"Oh, my God! Ah! My God!" she gasped out several times in a half-choked voice. * * * * * Silence had reigned for a long while in the smart town house of the Baroness de Vibray in the Avenue Henri-Martin.... From without came no sound; the avenue was quiet, deserted; the night was dark. But when three o'clock struck, the bedroom of Madame de Vibray was still flooded with light. She had not left her writing-table since she had read the letter of her bankers, Messieurs Barbey-Nanteuil. She wrote on, and on, without intermission. III UNEXPECTED COMPLICATIONS At nine o'clock in the morning, the staff of that great evening paper, _La Capitale_, were assembled in the vast editorial room, writing out their copy, in the midst of a perfect hubbub of continual comings and goings, of regular shindies, of perpetual discussions. A stranger entering this room, which among its frequenters went by the name of "The Wild Beasts' Cage," might easily have thought he was witnessing some thirty schoolboys at play in recreation time, instead of being in the presence of famous journalists celebrated for their reports and articles. Jerome Fandor had no sooner appeared on the threshold than he was accorded a variety of greetings--ironical, cordial, fault-finding, sympathetic. But he ignored them all; for, like most of those who came into the editorial room at this hour, he was preoccupied with one thing only--where the caprice of his editorial secretary would send him flying for news, in the course of a few minutes? On what difficult and delicate quest would he be despatched? It depended on the exigencies of passing events, on how questions of the hour struck the editorial secretary, in relation to Fandor. Just as he had expected, the editorial secretary called him. "Hey! Fandor, come here a minute! I am on the make-up: what have you got for to-day?" "I don't know. Who has charge of the landing of the King of Spain?" "Maray. He has just left. Have you seen the last issue of _l'Havas_?" "Here it is...." The two men ran rapidly through the night's telegrams. "Deplorably empty!" remarked the editorial secretary. "But where am I to send you?... Ah, now I have it! That article of yours on the rue Norvins affair, yesterday evening, was interesting--it made the others squirm, I know! Isn't there anything more to be got out of that story?" "What do you want?" "Can't you stick in something just a little bit scandalous about the Baroness de Vibray? Or about Dollon? About no matter whom, in fact? After all, it's our one and only crime to-day, and you must put in something under that head!..." Jerome Fandor seemed to hesitate. "Would you like me to rake up the past--refer to what happened before?" "What past?" "Come now, you must have an inkling of what I refer to!" "Not I!"