He pushed them into the study and drew his revolver. “Hands up, you crook! Hands up! Cover him too, Labonce!” he howled. The good Sauvinoux had propped up a small hand mirror on the top of the desk, and he did not stir. He began to strip off, slowly, his disguise. He had even set the revolver with which he had been threatening Bregeac down on the desk beside him. Marescal sprang forward, snatched up the weapon, and sprang back, with both revolvers leveled. “Hands up, or I fire! D’you hear, you crook!” he howled again. The crook took no more notice of him. Under the leveled revolvers a few feet away from him, he removed the hair which formed mutton-chop whiskers on his cheeks, and gave his eyebrows an unwonted thickness. “I’ll fire! I’ll fire! D’you hear, you scoundrel? I’ll count three and fire! One—two—three!” “You’re going to make a fool of yourself, Rudolph,” murmured Sauvinoux. Rudolph made a fool of himself. He had lost his head. He let fly with both weapons, at random, at the pier-glass, the walls, the pictures, like a murderer drunk with the smell of blood who plunges his knife again and again into the corpse of his panting victim. Bregeac crouched before the storm of bullets. Aurelie did not risk a movement. Since her savior did not try to save her, since he let it happen, it must be that there was nothing to fear. Her confidence in him was so complete that she almost smiled. With his handkerchief and some Vaseline Sauvinoux removed the grease-paint from his face. Little by little Ralph appeared. Twelve reports had banged out. The room was full of smoke; mirrors were smashed; there were holes in the walls, broken picture-frames, ruined pictures. It looked as if it had been taken by storm. Marescal stood dazed; a sudden shame at his fit of madness overwhelmed him. He pulled himself together and said faintly to his men: “Wait on the staircase. Come the moment I call.” “Look here, Chief: since Sauvinoux is no longer Sauvinoux, hadn’t we better arrest whoever he is,” Labonce suggested. “I’ve disliked him ever since you engaged him last week. Shall we? The three of us can collar him all right.” “Do as I tell you,” said Marescal. Doubtless three to one did not seem to him good enough odds. He shut the door on them. Sauvinoux finished his transformation, straightened his waistcoat and his tie; and another man faced them. The measly-looking policeman of a minute or two before had become a debonair fellow, sure of himself, well dressed, elegant, even young, in whom Marescal beheld once more his habitual prosecutor. “How do you do, Mademoiselle? Allow me to introduce myself—Baron Limézy, explorer—and for the last week a detective. You recognized me at once, I think. Yes? I guessed it down in the hall. Maintain your silence by all means, but still laugh. How good it was to hear your laugh just now! What a reward for my efforts!” He bowed to Bregeac and said: “How do you do, sir?”