Page:The Teeth of the Tiger - Leblanc - 1914.djvu/81

 M. Fauville had placed there. They put it back; but the fall had stopped it. And it stopped at half-past twelve."

"Then, Chief, when we settled ourselves here, at two in the morning, it was a corpse that was lying beside us and another over our heads?"

"Yes."

"But how did those devils get in?"

"Through this door, which opens on the garden, and through the gate that opens on the Boulevard Suchet."

"Then they had keys to the locks and bolts?"

"False keys, yes."

"But the policemen watching the house outside?"

"They are still watching it, as that sort watch a house, walking from point to point without thinking that people can slip into a garden while they have their backs turned. That's what took place in coming and going."

Sergeant Mazeroux seemed flabbergasted. The criminals' daring, their skill, the precision of their acts bewildered him.

"They're deuced clever," he said.

"Deuced clever, Mazeroux, as you say; and I foresee a tremendous battle. By Jupiter, with what a vim they set to work!"

The telephone bell rang. Don Luis left Mazeroux to his conversation with the Prefect, and, taking the bunch of keys, easily unfastened the lock and the bolt of the door and went out into the garden, in the hope of there finding some trace that should facilitate his quest.

As on the day before, he saw, through the ivy, two policemen walking between one lamp-post and the next. They did not see him. Moreover, anything that might