r period of waiting. Then our exasperated journalist
heard the driver pass down the centre of the van. The van door
slammed.... Once more the Salad Basket was loosed from its moorings.

"Something queer is going on!" said Fandor suddenly. He felt certain the
van had turned completely round and was going in the direction it came
from.

"Now where in the world are we going?... By what kind of a route are we
making for that blessed police station?"

There were spaces of asphalt, succeeded by wood pavement, then by hard
stones, then asphalt and wood again, and turning succeeded turning,
whilst a new Tom Thumb was doing his possible to guess the route the
Salad Basket was taking. Presently Fandor gave it up. He had to admit
that he was completely lost.... Which way the Salad Basket was going he
knew no more than the Man in the Moon!

"We have been trotting along for more than half an hour; therefore we
cannot be going to the boulevard Exelmans police station ... the
distance from the rue du Docteur-Blanche to the Point-du-Jour is not
great...."

As Fandor was murmuring these words, the van slowed down, turned round;
then, with a bump and a jolt, it mounted the footpath.

"Now for it," said Fandor. "This is certainly not the Point-du-Jour
station!... We are passing under an archway--now we are turning
again.... Ah, we draw up, at last!... Not too soon!"

The van did stop.

Again a wait. Fandor cocked both ears; he wondered who was going to
enter the cell next his. Then a man approached the door of his little
cell, where he was indeed "cribbed, cabined and confined"; inserted a
key in the lock, opened, and shouted in a brutal tone:

"Out with you!... March! Quick now!"

Fandor had no choice but to obey the orders hurled at him. But no sooner
had he descended the steps of the prison van than he exclaimed:

"By Jove! The Depot!"

This was not the moment to express all the surprise he felt at being
landed at Police Headquarters in this fashion.... All round the Salad
Basket the police were ranged in irregular order. They shouted to him to
be quick.

"Come on with you! Hurry there!"

Fandor, followed by the costermonger, was pushed towards a little open
door in the grey wall which led into a kind of office, where an old
frowning man was already looking through the papers, which had been
respectfully handed to him by a warder.

"So you have brought only two of the birds?" remarked the frowning
official.

"Yes,