tten a letter to M.
Rochefort's newspaper, L'Intransigeant, in which he declared Gouffe
to have been murdered by Gabrielle and an unknown. But, when official
inquiries were made in Mexico as to his whereabouts, the bird had flown.

At Havana, in Cuba, there lived a French dressmaker and clothes-merchant
named Puchen. In the month of February a stranger, ragged and unkempt,
but evidently a fellow-countryman, visited her shop and offered to sell
her a superb Turkish costume. The contrast between the wretchedness of
the vendor and the magnificence of his wares struck Madame Puchen at the
time. But her surprise was converted into suspicion when she read in
the American newspapers a description of the Turkish garment stolen by
Michel Eyraud, the reputed assassin of the bailiff Gouffe. It was one
morning in the middle of May that Mme. Puchen read the description of
the robe that had been offered her in February by her strange visitor.
To her astonishment, about two o'clock the same afternoon, she saw the
stranger standing before her door. She beckoned to him, and asked him
if he still had his Turkish robe with him; he seemed confused, and said
that he had sold it. The conversation drifted on to ordinary topics;
the stranger described some of his recent adventures in Mexico. "Oh!"
exclaimed the dressmaker, "they say Eyraud, the murderer, is in Mexico!
Did you come across him? Were you in Paris at the time of the murder?"
The stranger answered in the negative, but his face betrayed his
uneasiness. "Do you know you're rather like him?" said the woman, in
a half-joking way. The stranger laughed, and shortly after went out,
saying he would return. He did return on May 15, bringing with him
a number of the Republique Illustree that contained an almost
unrecognisable portrait of Eyraud. He said he had picked it up in a
cafe. "What a blackguard he looks!" he exclaimed as he threw the paper
on the table. But the dressmaker's suspicions were not allayed by the
stranger's uncomplimentary reference to the murderer. As soon as he had
gone, she went to the French Consul and told him her story.

By one of those singular coincidences that are inadmissable in fiction
or drama, but occur at times in real life, there happened to be in
Havana, of all places, a man who had been employed by Eyraud at the time
that he had owned a distillery at Sevres. The Consul, on hearing the
statement of Mme. Puchen, sent for this man and told him that a person