:

A. L. N., Post-office 45, Paris.

Situation desperate. Operation urgently necessary.
Send celebrity by national road fourteen.

The evidence was undeniable. Once apprised the accomplices in Paris
hastened to make their arrangements. At ten o'clock in the evening they
sent their celebrity by National Road No. 14, which skirts the forest
of Arques and ends at Dieppe. During this time, under cover of the fire
which they themselves had caused, the gang of burglars carried off
their leader and moved him to an inn, where the operation took place on
the arrival of the surgeon, at two o'clock in the morning.

About that there was no doubt. At Pontoise, at Gournay, at Forges,
Chief-inspector Ganimard, who was sent specially from Paris, with
Inspector Folenfant, as his assistant, ascertained that a motor car had
passed in the course of the previous night. The same on the road from
Dieppe to Ambrumesy. And, though the traces of the car were lost at
about a mile and a half from the chateau, at least a number of
footmarks were seen between the little door in the park wall and the
abbey ruins. Besides, Ganimard remarked that the lock of the little
door had been forced.

So all was explained. It remained to decide which inn the doctor had
spoken of: an easy piece of work for a Ganimard, a professional ferret,
a patient old stager of the police. The number of inns is limited and
this one, given the condition of the wounded man, could only be one
quite close to Ambrumesy. Ganimard and Sergeant Quevillon set to work.
Within a circle of five hundred yards, of a thousand yards, of fifteen
hundred yards, they visited and ransacked everything that could pass
for an inn. But, against all expectation, the dying man persisted in
remaining invisible.

Ganimard became more resolved than ever. He came back to sleep at the
chateau, on the Saturday night, with the intention of making his
personal inquiry on the Sunday. On Sunday morning, he learned that,
during the night, a posse of gendarmes had seen a figure gliding along
the sunk road, outside the wall. Was it an accomplice who had come back
to investigate? Were they to suppose that the leader of the gang had
not left the cloisters or the neighborhood of the cloisters?

That night, Ganimard openly sent the squad of gendarmes to the farm and
posted himself and Folenfant outside the walls, near the little door.

A little before midnight, a person passed out of the wood, slippe