The truth was that they searched for him in vain. Bordière, the lucky Bordière, who was responsible for so smart a piece of work, became enraged when he could find no traces of Chéri-Bibi apart from the marks among the bamboos. He offered his own explanation of the mystery: "I saw him fall here. He gave a loud cry and collapsed. Look at all this blood. He's certainly mortally wounded. He must have crawled away to croak a little farther on."
The thing was inexplicable, something very like magic. The Commandant stood silent, not knowing what to think. Had Chéri-Bibi any accomplices among his men? Had he bought some of them? How was it possible to tell with a man like that?
They related the story that he invariably carried gold-dust on him. Where? How? They were never able to determine. Some of them went so far as to maintain that he could hide at will thirty gold louis in his stomach. He ate gold, swallowed it, got rid of it, secreted it, and recovered it again as he pleased.
It was a pack of silly tales to which the authorities attached no importance, but now the Commandant began to think that there might be something in them.
Nevertheless what had really happened was capable of an extremely simple explanation. Chéri-Bibi had slipped away through the undergrowth until he came to his retreat and thence reached his opening; and the reason why blood was found on the bamboos was because he had wiped his hands, stained with Tarasque's blood, on them. While the warders were searching for a dead body he was in his tunnel; and thus his head appeared in the dormitory at the moment when the news of his death was exciting so much talk.
He summed up the situation at a glance. He saw the warders. He saw the Nut. He saw his brother "lifers" who, transfixed in amazement, restrained the burst of laughter with which they were ready to greet the startling vision that contradicted so flatly the warders' stories.
In a flash the Nut crept into the cavity and vanished from sight, while Chéri-Bibi kept the other convicts at bay by the ferocity of his look.
The flagstone fell back in its place.
When the convict guards turned round nothing seemed changed in the dormitory. Stay! There was one convict the fewer.
Some time elapsed before they noticed it. It was "Monsieur Désiré" who called their attention to it by saying under his breath so that he could be heard only by them: