A Royal Prisoner: Fantômas Saga. Marcel Allain

      CHAPTER I

       A ROYAL JAG

       Table of Contents

      "After all, why not celebrate? It's the last day of the year and it won't come again for twelve months."

      It was close upon midnight.

      Jerome Fandor, reporter on the popular newspaper, La Capitale, was strolling along the boulevard; he had just come from a banquet, one of those official and deadly affairs at which the guests are obliged to listen to interminable speeches. He had drowsed through the evening and at the first opportunity had managed to slip away quickly.

      The theatres were just out and the boulevard was crowded with people intent on making a night of it. Numberless automobiles containing the fashionable and rich of Paris blocked the streets. The restaurants were brilliantly illuminated, and as carriages discharged their occupants before the doors, one glimpsed the neat feet and ankles of daintily clad women as they crossed the sidewalk and disappeared inside, following their silk-hatted escorts, conscious of their own importance.

      Many years of active service in Paris as chief reporter of La Capitale had brought Jerome Fandor in touch with a good third of those who constitute Parisian society, and rarely did he fail to exchange a nod, a smile, or half a dozen words of friendly greeting whenever he set foot out of doors.

      But in spite of his popularity he led a lonely life — many acquaintances, but few close friends. The great exception was Juve, the celebrated detective.

      In fact,

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