"Why," exclaimed Fandor, "this is simply an invitation not to busy myself hunting for the guilty persons!... Who has sent this invitation and warning? Surely the sender is the assassin, to whose interest it is that the inquiry into the rue Norvins murder should be dropped!... It must be Jacques Dollon!... But how could Dollon know my address? How could he have found time between his flight from the Depot and the present minute, to put this message of printed letters together, and take it to the rue Bergere?... And that at the risk of encountering someone who could recognise him, and might have him arrested afresh? Had he accomplices?" Fandor was puzzled, agitated: "But I am mad!... mad! It cannot be Dollon!... Dollon is dead--dead as a door nail--dead beyond dispute, because fifty men have seen him dead; dead, because the Depot doctors have certified his death!" Daylight was fading; evening was coming on; Fandor was still turning the whole affair over in his mind. Every now and again he murmured: "Fantomas! Fantomas has to do with this extraordinary, this mysterious affair! Fantomas is in it!... Fantomas!" IV A SURPRISING ITINERARY Jerome Fandor had passed a bad night! Visions of horror had continually arisen in his troubled mind. Between nightmare after nightmare he had heard all the horrors of the night sound out in the darkness and the glimmering dawn. Then he had fallen into a heavy sleep, which had left him on awaking broken with fatigue. He had given himself a cold douche, and this had calmed his nerves; then he had dressed quickly. When eight o'clock struck he was at his writing-table, thinking things over: "It's no laughing matter. I thought at first that the Dollon affair was quite ordinary; but I am mistaken. The warning I received last night leaves me no doubts on that head. Since the guilty person thinks it necessary to ask me to keep quiet, it is evident he fears my intervention; if he is afraid of that it is because it must be hurtful to him; if disastrous to him, a criminal, it is evident that it must be useful to honest folk. My duty, then, is to go straight ahead at all costs...." There was another motive besides this of duty which incited him to follow more closely the vicissitudes of the rue Norvins drama, a motive still indefinite, vague, but nevertheless terribly strong.... Jerome Fandor had sworn to Elizabeth Dollon that he would get at the truth. He recalled the girl's entreaty, her emotion; and when he closed his eyes, now and again, he seemed to see before him the tall, graceful, fair and fascinating sister of the vanished artist.... All Fandor would admit to himself was a chivalrous feeling towards her--Elizabeth Dollon was worth putting himself out for--that was all! Our journalist spent the entire morning seated at his writing-table, his head between his hands, smoking cigarette after cigarette, arranging his plans for investigating the Dollon case: