ENDNOTE
Reading edition
[1] Author’s Note.—The Bombec Tower, it may be well to point out, was that tower of the Conciergerie prison in Paris in which torture was generally inflicted. I have added nothing in this story to historical descriptions of the cells in this horrible place. It was not until the end of the last century that these sunless dungeons were altered radically. At that time, the swords in the walls, and the loathsome creatures which the Seine washed into the cells, were still the talk of the curious.