A tall, slim, dark man, looking like an artisan in his Sunday best, then
stepped into the ministerial sanctum. Fully acquainted with the
under-currents of Paris life, this Chief of the Detective Force had a
cold dispassionate nature and a clear and methodical mind.
Professionalism slightly spoilt him, however: he would have possessed
more intelligence if he had not credited himself with so much.

He began by apologising for his superior the Prefect, who would certainly
have called in person had he not been suffering from indisposition.
However, it was perhaps best that he, Gascogne, should acquaint Monsieur
le Ministre with the grave affair which brought him, for he knew every
detail of it. Then he revealed what the grave affair was.

"I believe, Monsieur le Ministre, that we at last hold the perpetrator of
the crime in the Rue Godot-de-Mauroy."

At this, Monferrand, who had been listening impatiently, became quite
impassioned. The fruitless searches of the police, the attacks and the
jeers of the newspapers, were a source of daily worry to him. "Ah!--Well,
so much the better for you Monsieur Gascogne," he replied with brutal
frankness. "You would have ended by losing your post. The man is
arrested?"

"Not yet, Monsieur le Ministre; but he cannot escape, and it is merely an
affair of a few hours."

Then the Chief of the Detective Force told the whole story: how Detective
Mondesir, on being warned by a secret agent that the Anarchist Salvat was
in a tavern at Montmartre, had reached it just as the bird had flown;
then how chance had again set him in presence of Salvat at a hundred