Commissariat, you stupid brute?" The officer was furious. "But he paid
you, then?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"He paid you five francs and expected you to wait!" sarcastically.

"Yes, monsieur."

"Why?"

"He said he might want me, monsieur."

"Might want you. And why didn't you wait, you old fool?"

"Here? In the Rue Antoine Dubois, after dark, monsieur? And for
a--a--'stiff'? Not for a hundred francs!"

The students roared with laughter. As the agents had returned a report
meanwhile to the effect that there were no signs of any "subject"
immediately in hand, the commissary was deeply chagrined.

"Now, gentlemen," he began, in a fatherly tone, "it is evident that a
body has been taken from the street and brought here instead of being
turned over to the police for the morgue and usual forms of
identification. That body is possibly unimportant in itself, and would
probably fall to your admirable institution eventually. But the law
prescribes the proper course in such cases. We have traced that body
to this place and to one of your number. Far be it from me to find
fault with the desire of young gentlemen seeking to perfect their
knowledge of anatomy for the benefit of humanity; but we must know
where that body went from here."

The last very emphatically, with a stern gaze at Henri Lerouge.

"And on our part," answered the latter, with ill-subdued passion, "we
say there is no body here, that none has been brought here to-night,
that we have been together all day, and that we had but just arrived
here before this unwarrantable intrusion; in short, that your petits
mouchards there have lied!"

It was impossible not to believe him. Yet the evidence of the cabman,
corroborated circumstantially in part by Agent Dubat, seemed equally
positive and irresistible.

The commissary was nonplussed for a minute. He looked sternly at
Monsieur Perriot. The latter was nervously fumbling his glazed hat.
Somebody had lied. The commissary decided that it was the unlucky
cabman.

"Monsieur Perriot?"

"Y-yes, Monsieur le Commissaire."

"Have you got a five-franc piece about you?"

"Y--n--no--er----"

"Let me see it."

Now, the poor cabman had lost no time fortifying himself with an
absinthe or two upon leaving his fare in the terrible Rue Antoine
Dubois. He had changed the piece given him by Jean Marot.

"I haven't got----"

"You said this man gave you a five-franc piece, didn't you? Now, did
you, or did you not? Answer