Coquenil walked slowly around the chamber, peering carefully into cracks between the logs, as if searching for something. As he went on he held the candle lower and lower, and presently got down upon his hands and knees and crept along the base of the pile.
"What are you doing?" asked Alice, watching him in wonder from the archway.
Without replying, the detective rose to his feet, and holding the candle high above his head, examined the walls above the wood pile. Then he reached up and scraped the stones with his finger nails in several places, and then held his fingers close to the candlelight and looked at them and smelled them. His fingers were black with soot.
"M. Paul, won't you speak to me?" begged the girl.
"Just a minute, just a minute," he answered absently. Then he spoke with quick decision: "I'm going to set you to work," he said. "By the way, have you any idea where we are?"
She looked at him in surprise. "Why, don't you know?"
"I think we are on the Rue de Varennes—a big hôtel back of the high wall?"
"That's right," she said.
"Ah, he didn't take me away!" reflected M. Paul. "That is something. Pougeot will scent danger and will move heaven and earth to save us. He will get Tignol and Tignol knows I was here. But can they find us? Can they find us? Tell me, did you come down many stairs?"
"Yes," she said, "quite a long flight; but won't you please——"