Plantat rapidly added up the different sums, and said: 

“About fourteen thousand five hundred francs.”

“Madame Sauvresy gave him more than that,” said the detective, positively.  “If he had no more than this, he would not have been such a fool as to put it all into land.  He must have a hoard of money concealed somewhere.”

“Of course he must.  But where?”

“Ah, let me look.”

He began to rummage about, peering into everything in the room, moving the furniture, sounding the floor with his heels, and rapping on the wall here and there.  Finally he came to the fireplace, before which he stopped.

“This is July,” said he.  “And yet there are cinders here in the fireplace.”

“People sometimes neglect to clean them out in the spring.”

“True; but are not these very clean and distinct?  I don’t find any of the light dust and soot on them which ought to be there after they have lain several months.”

He went into the second room whither he had sent the men after they had completed their task, and said: 

“I wish one of you would get me a pickaxe.”

All the men rushed out; M. Lecoq returned to his companion.

“Surely,” muttered he, as if apart, “these cinders have been disturbed recently, and if they have been—­”

He knelt down, and pushing the cinders away, laid bare the stones of the fireplace.  Then taking a thin piece of wood, he easily inserted it into the cracks between the stones.

“See here, Monsieur Plantat,” said he.  “There is no cement between these stones, and they are movable; the treasure must be here.”

When the pickaxe was brought, he gave a single blow with it; the stones gaped apart, and betrayed a wide and deep hole between them.

“Ah,” cried he, with a triumphant air, “I knew it well enough.”

The hole was full of rouleaux of twenty-franc pieces; on counting them, M. Lecoq found that there were nineteen thousand five hundred francs.

The old justice’s face betrayed an expression of profound grief.

“That,” thought he, “is the price of my poor Sauvresy’s life.”

M. Lecoq found a small piece of paper, covered with figures, deposited with the gold; it seemed to be Robelot’s accounts.  He had put on the left hand the sum of forty thousand francs; on the right hand, various sums were inscribed, the total of which was twenty-one thousand five hundred francs.  It was only too clear; Mme. Sauvresy had paid Robelot forty thousand francs for the bottle of poison.  There was nothing more to learn at his house.  They locked the money up in the secretary, and affixed seals everywhere, leaving two men on guard.

But M. Lecoq was not quite satisfied yet.  What was the manuscript which Plantat had read?  At first he had thought that it was simply a copy of the papers confided to him by Sauvresy; but it could not be that; Sauvresy couldn’t have thus described the last agonizing scenes of his life.  This mystery mightily worried the detective and dampened the joy he felt at having solved the crime at Valfeuillu.  He made one more attempt to surprise Plantat into satisfying his curiosity.  Taking him by the coat-lapel, he drew him into the embrasure of a window, and with his most innocent air, said: