The stage-manager's voice echoed through the cellars. But Mauclair did not reply.
I have said that a door opened on a little staircase that led to the second cellar. The commissary pushed it, but it resisted.
"I say," he said to the stage-manager, "I can't open this door: is it always so difficult?"
The stage-manager forced it open with his shoulder. He saw that, at the same time, he was pushing a human body and he could not keep back an exclamation, for he recognized the body at once:
"Mauclair! Poor devil! He is dead!"
But Mr. Commissary Mifroid, whom nothing surprised, was stooping over that big body.
"No," he said, "he is dead-drunk, which is not quite the same thing."
"It's the first time, if so," said the stage-manager
"Then some one has given him a narcotic. That is quite possible."
Mifroid went down a few steps and said: