SLAVES OF PARIS (Complete Edition). Emile Gaboriau

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       Émile Gaboriau

      SLAVES OF PARIS

      (Complete Edition)

      Caught in the Net & The Champdoce Mystery

      Published by

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      2018 OK Publishing

      ISBN 978-80-272-4342-6

      Table of Contents

       Caught in the Net

       The Champdoce Mystery

      Caught in the Net

       Table of Contents

By Emile Gaboriau

Table of Contents

       Chapter I. Putting on the Screw

       Chapter II. A Registry Office

       Chapter III. The Opinion of Dr. Hortebise

       Chapter IV. A Trustworthy Servant

       Chapter V. A Forgotten Crime

       Chapter VI. A Medical Adviser

       Chapter VII. In the Studio

       Chapter VIII. Mademoiselle de Mussidan

       Chapter IX. Rose’s Promotion

       Chapter X. “You are a Thief”

       Chapter XI. The Man-Milliner

       Chapter XII. A Startling Revelation

       Chapter XIII. Husband and Wife

       Chapter XIV. Father and Daughter

       Chapter XV. Master Chupin

       Chapter XVI. A Turn of the Screw

       Chapter XVII. Some Scraps of Paper

       Chapter XVIII. An Infamous Trade

       Chapter XIX. A Friendly Rival

       Chapter XX. A Council of War

       Chapter XXI. An Academy of Music

       Chapter XXII. Diamond Cut Diamond

       Chapter XXIII. Father and Son

       Chapter XXIV. An Artful Trick

       Chapter XXV. A New Skin

       Chapter XXVI. At the Grand Turk

       Chapter XXVII. The Last Link

      Chapter I.

       Putting on the Screw

       Table of Contents

      The cold on the 8th of February, 186-, was more intense than the Parisians had experienced during the whole of the severe winter which had preceded it, for at twelve o’clock on that day Chevalier’s thermometer, so well known by the denizens of Paris, registered three degrees below zero. The sky was overcast and full of threatening signs of snow, while the moisture on the pavement and roads had frozen hard, rendering traffic of all kinds exceedingly hazardous. The whole great city wore an air of dreariness and desolation, for even when a thin crust of ice covers the waters of the Seine, the mind involuntarily turns to those who have neither food, shelter, nor fuel.

      This bitterly cold day actually made the landlady of the Hotel de Perou, though she was a hard, grasping woman of Auvergne, give a thought to the condition of her lodgers, and one quite different from her usual idea of obtaining the maximum of rent for the minimum of accommodation.

      “The cold,” remarked she to her husband, who was busily engaged in replenishing the stove with fuel, “is enough to frighten the wits out of a Polar bear. In this kind of weather I always feel very anxious, for it was during a winter like this that one of our lodgers hung himself, a trick which cost us fifty francs, in good, honest money, besides giving us a bad name in the neighborhood. The fact is, one never knows what lodgers are capable of doing. You should go up to the top floor, and see how they are getting on there.”

      “Pooh, pooh!” replied her husband, M. Loupins; “they will do well enough.”

      “Is that really your opinion?”

      “I know that I am right. Daddy Tantaine went out as soon as it was light, and a short time afterward Paul Violaine came down. There is no one upstairs now but little Rose, and I expect that she has been wise enough to stick to her bed.”

      “Ah!” answered the landlady rather spitefully. “I have made up my mind regarding that young lady some time ago; she is a sight too pretty for this house, and so I tell you.”

      The Hotel de Perou stands in the Rue de la Hachette, not twenty steps from the Place de Petit Pont; and no more cruelly sarcastic title could ever have been conferred on a building. The extreme shabbiness of the exterior of the house, the narrow, muddy street in which it stood,