He next returned to the little dining-room, inspected the sideboard and the cupboards, went down to the kitchen and pretended that the doctor had sent him to ask about M. Darcieux's diet. Without appearing to do so, he catechized the cook, the butler, and Baptiste, the lodge-keeper, who had his meals at the manor-house with the servants. Then he went back to the doctor: "Well?" "She's asleep." "Any danger?" "No. Fortunately, she had only taken two or three sips. But this is the second time to-day that you have saved her life, as the analysis of this bottle will show." "Quite superfluous to make an analysis, doctor. There is no doubt about the fact that there has been an attempt at poisoning." "By whom?" "I can't say. But the demon who is engineering all this business clearly knows the ways of the house. He comes and goes as he pleases, walks about in the park, files the dog's chain, mixes poison with the food and, in short, moves and acts precisely as though he were living the very life of her--or rather of those--whom he wants to put away." "Ah! You really believe that M. Darcieux is threatened with the same danger?" "I have not a doubt of it." "Then it must be one of the servants? But that is most unlikely! Do you think ...?" "I think nothing, doctor. I know nothing. All I can say is that the situation is most tragic and that we must be prepared for the worst. Death is here, doctor, shadowing the people in this house; and it will soon strike at those whom it is pursuing." "What's to be done?" "Watch, doctor. Let us pretend that we are alarmed about M. Darcieux's health and spend the night in here. The bedrooms of both the father and daughter are close by. If anything happens, we are sure to hear." There was an easy-chair in the room. They arranged to sleep in it turn and turn about. In reality, Lupin slept for only two or three hours. In the middle of the night he left the room, without disturbing his companion, carefully looked round the whole of the house and walked out through the principal gate. * * * * * He reached Paris on his motor-cycle at nine o'clock in the morning. Two of his friends, to whom he telephoned on the road, met him there. They all three spent the day in making searches which Lupin had planned out beforehand. He set out again hurriedly at six o'clock; and never, perhaps, as he told me subsequently, did he risk his life with greater temerity than in his breakneck ride, at a mad rate of speed, on a foggy December evening, with the light of his lamp hardly able to pierce through the darkness. He sprang from his bicycle outside the gate, which was still open, ran to the house and reached the first floor in a few bounds. There was no one in the little dining-room. Without hesitating, without knocking, he walked into Jeanne's bedroom: "Ah, here you are!" he said, with a sigh of relief, seeing Jeanne and the doctor sitting side by side, talking.