le. Lucienne.

"Do me the favor to go and take a walk for about fifteen minutes,"
said the commissary to him. "We have to talk, this gentleman and
myself."

Humbly, without a word, and like a man who does himself justice,
M. Fortin slipped off.

And at once,--"It is clear, M. le Marquis, it is manifest, that a
crime has been committed. Listen, and judge for yourself. I was
just rising from dinner, when I was notified of what was called
our poor Lucienne's accident. Without even changing my clothes, I
ran. The carriage was lying in the street, broken to pieces. Two
policemen were holding the horses, which had been stopped. I
inquire. I learn that Lucienne, picked up by Maxence, has been able
to drag herself as far as the Hotel des Folies, and that the driver
has been taken to the nearest drug-store. Furious at my own
negligence, and tormented by vague suspicions, it is to the druggist's
that I go first, and in all haste. The driver was in a backroom,
stretched on a mattress.

"His head having struck the angle of the curbstone, his skull was
broken; and he had just breathed his last. It was, apparently, the
annihilation of the hope which I had, of enlightening myself by
questioning this man. Nevertheless, I give orders to have him
searched. No paper is discovered upon him to establish his identity;
but, in one of the pockets of his pantaloons, do you know what they
find? Two bank-notes of a thousand francs each, carefully wrapped
up in a fragment of newspaper."

M. de Tregars had shuddered.

"What a revelation!" he murmured.

It was not to the present circumstance that he applied that word.
But the commissary naturally mistook him.

"Yes," he went on, "it was a revelation. To me these two thousand
francs were worth a confession: they could only be the wages of a
crime. So, without losing a moment, I jump into a cab, and drive to
Brion's. Everybody was upside down, because the horses had just
been brought back. I question; and, from the very first words, the
correctness of my presumption is demonstrated to me. The wretch who
had just died was not one of Brion's coachmen. This is what had
happened. At two o'clock, when the carriage ordered by M. Van
Klopen was ready to go for Mlle. Lucienne, they had been compelled
to send for the driver and the footman, who had forgotten themselves
drinking in a neighboring wine-shop, with a man who had called to
see them in the morning. They were slightly