An ejaculation from my quivering throat brought the gendarme to my side.  Crouching in the dark recess of the wall cupboard was Carissimo—­not dead, thank goodness! but literally shaking with terror.  I pulled him out as gently as I could, for he was so frightened that he growled and snapped viciously at me.  I handed him to the gendarme, for by the side of Carissimo I had seen something which literally froze my blood within my veins.  It was Theodore’s hat and coat, which he had been wearing when I chased him to this house of mystery and of ill-fame, and wrapped together with it was a rag all smeared with blood, whilst the same hideous stains were now distinctly visible on the door of the cupboard itself.

I turned to the gendarme, who at once confronted the abominable malefactor with the obvious proofs of a horrible crime.  But the depraved wretch stood by, Sir, perfectly calm and with a cynicism in his whole bearing which I had never before seen equalled!

“I know nothing about that coat,” he asserted with a shrug of the shoulders, “nor about the dog.”

The gendarme by this time was purple with fury.

“Not know anything about the dog?” he exclaimed in a voice choked with righteous indignation.  “Why, he . . . he barked!”

But this indisputable fact in no way disconcerted the miscreant.

“I heard a dog yapping,” he said with consummate impudence, “but I thought he was in the next room.  No wonder,” he added coolly, “since he was in a wall cupboard.”

“A wall cupboard,” the gendarme rejoined triumphantly, “situated in the very room which you occupy at this moment.”

“That is a mistake, my friend,” the cynical wretch retorted, undaunted.  “I do not occupy this room.  I do not lodge in this hotel at all.”

“Then how came you to be here?”

“I came on a visit to a friend who happened to be out when I arrived.  I found a pleasant fire here, and I sat down to warm myself.  Your noisy and unwarranted irruption into this room has so bewildered me that I no longer know whether I am standing on my head or on my heels.”

“We’ll show you soon enough what you are standing on, my fine fellow,” the gendarme riposted with breezy, cheerfulness.  “Allons!”

I must say that the pampered minion of the law arose splendidly to the occasion.  He seized the miscreant by the arm and took him downstairs, there to confront him with the proprietress of the establishment, while I—­with marvellous presence of mind—­took possession of Carissimo and hid him as best I could beneath my coat.

In the hall below a surprise and a disappointment were in store for me.  I had reached the bottom of the stairs when the shrill feminine accents of Mme. the proprietress struck unpleasantly on my ear.

“No! no!  I tell you!” she was saying.  “This man is not my lodger.  He never came here with a dog.  There,” she added volubly, and pointing an unwashed finger at Carissimo who was struggling and growling in my arms, “there is the dog.  A gentleman brought him with him last Wednesday, when he inquired if he could have a room here for a few nights.  Number twenty-five happened to be vacant, and I have no objection to dogs.  I let the gentleman have the room, and he paid me twenty sous in advance when he took possession and told me he would keep the room three nights.”