ally going through the provincial papers of
the towns at which he knew the train was to stop after he had left it at
Dorgival; and after the first uneasy quarter of an hour he forgot the
watcher outside, and became absorbed in his task. To his mingled
disappointment and relief, he found nothing.

It was of course possible that on the discovery of a dead body in a
Paris train, the matter would at once be handed over to the Paris
police; that would mean, in this case, that a body so found would be
conveyed to the Morgue.

The thought that this might be so made Vanderlyn's heart quail with
anguish and horror, and yet, if such a thing were within the bounds of
possibility, had he not better go to the Morgue alone and now, rather
than later in the company of Tom Pargeter?

As he passed out of the reading-room into the book-shop, and so into the
square, he understood for the first time, how it was that he had made so
foolish a mistake concerning the detective. The latter at once entered a
fiacre which had evidently been waiting for him, and, as Vanderlyn
plunged into the labyrinth of narrow streets leading from the Place St.
Sulpice to Notre Dame, he could hear the cab crawling slowly behind him.

Well, what matter? This visit to the Morgue was also in the picture--in
the picture, that is, of Laurence Vanderlyn, the kindly friend of Tom
Pargeter, helping in the perplexing, the now agonising, search for Mrs.
Pargeter.

But when at last he came in sight of the sinister triangular building
which crouches, toad-like, under the shadow of the great Cathedral,
Vanderlyn's heart failed him for the first time. If Peggy were indeed
lying there exposed to the careless, morbid glances of idle sightseers
to whom the Morgue is one of the sights of Paris, he felt that he could
not trust himself to go in and look at her.

He stood still for a few moments, and then, as he was about to turn on
his heel, he saw coming towards him from out of the door of the Morgue a
figure which struck a note of tragedy in the bright morning sunshine. It
was Madame de Lera, her eyes full of tears, her heart oppressed by the
sights she had just seen.

"There are three poor people there," she said, in a low voice, "two men
and a woman, but not, thank God! our friend. I wonder if it is possible
that we are mistaken--that there was no accident, Monsieur Vanderlyn?
But then, if so, where is she--why has she not written to me?"

He shook his head with a hope