“But you drew no inference from it. _I_ inferred that a slow-match was burning—but where? To search for it was running a risk, an incautious movement might precipitate the crisis. Instead, I said to myself, Monsieur Fandor—the natural thing for a traveller to do when he enters a bedroom is to sit down. Therefore it is more than probable, if a shot is to be fired, from a revolver say, or from a gun, that the weapon will be levelled at the height of a person’s head seated on a chair. I cut down my chair so as to be below the line of fire! I made you sit on the floor to save you from being hit!” One thing, and one thing only, could Fandor find to say to express his admiration adequately: “Juve could not have done better!” “Truly, it was not so bad. Now, if you would like to get to the bottom of things, we will take a look on top of that wardrobe ... There, what did I say?” From the top of the wardrobe Tom Bob, mounted on a chair, proceeded to unship a sort of gatling-gun, consisting of six barrels fixed side by side, the muzzles of which, arranged fan-wise, commanded the whole room. “Don’t you see,” the detective concluded, “it’s all as plain as daylight. Here’s how Fantômas set to work. He hired this room, up to seven or eight o’clock this morning, I imagine. Seeing it was taken for to-night by me, it was evident no one would occupy it between us two. On top of the wardrobe he lashed an extraordinary contrivance loaded up with grape-shot, which swept the whole place with a hurricane of lead; to touch off the charge, he laid down a slow-match of tinder.” Fandor shook his head: “No,” he objected, so enthralled in spite of himself by the interest of the investigation as to have completely recovered his clearness of mind; “you seem to forget one detail; if he lit the slow-match before leaving, it’s ten to one the smoke would have been noticed by the hotel waiter. Then besides, it would have needed a great length of slow-match, and that meant risking a conflagration ...” But Tom Bob indulged in another meaning smile, as he said: “Fantômas left, I suppose, about eight in the morning, quite early anyway; but his match was not lit till two or three o’clock in the afternoon. You needn’t be surprised, Fandor, the trick is quite elementary! Look there, on the carpet, near the wardrobe; you see those little shards of glass? the fragments of a burning-glass! The tinder was set alight by means of that lens, scientifically adjusted for the precise moment when the sun had reached the altitude chosen by Fantômas. It’s really very ingenious, after all!” And as Fandor remained silent, struck dumb with admiration for the coolness displayed by the American, who had thus escaped by a hair’s breadth the terrible machinations of a murderer, and at the same time saved his companion from a hideous death, Tom Bob resumed: