He saw Racine next to Dante, Stendhal near Edgar Allan Poe, Montaigne between Goethe and Virgil.  And suddenly, with that extraordinary faculty which enabled him, in any collection of objects, to perceive details which he did not at once take in, he noticed that one of the volumes of an English edition of Shakespeare’s works did not look exactly like the others.  There was something peculiar about the red morocco back, something stiff, without the cracks and creases which show that a book has been used.

It was the eighth volume.  He took it out, taking care not to be heard.

He was not mistaken.  The volume was a sham, a mere set of boards surrounding a hollow space that formed a box and thus provided a regular hiding-place; and, inside this book, he caught sight of plain note-paper, envelopes of different kinds, and some sheets of ordinary ruled paper, all of the same size and looking as if they had been taken from a writing-pad.

And the appearance of these ruled sheets struck him at once.  He remembered the look of the paper on which the article for the Echo de France had been drafted.  The ruling was identical, and the shape and size appeared to be the same.

On lifting the sheets one after the other, he saw, on the last but one, a series of lines consisting of words and figures in pencil, like notes hurriedly jotted down.

He read: 

“House on the Boulevard Suchet. 
“First letter.  Night of 15 April. 
“Second.  Night of 25th. 
“Third and fourth.  Nights of 5 and 15 May. 
“Fifth and explosion.  Night of 25 May.”

And, while noting first that the date of the first night was that of the actual day, and next that all these dates followed one another at intervals of ten days, he remarked the resemblance between the writing and the writing of the rough draft.

The draft was in a notebook in his pocket.  He was therefore in a position to verify the similarity of the two handwritings and of the two ruled sheets of paper.  He took his notebook and opened it.  The draft was not there.

“Gad,” he snarled, “but this is a bit too thick!”

And, at the same time, he remembered clearly that, when he was telephoning to Mazeroux in the morning, the notebook was in the pocket of his overcoat and that he had left his overcoat on a chair near the telephone box.  Now, at that moment, Mlle. Levasseur, for no reason, was roaming about the study.  What was she doing there?

“Oh, the play-actress!” thought Perenna, raging within himself.  “She was humbugging me.  Her tears, her air of frankness, her tender memories:  all bunkum!  She belongs to the same stock and the same gang as Marie Fauville and Gaston Sauverand.  Like them, she is an accomplished liar and actress from her slightest gesture down to the least inflection of her innocent voice.”

He was on the point of having it all out with her and confounding her.  This time, the proof was undeniable.  Dreading an inquiry which might have brought the facts home to her, she had been unwilling to leave the draft of the article in the adversary’s hands.