"Not this cigarette, at any rate," he replied. "Madame Barras
has already smoked it. . . . I can, perhaps, find you the burnt
match."

He got the electric-flash out of his pocket, and stooped over.
Immediately he made an exclamation of surprise.

I leaned down beside him.

There was a little heap of charred paper on the brown bed of
pine-needles. Marquis was about to take up this charred paper
when his eye caught something thrust in between the two stones.
It was a handful of torn bits of paper.

Marquis got them out and laid them on the top of the flat stones
under his light.

"Ah," he said, "Madame Barras, while she smoked, got rid of some
money."

"The package of gold certificates!" I cried. "She has burned
them?"

"No," he replied, "Madame Barras has favored your Treasury in her
destructive process. These are five-pound notes, of the Bank of
England."

I was astonished and I expressed it.