Several more nights passed. The house of Palmyre, closely watched, revealed nothing. No one came out, no one went in, no light was seen. They should have watched in broad daylight. At last, one midnight, 'Polyte Grandissime stepped cautiously up to one of the batten doors with an auger, and succeeded, without arousing any one, in boring a hole. He discovered a lighted candle standing in a glass of water.
"Nothing but a bedroom light," said one.
"Ah, bah!" whispered the other; "it is to make the spell work strong."
"We will not tell Agricola first; we had better tell Honoré," said Sylvestre.
"You forget," said 'Polyte, "that I no longer have any acquaintance with Monsieur Honoré Grandissime."
They told Agamemnon; and it would have gone hard with the "milatraise" but for the additional fact that suspicion had fastened upon another person; but now this person in turn had to be identified. It was decided not to report progress to old Agricola, but to wait and seek further developments. Agricola, having lost all ability to sleep in the mansion, moved into a small cottage in a grove near the house. But the very next morning, he turned cold with horror to find on his doorstep a small black-coffined doll, with pins run through the heart, a burned-out candle at the head and another at the feet.
"You know it is Palmyre, do you?" asked Agamemnon, seizing the old man as he was going at a headlong pace through the garden gate. "What if I should tell you that by watching the Congo dancing-ground at midnight to-night, you will see the real author of this mischief--eh?"
"And why to-night?"
"Because the moon rises at midnight."
There was firing that night in the deserted Congo dancing-grounds under the ruins of Fort St. Joseph, or, as we would say now, in Congo Square, from three pistols--Agricola's, 'Polyte's, and the weapon of an ill-defined, retreating figure answering the description of the person who had stabbed Agricola the preceding February. "And yet," said 'Polyte, "I would have sworn that it was Palmyre doing this work."