Aristide suddenly bethought him of the furtive masquer of the night
before.

"I can put you on his track," said he, and related what he knew.

The Mayor looked dubious. "It wasn't he," he remarked.

"Jose Puegas, Monsieur, would not commit a burglary in a pig's head,"
said the policeman, with the cutting contempt of the expert.

"It was a vow, I suppose," said Aristide, stung to irony. "I've always
heard he was a religious man."

The detective did not condescend to reply.

"Monsieur le Maire," said he, "I should like to examine the premises,
and beg that you will have the kindness to accompany me."

"With the permission of Monsieur le Maire," said Aristide. "I too will
come."

"Certainly," said the Mayor. "The more intelligences concentrated on the
affair the better."

"I am not of that opinion," said the detective.

"It is the opinion of Monsieur le Maire," said Aristide rebukingly, "and
that is enough."

When they reached the house--distances are short in Perpignan--they
found policemen busily engaged with tape measures around the premises.
Old Madame Coquereau in a clean white linen dressing jacket,
bare-headed, defying the keen air, stood grim and eager in the midst of
them.

"Good morning, Monsieur Pujol, what do you think of this?"

"A veritable catastrophe," said Aristide.

She shrugged her iron shoulders. "I tell him it serves him right," she
said, cuttingly. "A sensible person keeps his money under his mattress
and not in a tin machine by a window which anyone can get at. I wonder
we've not been murdered in our beds before."

"_Ah, Maman!_" expostulated the Mayor of Perpignan.

But she turned her back on him and worried the policemen. They, having
probed, and measured, and consulted with the detective, came to an exact
conclusion. The thief had climbed over the back wall--there were his
footsteps. He had entered by the kitchen door--there were the marks of
infraction. He had broken open the safe--there was the helpless
condition of the lock. No one in Perpignan, but Jose Puegas, with his
bad, socialistic, Barcelona blood, could have done it. These brilliant
results were arrived at after much clamour and argument and imposing
_proces verbal_. Aristide felt strangely depressed. He had narrated his
story of the pig-headed masquer to unresponsive ears. Here was a
melodramatic scene in which he not only was not playing a leading part,
but did not even carry a banner. To be less than a super in