ft foot, which was missing from the basket
in which the gruesome remains were discovered. For this left foot the
police had been vainly searching for a week, and young Rouletabille had
found it in a drain where nobody had thought of looking for it. To
do that he had dressed himself as an extra sewer-man, one of a number
engaged by the administration of the city of Paris, owing to an overflow
of the Seine.

When the editor-in-chief was in possession of the precious foot and
informed as to the train of intelligent deductions the boy had been
led to make, he was divided between the admiration he felt for such
detective cunning in a brain of a lad of sixteen years, and delight at
being able to exhibit, in the "morgue window" of his paper, the left
foot of the Rue Oberskampf.

"This foot," he cried, "will make a great headline."

Then, when he had confided the gruesome packet to the medical lawyer
attached to the journal, he asked the lad, who was shortly to become
famous as Rouletabille, what he would expect to earn as a general
reporter on the "Epoque"?

"Two hundred francs a month," the youngster replied modestly, hardly
able to breathe from surprise at the proposal.

"You shall have two hundred and fifty," said the editor-in-chief; "only
you must tell everybody that you have been engaged on the paper for a
month. Let it be quite understood that it was not you but the 'Epoque'
that discovered the left foot of the Rue Oberskampf. Here, my young
friend, the man is nothing, the paper everything."

Having said this, he begged the new reporter to retire, but before the
youth had reached the door he called him back to ask his name. The other
replied:

"Joseph Josephine."

"That's not a name," said the editor-in-chief, "but since you will not
be required to sign what you write it is of no consequence."

The boy-faced reporter speedily made himself many friends, for he
was serviceable and gifted with a good humour that enchanted the most
severe-tempered and disarmed the most zealous of his companions. At
the Bar cafe, where the reporters assembled before going to any of the
courts, or to the Prefecture, in search of their news of crime, he began
to win a reputation as an unraveller of intricate and obscure affairs
which found its way to the office of the Chief of the Surete. When a
case was worth the trouble and Rouletabille--he had already been given
his nickname--had been started on the scent by his editor-in-chief,