offin-factors. And beside and apart from all
this, there were (as in all great cities) districts of evil report and
obscure topography--lost islets of crime, round which flowed and circled
the daily tide of Paris life; flowed and circled, yet never penetrated.
A dark arch here and there--the mouth of a foul alley--a riverside vista
of gloom and squalor, marked the entrance to these Alsatias. Such an
Alsatia was the Rue Pierre Lescot, the Rue Sans Nom, and many more than
I can now remember--streets into which no sane man would venture after
nightfall without the escort of the police.

Into the border land of such a neighborhood--a certain congeries of
obscure and labyrinthine streets to the rear of the old Halles--I
accompanied Franz Mueller one wintry afternoon, about an hour before
sunset, and perhaps some ten days after our evening in the Rue du
Faubourg St. Denis. We were bound on an expedition of discovery, and the
object of our journey was to find the habitat of Guichet the model.

"I am determined to get to the bottom of this Lenoir business," said
Mueller, doggedly; "and if the police won't help me, I must help myself."

"You have no case for the police," I replied.

"So says the _chef de bureau_; but I am of the opposite opinion.
However, I shall make my case out clearly enough before long. This
Guichet can help me, if he will. He knows Lenoir, and he knows something
against him; that is clear. You saw how cautious he was the other day.
The difficulty will be to make him speak."

"I doubt if you will succeed."

"I don't, _mon cher_. But we shall see. Then, again, I have another line
of evidence open to me. You remember that orange-colored rosette in the
fellow's button-hole?"

"Certainly I do."

"Well, now, I happen, by the merest chance, to know what that rosette
means. It is the ribbon of the third order of the Golden Palm of
Mozambique--a Portuguese decoration. They give it to diplomatic
officials, eminent civilians, distinguished foreigners, and the like. I
know a fellow who has it, and who belongs to the Portuguese Legation
here. _Eh bien!_ I went to him the other day, and asked him about our
said friend--how he came by it, who he is, where he comes from, and so
forth. My Portuguese repeats the name--elevates his eyebrows--in short,
has never heard of such a person. Then he pulls down a big book from a
shelf in the secretary's room--turns to a page headed 'Golden Palm of
Mozambique'--runs his finge