With Lanoë! Why had Licquet never guessed it! This name, indeed, so often mentioned in the declarations of the prisoners, had made no impression on him. Mme. Acquet was hidden there without doubt, and he triumphantly sent off an express to Réal announcing the good news, and sent two sharp men to Glatigny at the same time. They left Rouen on September 15th, and time lagged for Licquet while awaiting their return. Three days, five days, ten days passed without any news of them. In his impatience he spent his time worrying Lefebre. A continuous correspondence was established between him and Mme. de Combray; but in his letters, as in his examination, he showed great mistrust, and Licquet even began to fear that the prudent lawyer would not have told where the yellow horse was, if he had not been sure that the hunt for it would be fruitless. And so the detective, who had played his last card, was in an agony during the two weeks' absence of his men. At last they returned, discomfited and weary, leading the foundered yellow horse, and accompanied by a sort of colossus, "somewhat resembling a grenadier," who was no other than Lanoë's wife.
The story told by Licquet's emissaries was as short as it was delusive. On arriving at Bretteville-sur-Dives they had gone to the farm of Glatigny, but had not found Lanoë, whom Caffarelli had arrested a fortnight before. His wife had received them, and after their first enquiry had led them to the famous horse's stable, enchanted at being relieved of the famished beast who consumed all her fodder. The men had gone as far as Caen, and obtained the prefect's authorisation to speak to Lanoë. The latter remembered that Lefebre had left the horse with him at the end of July, on returning from Tournebut, but he denied all knowledge of Mme. Acquet's retreat. If he was to be believed, she was "a prisoner of her family," and would never be found, as the whole country round Falaise was "sold" to the mayor, M. de Saint-Léonard, who had declared himself his cousin's protector.
Lanoë's wife was sent back to Glatigny, but the horse was kept at Rouen—apparently in the hope that this dumb witness would bring some revelation. Licquet even cut off some of its hairs and sent them, carefully wrapped up, to Mme. de Combray, implying that they came from the faithful Delaitre, to whom the Marquise had confided the task of disposing of the compromising animal. The same evening the Marquise, completely reassured, wrote the following note to the lawyer:
"You see that my commissioner was speedy. I have had certain proof. He went to Lanoë's wife, found the horse, got on it, went five or six leagues, killed it, and brought away the skin. He brought me some of its coat, and I send you half, so that you may see the truth for yourself, and so have no fear. I am going to write to Soyer to say that he sold the horse at Guibray for 350 livres."
In her joy at being delivered from her nightmare, she wrote the same day to Colas, her groom, who was also in the Conciergerie: "Do not worry: do you need money? I will send you twelve francs. The cursed horse! They have sent me some of its skin, which I send for recognition. Burn this." And to her chambermaid, Catherine Querey: "The horse is killed. My agent skinned and burnt it. If you are asked about the missing horse, say that it was sold. My miserable daughter gives me a great deal of pain."
Thus ends the story of the yellow horse. It finished its mysterious odyssey in the stables of Savoye-Rollin, where Licquet often visited it, as if he could thus learn its secret. For a doubt remained, and Réal's suggestion haunted him: "If the horse had only served for Mme. Acquet's flight, they would not advise the strange precaution of taking it twelve leagues away, killing, and skinning it on the spot." Even now a great deal of mystery hangs about it. The horse had not been used by Mme. Acquet, because we know that since the robbery of June 7th, she had not left the neighbourhood of Falaise. Lefebre had ridden it from Tournebut; but was that a fact to be so carefully concealed? Why did the Marquise in her confidential letters insist on this point? "Say that the lawyer returned to his house on foot," is a sentence that we find in each of her letters. Since no mystery was made of the journey, why was its means of accomplishment important?
There was something unexplained, and Licquet was not satisfied. His tricks had brought no result. D'Aché was not found; Mme. Acquet had disappeared; her description had in vain been sent to all the brigades. Manginot, in despair of finding her, had renounced the search, and Savoye-Rollin himself was "determined to suspend all action." Such was the situation during the last days of September. It seemed most probable that the affair of Quesnay and the great plot of which it was an off-shoot, were going to join many others of the same kind, whose originators Fouché's police had despaired of finding, when an unexpected event reawakened Licquet's fervour and suggested to him a new machination.