He went to the bar, laid his card on the counter, bought a drink of absinthe, and then drawing from his pocket a little mirror, set it up on the counter and proceeded to don a false beard and hair and paint his face into wrinkles, until he closely resembled an old man seventy-one years of age.

He then went into a dark corner and watched the crowd of people with sharp, ferret-like eyes.

Gray Wolf slipped cautiously to the bar and examined the card left by the newcomer.

“Holy Saint Bridget!” he exclaims.  “It is Tictocq, the detective.”

Ten minutes later a beautiful woman enters the cellar.  Tenderly nurtured, and accustomed to every luxury that money could procure, she had, when a young vivandiere at the Convent of Saint Susan de la Montarde, run away with the Gray Wolf, fascinated by his many crimes and the knowledge that his business never allowed him to scrape his feet in the hall or snore.

“Parbleu, Marie,” snarls the Gray Wolf.  “Que voulez vous?  Avez-vous le beau cheval de mon frere, oule joli chien de votre pere?”

“No, no, Gray Wolf,” shouts the motley group of assassins, rogues and pickpockets, even their hardened hearts appalled at his fearful words.  “Mon Dieu!  You cannot be so cruel!”

“Tiens!” shouts the Gray Wolf, now maddened to desperation, and drawing his gleaming knife.  “Voila!  Canaille!  Tout le monde, carte blanche enbonpoint sauve que peut entre nous revenez nous a nous moutons!”

The horrified sans-culottes shrink back in terror as the Gray Wolf seizes Maria by the hair and cuts her into twenty-nine pieces, each exactly the same size.

As he stands with reeking hands above the corpse, amid a deep silence, the old, gray-bearded man who has been watching the scene springs forward, tears off his false beard and locks, and Tictocq, the famous French detective, stands before them.

Spellbound and immovable, the denizens of the cellar gaze at the greatest modern detective as he goes about the customary duties of his office.

He first measures the distance from the murdered woman to a point on the wall, then he takes down the name of the bartender and the day of the month and the year.  Then drawing from his pocket a powerful microscope, he examines a little of the blood that stands upon the floor in little pools.

“Mon Dieu!” he mutters, “it is as I feared—­human blood.”

He then enters rapidly in a memorandum book the result of his investigations, and leaves the cellar.

Tictocq bends his rapid steps in the direction of the headquarters of the Paris gendarmerie, but suddenly pausing, he strikes his hand upon his brow with a gesture of impatience.

“Mille tonnerre,” he mutters.  “I should have asked the name of that man with the knife in his hand.”

* * * * * *

It is reception night at the palace of the Duchess Valerie du Bellairs.