wiped his hands with his pocket-handkerchief, and said: "Now I know
everything!"

"Well, that is saying a great deal!"

"When I say everything, I mean all that is connected with the episode of
the drama which ended in that bloody bout in the hovel. This expanse of
earth covered with snow is a white page upon which the people we are
in search of have written, not only their movements, their goings,
and comings, but also their secret thoughts, their alternate hopes and
anxieties. What do these footprints say to you, Papa Absinthe? To me
they are alive like the persons who made them; they breathe, speak,
accuse!"

The old agent was saying to himself: "Certainly, this fellow is
intelligent, undeniably shrewd; but he is very disagreeable."

"These are the facts as I have read them," pursued Lecoq. "When the
murderer repaired to the Poivriere with the two women, his companion--I
should say his accomplice--came here to wait. He was a tall man of
middle age; he wore a soft hat and a shaggy brown overcoat; he was,
moreover, probably married, or had been so, as he had a wedding-ring on
the little finger of his right hand--"

His companion's despairing gestures obliged the speaker to pause.
This description of a person whose existence had but just now been
demonstrated, these precise details given in a tone of absolute
certainty, completely upset all Father Absinthe's ideas, increasing his
perplexity beyond all bounds.

"This is not right," he growled, "this is not kind. You are poking
fun at me. I take the thing seriously; I listen to you, I obey you
in everything, and then you mock me in this way. We find a clue,
and instead of following it up, you stop to relate all these absurd
stories."

"No," replied his companion, "I am not jesting, and I have told you
nothing of which I am not absolutely sure, nothing that is not strictly
and indisputably true."

"And you would have me believe--"

"Fear nothing, papa; I would not have you do violence to your
convictions. When I have told you my reasons, and my means of
information, you will laugh at the simplicity of the theory that seems
so incomprehensible to you now."

"Go on, then," said the good man, in a tone of resignation.

"We had decided," rejoined Lecoq, "that the accomplice mounted guard
here. The time seemed long, and, growing impatient, he paced to and
fro--the length of this log of wood--occasionally pausing to listen.
Hearing nothing, he stamped his foot, d