ome along, we'll take the road the burglars took. The
inspector has put my lantern ready for me."

As he spoke he went to the fireplace, picked up a lantern which had
been set on the top of the iron fire-basket, and lighted it. The Duke
stepped into the great fireplace beside him. It was four feet deep, and
between eight and nine feet broad. Guerchard threw the light from the
lantern on to the back wall of it. Six feet from the floor the soot
from the fire stopped abruptly, and there was a dappled patch of
bricks, half of them clean and red, half of them blackened by soot,
five feet broad, and four feet high.

"The opening is higher up than I thought," said Guerchard. "I must get
a pair of steps."

He went to the door of the drawing-room and bade the young policeman
fetch him a pair of steps. They were brought quickly. He took them from
the policeman, shut the door, and locked it again. He set the steps in
the fireplace and mounted them.

"Be careful," he said to the Duke, who had followed him into the
fireplace, and stood at the foot of the steps. "Some of these bricks
may drop inside, and they'll sting you up if they fall on your toes."

The Duke stepped back out of reach of any bricks that might fall.

Guerchard set his left hand against the wall of the chimney-piece
between him and the drawing-room, and pressed hard with his right
against the top of the dappled patch of bricks. At the first push, half
a dozen of them fell with a bang on to the floor of the next house. The
light came flooding in through the hole, and shone on Guerchard's face
and its smile of satisfaction. Quickly he pushed row after row of
bricks into the next house until he had cleared an opening four feet
square.

"Come along," he said to the Duke, and disappeared feet foremost
through the opening.

The Duke mounted the steps, and found himself looking into a large
empty room of the exact size and shape of the drawing-room of M.
Gournay-Martin, save that it had an ordinary modern fireplace instead
of one of the antique pattern of that in which he stood. Its
chimney-piece was a few inches below the opening. He stepped out on to
the chimney-piece and dropped lightly to the floor.

"Well," he said, looking back at the opening through which he had come.
"That's an ingenious dodge."

"Oh, it's common enough," said Guerchard. "Robberies at the big
jewellers' are sometimes worked by these means. But what is uncommon
about it, and what at fir