“How so?”

“Oh, it’s very simple.  I thought I understood the rascals, and knew them by heart; and yet I have only recognized imaginary adversaries.  Are they fools, or are they mighty sly?  That’s what I ask myself.  The tricks played with the bed and clock had, I supposed, given me the measure and extent of their intelligence and invention.  Making deductions from the known to the unknown, I arrived, by a series of very simple consequences, at the point of foreseeing all that they could have imagined, to throw us off the scent.  My point of departure admitted, I had only, in order to reach the truth, to take the contrary of that which appearances indicated.  I said to myself: 

“A hatchet has been found in the second story; therefore the assassins carried it there, and designedly forgot it.

“They left five glasses on the dining-room table; therefore they were more or less than five, but they were not five.

“There were the remains of a supper on the table; therefore they neither drank nor ate.

“The countess’s body was on the river-bank; therefore it was placed there deliberately.  A piece of cloth was found in the victim’s hand; therefore it was put there by the murderers themselves.

“Madame de Tremorel’s body is disfigured by many dagger-strokes, and horribly mutilated; therefore she was killed by a single blow—­”

“Bravo, yes, bravo,” cried M. Plantat, visibly charmed.

“Eh! no, not bravo yet,” returned M. Lecoq.  “For here my thread is broken; I have reached a gap.  If my deductions were sound, this hatchet would have been very carefully placed on the floor.”

“Once more, bravo,” added the other, “for this does not at all affect our general theory.  It is clear, nay certain, that the assassins intended to act as you say.  An unlooked-for event interrupted them.”

“Perhaps; perhaps that’s true.  But I see something else—­”

“What?”

“Nothing—­at least, for the moment.  Before all, I must see the dining-room and the garden.”

They descended at once, and Plantat pointed out the glasses and bottles, which he had put one side.  The detective took the glasses, one after another, held them level with his eye, toward the light, and scrutinized the moist places left on them.

“No one has drank from these glasses,” said he, firmly.

“What, from neither one of them?”

The detective fixed a penetrating look upon his companion, and in a measured tone, said: 

“From neither one.”

M. Plantat only answered by a movement of the lips, as if to say, “You are going too far.”

The other smiled, opened the door, and called: 

“Francois!”

The valet hastened to obey the call.  His face was suffused with tears; he actually bewailed the loss of his master.

“Hear what I’ve got to say, my lad,” said M. Lecoq, with true detective-like familiarity.  “And be sure and answer me exactly, frankly, and briefly.”