What had now happened was evident.  The assailants of the cut-under had abandoned it here before entering the village.  They could not, of course, go on with this incriminating vehicle.

The sight of the cut-under here had on Marquis the usual effect of any important evidential sign.  He at once ceased to hurry.  He pulled up; looked over the cut-under and the horse, and began to saunter about.

This careless manner was difficult for me at such a time.  But for his assurance that Madame Barras, was uninjured it would have been impossible.  I had a blind confidence in the man although his expressions were so absurdly in conflict.

I started to go on toward the village, but as he did not follow I turned back.  Marquis was sitting on the flat stones with a cigarette in his fingers: 

“Good heavens, man,” I cried, “you’re not stopping to smoke a cigarette?”

“Not this cigarette, at any rate,” he replied.  “Madame Barras has already smoked it. . . .  I can, perhaps, find you the burnt match.”

He got the electric-flash out of his pocket, and stooped over.  Immediately he made an exclamation of surprise.

I leaned down beside him.

There was a little heap of charred paper on the brown bed of pine-needles.  Marquis was about to take up this charred paper when his eye caught something thrust in between the two stones.  It was a handful of torn bits of paper.

Marquis got them out and laid them on the top of the flat stones under his light.

“Ah,” he said, “Madame Barras, while she smoked, got rid of some money.”

“The package of gold certificates!” I cried.  “She has burned them?”

“No,” he replied, “Madame Barras has favored your Treasury in her destructive process.  These are five-pound notes, of the Bank of England.”

I was astonished and I expressed it.

“But why should Madame Barras destroy notes of the Bank of England?”

“I imagine,” he answered, “that they were some which she had, by chance, failed to give you for exchange.”

“But why should she destroy them?” I went on.

“I conclude,” he drawled, “that she was not wholly certain that she would escape.”

“Escape!” I cried.  “You have been assuring me all along that Madame Barras is making no effort to escape.”

“Oh, no,” he replied, “she is making every effort.”

I was annoyed and puzzled.

“What is it,” I said, “precisely, that Madame Barras did here; can you tell me in plain words?”

“Surely,” he replied, “she sat here while something was decided, and while she sat here she smoked the cigarette, and while she smoked the cigarette, she destroyed the money.  But,” he added, “before she had quite finished, a decision was made and she hastily thrust the remaining bits of the torn notes into the crevice between these stones.”

“What decision?” I said.