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Rh looked at the trim, boyish figure. Then he charged, together with the others. On toward that belching belt of fire.

The servant girl knocked at the door—twice, three times. There was no answer. The landlady came.

"Open up there—open up! You can't play 'possum with the likes of me. You pay your rent to-day or—"

Suddenly a great fear engulfed her. She called the police. They forced the door open.

The Frenchman was dead. A bullet had pierced his heart. No weapon was found in his room. No trace of the assassin was ever found.

But the doctor who examined the body shook his head.

"Can't account for it," he murmured. "That bullet was fired from a great distance—from a very great distance. And yet there is no hole in window nor door nor wall."

And then he entered the case in the little book which contained his private collection of inexplicable deaths.