should he know? He had thought of the aquarium and her
often repeated feat.

"Monsieur is right, she is drowned; but it is not the aquarium--it is
the Seine. It appears," the wine-merchant's wife went on, "that last
night she made _la fete_ in the streets. We over here lock up, well,
at a decent hour, as monsieur will understand. Those who are in stay,
those who are out--well, monsieur will understand----"

Yes, he understood. Would she go on?

"Mademoiselle Lascaze had evidently lost her key of entry--so it
appears. We have this story from her comrades, a bad lot, like
herself. She tried to get in about five o'clock--they left her
knocking at the door. She must then have wandered the streets for an
hour, for it was six when they met her again by chance quite by the
Pont des Arts. They all had something to drink and started across the
river, when the poor thing offered to give an exhibition of her circus
feat and, before anyone could stop her, had dived off the bridge into
the Seine."

He had, then, seen her knocking there in the dawn, and if he had
hastened a little--not held conventionally back----

"It is all _en regle_," assured Madame Branchard. "As my husband will
tell monsieur, he has been to the morgue to identify her."

The wine-merchant now at his cue, nodded impressively. "Mais oui, I
assure monsieur she was quite natural--and she was une belle femme tout
le meme----"

His wife glanced at him scornfully. "She was a bad mother, and all the
house will tell you so. Many times, monsieur, I have gone in with my
pass-key and taken the poor little thing downstairs in my arms to give
her all the supper she would have had, and many a time, on cold nights,
when there was not a stick of fire in their room, and the woman
abroad--many a time I have had her sleep in our bed with us--my husband
will tell monsieur."

The wine-merchant nodded assent. "She speaks the truth, monsieur."

Bulstrode found presence of mind to wonder. "I suppose Mademoiselle
Lascaze left debts?"

The husband and wife exchanged glances.

"_En verite_, monsieur," confessed Madame Branchard, "she has left a
few, but they are small and not significant; a hundred francs will
cover them. It is not for our pockets we are come to monsieur."

Here the sentimentality having been disposed of by the woman, the
husband broke in:

"It is like this, Monsieur Balstro" (Bulstrode saw how intimately the
_hotel meuble_ knew him): "In a