When the waiter was gone, Tom Bob got up from his chair, remarking: “So now, Monsieur Fandor, you understand why I made such a point of our both being seated as close to the ground as possible.” But Fandor shook his head. “I don’t understand anything at all,” he protested. “Well, go and look at the pencil line you drew just now, on a level with my head.” Fandor ran to the wall and could not restrain an exclamation: “By the Lord! the line is exactly in the zone riddled by the explosion of the bomb!” “It was not a bomb.” “Not a bomb? What was it then?” “A shot fired by Fantômas.” “By Fantômas?” “Precisely, by Fantômas.” The other’s calm was so wonderful, his imperturbability so complete, that Fandor felt almost ashamed of himself to be so profoundly agitated. Once again he called upon his strength of will power and mastered his feelings. In a quiet voice he asked: “Well then, sir, what _has_ happened? Why did you ask me to mark just that height on the wall? You guessed?...” Tom Bob, hands in pockets, was looking up at the top of a tall wardrobe. “I did not guess anything,” he said. “I never guess, I infer.” “But what have you inferred then?” “Why, I observe ...” “But, good Lord, what do you observe?” “What occurs, Monsieur Fandor! Now look here, is it, yes or no, a logical conclusion that Fantômas was put out by my arrival? Was it, yes or no, logical to conclude that knowing, as everybody knows, thanks to my wireless messages, that I am setting to work to arrest him, while _he_ proposes to terrify Paris and force the Chambers to satisfy his demands, was it, I ask again, logical to suppose that he was going to try to murder me?” “Logical, why yes; but how did you guess?” “I argued, Monsieur Fandor; I argued that Fantômas, wishing to murder me, would do it as swiftly as possible; consequently, if I wished to escape his criminal manœuvres, it was advisable to lay a trap for him. The trap consisted in engaging a room here. Fantômas knew of this. How, I cannot say, but Fantômas knows everything. For my part, _I_ knew—knowledge is power—I knew that, on my coming to the Terminus, an attempt was going to be made on my life. What sort of an attempt? I felt uncertain. I suspected the lift—that risk avoided, in revenge I was pretty well convinced, when I entered this room, the room I had engaged in advance, that something was going to happen here. But what? I thought of a poisonous gas infiltrated during the night, and that is why I questioned the waiter about the occupant of the room above. Monsieur Fandor, I told you you had no nose, did I not? The fact is I am astonished that you didn’t, like me, detect in the room a faint smell of burning, of burning tinder.” Fandor, lost in admiration at the precision of the American detective’s discoveries, the nature of which he was beginning to fathom, declared: “I noticed the smell of burning perfectly well, but ...”