'll soon show you if I
need a warrant!"

"You'll show me nothing," cried Mazeroux, hanging on to his companion's
arm. "You shan't touch the man."

"One would think he was your mother!"

"Come, Chief."

"But, you stick-in-the-mud of an honest man," shouted Don Luis, angrily,
"if we let this opportunity slip shall we ever find another?"

"Easily. He's going home. I'll inform the commissary of police. He will
telephone to headquarters; and to-morrow morning--"

"And suppose the bird has flown?"

"I have no warrant."

"Do you want me to sign you one, idiot?"

But Don Luis mastered his rage. He felt that all his arguments would be
shattered to pieces against the sergeant's obstinacy, and that, if
necessary, Mazeroux would go to the length of defending the enemy against
him. He simply said in a sententious tone:

"One ass and you make a pair of asses; and there are as many asses as
there are people who try to do police work with bits of paper,
signatures, warrants, and other gammon. Police work, my lad, is done with
one's fists. When you come upon the enemy, hit him. Otherwise, you stand
a chance of hitting the air. With that, good-night. I'm going to bed.
Telephone to me when the job is done."

He went home, furious, sick of an adventure in which he had not had elbow
room, and in which he had had to submit to the will, or, rather, to the
weakness of others.

But next morning when he woke up his longing to see the police lay hold
of the man with the ebony stick, and especially the feeling that his
assistance would be of use, impelled him to dress as quickly as he could.

"If I don't come to the rescue," he thought, "they'll let themselves be
done in the eye. They're not equal to a contest of this kind."

Just then Mazeroux rang up and asked to speak to him. He rushed to a
little telephone box which his predecessor had fitted up on the first
floor, in a dark recess that communicated only with his study, and
switched on the electric light.

"Is that you, Alexandre?"

"Yes, Chief. I'm speaking from a wine shop near the house on the
Boulevard Richard-Wallace."

"What about our man?"

"The bird's still in the nest. But we're only just in time."

"Really?"

"Yes, he's packed his trunk. He's going away this morning."

"How do they know?"

"Through the woman who manages for him. She's just come to the house and
will let us in."

"Does he live alone?"

"Yes, the woman cooks his meals and goes away in t