he
often got the better of the most famous detective.

It was at the Bar cafe that I became intimately acquainted with him.
Criminal lawyers and journalists are not enemies, the former need
advertisement, the latter information. We chatted together, and I soon
warmed towards him. His intelligence was so keen, and so original!--and
he had a quality of thought such as I have never found in any other
person.

Some time after this I was put in charge of the law news of the "Cri du
Boulevard." My entry into journalism could not but strengthen the ties
which united me to Rouletabille. After a while, my new friend being
allowed to carry out an idea of a judicial correspondence column, which
he was allowed to sign "Business," in the "Epoque," I was often able to
furnish him with the legal information of which he stood in need.

Nearly two years passed in this way, and the better I knew him, the more
I learned to love him; for, in spite of his careless extravagance, I
had discovered in him what was, considering his age, an extraordinary
seriousness of mind. Accustomed as I was to seeing him gay and, indeed,
often too gay, I would many times find him plunged in the deepest
melancholy. I tried then to question him as to the cause of this change
of humour, but each time he laughed and made me no answer. One day,
having questioned him about his parents, of whom he never spoke, he left
me, pretending not to have heard what I said.

While things were in this state between us, the famous case of The
Yellow Room took place. It was this case which was to rank him as the
leading newspaper reporter, and to obtain for him the reputation of
being the greatest detective in the world. It should not surprise us to
find in the one man the perfection of two such lines of activity if we
remember that the daily press was already beginning to transform itself
and to become what it is to-day--the gazette of crime.

Morose-minded people may complain of this; for myself I regard it a
matter for congratulation. We can never have too many arms, public or
private, against the criminal. To this some people may answer that,
by continually publishing the details of crimes, the press ends by
encouraging their commission. But then, with some people we can never do
right. Rouletabille, as I have said, entered my room that morning of the
26th of October, 1892. He was looking redder than usual, and his eyes
were bulging out of his head, as the phrase is, and