The Sub-prefect, after taking down my _"proces verbal"_ in his office, returned with me to my hotel to get my passport.

"Do you think," I asked, as I gave it to him, "that any men have really been smothered in that bed, as they tried to smother _me ?_" "I have seen dozens of drowned men laid out at the Morgue," answered the Sub-prefect, "in whose pocket-books were found letters stating that they had committed suicide in the Seine, because they had lost everything at the gaming table.

Do I know how many of those men entered the same gambling-house that _you_ entered?
won as _you_ won?
took that bed as _you_ took it?
slept in it?
were smothered in it?
and were privately thrown into the river, with a letter of explanation written by the murderers and placed in their pocket-books?
No man can say how many or how few have suffered the fate from which you have escaped.

The people of the gambling-house kept their bedstead machinery a secret from _us_--even from the police! The dead kept the rest of the secret for them.

Good-night, or rather good-morning, Monsieur Faulkner! Be at my office again at nine o'clock--in the meantime, _au revoir!_" The rest of my story is soon told.