Poor Elizabeth Dollon, when she heard this speech, stared at the pompous police official, astonished. What had she to conceal? What had she to gain by lying? What did he think, this fat policeman, who took it upon himself to issue orders, when he should rather have tried to comfort her! Nevertheless, she at once began telling him all that she knew with regard to the affair. She told him of her letter to Fandor: that her room had been visited the evening before: by whom she did not know ... that she had not said a word about it to anyone, fearing vengeance would fall on her, frightened, not understanding what it all meant.... Then she came to what the police dignitary called "her suicide." As she finished her recital with a reference to her rescue by Fandor, she looked at the young journalist. It was a look of great gratitude and a kind of ardent tenderness, with a touch of fear in it. "Strange, very strange!" pronounced the superintendent of police, who had been taking notes with an air of great gravity. "So very strange, mademoiselle, that it is very difficult to credit your statements!... very difficult indeed!..." Whilst he was speaking, Fandor was saying to himself: "Decidedly, it is that!... Just what I was thinking! It is quite clear, clear as the sun in the sky, evident, indisputable!" And he refused, very politely of course--for one has to respect the authorities--to accompany the superintendent, who, in his turn, went upstairs to Elizabeth's room, in order to carry out the necessary legal verification.... XIV SOMEONE TELEPHONED The nuns of the order of Saint Augustin were not expelled in consequence of the Decrees. This was a special favour, but one fully justified, because of the incalculable benefits this community conferred on suffering humanity. The vast convent of rue de la Glaciere continues to serve as a shelter for these holy women, and as a sort of hospital for the sick. For close on a hundred years, generation after generation of those living near its walls have heard the convent clock sound the hours in solemn tones; so, too, the convent chapel's shrill-voiced bells have never failed to remind the faithful that the daily offices of their church are being said and sung by the holy sisters within the hallowed walls. In the vast quarter of Paris, peopled with hospitals and prisons, the convent shows a stern front in the shape of a high, blackened wall. A great courtyard gate, in which a window with iron bars and grating is the only visible opening to the exterior world. About half-past six in the morning, slightly out of breath with his rapid walk from the Metropolitan station, Jerome Fandor rang the convent door bell. The sound could be heard echoing and re-echoing in the vaulted corridors, till it died away in the stony distance. There was a silence: then the iron-barred window was half opened, and Fandor heard a voice asking: "What do you want, monsieur?"