have lost him!"

"Impossible! You cannot mean it! Gone, now, just when we most want
him? Never!"

"It is so, unhappily."

"Idiot! _Triple_ idiot! You shall be dismissed, discharged from
this hour. You are a disgrace to the force." M. Floçon raved
furiously at his abashed subordinate, blaming him a little too
harshly and unfairly, forgetting that until quite recently there
had been no strong suspicion against the Italian. We are apt at
times to expect others to be intuitively possessed of knowledge
that has only come to us at a much later date.

"How was it? Explain. Of course you have been drinking. It is
that, or your great gluttony. You were beguiled into some
eating-house."

"Monsieur, you shall hear the exact truth. When we started more
than an hour ago, our fiacre took the usual route, by the Quais
and along the riverside. My gentleman made himself most pleasant"

"No doubt," growled the Chief.

"Offered me an excellent cigar, and talked--not about the affair,
you understand--but of Paris, the theatres, the races, Longchamps,
Auteuil, the grand restaurants. He knew everything, all Paris,
like his pocket. I was much surprised, but he told me his business
often brought him here. He had been employed to follow up several