marks, made by two kinds of shoes, and the heels have made much
deeper marks in the soil than have the tips--yes, these men bore a heavy
burden!"

Fandor was so pleased that he mentally rubbed his hands over this
discovery. His quest was a success so far: he was on the track of
Dollon's body! And what copy for _La Capitale_! Then a sad thought came
to dim his delight:

"Poor, poor Elizabeth Dollon! I swore to her I would get at the
truth--and a lamentable truth it is! Her brother is dead: he died in the
Depot: he was done to death--it was no suicide!"

Whilst talking to himself Fandor was scrutinising every inch of the
ground as he moved forward: there might be fresh clues:

"It's a queer kind of sewer," he went on. "This streamlet is as much mud
as water, is almost stagnant. Evidently this underground sewer way is no
longer used--has been abandoned!"

A horrid spectacle struck him motionless. His lantern made visible a
struggling, heaving mass of rats, fighting tooth and claw, enormous rats
devouring some hidden thing!

Fandor's stomach rose at the sight.

Oh, horror! Could it be Jacques Dollon's body?

Fandor snatched up a stone and flung it furiously among the unclean
beasts. They fled. On the ground he could distinguish a mass, a red,
formless mass, saturated with congealed blood:

"Assuredly, if the corpse has disappeared, it is there the assassins
must have cut it in pieces, that they might carry it more easily, and
those vile creatures are in the thick of feasting on the poor victim's
remains!... Pouah!"

Fandor moved on, only to discover another pool of blood almost as large,
also besieged by rats:

"Evidently I shall find nothing else," thought Fandor: "the corpse no
longer exists!"

He continued his advance, determined to find out what this underground
way ended in. His lantern was flickering to a finish when he arrived at
the end of the sewer and found, as he had foreseen, that its opening had
been cut in the steep bank of the Seine:

"That's a bit of luck! I can get out this way instead of having to climb
back the way I came, up to the Palais roof and down again!"

It was still night; darkness reigned save on the far horizon, where a
faint, whitish line indicated the early dawn of an April day.

Fandor was just asking himself by what gymnastic feat he could regain
the quay, and he was leaning over the opening of the sewer, his body
bending far forward over the inky waters of the Seine. Bef