ver this object; and the man,
standing with his face to the wall, put his hand six times in his pocket
and made a movement as though he were loading a weapon.

As soon as this was done, they walked briskly to the Rue de Surene; and
the inspector, who followed them as closely as he was able to do without
attracting their attention, saw them enter the gateway of an old house
of which all the shutters were closed, with the exception of those on
the third or top floor.

He hurried in after them. At the end of the carriage-entrance he saw a
large courtyard, with a house-painter's sign at the back and a staircase
on the left.

He went up the stairs and, as soon as he reached the first floor, ran
still faster, because he heard, right up at the top, a din as of a
free-fight.

When he came to the last landing he found the door open. He entered,
listened for a second, caught the sound of a struggle, rushed to the
room from which the sound appeared to proceed and remained standing on
the threshold, very much out of breath and greatly surprised to see
the man of the orange-peel and the boy banging the floor with chairs.

At that moment a third person walked out of an adjoining room. It was a
young man of twenty-eight or thirty, wearing a pair of short whiskers in
addition to his moustache, spectacles, and a smoking-jacket with an
astrakhan collar and looking like a foreigner, a Russian.

"Good morning, Ganimard," he said. And turning to the two companions,
"Thank you, my friends, and all my congratulations on the successful
result. Here's the reward I promised you."

He gave them a hundred-franc note, pushed them outside and shut both
doors.

"I am sorry, old chap," he said to Ganimard. "I wanted to talk to you
... wanted to talk to you badly."

He offered him his hand and, seeing that the inspector remained
flabbergasted and that his face was still distorted with anger, he
exclaimed:

"Why, you don't seem to understand!... And yet it's clear enough.... I
wanted to see you particularly.... So what could I do?" And, pretending
to reply to an objection, "No, no, old chap," he continued. "You're
quite wrong. If I had written or telephoned, you would not have come
... or else you would have come with a regiment. Now I wanted to see you
all alone; and I thought the best thing was to send those two decent
fellows to meet you, with orders to scatter bits of orange-peel and draw
crosses and circles, in short, to mark out your