The detective walked on, busy with pleasant thoughts. This was the hour of
his triumph and justification, this made up for the cruel blow that had
fallen two years before and resulted, no one understood why, in his leaving
the Paris detective force at the very moment of his glory, when the whole
city was praising him for the St. Germain investigation. _Beau Cocono!_
That was the name they had given him; he could hear the night crowds
shouting it in a silly couplet:

Il nous faut-o
Beau Cocono-o!

And then what a change within a week! What bitterness and humiliation! M.
Paul Coquenil, after scores of brilliant successes, had withdrawn from the
police force for personal reasons, said the newspapers. His health was
affected, some declared; he had laid by a tidy fortune and wished to enjoy
it, thought others; but many shook their heads mysteriously and whispered
that there was something queer in all this. Coquenil himself said nothing.

But now facts would speak for him more eloquently than any words; now,
within twenty-four hours, it would be announced that he had been chosen,
_on the recommendation of the Paris police department_, to organize the
detective service of a foreign capital, with a life position at the head
of this service and a much larger salary than he had ever received, a
larger salary, in fact, than Paris paid to its own chief of police.

M. Coquenil had reached this point in his musings when he caught sight of a
red-faced man, with a large purplish nose and a suspiciously black mustache
(for his hair was gray), coming forward from the prefecture to meet him.

"Ah, Papa Tignol!" he said briskly. "How goes it?"

The old man saluted deferentially, and then, half shutting his small gray
eyes, replied with an ominous chuckle, as one who enjoys bad news: "Eh,
well enough, M. Paul; but I don't like _that_." And, lifting an unshaven
chin, he pointed over his shoulder with a long, grimy thumb to the western
sky.

"Always croaking!" laughed the other. "Why, it's a fine sunset, man!"

Tignol answered slowly, with objecting nod: "It's too red. And it's barred
with purple!"

"Like your nose. Ha, ha!" And Coquenil's face lighted gaily. "Forgive me,
Papa Tignol."

"Have your joke, if you will, but," he turned with sudden directness,
"don't you _remember_ when we had a blood-red sky like that? Ah, you don't
laugh now!"

It was true, Coquenil's look had deepened into one of somber reminiscence.