steel shoves toward you.  You grip your pistol and look through the left-hand hole, you see the woman holding back the curtains, you see Martinez draw out the auger from the right-hand hole and lay it down.  Now he leans forward, pressing his face to the completed eyeholes, you see the whites of his eyes, not three inches away.  Quick!  Pistol up!  Ready to fire!  No, no, through the left-hand hole where he fired.”

“Sacre matin!” muttered Tignol, “it’s awkward aiming through this left-hand hole.”

“Ah!” said the detective. “Why is it awkward?”

“Because it’s too near the sideboard.  I can’t get my eye there to sight along the pistol barrel.”

“You mean your right eye?”

“Of course.”

“Could you get your left eye there?”

“Yes, but if I aimed with my left eye I’d have to fire with my left hand and I couldn’t hit a cow that way.”

Coquenil looked at Tignol steadily. “You could if you were a left-handed man.”

“You mean to say—­” The other stared.

“I mean to say that this man, at a critical moment, fired through that awkward hole near the sideboard when he might just as well have fired through the other hole away from the sideboard.  Which shows that it was an easy and natural thing for him to do, consequently——­”

“Consequently,” exulted the old man, “we’ve got to look for a left-handed murderer, is that it?”

“What do you think?” smiled the detective.

Papa Tignol paused, and then, bobbing his head in comical seriousness:  “I think, if I were this man, I’d sooner have the devil after me than Paul Coquenil.”

CHAPTER IX

COQUENIL MARKS HIS MAN

It was nearly four o’clock when Coquenil left the Ansonia and started up the Champs Elysees, breathing deep of the early morning air.  The night was still dark, although day was breaking in the east.  And what a night it had been!  How much had happened since he walked with his dog to Notre-Dame the evening before!  Here was the whole course of his life changed, yes, and his prospects put in jeopardy by this extraordinary decision.  How could he explain what he had done to his wise old mother?  How could he unsay all that he had said to her a few days before when he had shown her that this trip to Brazil was quite for the best and bade her a fond farewell?  Could he explain it to anyone, even to himself?  Did he honestly believe all the plausible things he had said to Pougeot and the others about this crime?  Was it really the wonderful affair he had made out?  After all, what had he acted on?  A girl’s dream and an odd coincidence.  Was that enough?  Was that enough to make a man alter his whole life and face extraordinary danger? Was it enough?