioning him to be seated.

As Zilch sat down upon the sofa, there appeared upon the threshold of a door, opposite the one by which he had entered, a small, dark, elegantly dressed young man, whom Andras vaguely remembered to have seen somewhere, he could not tell where.  The newcomer was irreproachable in his appearance, with his clothes built in the latest fashion, snowy linen, pale gray gloves, silver-headed cane, and a single eyeglass, dangling from a silken cord.

He bowed to Zilch, and, going up to the secretary, he said, rapidly: 

“Well! since Tourillon is away, I will report the Enghien races.  I am going there now.  Enghien isn’t highly diverting, though.  The swells and the pretty women so rarely go there; they don’t affect Enghien any more.  But duty before everything, eh, Fremin?”

“You will have to hurry,” said Fremin, looking at his watch, “or you will miss your train.”

“Oh!  I have a carriage below.”

He clapped his confrere on the shoulder, bowed again to Zilah, and hurried away, while Fremin, turning to the Prince, said: 

“I am at your service, Monsieur,” and waited for him to open the conversation.

Zilah drew from his pocket the copy of L’Actualite, and said, very quietly: 

“I should like to know, Monsieur, who is meant in this article here.”

And, folding the paper, with the passage which concerned him uppermost, he handed it to the secretary.

Fremin glanced at the article.

“Yes, I have seen this paragraph,” he said; “but I am entirely ignorant to whom it alludes.  I am not even certain that it is not a fabrication, invented out of whole cloth.”

“Ah!” said Zilah.  “The author of the article would know, I suppose?”

“It is highly probable,” replied Fremin, with a smile.

“Will you tell me, then, the name of the person who wrote this?”

“Isn’t the article signed?”