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ordinarily realize the impossibility of escaping from this ambulatory
prison.

Indeed, statistics record only thirty attempts at escape in a period
of ten years. Of these thirty attempts, twenty-five were ridiculous
failures; four were discovered before their authors had conceived
any serious hope of success: and only one man actually succeeded in
alighting from the vehicle, and even he had not taken fifty steps before
he was recaptured.

Lecoq was well acquainted with all these facts, and in preparing
everything for May's escape, his only fear was lest the murderer might
decline to profit of the opportunity. Hence, it was necessary to offer
every possible inducement for flight. The plan the young detective had
eventually decided on consisted in sending an order to Mazas for May to
be despatched to the Palais de Justice. He could be placed in one of the
prison vans, and at the moment of starting the door of his compartment
would not be perfectly secured. When the van reached the Palais
de Justice and discharged its load of criminals at the door of the
"mouse-trap" May would purposely be forgotten and left in the vehicle,
while the latter waited on the Quai de l'Horloge until the hour of
returning to Mazas. It was scarcely possible that the prisoner would
fail to embrace this apparently favorable opportunity to make his
escape.

Everything was, therefore, prepared and arranged according to Lecoq's
directions on the Monday following the close of the Easter holidays; the
requisite "order of extraction" being entrusted to an intelligent man
with the most minute instructions.

Now, although the van in which May would journey was not to be expected
at the Palais de Justice before noon, it so happened that at nine
o'clock that same morning a queer-looking "loafer" having the aspect
of an overgrown, overaged "gamin de Paris" might have been seen hanging
about the Prefecture de Police. He wore a tattered black woolen blouse
and a pair of wide, ill-fitting trousers, fastened about his waist by
a leather strap. His boots betrayed a familiar acquaintance with the
puddles of the barrieres, and his cap was shabby and dirty, though, on
the other hand, his necktie, a pretentious silk scarf of flaming hue,
was evidently quite fresh from some haberdasher's shop. No doubt it was
a present from his sweetheart.

This uncomely being had the unhealthy complexion, hollow eyes, slouching
mien, and straggling beard common to his trib