very theory he enunciated, and he grew more and more disposed to
regard him as a zealous and trustworthy officer. Also he was not at all
displeased at enjoying this opportunity of impressing the Duke with his
powers of analysis and synthesis. He was unaware that, as a rule, the
Duke's eyes did not usually twinkle as they twinkled during this solemn
and deliberate progress through the house of M. Gournay-Martin. M.
Formery had so exactly the air of a sleuthhound; and he was even
noisier.

Having made this thorough examination of the house, M. Formery went out
into the garden and set about examining that. There were footprints on
the turf about the foot of the ladder, for the grass was close-clipped,
and the rain had penetrated and softened the soil; but there were
hardly as many footprints as might have been expected, seeing that the
burglars must have made many journeys in the course of robbing the
drawing-rooms of so many objects of art, some of them of considerable
weight. The footprints led to a path of hard gravel; and M. Formery led
the way down it, out of the door in the wall at the bottom of the
garden, and into the space round the house which was being built.

As M. Formery had divined, there was a heap, or, to be exact, there
were several heaps of plaster about the bottom of the scaffolding.
Unfortunately, there were also hundreds of footprints. M. Formery
looked at them with longing eyes; but he did not suggest that the
inspector should hunt about for a set of footprints of the size of the
one he had so carefully measured on the drawing-room carpet.

While they were examining the ground round the half-built house a man
came briskly down the stairs from the second floor of the house of M.
Gournay-Martin. He was an ordinary-looking man, almost insignificant,
of between forty and fifty, and of rather more than middle height. He
had an ordinary, rather shapeless mouth, an ordinary nose, an ordinary
chin, an ordinary forehead, rather low, and ordinary ears. He was
wearing an ordinary top-hat, by no means new. His clothes were the
ordinary clothes of a fairly well-to-do citizen; and his boots had been
chosen less to set off any slenderness his feet might possess than for
their comfortable roominess. Only his eyes relieved his face from
insignificance. They were extraordinarily alert eyes, producing in
those on whom they rested the somewhat uncomfortable impression that
the depths of their souls were being penetrat