At this preliminary stage, the affair seems involved in impenetrable mystery." Lomaque read these lines through, down to his own signature at the end.
They were the duplicate Secret Instructions demanded from him in the paper which he had been looking over before the entrance of the two police agents.

Slowly, and, as it seemed, unwillingly, he folded the note up in a fresh sheet of paper, and was preparing to seal it when a tap at the door stopped him.

"Come in," he cried, irritably; and a man in traveling costume, covered with dust, entered, quietly whispered a word or two in his ear, and then went out.

Lomaque started at the whisper, and, opening his note again, hastily wrote under his signature: "I have just heard that Danville has hastened his return to Paris, and may be expected back to-night." Having traced these lines, he closed, sealed, and directed the letter, and gave it to Magloire.

The police agent looked at the address as he left the room; it was "To Citizen Robespierre, Rue Saint-Honore." Left alone again, Lomaque rose, and walked restlessly backward and forward, biting his nails.
"Danville comes back to-night," he said to himself, "and the crisis comes with him.