ended by touching some woodwork. It was the partition-wall.
He crept along this; but, as ill-luck would have it, his bewildered brain showed him a false picture of the room, so that, instead of turning to the left as he should have done, he followed the wall to the right, behind a screen which concealed a third door.
His fingers touched the handle of this door and he managed to open it. He gasped, "Help! Help!" and fell at his full length in a sort of cupboard or closet which the Prefect of Police used as a dressing-room.
"To-night!" he moaned, believing that he was making himself heard and that he was in the secretary's room. "To-night! The job is fixed for to-night! You'll see … The mark of the teeth!… It's awful!… Oh, the pain I'm in!… It's the poison! Save me! Help!"
The voice died away. He repeated several times, as though in a nightmare:
"The teeth! the teeth! They're closing!"
Then his voice grew fainter still; and inarticulate sounds issued from his pallid lips. His mouth munched the air like the mouth of one of those old men who seem to be interminably chewing the cud. His head sank lower and lower on his breast. He heaved two or three sighs; a great shiver passed through his body; and he moved no more.
And the death-rattle began in his throat, very softly and rhythmically, broken only by interruptions in which a last instinctive effort appeared to revive the flickering life of the intelligence, and to rouse fitful gleams of consciousness in the dimmed eyes.
