Page:Mystery of the Yellow Room (Grosset Dunlap 1908).djvu/196

 feet behind him. He had taken, as I supposed he would, the gallery on his right,—that is to say, the road he had prepared for his flight. 'Help, Jacques!—help, Larsan!' I cried. He could not escape us! I raised a shout of joy, of savage victory. The man reached the intersection of the two galleries hardly two seconds before me for the meeting which I had prepared—the fatal shock which must inevitably take place at that spot! We all rushed to the crossing-place—Monsieur Stangerson and I coming from one end of the right gallery, Daddy Jacques coming from the other end of the same gallery, and Frederic Larsan coming from the 'off-turning' gallery.

"The man was not there!

"We looked at each other stupidly and with eyes terrified. The man had vanished like a ghost.  'Where is he—where is he?' we all asked.

"'It is impossible he can have escaped!' I cried, my terror mastered by my anger.

"'I touched him!' exclaimed Frédéric Larsan.

"'I felt his breath on my face!' cried Daddy Jacques.

"'Where is he?'—where is he?' we all cried.

"We raced like madmen along the two galleries; we visited doors and windows—they were closed, hermetically closed. They had not been opened.  Besides, the opening of a door or window by this man whom we were hunting, without our having perceived it, would have been more inexplicable than his disappearance.

"Where is he?—where is he?—He could not have got away by a door or a window, nor by any