hbour enter a baker's shop.
She bought two rolls and placed them in a little basket which her
daughter was carrying and which seemed already to contain some other
provisions. Then they went in the direction of the outer boulevards and
followed them as far as the Place de l'Etoile, where they turned down
the Avenue Kleber to walk toward Passy.

Lupin strolled silently along, evidently obsessed by a train of thought
which I was glad to have provoked. From time to time, he uttered a
sentence which showed me the thread of his reflections; and I was able
to see that the riddle remained as much a mystery to him as to myself.

Louise d'Ernemont, meanwhile, had branched off to the left, along the
Rue Raynouard, a quiet old street in which Franklin and Balzac once
lived, one of those streets which, lined with old-fashioned houses and
walled gardens, give you the impression of being in a country-town. The
Seine flows at the foot of the slope which the street crowns; and a
number of lanes run down to the river.

My neighbour took one of these narrow, winding, deserted lanes. The
first building, on the right, was a house the front of which faced the
Rue Raynouard. Next came a moss-grown wall, of a height above the
ordinary, supported by buttresses and bristling with broken glass.

Half-way along the wall was a low, arched door. Louise d'Ernemont
stopped in front of this door and opened it with a key which seemed to
us enormous. Mother and child entered and closed the door.

"In any case," said Lupin, "she has nothing to conceal, for she has not
looked round once...."

He had hardly finished his sentence when we heard the sound of footsteps
behind us. It was two old beggars, a man and a woman, tattered, dirty,
squalid, covered in rags. They passed us without paying the least
attention to our presence. The man took from his wallet a key similar to
my neighbour's and put it into the lock. The door closed behind them.

And, suddenly, at the top of the lane, came the noise of a motor-car
stopping.... Lupin dragged me fifty yards lower down, to a corner in
which we were able to hide. And we saw coming down the lane, carrying a
little dog under her arm, a young and very much over-dressed woman,
wearing a quantity of jewellery, a young woman whose eyes were too dark,
her lips too red, her hair too fair. In front of the door, the same
performance, with the same key.... The lady and the dog disappeared from
view.

"This promises to