THE HOLLOW NEEDLE

CONTENTS

I. The Shot
II. Isidore Beautrelet, Sixth-form Schoolboy
III. The Corpse
IV. Face to Face
V. On the Track
VI. An Historic Secret
VII. The Treatise of the Needle
VIII. From Caesar to Lupin
IX. Open, Sesame!
X. The Treasures of the Kings of France


CHAPTER ONE

THE SHOT


Raymonde listened. The noise was repeated twice over, clearly enough to
be distinguished from the medley of vague sounds that formed the great
silence of the night and yet too faintly to enable her to tell whether
it was near or far, within the walls of the big country-house, or
outside, among the murky recesses of the park.

She rose softly. Her window was half open: she flung it back wide. The
moonlight lay over a peaceful landscape of lawns and thickets, against
which the straggling ruins of the old abbey stood out in tragic
outlines, truncated columns, mutilated arches, fragments of porches and
shreds of flying buttresses. A light breeze hovered over the face of
things, gliding noiselessly through the bare motionless branches of the
trees, but shaking the tiny budding leaves of the shrubs.

And, suddenly, she heard the same sound again. It was on the left and
on the floor below her, in the living rooms, therefore, that occupied
the left wing of the house. Brave and plucky though she was, the girl
felt afraid. She slipped on her dressing gown and took the matches