been undertaken by Coquenil (and in that event might never have been
solved) but for the extraordinary faith this man had in certain strange
intuitions or forms of half knowledge that came to him at critical moments
of his life, bringing marvelous guidance. Who but one possessed of such
faith would have given up fortune, high position, the reward of a whole
career, _simply because a girl whom he did not know spoke some chance words
that neither he nor she understood_. Yet that is exactly what Coquenil did.

It was late in the afternoon of a hot July day, the hottest day Paris had
known that year (1907) and M. Coquenil, followed by a splendid
white-and-brown shepherd dog, was walking down the Rue de la Cité, past the
somber mass of the city hospital. Before reaching the Place Notre-Dame he
stopped twice, once at a flower market that offered the grateful shade of
its gnarled polenia trees just beyond the Conciergerie prison, and once
under the heavy archway of the Prefecture de Police. At the flower market
he bought a white carnation from a woman in green apron and wooden shoes,
who looked in awe at his pale, grave face, and thrilled when he gave her a
smile and friendly word. She wondered if it was true, as people said, that
M. Coquenil always wore glasses with a slightly bluish tint so that no one
could see his eyes.

The detective walked on, busy with pleasant thoughts. This was the hour of
his triumph and justification, this made up for the cruel blow that had
fallen two years before and resulted, no one understood why, in his leaving
the Paris detective force at the very moment of his glory, when the whole
city was praising him for the St. Germain investigation. _Beau Cocono!_
That was the name they had given him; he could hear the night crowds
shouting it in a silly couplet:

Il nous faut-o