Lars Larssen nodded appreciation of the young fellow's method of going
straight to the heart of the subject. "Good!" said he. "Now for
details."

"I carried out your orders exactly, sir. Took a cab to Neuilly,
dismissed it, put on the pair of workman's boots when I was in the
darkness of the river bank, and found the coat and stick just where
Martin and I had hidden them in the bushes. The trees make it quite dark
along that part of the Seine, and I am certain no one saw me taking them
and wrapping them in my brown paper. The coat was nearly dry."

"Did you find the stick broken?"

"No. I broke it in two so that it could be wrapped in the same parcel as
the coat."

"Did you examine footprints?"

"Yes. The only ones around the bushes were Martin's and mine made this
morning, and the prints of the man who first discovered them. Of course
my own prints this time were made by the boots you told me to buy and
put on."

"What next?"

"I went along the river bank for a couple of miles with my parcel until
I came to some other suburb, and then I caught a cab to the Arc de
Triomphe, and there I took another cab to here."

"The workman's boots?"