I myself did my best to get out and shouldered my way through this indescribable fray. It was no easy work, for numbers of policemen and many people who had not been able to obtain entrance were thronging towards the exit-doors of the amphitheatre. At last I succeeded in reaching the gate through an opening that was made amid the crowd. "Room for the wounded man!" a tall, clean-shaven fellow was shouting, in a stentorian voice. Two others followed, carrying in their arms an individual covered with rugs and overcoats. The crowd fell back. The little procession moved out. I seized my opportunity. The tall fellow pointed to a private motor-car waiting outside: "Chauffeur, I'm requisitioning you. Orders of the prefect of police. Come along, the two of you, and get a move on!" The two men put the victim into the car and took their places inside. The tall fellow sat down beside the chauffeur; and the car drove off. It was not until the very second when it turned the corner that I conceived in a flash and without any reason whatever the exact idea of what this little scene meant. Suddenly I guessed the identity of the wounded man who was hidden so attentively and carried off so assiduously. And suddenly also, notwithstanding the change of face, though he wore neither beard nor glasses, I gave a name to the tall, clean-shaven fellow. It was the man Velmot. I rushed back to the Yard and informed the commissary of police who had hitherto had charge of the Dorgeroux case. He whistled up his men. They leapt into taxi-cabs and cars. It was too late. The roads were already filled with such a block of traffic that the commissary's car was unable to move. And thus, in the very midst of the crowd, by means of the most daring stratagem, taking advantage of a crush which he himself doubtless had his share in bringing about, the man Velmot had carried off his confederate and implacable enemy, Théodore Massignac. CHAPTER XIII THE VEIL IS LIFTED I will not linger over the two films of this second performance and the evident connection between them. At the present moment we are too near the close of this extraordinary story to waste time over minute, tedious, unimportant details. We must remember that, on the following morning, a newspaper printed the first part, and, a few hours later, the second part of the famous Prévotelle report, in which the problem was attacked in so masterly a fashion and solved with so profoundly impressive a display of method and logic. I shall never forget it. I shall never forget that, during that night, while I sat in my bedroom reflecting upon the manner in which Massignac had been spirited away, during that night when the long-expected thunderstorm burst over the Paris district, Benjamin Prévotelle was writing the opening pages of his report. And I shall never forget that I was on the point of hearing of all this from Benjamin Prévotelle himself!