, he approached the spot to which he had pointed, stooped,
picked up something, and said: "My folly is not deserving of such luck."

The object he had found was an earring composed of a single large
diamond. The setting was of marvelous workmanship. "This diamond,"
declared Lecoq, after a moment's examination, "must be worth at least
five or six thousand francs."

"Are you in earnest?"

"I think I could swear to it."

He would not have troubled about such a preamble as "I think" a few
hours before, but the blunder he had made was a lesson that would not be
forgotten so long as he lived.

"Perhaps it was that same diamond earring that the accomplice came to
seek," ventured Father Absinthe.

"The supposition is scarcely admissible. In that case, he would not have
sought for it in Mother Chupin's apron. No, he must have been seeking
for something else--a letter, for example."

The older man was not listening; he had taken the earring, and was
examining it in his turn. "And to think," he murmured, astonished by
the brilliancy of the stone, "to think that a woman who had ten thousand
francs' worth of jewels in her ears would have come to the Poivriere.
Who would have believed it?"

Lecoq shook his head thoughtfully. "Yes, it is very strange, very
improbable, very absurd. And yet we shall see many things quite as
strange if we ever arrive--which I very much doubt--at a solution of
this mysterious affair."

Day was breaking, cold, cheerless, and gloomy, when Lecoq and his
colleague concluded their investigation. There was not an inch of space
that had not been explored, carefully examined and studied, one might
almost say, with a magnifying glass. There now only remained to draw up
the report.

The younger man seated himself at the table, and, with the view of
making his recital as intelligible as possible, he began by sketching a
plan of the scene of the murder.

[[Graphic Omitted]]

It will be seen that in the memoranda appended to this explanatory
diagram, Lecoq had not once written his own name. In noting the things
that he had imagined or discovered, he referred to himself simply as one
of the police. This was not so much modesty as calculation. By hiding
one's self on well-chosen occasions, one gains greater notoriety when
one emerges from the shade. It was also through cunning that he gave
Gevrol such a prominent position. These tactics, rather subtle, perhaps,
but after all perfectly fair, could not fai