The word was strangled in his throat!... As he advanced another step, Nanteuil suddenly sprang backwards, and his hand rested on the moulding of a wooden panel.... At the same moment, Monsieur Havard, as if hampered by some invisible obstacle, stretched his length on the floor! Juve and Fandor were about to rush to his aid ... but while Fandor, in his turn, measured his length on the floor also, Juve yelled: "Good lord!... We are caught!... He escapes!..." Whilst the detective made a frantic effort to move a step--_he seemed nailed to the floor_--Fantomas, quick as lightning, leaped over the prone body of Monsieur Havard, gained the door, and banged it to behind him!... They heard a triumphant burst of laughter.... Fantomas was escaping! "This is sorcery!" shouted the chief of the detective force, in a voice hoarse with rage. "Take your boots off!... Take your boots off!" yelled Juve, who, with bare feet, was rushing through the house, revolver in hand, hoping to come up with the banker bandit!... But, when the detective arrived at the entrance gateway of the house, he found the policemen brought by Monsieur Havard chatting away quietly ... they had not seen a thing ... the street was deserted ... in a second Fantomas had disappeared, vanished into thin air ... he, the elusive one, had got away: once more he had escaped those who were pursuing him with such keen determination! * * * * * "It is very simple," explained Juve to Monsieur Havard and Fandor, who seemed deprived of speech. "Yes, it is simple enough; I guessed it at once when I saw you fall, Monsieur Havard, just after Fantomas had pressed the woodwork." "He pressed an electric button, did he not?" "Yes, Fandor, he established a current!... The wretch must have placed powerful electric magnets under the floor ... and the moment he realised that it was impossible to brazen it out any longer--was on the very point of being arrested--he established the current ... so we three were nailed to the ground by the attraction exercised by these electro-magnets on the nails of our shoes--he, Fantomas, was then free to cut and run for it, whose shoes must certainly have had soles made of some insulating material...." Monsieur Havard and Fandor made no answer to this. To have held Fantomas at their mercy, if only for a minute; to have believed that they were going to lay hands on the atrocious criminal, at last; to have seen him slip through their fingers--the thought of this almost brought tears to their eyes: they were in a state of the deepest despondency. "There's a curse on us!" cried Fandor. "This time, at any rate, we have nothing to reproach ourselves with! We could not foresee that!..." Then, to himself in a low tone, he added: "Poor Elizabeth!... How are we to tell her that we have let her brother's murderer escape?" XXVIII COURAGE "Have some more chicken?" "No, thanks: I am not hungry." "But you should eat all the same!"