“Unfortunately, M. Costeclar had just gone out.  As to M. Saint Pavin, I found him at the office of his paper, ‘The Financial Pilot.’  He is a coarse and vulgar personage, and received me like a pickpocket.  I had even a notion to—­”

“Never mind that!  Go on.”

“He was closeted with another gentleman, a banker, named Jottras, of the house of Jottras and Brother.  They were both in a terrible rage, swearing like troopers, and saying that the Favoral defalcation would ruin them; that they had been taken in like fools, but that they were not going to take things so easy, and they were preparing a crushing article.”

But he stopped, winking, and pointing to Maxence and Mlle. Lucienne, who were listening as attentively as they could.

“Speak, speak!” said the commissary.  “Fear nothing.”

“Well,” he went on, “M.  Saint Pavin and M. Jottras were saying that M. Favoral was only a poor dupe, but that they would know how to find the others.”

“What others?”

“Ah! they didn’t say.”

The commissary shrugged his shoulders.

“What!” he exclaimed, “you find yourself in presence of two men furious to have been duped, who swear and threaten, and you can’t get from them a name that you want?  You are not very smart, my dear!”

And as the poor secretary, somewhat put out of countenance, looked down, and said nothing,

“Did you at least ask them,” he resumed, “who the woman is to whom the article refers, and whose existence they have revealed to the reporter?”

“Of course I did, sir.”

“And what did they answer?”

“That they were not spies, and had nothing to say.  M. Saint Pavin added, however, that he had said it without much thought, and only because he had once seen M. Favoral buying a three thousand francs bracelet, and also because it seemed impossible to him that a man should do away with millions without the aid of a woman.”

The commissary could not conceal his ill humor.

“Of course!” he grumbled.  “Since Solomon said, ‘Look for the woman’ (for it was King Solomon who first said it), every fool thinks it smart to repeat with a cunning look that most obvious of truths.  What next?”

“M.  Saint Pavin politely invited me to go to—­well, not here.”

The commissary wrote rapidly a few lines, put them in an envelope, which he sealed with his private seal, and handed it to his secretary, saying,

“That will do.  Take this to the prefecture yourself.”  And, after the secretary had gone out,

“Well, M. Maxence,” he said, “you have heard?” Of course he had.  Only Maxence was thinking much less of what he had just heard than of the strange interest this commissary had taken in his affairs, even before he had seen him.

“I think,” he stammered, “that it is very unfortunate the woman cannot be found.”

With a gesture full of confidence,