“I’ll have to set you to work on it.  Ha, ha!  Upon my soul, I will.”

“You’d better look out,” menaced the red-haired man with an ugly look, “or I’ll do some work on this case you’ll wish I hadn’t done.”  With this he flung himself out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

“What did he mean by that?” muttered M. Paul, and he sat silent, lost in thought, until the others returned.  In a glance, he read the answer in their faces.

“It’s all right,” said the chief.

“Congratulations, old friend,” beamed Pougeot, squeezing Coquenil’s hand.

“The prefet was extremely nice,” added M. Hauteville; “he took our view at once.”

“Then my commission is signed?”

“Precisely,” answered the chief; “you are one of us again, and—­I’m glad.”

“Thank you, both of you,” said M. Paul with a quiver of emotion.

“I give you full charge of this case,” went on M. Simon, “and I will see that you have every possible assistance.  I expect you to be on deck to-morrow morning.”

Coquenil hesitated a moment and then, with a flash of his tireless energy, he said:  “If it’s all the same to you, chief, I’ll go on deck to-night—­now.”

CHAPTER VI

THE WEAPON

Right across from the Ansonia on the Rue Marboeuf was a little wine shop that remained open all night for the accommodation of cab drivers and belated pedestrians and to this Coquenil and the commissary now withdrew.  Before anything else the detective wished to get from M. Pougeot his impressions of the case.  And he asked Papa Tignol to come with them for a fortifying glass.

“By the way,” said the commissary to Tignol when they were seated in the back room, “did you find out how that woman left the hotel without her wraps and without being seen?”

The old man nodded.  “When she came out of the telephone booth she slipped on a long black rain coat that was hanging there.  It belonged to the telephone girl and it’s missing.  The rain coat had a hood to it which the woman pulled over her head.  Then she walked out quietly and no one paid any attention to her.”

“Good work, Papa Tignol,” approved Coquenil.

“It’s you, M. Paul, who have done good work this night,” chuckled Tignol.  “Eh!  Eh!  What a lesson for Gibelin!”

“The brute!” muttered Pougeot.

Then they turned to the commissary’s report of his investigation, Coquenil listening with intense concentration, interrupting now and then with a question or to consult the rough plan drawn by Pougeot.

“Are you sure there is no exit from the banquet room and from these private rooms except by the corridor?” he asked.

“They tell me not.”

“So, if the murderer went out, he must have passed Joseph?”

“Yes.”

“And the only persons who passed Joseph were the woman and this American?”