leave
this room, which can disclose no more, and turn our attention to the
court and garden. (Jean-Marie, I trust you are observantly following my
various steps; this is an excellent piece of education for you.) Come
with me to the door. No steps on the court; it is unfortunate our court
should be paved. On what small matters hang the destiny of these
delicate investigations! Hey! What have we here? I have led on to the
very spot,' he said, standing grandly backward and indicating the green
gate. 'An escalade, as you can now see for yourselves, has taken place.'

Sure enough, the green paint was in several places scratched and broken;
and one of the panels preserved the print of a nailed shoe. The foot had
slipped, however, and it was difficult to estimate the size of the shoe,
and impossible to distinguish the pattern of the nails.

'The whole robbery,' concluded the Doctor, 'step by step, has been
reconstituted. Inductive science can no further go.'

'It is wonderful,' said his wife. 'You should indeed have been a
detective, Henri. I had no idea of your talents.'

'My dear,' replied Desprez, condescendingly, 'a man of scientific
imagination combines the lesser faculties; he is a detective just as he
is a publicist or a general; these are but local applications of his
special talent. But now,' he continued, 'would you have me go further?
Would you have me lay my finger on the culprits--or rather, for I cannot
promise quite so much, point out to you the very house where they
consort? It may be a satisfaction, at least it is all we are likely to
get, since we are denied the remedy of law. I reach the further stage in
this way. In order to fill my outline of the robbery, I require a man
likely to be in the forest idling, I require a man of education, I
require a man superior to considerations of morality. The three
requisites all centre in Tentaillon's boarders. They are painters,
therefore they are continually lounging in the forest. They are
painters, therefore they are not unlikely to have some smattering of
education. Lastly, because they are painters, they are probably immoral.
And this I prove in two ways. First, painting is an art which merely
addresses the eye; it does not in any particular exercise the moral
sense. And second, painting, in common with all the other arts, implies
the dangerous quality of imagination. A man of imagination is never
moral; he outsoars literal demarcations an