numberless little courts
enclosed within its vast confines, to understand the difficulties with
which our intrepid journalist had to contend. But Jerome Fandor was not
the man to be discouraged in the face of difficulties: he was determined
to brave them--conquer them! He examined, minutely, the entire roofing
of the Palais; he did not leave a corner or a morsel of shadow
unexplored; there was not a gutter which he had not searched from end to
end. When, after two hours of strenuous exertion, he returned to his
starting-point, the chimney of Marie Antoinette, he was fain to confess
that if Jacques Dollon had mounted to the roof of the Palais de Justice
he certainly had not remained there.

Fandor unfolded his plan once more. It fluttered in the night breeze, as
he carefully numbered all the chimneys opening on to this roof; then,
one by one, he identified them with the real chimneys before his eyes.
He exclaimed joyfully:

"There, now! It's just what I suspected!"

He had discovered there was one chimney not down on the plan: "Whither
did it lead?" At all costs he must find out--make sure. He hastened to
this extra chimney. Its orifice was large enough to allow of the passage
of a man; also, here again, stones had been recently loosened, and a
rope had rubbed against them:

"What the deuce is this chimney?" thought Fandor. "Another mystery! This
chimney is not a chimney; there is not a trace of soot on it, even old
soot!"

After a moment's reflection, he added:

"Can it be for ventilation only? But a ventilation hole could only
communicate with one of the apartments in the Palais itself, and how the
deuce could they drop a corpse down there? It would have been in the
highest degree imprudent to attempt it! No, it is not by that road they
have carried off Dollon's body! But then by what way?"

He glued his ear to the chimney. After a while, Fandor could make out a
vague, intermittent sound--could catch a little, far-away, plashing
sound.

"Can the chimney communicate with the Seine?" he asked himself. "No, we
are too far off it. Why this opening, then?... Ah, I have it! It is a
drain, a sewer, it communicates with!"

To verify that, there was nothing for it but to descend this chimney,
which was no chimney! So be it!... Fandor took off his coat, and
uncovered the long, fine cord, rolled round and round his middle.
Weighting the cord with a flint, he let it slide down the chimney,
testing the straightness of t