Page:The Teeth of the Tiger - Leblanc - 1914.djvu/447

 been craftily done away with and the Dedessuslamare couple driven to commit suicide in the barn.

It was from there that the tiger had come to Paris, where later he was to find Fauville and Cosmo Mornington and plot the tragic affair of the inheritance.

And it was there that he was now returning!

There was no doubt about that. To begin with, the fact that he had administered a narcotic to Florence constituted an indisputable proof. Was he not obliged to put Florence to sleep in order to prevent her from recognizing the landscape at Alençon and Damigni, or the Old Castle, which she had explored with Gaston Sauverand?

On the other hand, the Le Mans-Angers-Nantes route, which had been taken to put the police on a false track, meant only an extra hour or two, at most, for any one motoring to Alençon. Lastly, that coach-house near a big town, that limousine waiting, ready charged with petrol, showed that the villain, when he intended to visit his retreat, took the precaution of stopping at Le Mans, in order to go from there, in his limousine, to Langernault's deserted estate.

He would therefore reach his lair at ten o'clock that morning. And he would arrive there with Florence Levasseur dead asleep!

The question forced itself upon him, the terrible persistent question—what did he mean to do with Florence Levasseur?

"Faster! Faster!" cried Don Luis.

Now that he knew the scoundrel's haunt, the man's scheme became hideously evident to him. Feeling himself hunted down, lost, an object of hatred and terror to Florence, whose eyes were now opened to the true state