There was a sound of a key turning in the lock and the door fell ajar, while Jérôme could faintly catch a confused clamour reaching him from the courtyard below. “You want to see me, sir?” and cautiously the occupant of the flat—doubtless the young woman had been resting on her bed and had hurriedly thrown a _peignoir_ round her—opened the door a little wider. Alas! hardly had she cast eyes on the visitor before she turned livid and tried to pull the door to again, screaming: “Help! help!... you ... you, Fantômas!... Fandor!... I am undone!” Instinctively throwing his weight against the door, Fandor endeavoured to prevent the girl from shutting him out. “For heaven’s sake,” he prayed her, “calm yourself!—yes, it is I ... I Fandor!... who loves you.... Listen to me, I beseech you!” But with a sudden, desperate effort, Elisabeth Dollon had dragged the door to again, not without giving vent to another cry of frantic terror: “Help! it is Fantômas ... Fantômas!” All this had occupied but a moment, and already Fandor was regaining his composure. That Elisabeth, terribly upset by last night’s violence, in which she believed him to have been concerned, took him for Fantômas, was after all of small importance. He could easily convince her of the truth. What was more serious was the monstrous folly he had committed in bolting away in that unceremonious fashion from Mme. Doulenques a moment before. Now on the stairs a prodigious uproar was swelling louder and louder, while the shrill voice of the concierge rose high above the clamour: “A scoundrelly brigand, I tell you! one of the same lot for sure who attacked the girl yesterday!” People were thronging upstairs, heavy footsteps sounded on the boards, a crowd of neighbours was hurrying up to the scene of action. Instinctively Fandor stepped back on the landing. For nearly six months he had been living the life of a fugitive; for all those months the unfortunate young man had known the gnawing anxieties of a never-ending flight from all whose interest it might be to discover his identity. Now, finding himself pursued, trapped on this stairway, he lost his head. Instead of quietly waiting till the concierge and her satellites came up to him and then explaining the misunderstanding, Fandor, realizing that Elisabeth would be long in recognizing her mistake, resolved to fly. Swiftly, noiselessly, nimbly, he mounted to the seventh story of the house, in the vague hope of finding a hiding-place.