f, briefly. "Though you have arrested me, I
can truly say that I have never raised a knife, or fired a revolver, or
attempted to take the life of any man."

"You will not be charged with any crime more serious than burglary,
Carlier," replied the official. "But besides the Baron's affair
to-night, there is also the robbery at the widow's apartment in the Rue
Leonce Reynaud, the theft from the Chateau des Grandes Vignes, out at
Moret in the Forest of Fontainebleau, and the safe-breaking at
Thessier's in the Boulevard des Italiens. You were in all of them,
remember."

"M'sieur knows," replied Adolphe with a grim smile.

"It is my duty to know, eh?" was the rather sympathetic reply, for the
commissary had quickly seen that this member of the broken Bonnemain
gang, which had for years given such trouble to the Surete, was, though
a criminal and outwardly a rough scoundrel of the Apache type, yet
nevertheless a man possessed of better feelings than the ordinary thief.

The treatment that Carlier had received at his friend's hands had
crushed him. He did not crave for mercy, as so many criminals did when
suddenly cornered and placed under arrest. He merely regarded it as a
stroke of ill-luck, and with the true sportsman-like air "faced the
music."

As a matter of fact, he was wondering at that moment what had become of
little Mme. Ansell, and whether the efforts of the police to discover
her would be successful. No doubt they would, for one cannot travel far
in Paris if one is searched for by the Surete, unless one is a
professional thief, and therefore knows the holes in the underworld of
Parisian life in which to hide successfully.

The commissary, pointing with his stick at the movable cupboard, ordered
one of the agents to search it, and then, moving from one object to
another, he had everything turned upside down in search of any property
which might be concealed. The cupboard and sideboard were shifted away
from the wall, the chairs were examined, the pictures taken down and
pulled from their frames; indeed, no stone was left unturned.

When the French police make a search, they do so with a creditable
thoroughness.

Adolphe, the gyves upon his wrists, craved a cigarette, and a
police-officer took one from the packet lying upon the sideboard. Then,
with both hands, the prisoner lit it, and sat upon a chair watching them
turn the place upside down.

In the adjoining room they investigated everything. They even