passed through the village
of Buzancais and the town of Chateauroux and had stopped beyond the
town, on the verge of the forest. At ten o'clock, a hired gig, driven
by a man unknown, had stopped beside the car and then gone off south,
through the valley of the Bouzanne. There was then another person
seated beside the driver. As for the car, it had turned in the opposite
direction and gone north, toward Issoudun.

Beautrelet easily discovered the owner of the gig, who, however, had no
information to supply. He had hired out his horse and trap to a man who
brought them back himself next day.

Lastly, that same evening, Isidore found out that the motor car had
only passed through Issoudun, continuing its road toward Orleans, that
is to say, toward Paris.

From all this, it resulted, in the most absolute fashion, that M.
Beautrelet was somewhere in the neighborhood. If not, how was it
conceivable that people should travel nearly three hundred miles across
France in order to telephone from Chateauroux and next to return, at an
acute angle, by the Paris road?

This immense circuit had a more definite object: to move M. Beautrelet
to the place assigned to him.

"And this place is within reach of my hand," said Isidore to himself,
quivering with hope and expectation. "My father is waiting for me to
rescue him at ten or fifteen leagues from here. He is close by. He is
breathing the same air as I."

He set to work at once. Taking a war-office map, he divided it into
small squares, which he visited one after the other, entering the
farmhouses making the peasants talk, calling on the schoolmasters, the
mayors, the parish priests, chatting to the women. It seemed to him
that he must attain his end without delay and his dreams grew until it
was no longer his father alone whom he hoped to deliver, but all those
whom Lupin was holding captive: Raymonde de Saint-Veran, Ganimard,
Holmlock Shears, perhaps, and others, many others; and, in reaching
them, he would, at the same time, reach Lupin's stronghold, his lair,
the impenetrable retreat where he was piling up the treasures of which
he had robbed the wide world.

But, after a fortnight's useless searching, his enthusiasm ended by
slackening and he very soon lost confidence. Because success was slow
in appearing, from one day to the next, almost, he ceased to believe in
it; and, though he continued to pursue his plan of investigations, he
would have felt a real surprise if his