“Where are you taking me?” asked Gascoigne.

“You will see,” replied his conductor, coldly.

“To another prison?”

“Silence!  A prisoner is not permitted to enter into conversation with his guard.”

Thus rebuffed, Gascoigne resigned himself to gazing mournfully through the windows as the cab rattled along.  He did not know this quarter of Paris well, but he could see that they were passing along one of the quays of the Ile de la Cite.  He could see the houses on the opposite bank, and knew from the narrowness of the river that it was not the main stream of the Seine.  It was still early morning; the streets were not as yet very crowded, but as the cab entered a wide square it came upon a throng issuing from the portals of a large church, the congregation that had been attending some celebration at Notre Dame.  He recognised the church as he passed it, still driving, however, by the quays.  Then they came to a low building, with a dirty, ill-kept, unpretentious doorway.  The cab passed through into an inner court, stopped, and Gascoigne was ordered to alight.

The police-agents, one on each side of him, took him to a rather large but dirty, squalid-looking room, which might have been part of an old-clothes shop.  All round, hanging from pegs, each neatly ticketed with its own number, were sets of garments, male and female, of every description:  rags and velvets, a common blouse and good broadcloth, side by side.

At a small common table in the centre of the room sat Gascoigne’s judge, with the same cold face, only darkened now by a frown.

“Once more,” he said, abruptly—­“will you confess your crime?”

Gascoigne looked at him contemptuously, but held his tongue.

“Do you still refuse?  Do you still obstinately persist in remaining dumb?  Very well, we shall see.”

The judge got up from his chair, and disappeared through a side-door.

After a short pause, Gascoigne’s escort bade him march, and the three followed through the same door.

They entered a second chamber, smaller than the first, the uses of which were at once obvious to Gascoigne, although he had never been there before.  It was like a low shed or workroom, lighted from above, perfectly plain—­even bald—­in its decoration, but in the centre, occupying the greater part of the space, and leaving room only for a passage around, was a large flat slab of marble, something like that seen in fishmongers’ shops.  The similarity was maintained by the sound of water constantly flowing and falling upon the marble slab, as though to keep it and its burden always fresh and cool.

But that burden!  Three corpses, stark naked but for a decent waistband, were laid out upon the marble table.  One was that of a child who had been fished up from the Seine that morning; the second that of a stonemason who had fallen from a scaffolding and broken his neck and both legs; the third was the murdered man of the Hotel Paradis, the Baron d’Enot, stripped of his well-made clothes, lying stark and stiff on his back, with the great knife-wound gaping red and festering in his breast.