one, and I thank you for it. While the others spend the night paddling
about in the slush, I shall get a good sleep."

Here he stood, in a room that was splashed with blood, that was
shuddering, so to speak, with crime, and yet face to face with the still
warm bodies of three murdered men he could talk of sleep!

But, after all, what did it matter to him? He had seen so many similar
scenes in his time. And does not habit infallibly lead to professional
indifference, making the soldier cool and composed in the midst of
conflict, and rendering the surgeon impassible when the patient shrieks
and writhes beneath his operating knife.

"I have been upstairs, looking about," pursued Father Absinthe; "I saw a
bed up there, and we can mount guard here, by turns."

With an imperious gesture, Lecoq interrupted him. "You must give up
that idea, Father Absinthe," he said, "we are not here to sleep, but to
collect information--to make the most careful researches, and to note
all the probabilities. In a few hours the commissary of police, the
legal physician, and the public prosecutor will be here. I wish to have
a report ready for them."

This proposition seemed anything but pleasing to the old police agent.
"Eh! what is the use of that?" he exclaimed. "I know the General. When
he goes in search of the commissary, as he has gone this evening, there
is nothing more to be done. Do you think you can see anything that he
didn't see?"

"I think that Gevrol, like every one else, is liable to be mistaken. I