d.

"When we turned him off he must have taken some duplicate keys with
him," remarked Grevin. "No doubt he has been meditating a desperate
step, for he has lately sold his whole property, and he received the
money for it in my office day before yesterday."

"The others have followed his lead!" exclaimed Lechesneau, struck with
the circumstances. "He has been their evil genius."

Moreover, who could know as well as the Messieurs de Simeuse the ins and
outs of the chateau. None of the assailants seemed to have blundered in
their search; they had gone through the house in a confident way which
showed that they knew what they wanted to find and where to find it.
The locks of none of the opened closets had been forced; therefore the
delinquents had keys. Strange to say, however, nothing had been taken;
the motive, therefore, was not robbery. More than all, when Violette
had followed the tracks of the horses as far as the _rond-point_, he
had found the countess, evidently on guard, at the pavilion. From such a
combination of facts and depositions arose a presumption as to the guilt
of the Messieurs de Simeuse, d'Hauteserre, and Michu, which would have
been strong to unprejudiced minds, and to the director of the jury had
the force of certainty. What were they likely to do to the future Comte
de Gondreville? Did they mean to force him to make over the estate for
which Michu declared in 1799 he had the money to pay?

But there was another aspect of the cast to the knowing criminal lawyer.
He asked himself what could be the object of the careful search made of
the chateau. If revenge were at the bottom of the matter, the assailants
would have killed the senator. Perhaps he had been killed and buried.
The abduction, however, seemed to point to imprisonment. But why keep
their victim imprisoned after searching the castle? It was folly to
suppose that the abduction of a dignitary of the Empire could long
remain secret. The publicity of the matter would prevent any benefit
from it.

To these suggestions Pigoult replied that justice was never able to make
out all the motives of scoundrels. In every criminal case there
were obscurities, he said, between the judge and the guilty person;
conscience had depths into which no human mind could enter unless by the
confession of the criminal.

Grevin and Lechesneau nodded their assent, without, however, relaxing
their determination to see to the bottom of the present mystery.

"The E