It was a happy thought.  A hearty meal washed down with a couple of glasses of Bordeaux sent new courage and energy coursing through his veins.  If he still felt a trifle weary, the sensation of fatigue was at all events greatly diminished when he left the restaurant with a cigar between his lips.

Just at that moment he longed for Father Papillon’s trap and sturdy steed.  Fortunately, a cab was passing:  he hired it, and as eight o’clock was striking, alighted at the corner of the square in front of the Northern Railway Station.  After a brief glance round, he began his search for the hotel where the murderer pretended to have left a box of clothes.

It must be understood that he did not present himself in his official capacity.  Hotel proprietors fight shy of detectives, and Lecoq was aware that if he proclaimed his calling he would probably learn nothing at all.  By brushing back his hair and turning up his coat collar, he made, however, a very considerable alteration in his appearance; and it was with a marked English accent that he asked the landlords and servants of various hostelries surrounding the station for information concerning a “foreign workman named May.”

He conducted his search with considerable address, but everywhere he received the same reply.

“We don’t know such a person; we haven’t seen any one answering the description you give of him.”

Any other answer would have astonished Lecoq, so strongly persuaded was he that the prisoner had only mentioned the circumstances of a trunk left at one of these hotels in order to give a semblance of truth to his narrative.  Nevertheless he continued his investigation.  If he noted down in his memorandum book the names of all the hotels which he visited, it was with a view of making sure of the prisoner’s discomfiture when he was conducted to the neighborhood and asked to prove the truth of his story.

Eventually, Lecoq reached the Hotel de Mariembourg, at the corner of the Rue St. Quentin.  The house was of modest proportions; but seemed respectable and well kept.  Lecoq pushed open the glass door leading into the vestibule, and entered the office—­a neat, brightly lighted room, where he found a woman standing upon a chair, her face on a level with a large bird cage, covered with a piece of black silk.  She was repeating three or four German words with great earnestness to the inmate of the cage, and was so engrossed in this occupation that Lecoq had to make considerable noise before he could attract her attention.

At length she turned her head, and the young detective exclaimed:  “Ah! good evening, madame; you are much interested, I see, in teaching your parrot to talk.”

“It isn’t a parrot,” replied the woman, who had not yet descended from her perch; “but a starling, and I am trying to teach it to say ’Have you breakfasted?’ in German.”

“What! can starlings talk?”

“Yes, sir, as well as you or I,” rejoined the woman, jumping down from the chair.