iously: "When a crime is committed under my very roof, I
am not even allowed to write an account of it, and strangers, because
they are reporters, can have the exclusive privilege of writing it up!"

The Commissary did not listen to him, but those who were his
fellow-sufferers applauded him to the echo. The Commissary shrugged his
shoulders at the hand-clappings.

"It is but right," he said to the reporter, "that the agents of the
press should be admitted in preference to any one else. Do you think
that it is easy to discover a criminal? I have been a journalist, too.
Yes, at times. In the Quartier, occasionally. I have even written a
piece for the theatre. But we will not talk of that. Enter! Enter, I beg
of you--and we shall see"--and elegant, amiable, polished, smiling, he
looked toward M. Bernardet, and his eyes asked the question: "Where is
it?"

"Here! M. le Commissaire."

Bernardet stood respectfully in front of his superior officer, as a
soldier carrying arms, and the Commissary, in his turn, approached the
body, while the curious ones, quietly kept back by Moniche, formed a
half circle around the pale and bloody corpse. The Commissary, like
Bernardet, was struck by the haughty expression of that livid face.

"Poor man!" he said, shaking his head. "He is superb! superb! He reminds
me of the dead Duke de Guise, in Paul Delaroche's picture. I have seen
it also at Chantilly, in Gerome's celebrated picture of _Le Duel de
Pierrot_."

Possibly in speaking aloud his thoughts, the Commissary was talking so
that the reporters might hear him. They stood, notebooks in hand,
taking notes, and Paul Rodier, catching the names, wrote rapidly in his
book: "M. Desbriere, the learned Commissary, so artistic, so well
disposed toward the press, was at one time a journalist. He noticed that
the victim's pale face, with its strong personal characteristics,
resembled the dead Duke de Guise, in Gerome's celebrated picture, which
hangs in the galleries at Chantilly."

CHAPTER IV.

M. DESBRIERE now began the investigation. He questioned the porter and
portress, while he studied the salon in detail. Bernardet roamed about,
examining at very close range each and every object in the room, as a
dog sniffs and scents about for a trail.

"What kind of a man was your lodger?" was the first question.

Moniche replied in a tone which showed that he felt that his tenant had
been accused of somethin