"They're dead!" Sister Sandrine stammered into the telephone in her Saint-Sulpice residence. Shewas leaving a message on an answering machine. "Please pick up! They're all dead!"The first three phone numbers on the list had produced terrifying results—a hysterical widow, adetective working late at a murder scene, and a somber priest consoling a bereaved family. Allthree contacts were dead. And now, as she called the fourth and final number—the number she wasnot supposed to call unless the first three could not be reached—she got an answering machine.

　　The outgoing message offered no name but simply asked the caller to leave a message.

　　"The floor panel has been broken!" she pleaded as she left the message. "The other three are dead!"Sister Sandrine did not know the identities of the four men she protected, but the private phonenumbers stashed beneath her bed were for use on only one condition.

　　If that floor panel is ever broken, the faceless messenger had told her, it means the upper echelonhas been breached. One of us has been mortally threatened and been forced to tell a desperate lie.

　　Call the numbers. Warn the others. Do not fail us in this.

　　It was a silent alarm. Foolproof in its simplicity............