CHAPTER XXIII. THE OVERWHELMING ODDS

At half-past ten that same evening, Blakeney, still clad in a workman's tattered clothes, his feet bare so that he could tread the streets unheard, turned into the Rue de la Croix Blanche.

The porte-cochere of the house where Armand lodged had been left on the latch; not a soul was in sight. Peering cautiously round, he slipped into the house. On the ledge of the window, immediately on his left when he entered, a candle was left burning, and beside it there was a scrap of paper with the initials S. P. roughly traced in pencil. No one challenged him as he noiselessly glided past it, and up the narrow stairs that led to the upper floor. Here, too, on the second landing the door on the right had been left on the latch. He pushed it open and entered.

As is usual even in the meanest lodgings in Paris houses, a small antechamber gave between the front door and the main room. When Percy entered the antechamber was unlighted, but the door into the inner room beyond was ajar. Blakeney approached it with noiseless tread, and gently pushed it open.

That very instant he knew that the game was up; he heard the footsteps closing up behind him, saw Armand, deathly pale, leaning against the wall in the room in front of him, and Chauvelin and Heron standing guard over him.

The next moment the room and the antechamber were literally alive with soldiers--twenty of them to arrest one man.

Answer this series of questions:

1. what was burning?
2. what city was he in?
3. what was between the door and main room?
4. was it lit?
5. was he heavyfooted?
6. was he followed?
7. by whom?
8. Who was being guarded?

Numbered answers:
1. a candle
2. Paris
3. soldiers
4. No
5. No
6. Yes
7. Armand,
8. Yes