No signature. Nevertheless it was plain the letter came from Milady. He consequently kept it as a piece of evidence, and being in safety behind the angle of the trench, he began to interrogate the wounded man. He confessed that he had undertaken with his comrade⁠—the same who was killed⁠—to carry off a young woman who was to leave Paris by the Barrière de La Villette; but having stopped to drink at a cabaret, they had missed the carriage by ten minutes.

“But what were you to do with that woman?” asked d’Artagnan, with anguish.

“We were to have conveyed her to a hotel in the Place Royale,” said the wounded man.

“Yes, yes!” murmured d’Artagnan; “that’s the place⁠—Milady’s own residence!”