XX
The Trap
The door of the garret had just opened abruptly, and allowed a view of three men clad in blue linen blouses, and masked with masks of black paper. The first was thin, and had a long, iron-tipped cudgel; the second, who was a sort of colossus, carried, by the middle of the handle, with the blade downward, a butcher’s poleaxe for slaughtering cattle. The third, a man with thickset shoulders, not so slender as the first, held in his hand