tween some piles
of papers, was a diary bound in drab cloth, with a rubber band round it.
He took the diary, and, emphasizing his words, said:

"There, look, it's all in here. With this, the hideous business can
be reconstructed.... There are my suspicions first and then my
certainties.... Everything, everything ... how to trap them and how
to do for them.... You'll remember, won't you? A diary bound in drab
cloth.... I'm putting it back in the safe."

Gradually his calmness returned. He pushed back the glass case, tidied a
few papers, switched on the electric lamp above his bed, put out the
lights in the middle of the ceiling, and asked Don Luis and Mazeroux to
leave him.

Don Luis, who was walking round the room and examining the iron shutters
of the two windows, noticed a door opposite the entrance door and asked
the engineer about it.

"I use it for my regular clients," said Fauville, "and sometimes I go out
that way."

"Does it open on the garden?"

"Yes."

"Is it properly closed?"

"You can see for yourself; it's locked and bolted with a safety bolt.
Both keys are on my bunch; so is the key of the garden gate."

He placed the bunch of keys on the table with his pocket-book and, after
first winding it, his watch.

Don Luis, without troubling to ask permission, took the keys and
unfastened the lock and the bolt. A flight of three steps brought him to
the garden. He followed the length of the narrow border. Through the ivy
he saw and heard the two policemen pacing up and down the boulevard. He
tried the lock of the gate. It was fastened.

"Everything's all right," he said when he returned, "and you can be easy.
Good-night."

"Good-night," said the engineer, seeing Perenna and Mazeroux out.

Between his study and the passage were two doors, one of which was padded
and covered with oilcloth. On the other side, the passage was separated
from the hall by a heavy curtain.

"You can go to sleep," said Perenna to his companion. "I'll sit up."

"But surely, Chief, you don't think that anything's going to happen!"

"I don't think so, seeing the precautions which we've taken. But,
knowing Inspector Verot as you did, do you think he was the man to
imagine things?"

"No, Chief."

"Well, you know what he prophesied. That means that he had his reasons
for doing so. And therefore I shall keep my eyes open."

"We'll take it in turns, Chief; wake me when it's my time to watch."

Seated motionlessly, side by