But an exclamation of stupor escaped his lips; he had come to the other door; and this door, the last before the garden-house, was shut. He flung himself upon it. What was the good? What could he do? "This time," he muttered, "I'm badly done!" And, seized with a sort of lassitude, he sat down. He had a sense of his weakness in the face of the mysterious being. Altenheim hardly counted. But the other, that person of darkness and silence, the other loomed up before him, upset all his plans and exhausted him with his cunning and infernal attacks. He was beaten. Weber would find him there, like an animal run to earth, at the bottom of his cave. "Ah, no!" he cried, springing up with a bound. "No! If there were only myself, well and good! . . . But there is Geneviève, Geneviève, who must be saved to-night. . . . After all, the game is not yet lost. . . . If the other one vanished just now, it proves that there is a second outlet somewhere near. . . . Come, come, Weber and his merry men haven't got me yet. . . ." He had already begun to explore the tunnel and, lantern in hand, was examining the bricks of which the horrible walls were formed, when a yell reached his ears, a dreadful yell that made his flesh creep with anguish. It came from the direction of the trap-door. And he suddenly remembered that he had left the trap-door open, at the time when he intended to return to the Villa des Glycines. He hurried back and passed through the first door. His lantern went out on the road; and he felt something, or rather somebody, brush past his knees, somebody crawl along the wall. And, at that same moment, he had a feeling that this being was disappearing, vanishing, he knew not which way. Just then his foot knocked against a step. "This is the outlet," he thought, "the second outlet through which 'he' passes." Overhead, the cry sounded again, less loud, followed by moans, by a hoarse gurgling. . . . He ran up the stairs, came out in the basement room, and rushed to the baron. Altenheim lay dying, with the blood streaming from his throat! His bonds were cut, but the wire that fastened his wrists and ankles was intact. _His accomplice, being unable to release him, had cut his throat._ Sernine gazed upon the sight with horror. An icy perspiration covered his whole body. He thought of Geneviève, imprisoned, helpless, abandoned to the most awful of deaths, because the baron alone knew where she was hidden. He distinctly heard the policemen open the little back door in the hall. He distinctly heard them come down the kitchen stairs. There was nothing between him and them save one door, that of the basement room in which he was. He bolted the door at the very moment when the aggressors were laying hold of the handle. The trap-door was open beside him; it meant possible safety, because there remained the second outlet. "No," he said to himself, "Geneviève first. Afterward, if I have time, I will think of myself."