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174 "Certainly. We shall put a guard over it and keep a sharp lookout until he comes back. As to the man, he has disappeared."

"Disappeared?"

"Disappeared. He generally passes his evenings with his neighbor, the widow Bidoin, who is also a second-hand dealer and a good-for-nothing fortune-teller. She has not seen him this evening and can give us no intelligence of him. We shall have to wait until to-morrow."

I went away. Ah! how sinister, how haunted and dread-inspiring the streets of Rouen appeared to me that night!

I slept so badly, awakening in a nightmare from every one of my short naps.

As I did not wish to appear unduly anxious or impatient, I waited the next morning until it was ten o'clock before going to the police-station.

Nothing more had been seen of the merchant. His shop remained closed.

The commissaire said to me:

"I have taken all the necessary steps. The public prosecutor has been fully apprised of the circumstances of the case; we will go together to that shop and have it opened, and you will point out to me your property."

A coupé conveyed us thither. There were policemen, together with a locksmith, standing in front of the shop-door, which was quickly opened.

When we had effected an entrance I could see nothing of my armoire, my fauteuils, my tables; nothing, not a thing of the furniture that had been in my house, absolutely nothing, while the night before I